September's work inspired by old beat em ups and Bandai box art. As I get more competent with the program I have to keep an eye not to stray too far from my original mission statement - produce cool 90s/00s inspired images. I just have to dial back some details and embrace the low polys and primitive shapes!
This one's been a challenge! Since my last update:
Lots of little bits tidied up in nomad
Lighting adjusted
Graphic elements created with Nomad / Photoshop
Final comp pieced together in Photoshop
I added a lot of little details which, as always, have been covered up or washed out in the final render. I often find good compositions are more about knowing which details to redact, rather than cramming them in - better to have them and not need them I guess.
Happy to say: On to the next one!
22 saved viewports later and I have a composition that I'm kinda happy with. I wanted to pay homage to some old sideways-on fighting games, while also having it be a bit illustrative and not too fighting-gamey?
I haven't taken it into Photoshop yet so there's still a way to go!
This week I've been working on costume designs as my last post was flagged nsfw. If I share any more early ideas I'll be sure to include figleaves 😂
Characters and costumes are almost done! I took time focussing on strong silhouettes while keeping things simple. I've also been working on cleaning up my topology... It's probably still got a long way to go before being industry ready, but good enough for me and my 2D artwork :p
Next is posing and adding a bit of flair. Stay tuned :)
Digging out some of my old Tekken games got me inspired to try something new.
A lot of my artwork features characters in static poses. So the idea of creating fighting-game inspired work feels like a crazy challenge... Definitely not one that I've attempted before.
Characters are done...ish? I went with original designs that need a bit of refining, but also kinda match my style.
The framing and posing... Man it's hard! I want something that's instantly recognisable as a fighting game, but also kind of decorative... like a fighting game spin on a renaissance painting. I also know I want to show some crazy impossible ground-kick... but getting the weight and momentum to come across in a single frame is just as hard as I thought!
Here's my early process of roughing out characters and potential poses/compositions. I used my own base character rig for this early part so it looks a bit like nightmare fuel. I'm swaying more towards keeping an orthographic view, rather than any weird wide focal length to keep the side-on feel. But I guess i'll review these rough ideas a bit before making a final decision.
Created with Nomad sculpt and a sprinkling of Photoshop
I think I've taken this one as far as I can go. I wanted to see what I could do with a relatively simple sculpt, using textures and masks to create more intricate shapes.
The risk of this approach was having details look awful at a larger scale, as people might just instantly identify them as bad cutouts. Personally, I find the telltale signs and small janky artifacts of early 3D artwork quite pleasing to the eye, but I learned pretty quick that hastily drawn / badly curated textures often lead to hot messes. I had to take my time in procreate to get things right.
So many experiments like this end up in the trash bin. I'm glad to come out of the other side of this one with a piece of work that I'm quite pleased with!
Still got a little way to go but here's a progress screenshot.
Trying to get max mileage out of using procreate-drawn opacity layers to 'fake' detail. I'm unsure how well this will work for the final image (especially viewed close-up), but it's a nice way to explore silhouettes and composition without having to draw and sculpt hundreds of tubes, or up the poly count to ipad-frying numbers.
After spending some time working as a traditional painter/illustrator I picked up Nomad sculpt for the first time about 18 months ago.
I still consider myself a 2D artist as everything I sculpt tends to serve the final flat artwork. But there's something about the old 3D vibe that puts me in a good creative headspace.
It's like my brain gets rolled back to being a creative 13-year-old again. Any thoughts of academia, paid work, or seeking validation seem to melt away because I'm too busy trying to figure out the software and getting lost in the process of creating stuff with no real end-goal (I guess just like the young teenage me would do). I owe a lot to retro CGI for reminding me there's still a natural creative in there somewhere.
Following on from my last bit of work which involved creating shapes and trying new things, with almost no direction beyond blocking out a rough composition. The 3D doodle pad approach.
I guess this is at the same stage where I can just ease into trying out shapes and textures - keeping in the things that are cool and chucking out the stuff that doesn't work.
As always, I'm posting my last few shots from the Nomad window before giving it the Photoshop treatment.
Did I overcook it? Maybe, probably? But I had zero plan going into this one, other than a vague intention of using abstract shapes to fill out large areas of the canvas, and to learn as much as possible. I essentially treated it as a doodle pad.
I spent a lot of time messing around with some custom made textures paired with different matcaps to get some rough and whacky Y2K results.
I also haven't left matcap mode yet because I think my iPad would simply implode if I even look at the PBR button. I dropped the render resolution to 0.75 to help with performance... I actually quite like the pixelated look! We'll see what happens to it when I open it on PC and start layering multiple rendered versions in Photoshop.
I spend so long making random shapes it's crazy. I could probably buy a pack of obj files and save hours of work but that's not really the point is it? 😂 something about it being the journey not the destination yadda yadda.That said, its still kinda annoying to spend weeks working away with nothing final to show for it. I just trust the process and let ideas for my final images cook in the background.
It's nice when I can apply my library of shapes to things like head sculpts. I'd usually use these from framing elements but they work pretty cool as hair! I've also made a lot of crazy normal maps for embellishments on armour and background bits. Been revisiting a lot of my old Yoshitaka Amano art books and love his tiny decorative elements. Not easy to build a visual library like that in 3D but it's lit a fire under me to give it a go and apply some of it to what I'm already doing.
I also revisited my last bit of artwork as I wasn't totally happy with it. I decided to layer up my BPR with a few matcap renders and really mess about with the colours. I also used a liquify tool to mess around with some proportions and make things look a bit more dynamic. I feel better about it now, but it's still a way out from what I want to finally achieve. I'll leave it be for now and move on to the next one!
I went back and forth on poses and perspectives for a little while, but eventually managed to get everything in frame and making sense.
Then finally a couple of hours in Photoshop adding filters and flourishes. Adding blur and grain is magic for making something look analog. See previous posts for more WIP shots.
Finishing off the last few bits before I chuck it into Photoshop.
Trying to be a bit more purposeful with my plants and light and dark areas. This stage is less about 3D sculpting and more looking at the final flat image.