Ibuki, a work in progress

While searching for a job I've come up with a make work project to help teach myself more of Maya (specifically rigging and using the hyper shader), to have better understanding of Zbrush and normal mapping as well as having something worth posting on CGTalk.

A classmate of mine made a pretty kick ass Chun-Li and that inspired myself and a some of my classmates to try our hand at making our own Street Fighter characters. I've chosen Ibuki, the ninja girl from Street Fighter 3.

Since I'm not too comfortable using ZSpheres I started modeling the base mesh for the characcter in Maya 2009. This is the seventh thing, I believe, that I've modeled thus far and the first attempt at modeling a woman. I used this tutorial as a jumping off point because it showed a fair bit of process.

I kind of skirted the line between the reference and the artwork.







The torso was based off of a cylinder as were the arms and the legs. Since I'm not too worried about the topology I just boolean'd the cylinders together with spheres to get the shape of the shoulders and the butt and cleaned up the mess as I went along. I didn't want to spend too much time manipulating vertices and what not since I was going to fix it in Zbrush.



I ganked the hands, feet and ears off of xsi man, the head started off as the simple woman's head you can generate from primitive>characters in xsi took them into Maya as obj's and frankenstien'd everything together. The hands, feet and ears are largely the same but the head had to be modified quite a bit. this is what I ended up with this.



I dubbed the base mesh He-Ra Princess of Power. The shoulders were way too large, the neck was too thick from the front view and the head was too long and tall, but that's what Zbrush is for.

After working on the character in Zbrush for a while I ended up having to export my base mesh back into Maya from Zbrush to clean up some of the geo and fix some of the vertices. They weren't quite center and the symmetrical sculpting in Zbrush was getting thrown off. Here's what I have to take back into ZBrush.



Definitely looking a bit more feminine and stylised but the neck looks a little too long, as does the lower half of her body. Nothing I can't fix in ZBrush. Once I get the proportions and the shape exactly where I want them to be I'll take the base mesh back into Maya, fix whatever topology issues the mesh has, create the base mesh for her costume and UV everything so I can normal map it all. I think most of the normal mapping will be done on her clothing but her body will definitely need at least one higher level of subdivision to smooth it all out.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the project up to this point, I've finally started to wrap my head around ZBrush's interface and modeling with ZBrush is so much more fun, artistic even, than the ol' extrude, point/face/edge manipulation.

By the end of next week I hope to have Ibuki ready to be textured and rigged. Then I can move on to learning how to animate in Maya. I can start off with some simple animated poses with Ibuki and then segue into doing full on animation with some downloadable rigs. I want to have an entirely new portfolio and demo reel to take around to all of the studios I've just applied to.

Next week I hope to have a complete or nearly complete modeled/normal mapped character to post.

Dan Lindberg 09 Demo Reel 1.0

Disposable portfolio pages

Cloney Island Animatic.

Here's the animatic for my Cloney Island demo reel short.



I definitely need to re-record the dialogue to improve its sound quality and get rid of the background sounds from the show. I also need to combine a baby crying with a T-Rex roar for when Super Atomic baby Abe punches through and ganks the mad scientist type guy.

Demo Reel Storyboard

Here's the story board for my (apparently bizarre) demo reel film idea.






I'm using a line of dialogue from the twelfth episode of Clone High, which at this point I think I'm going to re-record for the sake of changing a word and increasing the sound quality. The clip I currently have is mono and ganked off of Youtube. It's a line of dialogue by Principal Scudsworth.

"I first came up with the idea for Cloney Island after watching the movie Jurassic Park 3. But my ill-conceived amusement park will be filled with human clones instead of zoo animals. It's as fool proof as the amusement park in the movie itself."

I want to change the words zoo animals to dinosaurs and I'm tempted to shoe horn in the words super atomic before human clones, although that might be a bit much. I already have an animatic done and just need to convert it to an avi or quicktime from a swf so I can host it on youtube.

Wow, two months has gone by.

I feel like I've blinked and two months has just flown by. It just seems like just the other day I was first learning how to model a hand and now I now how to rig, paint weight maps, model characters and environments, face shapes, constrain, create basic ICE trees, etc. I really should post some of my cg stuff, I've got some renders and captures.

After listening to Craig rant, I mean lecture, lecture us about what we should do for our demo reels, the scope we should aim for, what we intend to convey with it, who we're targeting with it and, perhaps mopst important of all, what we shouldn't do I've come up with a new idea for my demo reel. The Metalocalypse styled short film still appeals to me, but I don't think that it's something I could do and do well within the next semester.

I'll keep working on the designs for it, if only to have more things for my demo reel and grad pages.



I'm going to model, texture, rig, weight map and face shape this--the summoned minion from the Metalocalypse short idea--for grad page material and not worry about how well it can animate, just how well I can pose it. Have some cool looking stuff for grad.

The new idea for my demo reel involves relying more on a piece of acting to dialogfue rather than trying to mmake a short film. I'll be revisiting a bit of dialogue I used for a piece of animation from fourth semester in the commercial animation program. It's a line from the 11th episode of Clone High spoken by Principle Scudworth, right before the phone call from John Stamos (STAMOS!).

"I first got the idea for Cloney Island after watching the movie Jurasic Park 3. But my ill-conceived amusement park will be filled with human clones instead of zoo animsls. It's as fool proof as the amusement park in the film itself! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"





A simple but expressive character. James Bond villain-ish. The interior environment will be pretty minimalist, just a few plains, the 60's style desk and an implied window via the lighting. I need to come up with some sort of juxtaposition to the dialogue and acting. Right now I'm leaning towards a 60 foot tall, atomic, super baby Abe Lincoln clone--with chin-strap beard and stove top--punch through the window, grab the mad scientist villain dude mid-cackle, pull him outside and roar as laser beams shoot from his eyes. I have no idea what the exterior environment will look like.

Soooo...an update of sorts.

I am trying to come up with the idea for my final project for digital animation the first week in. The impetus being lessons learned from struggling to come up with my final project for commercial animation in the fourth semester, not really succeeding at that and one demo reel I saw as a first year volunteer at the Digital and Commercial animation grad show that really left an impression on me. I really want to focus on what I need to make a kick ass demo reel, really hit it out of the park and I think I've got the concept.

A 20-30 second short film that's like a music video to a Metalocalypse song.

I want to have the semblance of a narrative, some physical acting, some facial expressions, a bit of dialogue, and a scantily clad barbarian chick hacking her way through some minions to get to some troll warlock.






I want to do some kick ass models in z brush.