Case Studies for Selected Works
Here, I go into a little more detail on the creative process of a few noteworthy pieces selected from my body of work, to show off my methods and some behind the scenes progress shots
Moray Eel
Sea Hag
An exploration of character design.
The Moray Eel Sea Hag was my final project in Nicholas Zuccarello's digital sculpting class at UCF. Our goal was to design a humanoid character incorporating features of an animal, and then render this character in ZBrush to show off the skills we'd learned over the semester. I chose the moray eel as my animal, and decided to translate the animal's serpentine body shape, weird face, and wrinkly skin to this odd looking character. I had it in mind that I wanted to create a sea hag, or some kind of twisted parody of a mermaid, so I created this uncanny, flabby looking humanoid - wearing seaweed as a garment and wig, with deep sea isopods covering the breasts, and, to bring in the "sea with" aspect, a magic spell summoning tentacles in front of her. I started out with a ZSphere skeleton, which I transformed to a mesh, which I slowly began sculpting on, iterating upon, and adding subtools. The whole process took about 3 weeks of intermittent work.
Metallic Raygun
Advanced Modeling and Textures in ZBrush
This ray gun sculpt was another piece from Zuccarello's digital sculpting class, this time from a three-week project focusing on teaching us advanced modeling techniques, detailing metal objects, and textures in ZBrush. We were required to make a model with a distinct top, middle, and bottom piece, so I decided to make a sci-fi ray gun on a rotating turret with a big base. I can't say I really drew on any one source, and I mostly winged the design of the prop using a general idea of what a "ray gun" would look like. I was definitely aiming for something a bit more fantastic and retrofuturistic, though. I used the ZModeler tools in ZBrush to transform simple spheres and cylinders into the structures of the ray gun. Then, I converted them to a single mesh and started sculpting on it to add in the metal details. Finally, the textures were applied, and, as a bonus, we went into photoshop to do some experimental rendering of our pictures with colored lighting.
Engraved Stone Pillar
Surface detail, stone sculpting, and scene design in ZBrush
Yet another piece from Zuccarello's digital sculpting class, this project came midway through the semester, when we were delving into advanced sculpting techniques and the nuances of primary, secondary, and tertiary details as they apply to sculpting. Our goal for this 3 week project was to create a detailed stone structure and place it in a scene featuring a few rocks, a ground element, and a variety of plants. I started with the pillar, beginning with a simple elongated cube, and using live Booleans to give it a more interesting shape through subtraction. Then, I converted it to a mesh and began adding in the details to make it look more like an engraved, weathered stone. I created a custom brush for some of the more finely detailed carved symbols. From there, I modeled out the rocks and the ground from simple geometry and added surface detail to them, using the same techniques. Finally, I created the plants - I created a few models of simple plants (blades/clusters of grass, flowers), and then used a brush to spread out a bunch of copies of them all around the scene to populate it.
Monster Wilds
My first major game design project as a 3D artist
Monster Wilds is an ongoing game development project that I'm involved with in Game Design Workshop, the capstone for my degree. This project is taking place over two semesters, and due to be completed at the end of this semester. I'm one of the team's 3D artists - specifically, I create 3D models, based on tasks and references given to me by the art leads. I'm given quite a bit of artistic freedom, provided the leads are satisfied with my work. I mainly work off the references they provide for me, and the results are usually okayed, with very few modifications asked for. The goal is to create plants, rock structures, and other miscellaneous props to decorate the world of our game - a bright, fantastical alien environment of swamps, forests, and caverns. I create the 3D models through various methods - typically in Maya, though some of them require me to start off in ZBrush and transfer them to Maya to finish them. Once they've been modeled and UV-ed, I send them on to be textured by another member of the team - I'm only a modeler, as far as my work on the game is concerned.
