Enter3D Project 5-03 Basic head modeling tutorial 'Little Devil 2010'

Enter3D Project 5-03 Basic head modeling tutorial 'Little Devil 2010'



This is the latest addition to the Enter3D projects. I first did this tutorial about 4 years ago in Silo 1.4 . For some reason I've had lots of emails asking for it in recent weeks. As Silo 2.0 has changed in some significant ways I decided to re-hash the video and add it to Enter3D.

I'll be adding a few videos over the next few weeks so please feel free to follow the Blog for notification of new uploads. It's always great to get some feedback on a video so please take time to leave a comment below.

___________________________________________________________

Getting confused with Foo the Fox

I've just had a weird thing happen. I've been working on some ideas for a couple of characters called 'Foo and Bah' (Foo, a small intelligent fox and Bah! his muscle bound bodyguard sheep. I'd been drawing the Fox character for a while and I was getting frustrated as I couldn't get a feel for his anatomy. I wanted to keep him basic and cartoony and as usual I was over-engineering his anatomy. I really do struggle keeping to basic shapes. Where some designers will put in a stick for an arm and it works perfectly I try to put in the full anatomically correct arm with bones, muscles, fat etc. I kept on drawing the Fox over and over and I seemed to keep coming back to the same basic shape and it just didn't feel right for me.

I was about to Google for some reference images and then thought I'd quickly model a fox with primitives in 3D and then spin it around to get the form or silhouette locked off. I opened my favorite modeling package and threw down some boxes and spheres in no particular order. I messed around with them for a few minutes and started to get a basic Fox shape together. Before I knew it I'd gone from primitives into detailed modeling, added a few colors that suited the Fox and started trying out different poses and facial expressions that I had struggled with in the pencil sketches. In no time at all I'd hit upon the right design and I was happy that the anatomy was right for this project.

It is quite liberating to do your concept work in 3D, trying out different shapes, making scale changes to limbs, trying different expressions etc. I used my 3D model as a drawing reference and sketched out five or six different turnarounds and I was pretty happy with every one. I chose one and inked it, scanned it in and did some quick Photoshop coloring.

All done I thought. I'd nailed the concept via a very unusual concept process. Now all there was to do was to use the reference image and make the 3D model....oh..wait...I already did that bit!. Doh! Very confused.com

EDIT:

Added his partner in crime tonight the evil henchman of the piece, 'Bah! the Sheep'. Be VERY careful tonight as Foo & Bah are after your Easter Eggs! Guard them with your life! If you haven't scoffed 'em all already. Happy Easter!

___________________________________________________________

Entering the Third Dimension (NOW OPEN)

Are you finding that your sketch books are overflowing with characters these days? Have you been wondering what some of those character would look like if they were a little more three dimensional? Well come on in and Enter the Third Dimension....

Q&A

Whats this Enter3D stuff then?

I've been doing tutorials and 3D training videos for a long time now. I've been working with more and more 2D designers and especially 2D character designers. More and more people have been asking about how to get their concepts into 3D. This new area of my website is designed to help.

What will I find there?

Help and support for one thing. I want to help anyone new to modeling get a feel for how subdivision modeling works and how to learn the basics. The new area of the site is broken down into:

An Introduction
The Basics
Some Projects
A Subdivision modelers Primer

I will use this framework as a place to keep my future tutorial videos. If you have specific requests then please feel free to add comments in this blog post.

Is it finished?

Nope. Not by a long way. I've been getting help and feedback from some amazing designers and I've been given some amazing character designs to use in future tutorials. The site is there as a resource for future modelers and a place to add new video content as I produce it.


Thanks have to go to Wes and the KURV guys who host all my stuff. The ever supportive Nevercenter Silo team for sponsorship and encouragement. For help with or for providing character designs and reference images James Yeah!, Moopf, Tado, Steve Cairney, Steve Talkowski, George Coghill, Lawrence Basso and many more to come. For constant advice and reality checks Wayne Robson, Dave Davidson. The multi-talented Glenn McGuire at Sparkle Media and Anthony Fillice my business guru and life coach. Oran Parker for design feedback. What would I do with out you all and the hundreds of others who I have the pleasure of interacting with on a daily basis. Thanks!

Follow me on twitter for updates.
___________________________________________________________

Woodland Yowie

Having received my Yowie blank the other day I set about working him over. I decided on a Wodland theme and decided to add roots and leaves and paint him with a bark texture. The black in awesome! He is a resin cast by Jon-Does-Doodles and if you get chance grab one from his Bigcartel shop.

