10_Vexgnaw WIP

A quick texture test before I go to bed. Will probably use this as a foundation to play with polypaint features. (Spec's ramped a little high..)

Long awaited update

Since starting as a texture artist at Dinamo productions I've been way busier outside of work than I ever could have predicted. Keeping a constant effort to work on my portfolio seems like a loosing battle but its probably my own fault for choosing such an ambitious project to complete. -_-

I haven't had time to work on Vexgnaw for a few weeks now so I'm officially putting him on pause until I have a a decent stretch of time to properly commit to him. Don't worry, I'm sure as hell not giving up on him!

Here's as far as I got :







I'm quite happy with the result so far, hopefully textures will truly make him come to life (looking forward to that bit.)

As for the time being I've decided to take what I've learnt making Vexgnaw and apply it to a fresh new project. So far I've just had time to block out a rough head base mesh. I'll be following information from Scott Spencer's "ZBrush Digital Sculpting Human Anatomy" book. I'm currently using his heroic character model as a guide for my base mesh but wont be using Zbrush for the detailing =O. I'm also attempting to model by dragging out faces rather than subdividing from a box. Experimenting with topology... sad to admit but I'm finding it rather therapeutic. Here's the head I created:



I'm happy with the majority of it but do feel like there could be more Polys shaping the side of the nose, probably something I'll look in to after finishing the rest of the body.

I'll post an update of my progress asap. All comments/advise are welcome =) (currently fighting with the torso and arms.. mostly arms.)

09_Vexgnaw WIP

Here's a 4k preview of my progress so far. Belt was a pain to create, may have to go back to it at a later date. Need to get the lower legs in and move on to creating his backpack.

08_Vexgnaw

Got a chance to add the arms in this afternoon. Took longer than expected as I had to retopologise each limb before unwrapping and rendering the maps. Ran into a few problems but managed to overcome them after several cups of tea.

I'm particularly pleased with how his non-mutated hand has come out, hands being something I've always found awkward to model.

07_Vexgnaw WIP

Starting to run in to a few problems...

06_Vexgnaw WIP

Click to view HD

05_Vexgnaw WIP

Some tests with displacement maps, rendered in 3dMax. I'm hoping to get a similar test up in Maya asap.

*Updated with progress so far before I go to bed =) I aim to get the chest complete before I try and replicate it all in Maya.

04_Vexgnaw WIP

03_Vexgnaw WIP

Blocking out the hard surfaces at the moment, shoulder guards will probably be redone. Progress on this character had been slowed during this past month for various reasons but fortunately these next few weeks look clear so there shouldn't be anything stopping me! This is probably the hardest and most ambitious character project I've set myself so any advise or critism is more than welcome.

02_Vexgnaw WIP

Here's a quick screen grab from Zbrush to show my current progress with Vexgnaw.

*I'll update this post with more images soon

01_Vexgnaw WIP

Made a start on Vexgnaw today although there's still a lot of work to do before he looks more like the concept. I'm still piecing him together and working out what needs to be done and how I'm going to do it.

The only thing bothering me is working out how I'm going to go about the hard surface detailing, I'd like to get sufficient detail while keeping it relatively low poly.* If anyone can tell me any tips or knows any books, webpages that might help me learn hard surface detailing techniques I'd greatly appreciate it.

*Making two versions for Film and Game.

'Vexgnaw' Character Concept

This is a concept for a self set project I'm currently working on. Consider it fan art for 'Warhammer 40k.' I love the universe its set in and thought I'd like to do nothing more than create some concepts and character models while I have some spare time.

*I'll update this post with more information regarding the character and project soon

Warhammer 40,000 is © Games Workshop

Concepts

Here are some concepts I created for my teams 'dare to be digital' entry this year. I think we had a really good game idea and mechanic but unfortunately we didn't get through. I was quite disappointed but I feel a lot of good came from it, especially by taking the time to do some traditional and digital concepts. It was a nice change and refreshed my respect for concept artists and illustrators.

When I started my degree I wanted to be a concept artist but as the course progressed I started to realise concept design was mainly focused on the 2D course. This caused some confusion for me but I quickly started enjoying the 3D elements, especially modeling and texturing. Now when looking back, I'm so glad I chose to do what I did. I've enjoyed it so much, I don't think I can imagine not being a 3D artist!

I like the 'Zombie boar' image so much I think I'll defiantly have to create a 3D model of it!

Graduate Showreel

Daniel McCarthy Graduate Showreel from Daniel McCarthy on Vimeo.

My Graduate showreel, containing clips from a variety of projects I undertook during my 3rd year studying Computer Animation at Glamorgan University : Atrium. The showreel also contains clips from a collaboration project called 'spider attack,' a short visual effects sequence by Myself (Daniel McCarthy - CG artist), Sean_Rowlands (VFX artist) and Mark Nicholas (Animator).

'Spider Attack' - short film

Spider Attack - Final Cinema Render from Sean Rowlands on Vimeo.

Aracnoid!

Heres the lovely spiderbot pretty much all finished up =) Im considering adding some blood alphas to the feeding tubes on the face and maybe some bullet decals on the metal plating. Input welcome!





Also rendered shot 3 of our spider attack film. A short action sequence featuring the animation of Mark Nicholas, visual effects of Sean_Rowlands and modeling, texturing and general 'artyness' of myself. Hope to put some stills up soon.

Turret Prop

Spider WIP teaser

Me and Sean have been working on some Blood effects for our little 'Aracnoid attack' film. Check it out =)

Models and Textures - Daniel McCarthy
Animation - Mark Nicholas
VFX - Sean Rowlands

Blood Splatter Test from Sean Rowlands on Vimeo.

Exterior Environment WIP

Exterior Sky WIP

So i've spent all day trying to get this right, and while its not quite there yet I think its in a good enough place to leave for the time being. So much to do, so little time!

Environment feedback update

I've updated my interior with a ceiling, magnetic pipe hooks and hopefully screens that now look more like screens and less like posters. Thanks to Sean Rowlands who's been helping with the screen animations.

Any more feedback would be great =)

Interior feedback

Updated some of my interior, mainly the propaganda posters due to 1st submittal feedback. They did look far too clean before...

Spider Texture WIP

Zbrush bodydouble

These are my Zbrush sculpts of the body double character so far, click here for a peek at the greenscreen footage we shot useing a tasty Red camera. Hoping to have more up soon, including the low poly character in progress.

Interior updated

Environment interior?

Wip character

Major Character

Here's a current WIP of my major character project. Its modeled with games in mind but might be used in a short film as a body double to swap with a live action character. The face wont be seen as it'll be behind a gas mask but I used the opportunity to model my friends face underneath just because I can =P A sort of mini project I guess.

Really need to learn how to model creases.. time to watch those Richard Smith tutorials =S