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Writer's pictureAvery Buffington

Thesis Production Blog Week 15

Updated: Sep 12, 2023

Over the summer I briefly worked on the character hair and made several versions that evolve and change based off of the same hair pattern rather than trying to make completely different hairstyles and make them cohesive.

I made these sketch drawings in my sketchbook trying to figure out how the character turns into the moth creature and where hair turns into fur and feathers around his face, neck, arms, and back and possibly how it interacts with his clothes.

I then turned these sketches into another work in progress iteration of a character sheet that shows more clearly the details of the moth form. I'm currently struggling with trying to figure out how to push the silhouette more to exaggerate the "creaturiness" of the figure.

I then blocked out the forms in ZBrush and started experimenting with continuing the hair details and how they might look on the basic geo for the fur/wing blocks.

I made a second version where the wings are up as well to show the change in silhouette.

I also experimented with temporarily painting in some details/shading on the face in zbrush such as giving him more of a darker unkempt beard that connects to the sideburn and neck fur that leads more into the back. I also painted the eyes to be a more unsettling gold/red color which might be more striking and uncanny.


BEFORE (Unpainted):

AFTER (Painted):


This is something that would be redone in the official texturing step in substance painter but I was just curious and wanted to previs what it could look like.


I have reached out to April and Sten continually through this process to get some feedback on my sculpt and see if they have advice for shapes and forms and technical ZBrush knowledge beyond my skill level to help me achieve the look we are hoping for.


My goals moving forward based on the discussion in today's production class are that I will be prioritizing the retopology of the regular normal painter ASAP in order to hand off to Carl for rigging improvements so that blocking animation can proceed. Then my next goal afterwards would be to continue to refine the creature sculpt and have a version of the geometry to start to put into the animatic (not rigged/retopoed) yet. My third goal after the character sculpt would be to circle back to texture look dev. While I am the most familiar with ZBrush and therefore am the group expert on sculpting, I really want to get back to texturing as it is my true production love and my best developed skill. I feel like my teammates seem a bit scattered and lost trying to figure out texturing without my degree of technical Substance Painter/Designer knowledge. They have researched and explored and experimented with a couple different techniques or tools in the meanwhile since I last put down the texturing work last semester but I would be very very eager to return to the texturing look development once I get the character out of the way. I don't intend on having the character completely finished and finaled for a while but as long as there is a version of the painter and the painter/mothman creature that is retopoed/rigged and useable for blocking and rough animation I will be happy moving back towards texturing.


In other news, Cameron and Eric Tetz (Sound guys for Lynth) have been in communication with me over the summer and have kindly offered to do sound for Mothman as well since Cameron is good friends with the group of graduated DAC students I usually hang out with. After unanimous agreement from the Mothman group, as of 9/8/2023 I have reached out to Cameron to formally start the process of inviting him and Eric into the Mothman Discord and presenting our animatic and visuals to him to start getting a sense of some kind of sound design ideas. I am hoping that having a sound person who is looking at our animatic and making things off of our animatic will push my group to start really in depth analyzing and addressing the issues with our animatic and moving towards and more solid and locked down iteration. I am quite jealous of the Bathroom Stall Galactica team and how solid their animatic is and I'd like to be at that point of confidence by the end of the semester.



BATHROOM STALL GALACTICA WORK:


Beyond just my work for the Mothman team I've also been doing work for Bathroom Stall Galactica team over the summer and continuing into this semester helping them develop a cohesive visual style and producing concept art for them.


I started by helping them organize all of their thoughts and inspirations into a miro board that collects their visual style influences together.

These are my personal additions to their inspiration boards:

We played around with some interesting midjourney stuff to try to extract some cool lighting or shape inspirations for the alien rooms. These were the group favorites:


Then they asked me to create four illustrations for them.

  • Earth Gas Station

  • Alien Abduction Room

  • Alien Operating Room

  • Alien Hallway

WIP Hallway:

WIP Operating Room:

WIP Operating Room Machine Sketches:


I also took a brief pass at their Alien character model head in exchange for dinner as they were struggling with finding the "Cute Factor" in their sculpts and making the anatomy look like it would work anatomically.


BEFORE: (Sculpts done by Logan & Anna)

AFTER: (Sculpt done by Avery)


It's not perfect and I've handed it back off to the BSG team but for about an hour and a half of work I think it's pretty decent for doing a major rework and going back to the drawing board with the primary shapes to try to match the cute simplicity of the storyboard drawings done by Riley. The mouth doesn't match quite perfectly but we went back and forth on the placement and the angle of the jaw bone and how it would move and my sculpt version is just a possible iteration of the head moving forward.






















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