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A full bodied and in depth breakdown of best practices to follow and common mistakes for games characters but most importantly; how to fix them. Learning any discipline can be trial by fire with universities not having the scope to foresee issues you may face in a studio, resources online often not breaking down key fundamental pipeline must haves and so fresh artists may not realize their mistake until it's already been pushed into the main branch. Here you will get a comprehensive guide to the pipeline for 3D characters.

Takeaway

• Best practices for games characters for production
• How to spot and best fix common mistakes in the FULL character art pipeline
• How to implement stronger artistic fundamentals

This is a purely digital presentation with no voice over, read the script at your own pace :)

So it's been a while since I posted here about how my figure sculpting classes were going.
We had a week off after the hand sculpt, then I sculpted some legs and finally we started the long arduous task of doing a full posed figure. It couldn't just be a sketch to show that I knew where landmarks and basic forms were this time, it had to be the real deal, so I've put my all into the process (even though I haven't ever taken a study to this level of completion before).

It started with a very rough form and proportion block out using a provided base mesh, layers were used primarily to lock in various milestones in the process which I really enjoyed as a workflow. It felt very fluid, I could reverse certain choices, huge changes or go back to sculpt in the T-Pose form for any symmetry like hands and feet (spoilers, that didn't work and I did them all in asymm in the end anyways). 

I got a little feedback on the basic forms and volumes (like in the chest) but after this I was on my own for the rest of it. There isn't much else to say on the process other than just knuckling down and doing your best. Mostly I struggled on just trying to finish it; in life drawing classes, I always hated doing the long poses where you made a complete study over the course of an hour. I really enjoy making big gestural pieces, something to capture the image and emotion but ultimately keeping up the pace by doing something new as soon as I "get it". This is quite the change of pace for me, and even though it was long and at times, it was the last thing on this planet that I wanted to do, I'm very happy I finished it for the new year! 

The face was a particularly large obstacle to overcome, I enjoy faces a lot but once it comes to likeness pieces I feel like a deer caught in headlights! The feedback I got for this part was incredibly insightful as with likeness' you often need another persons perspective to help guide you, otherwise their face stops looking like a face and you can be blinded and overwhelmed very quickly. 

A quick fun note! I didn't think I would enjoy sculpting feet so much! There is a lot of gesture and little quirks you can find in toes, so I may try to do some posed studies once I've taken a break! In all my years working, I haven't had to sculpt detailed feet before (cause who isn't wearing shoes?) so this was a lot of fun.

And this was the final stretch! Scrubbing through all the layers before working on the hands and calling it finished (who else leaves hands till the last possible second?). A lot of refining, detailing and some small structural edits!

And this is how it has finally turned out!

I have sent it away for my final feedback session but as I'm unsure when that may come in, I wanted to share my progress with everyone. Although not an anatomy course at all, I feel as though what I gained most from this course was just more confidence in my ability.
Sculpting without symmetry isn't scary, I can do it. I can do something other than stylised characters just fine and I feel far more secure in my understanding of human anatomy and where my assumptions where tripping me up the most and how to correct them, no matter how messy it may have gotten.

Thank you for following my journey so far! Hopefully I can apply the feedback I got soon and upload full renders and videos very soon.
Happy new year, everybody!

Hands! Hands hands hands hands hands! This week was about hands. A territory I'm more familiar with which meant I had far more fun, the only stressful part was trying to pick a pose that would be cool enough to make.
As we had to sculpt our own hands, I took inspiration from old renaissance paintings and ball jointed doll sculpts to make something delicate and dainty as a struggle I usually face with hands is not making them super "I'll punch out a wall" chunky.

So here is how I got on!
At first I started with a pretty basic base mesh that I already had in my stock pile, as I'm more familiar with it than the one provided, and worked up some of the anatomy in a T pose; that way it was easier to pose once all the landmarks were already sculpted in.

The geometry isn't that great as the geo gets in the way of the knuckles so I think I'm going to fix that for any future use but seeing how this is a sculpt it wasn't very noticeable at the highest resolution.
Then I quickly posed it up using transpose master and just started to sculpt in the posed version! I took as many photos as I could but I also tried not to rely on them too heavily and instead focus more on the construction rules/proportions so I was really drilling them in.

I really wanted to highlight the elegance in my inspirations, subtle shifts in form and dainty nature (that I don't have in my own hands) and so I like to think I came close to achieving that!