One of the main reasons I bought the Yowie was that I want to do some resin casting myself and I thought it would help me to understand the process a little better if I could see a cast first hand. However, as soon as I opened the packaging I decided I needed to get right on and customise the little fella there and then.

I used a dark brown Premo Sculpey to make the roots and a bottle green to make the leaves. That way I didn't need to use the skull white undercoat as the Premo color was very close to the final color. I baked these parts off and gave them a coat of paint then followed that up with some detailed line work.


_______________________________________________________________________________________

A very eventful day or how I lost my eyebrows!

It isn't often that I sit and write about my day. Today has been a very eventful day. As you will find out as you continue into the narrative, I can't do much else tonight other than sit and type this blog with one finger on my right hand.

The plan for the day should have looked like this: school for Josh, post office for missed deliveries, gym, car wash, meet Anthony Filice for a discussion about CGTweet up, back to school, do some sculpting, a little drawing and finish building a robot with Josh. I didn't turn out that way.

I dropped the little fella off at school and got the parcels from the post office. My new arrivals were a custom Dunny destined for stripping and a cool custom resin blank called `Yowie` from Jon does doodles.

All good so far. I decided to shoot back home and pick up my wallet before heading to the car wash and onto the gym. For some reason that I'll never know I decided to skip the gym and spend an hour or so working on a custom break-dancing mummy figure I have on the go. I settled down in the studio and began mixing some epoxy resin to start piecing together the mummies legs. I finished that and set up my spray booth box outside ready to spray the Yowie blank and the base for the mummy. The wind was a little too high and paint started to go everywhere so I decided to use a galvanised bin to spay into. I put the mummy base into the bin and began spraying down into the bin. I fully coated the base and was going over for a second coat when the paint ignited and blew upwards out of the can. Luckily I wasn't fully over the can and jumped backwards. The flame hit my hand, the crease of my left arm, my neck and the side of my head. The worst area being the crease of the arm. I have no idea what caused the paint to ignite but checking the base later it seems there was some epoxy resin which may have caused some sort of reaction. I can't see any other explanation for the combustion but I know have a new outlook on the dangers of spraying models!

I called Pams Mum and got her to take me to the minor injuries clinic at the local hospital. They hurried me in and very quickly had my arm submerged in water cooling the blisters down. Within an hour I was spattered with cream and bandaged like the mummy I was creating before all this happened.

Speaking of which, here is the little bugger that has lost me half a day of work and is the reason I am now sitting here pecking away with this finger on my righthand.






_______________________________________________________________________________________

Orcs ahoy! More Warhammer than Lord of the rings.

We just had a red hot day here in the Northwest of England. In fact, too humid for my liking. Time to update a few of my galleries tonight and here's some Orc models I've been messing with:



Check out my gallery pages as I've been updating Sketches, Cartoons and toys and 3D characters.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Custom`I`vor - A virtual vinyl buddy!

Do you want to use some Virtual Vinyl? Want to try out your graphics on a virtual toy before getting the brushes out?

Meet Custom`I`vor the Virtual Toy customizers new best friend!

Customer`I`vor is a small 3D model and a layered photoshop texture template availalble soon from SouthernGFX.

And the great news? You will even have a template that can be printed out which lets you use any medium, scan it back in and apply that to your Custom`I`vor

Updates will be posted to my Blog
http://southerngfxblog.blogspot.com/

Custom`I`vor is in development and any feedback would be a big help!!!!!





Iphone-Ivor-Screens














____________________________________________________________________________

Ivor lost some of his cuteness in translation

I'm quite happy with the first set of 3D tests for Ivor but the feedback from a few guys was that the model is a little different than the concept and that it had lost some of its cuteness. I went back into Silo and bulked up the belly area, increased the size of his hands and repostitioned his arms. Added his ears back as I thought he lacked something without them and lowered his eyes giving him a bigger forehead (ie. younger).

I am happy enough with the progress so far, so much so that I am looking at having him 3D printed if costs aren't too high. I would like to get about 4 main characters done in concept and 3D before commiting to print I think.

I wanted to hold off with doing any real sculpting until I was happy with the 3D concept but I ended up making a start this morning. Out came the pasta maker and off I went with my black sculpey Premo.













