Afro wearing gentleman.

as ive had a day of waiting on various cogs to turn i thought i would touch up on my modelling skills. without any reference (which was bad of me) i made this bloke up. wasnt really sure where he was going, but eventually got to a point where the chap looked like he needed an afro... so i gave him one. about 3 hours modelling, and relatively pleased :)heres a quick look at its topology.

another picture.

here is another illustration, not quite as good as the one below, more of a muck around in photoshop and the graphics tablet. its a samurai, i took reference from http://characterdesign.blogspot.com/ which had a coupla neat pictures done by Rad Sechris.

here is a picture.

Havent posted any new content for a while mainly due to several projects im working on, and not being able to post the wares of my labour. as a result alot of my own ideas are falling by the wayside, but im planning to correct this, firstly by doing some fresh character design, just for the fun of it.

Above here is a picture, of a mad, slightly serious scientist. was dead chuffed with the design and really got me working in illustrator alot more than i ever have previously (finally stopping using the photoshop polygonal lasso tool...)

he doesnt have a name. simon. simon is his name. yes, that'll do.

hopefully post another new illustration soon.

Travelling Skinned Mole

OOO its nice to post something that isnt the RAM chip. not that i dont like it, but ive come to realise its taking up alot of space on this blog.

last week my friend hayley contacted me about a travelling moleskin diary, where artists were invited to add their own little interpretations to the theme "Food for Thought". so i wrote a story (a true story) of the time myself and my friend aaron happened upon stephen hawkin leaving pizza hut with a pizza box on his lap.

it looked alot like this:-

find out more about the Moleskin, about taking part and what-not, gubbins etc at
http://www.thompson.typepad.com/

and thank you hayley and Thompson Brand Partners for an opportunity to draw some nonsense (although totally based on a true story.)

paint weight tests

been a relatively slow evening as i have been mainly just doing some weight-painting. but theres fun you can have with that, i.e bending the character into fun and silly poses

Ram Client Character Board

original design by ROBERT PAGE @ TUBBYPHUNK.COM

http://www.virtualopera.co.uk/ Random Acess Memory | The Virtual Opera

Had a bit of spare time so put this together, however not complete, as he's still missing his nose! quite a funky client board methought....

(edit) heres the complete version!

Rock Opera RAM stick.

http://www.virtualopera.co.uk/ Random Acess Memory | The Virtual Opera

original design by ROBERT PAGE @ TUBBYPHUNK.COM


Early modelling.

Here is come of my working over the past few days, i finished off modelling the RAM chip, and then went about setting up a UV in the time honoured tradition of planar and cyndrical mapping. reletively painless, no issues as far as i can tell! i had a wee play around with some toon shaders, settled on a slight gradient on a toon shader, to allow for a more gradual change in tone.

Toon Shader with no adjustments. theres a wee charm about them.with a slight gradient however, it gives a really nice effect, which doesnt stumble into just being another shader.
Testing out the face.
This is a Blinn Shader, which is giving it alot of shine. also im not very happy about the texture/colours. need to match the source more.
This is more like it! Toon shaded, and more subtle texture.
(with fancy lighting) So Far... gonna do a quick test of animating the texture today, mebbes throw up a quick video of that. also gonna do the manips for the skeleton and bind it, mebbes a wee animation test of him bouncing about.