I also reuse hands a lot for work so it was nice to go back to basics and make another that I think I am totally going to reuse again; recycling is good for the environment you see! This week has been fun, I might try and do something gnarly, grisly and scary one day with more drama after the course, just to give it a go, but for now, onto week 5!

As I mentioned previously, I THINK week five is a break where we get a week off but I might use this time to go back over previous pieces and update them with the feedback I got from Scott. Exciting! Lets hope there is a big difference. 

This week was aaarms! More specially pronation and supination while flexed. 

A huge challenge for me, usually I pick out key plane changes and landmarks but really getting into the nitty gritty of what's happening in the forearm was a real mind bender BUT enjoyable! Lots of feedback to apply on this one but hopefully I'll get the time to do that soon!

Didn't have a lot of time to spend on this weeks assignment so what I think I'm going to do, is during our fifth week break (yay! a break!), I will take that time to go over all my previous pieces and apply the feedback I was given. That way I can kind of soak in the advice and go over the things I've seen and learnt since then rather than nodding and having to move on. It will be exciting to see a direct comparison!

This week was all about taking the feedback I got from week01 and applying it while covering a wide range of motion in the shoulders. It's actually been a lot of fun! I might have spent a lot of my time just fighting the layers as every time I would fix something in the earlier layers, it would break the subsequent ones which was a bit of a bummer. Expected, but always a little heart breaking.

But here we go!

I was running out of time in the last two poses but I tried to focus on the areas I was weakest in last week as not to cop out on the fundamental things I should be developing. But its okay if I leave out an elbow here or there right? Riiight? We focus on arms soon so I'll have my chance to slay those pesky elbows soon!

Still a long way to go but I can already feel myself understanding everything a little better which is incredibly satisfying!

Some updates on the Medabot!

As LuisCherubini asked on polycount, There is now also a medal design! It needs a little cleanup but overall with how tiny its going to be i don't think it needs much detail to look impactful. As long as it's cute! 

Retop is also done! Got a little clean up to do here as i could have done better in areas like the chest and crown but overall i'm happy that I've been able to retain a lot of the shape. We shall see how well it does once baked!

Working on two things at once has been quite refreshing, if i get stuck or bored with one, its nice to have something so different to switch back to.  

The plan from now on iiiis:
- Unwrap Medabot
- Bake Medabot
- Build eye mesh for rig test

Zuri is unwraped and baked so i'll be working on her lashes and brows first before the whole face as its been a while since I've done any hair cards. Roughly 4 years? Lets see how that goes!

So a little while ago I finished Zuri's face retop and UV's

Its not perfect but as this is more of a project for me to practice my texturing pipelines, i wasn't too worried about having the perfect example of a game mesh. As long as the UV's are nice and there is enough clean geo for me to pull of the style i'm looking for, then i'm happy! Really looking forward to texturing her face as i haven't done anything remotely this close to a stylised realism piece for four years.

Zuri was also a small distraction from my current larger project, a custom Medabot collaboration with Luke Kendall https://www.artstation.com/purplepixelrat.

 His Highpoly is finished (there may be some cleanup after i've spent a little time away) and i have started the retop process. Its always nice to have a few projects to flip between, more so when they are so widely different from each other. Medabots only stand about 90cms tall so its been fun to play with the toyish proportions of the design rather than my usual "giant mech" experiences.

Trying not to rush myself too much with these projects but with being inside all the time, what else is there to do?

Develop a next-gen stylised character tutorial!

I was asked a few months ago if i could make a tutorial about how i created my most recent Sakura piece (because I had been posting a lot of wip dev images on twitter) and i just got my copy! Copies will be available in stores on the 20th.
Its always been a bit of a dream to be published in some way so i feel really blessed to be a part of something so cool with lots of different artists. I hope that the readers find it helpful!

  

  Thank you!

But i guess that means we have room for magical girls right?

I've been reworking an old project from a year ago for almost a month and this is just some tasters of the final textures. Hopefully the rig will be done soon and i can pose her up and add crazy magic stuff to her. 

Keep an eye out!

I have taken a break for a while from doing personal work over the past few months and have recently decided to dig up an old project so I can finish it!

This is Chasten!

He is an old elven war vet turned head of the royal guard. Based on this concept by Shen YH

I fell in love with this guy's attitude immediately and i was so happy that Shen said i could bring him to life. With taking on a large project in my day job I've had to cut the project down to a bust so i can finish him up but i'm very excited to be back on the horse creatively again!

He still needs a bunch of polish and i need to decide whether to give him cards or sculpted hair. With how detailed and fine his metal deco's have become i'm feeling a more stylised card look but i'll do some tests!