A few more concepts for the next toy.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Ivor gets his first appearance in 3D

I took the Ivor concept one stage further today and modeled him in Silo. I asked a buddy (Thanks Wayne!) to run me off a couple of renders this evening and they aren't looking too bad so far. I'm not sure where to go with this idea now. I've started creating Ivor in Sculpey but as I was un-wrappping the first block I began thinking about getting Ivor 3D Printed. Need some sleep to think about this one.



____________________________________________________________________________

Some studio shots and a look at some of my books

I really love snooping through other artists studios and work rooms. It is the first thing I look for in a new art book and it's often the best thing on a new training DVD. With that in mind and on the request of a couple of twitterers I'm reposting shots of my shit-pit studio. I have always had a work room of one type or another. Sometimes a bedroom, sometimes a shed. This one is a custom built studio made by converting a double garage and I will have to be carried out of here in a large wooden box before I relinquish the helm! If you have a special art place in your life you will know what I mean.

Note: These are quite big images compared to my normal posting size so they may take a second or two to load.




No one cleans it but me (not often as you may know from my blogs) and the kids have to ask for a pass to even look in here (thats a lie but it would be great wouldn't it!). I keep it in such a way that I can move desks and stands around to suit whatever project I have on the go. The PC/Mac table stays pretty much the same and is a great setup when I bring 3D artists here to train. The other areas of the studio are alwasy in flux. Sometimes covered over if I'm spraying. Sometimes just a table in the middle if I'm scultping clay or messing with wax. A 20ft wall is dedicated to DVD's and books and I love my little library. I keep lots more books in the house but the studio is filled with inspirational stuff in the main.

If you've got any snaps of your work space please share them in the comments. `I've shown you mine...` as they say on Carry On films!

_________________________________________________________________________________

Sculpey order and some more concepts

I ordered my Sculpey PREMO from the amazing Dougarts on Ebay (Ordered Friday, it arrived Saturday am. Cool!). If you are in the UK and need modeling supplies fast and fairly cheap he seems to be the man! So I am now just waiting for some 1lb blocks of super sculpey and I'm ready to start some serious toy modeling. I'll be sketching all weekend and see if I can lock down an idea or two so I can have a go with the new modeling supplies.

I carried on playing with the underwater theme and I've started to refine one or two characters. I really like my little `Ivor-the-Diver` and `Ocho` so far. I think I will ink one or two images of these characters and then convert them to vector line art to see how they turn out. That way I can have a go at several color variations in photoshop. Ivor seems to be shaping up as my lead creation so I think I'll start with him. I'm trying not to look at too many other peoples toys as I don't want to be influenced too much, however, I need to research some eyes. I can't decided how I want Ivors eye to look like through his mask.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Diving into toys for a while

Although I've been sculpting for years I've never designed and made any toys myself. I've done plenty of toy concepts and I've modelled a fair few in 3D for a variety of clients. I've been talking to a few amazing toy-dude (you know who you are!!) and I have ordered a shed load of sculpey, premo sculpey and miliput and I'm going to get sketching for a few days. I want to design a range of little diving characters that I've had in the back of my mind for ages.

I was thinking of a couple of divers (boy and girl perhaps), a couple of hero sea creatures, maybe a Sperm Whale and a Shark and then a plethora of smaller characters like clown fish, a turtle, a baracuda etc.

I made a start tonight to get my juices flowing and I'm more than open to suggestions and critisism. It's nothing more than a fun project and one where I can learn a little about getting into toy design. It seems i've picked up lots of new followers this week and I'm hoping theres some toy-designer-gurus in there to help me out.



Comments, hints, tips, crits and color help more than welcome.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Fuse Wax by Willow products

I've been talking to a few artists this week about using `Fuse` Wax for sculpting and I thought I'd re-post the video that Willow products made to demonstate the basic properties of the wax. I'm a long time sculpey user but last year I fell in love with this wax. I tried about 5 or 6 different type of wax from very soft almost playdoh like Wax to the other end of the scale with carving waxes. Fuse was the best imho.

Heres the demo video to give you an idea of why I like it so much.





________________________________________________________________________________________________

Rhino Head Tutorial.

So I finally got some time to get my Rhino sculpt underway. I have managed to put together a little tutorial about how I did the 3D modeling prior to the clay modeling and that can be viewed here

Here a a few of the screen shots that can be seen in the tutorial:


________________________________________________________________________________________________________