Tag Archives: Zbrush

FACEBOOK ART CHALLENGE – DAY 2/5

Art Challenge Day 2/5. Today’s theme is Zbrush. These were all sculpted in Zbrush and painted over the top of.

Today I’m going to nominate Ryan-John Keates. Let’s see some of that sculpting goodness, RJ!

ArtNuggets-NickSmith-Borg

ArtNuggets-NickSmith-PMC

ArtNuggets-NickSmith-CDW5A

 

 

 

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Borg Process

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Here’s a slide show of the process I went through to create the Borg Image.

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Borg

ArtNuggets-NickSmith-BorgHaving seen some of Ben Mauro‘s latest stuff, I felt I owed it to myself to get some Zbrushing done. I wanted to get something sculpted quickly out of Zbrush and then painted over in Photoshop. The sculpt turned out a little more tech and hard edged than I’d anticipated, which lead to a long paint over process than I was hoping for. The head, in particular, was pretty undefined and meant I had to go back into Zbrush to give it a bit of a kicking, and even then it took some serious paint over trial and error to get a result I was happy with.

Having said that, this experiment really showed me that I can go straight into Zbrush with nothing more than a vague idea in mind and come up with something interesting. Certain areas of this character I feel pretty confident in saying I would not have come up with if I’d started by sketching. I’m thinking of the ribcage stylings in particular. I’m keen to give it another crack soon.

 

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Steve

ArtNuggets-NickSmith-SCassEver since I started using Zbrush I’ve wondered what it would be like to create a caricature using it. Recently I was lucky enough to be commissioned to do such a thing.

Surprise! Surprise! It turns out that Zbrush is ideal for creating caricatures. With this piece I used Zbrush to get the bulk of the head likeness sculpted, before bringing it into Photoshop to apply colour and paint the body and setting. I’m looking forward to applying this technique to caricatures of the rich and famous as part of the Caricaturama Showdown 3000 on facebook.

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Behold My Booty!

This weekend I will be in attendance at Supanova at the Brisbane RNA Showgrounds, so come on down if you’re in the area and pick up some of this sweet loot. I have postcards, prints, posters and t-shirts for sale, as well as the chance to win some of the more exclusive images.

I can be found, along with my cohort Pete Yong, at Pete & Nick’s Art Nuggets in Artist’s Alley, Booth L2. Below I have provided a helpful map, so as to remove all possible impediments to people attending. I’m excited to be taking part and hope to see many friendly faces as well as make new acquaintances. Should be fun.

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PMC 3D Print

 

Having sculpted this wee chap in Zbrush and painted him up a few weeks ago, I was damn keen to get him 3D printed. I uploaded him to i.materialise.com and purchased a print about a week ago and today he arrived on my doorstep.

There’s something satisfying about holding a tactile incarnation of a character you’ve designed in your hand. It taps into that childlike urge to hold and manipulate and examine things. It’s so much better than just seeing it on screen. It feels like the logical conclusion of the fascination that first inspired me to start drawing pictures of the toys I had when I was a kid. All I know for sure is that it puts a smile on my face.

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PMC

 

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Having been inspired by my visit to Wellington and the powers of Zbrush, it’s taken me a surprising amount of time to get something new done. This is a little character I’ve had in the pad for a while and I thought it would make a great project to stretch my Zbrush skills a bit more. The creation of this character required getting to grips with a lot of new facets of Zbrush, such as merging multiple subtools, posing and, the most daunting, hard surface modelling.

The sculpt was great fun to do, especially the head. However, having sculpted it from one sphere, I realised after having created other parts of the character that I could have achieved better results by creating separate pieces and merging them into the head. The creation of the gun was quite time-consuming, probably at least six hours, but it was gratifying to see it come out so well. I’m looking forward to seeing what other tech I can create using Zbrush.

The paint over took a lot longer than I expected. It really is a case of the work having to be done somewhere along the pipeline. There’s always the temptation to get the model rendered and into photoshop as soon as I can, probably because I feel more comfortable painting as opposed to sculpting at this stage. Really though, the process could have been sped up if I’d taken that extra bit of time sharpening up the model. You live and learn….

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Concept Design Workshop – Wellington Day 5

Final day of the regular daily format of the Workshop and I’m excited to think of the artistic possibilities using Zbrush can unleash. Really enjoyed sculpting this chap. Really enjoyed painting him up too, complete with a scalp tattoo in homage to the talented Jacob Hina, who’s concepts can be found at his Order-in-Debris website. What to sculpt next? Hmm….

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Concept Design Workshop – Wellington Day 4

More Super-happy fun times at CDW in Wellington. First up, a future-trooper borrowing heavily from Aaron Beck’s work. For the real thing go here. Then there’s the knight’s head with some hand sculpted hair. I’m looking forward to rendering out and doing the paint over tomorrow.

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Concept Design Workshop – Wellington Day 2

Today’s fresh produce from the Wellington CDW…

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