The Art of Jamie Carr

A digital sketchbook and art discussion progress blog by Jamie Carr.

[jamiepcarr]

  Lineless lioness!

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Attempting to paint without lines. The characters should read 'Mu shi,' or 'lioness' but I had to guess the stroke order so it may be off.

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4 Werrwerrvs

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Unused concepts for an unannounced game. The style has been completely changed from this so it is safe to post, but it's fun all the same. :)

[jamiepcarr]

The CarrTek JAAV4, or Jet Assault Array Vervet 4, affectionately known as the ‘Jaava.’ Equipped with dual plasma disruptors sealed inside discrete compartments and a nimble yet robust poly-alloy frame, the JAAV4 is a great unit suitable for even the most demanding of personal security matters. Not just your average security bot, each JAAV4 unit comes pre-installed with the latest model of the legendary MPATH-E chip, thus ensuring your new bot is a caring companion for life. For those times when negotiations are still on the table, your new friend can dispense piping hot coffee from the reservoir on its back. Models are available in Awakening White, High Noon Blue, Evening Orange, and Midnight Black. For more information, please visit your local CarrTek dealership.

[jamiepcarr]

Dolphin Man

I think this has been long enough in the works now, and I have been stuck on it long enough now that it has become appropriate to start posting about it even if it is still unfinished. I did not initially want to release this until it was 100% done, but maybe I can get some suggestions.

Many moons ago, myself and another individual had a running story going involving dolphin people and cybernetics. He had come up with his character's look and backstory long before I ever got involved, and way back when in the heady days of teenagerdom, I drew a concept picture. I was 16 at the time. It is a little embarrassing to look back this far, but also educational in seeing how I have grown artistically since then:

I found myself wanting to do something with this character, and I decided modelling it in Zbrush would be a fun and challenging exercise in helping me to understand the program and push my limits, especially with something combining hardsurface and organic modelling like a cyborg.

I felt the design needed updating and just general improvements. The anatomy was wonky and did not always make sense, and the aesthetics of the cybernetics were confusing and busy. I had also forgotten an important element to this character. His backstory describes major scarring and some facial disfigurement, including one eye being robotic.

I started out by pushing around a cube for a basemesh in Maya:

Which I then imported into Zbrush for subdivision and sculpting. I did not UV this, as I had planned to retopologise several times over the course of modelling, and not paid particular attention to polyflow as a result. I also planned on simply polypainting the final colours in for a single, one-off render.

Here are the basic forms with scarring and a prototype heart-access panel, something else from the backstory.

The metal bit was a simple, low-poly shape made in Maya that I imported in as a separate Subtool. Hard-surfacing is not my strong point, and I have been having difficulty in re-imagining what his implants might look like. To do this, I exported a moderately subdivided version of the dolphin into Maya, so that I could be sure the pieces would fit correctly when brought into Zbrush.

The low-poly iteration for the robotic eyecover.

This is what the armour currently looks like. The metal shader is a placeholder and not at all representative of what I want the final shader to look like.

The larger parts of metal such as the chest plate and the headband were extruded extractions to ensure they would wrap correctly. They are also placed on parts of the body I do not anticipate stretching much with the pose I have in mind.

The cybernetic parts do not look right to me, and I am not altogether convinced at this juncture that they can be salvaged. I have been considering trying different methods to get a better look, but have not settled on a method of attack. I was thinking of using Zspheres in sketch mode to try out some different forms, and I have tried painting on screenshots of the model as well.

The dolphin man needs to look as if he can still swim reasonably well, so this excludes having a lot of external cables and wires, something very common in cyborg designs. He needs several 'port jacks,' the robotic eye, and something to do with his heart not functioning completely organically. Unfortunately, I am still at a loss as to how to proceed with the machinery.

I have been considering making a new layer in Zbrush and opening his jaw to hollow out and detail in case I would like his mouth to open slightly, but at this point I am more concerned with the machinery looking right.

If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

[jamiepcarr]

Drew a dragon for a name-generator website owned by a friend.

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An idle Predator doodle.

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Some BPR renders of the Zbrush high-poly dinosaur I made for my final submission last year.

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Some birds.

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The official portrait I got back after the contest. Winner of Best Student Submission category, 3D Print Cup 2013.

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Creating the Concampi Pt 1

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of attending the Foundation in Game Art course at Futureworks in preparation for entering the 3 year degree programme of the same subject. When I started the course in the 12/13 academic year I had had no previous formal qualifications and even less understanding of 3D. That I never graduated highschool is not a fact about myself that I keep hidden, and I was overjoyed to find myself accepted onto the course. Under the informative tutelage of a Mr Andy Whalley, (simultaneously a character artist at TT Fusion, and thus an impossibly busy individual) I began to see 3D art less as crazy voodoo space magic and more as an attainable medium that I could really participate in.

One of the earlier assignments involved concepting a character of any kind to be made into a model sheet. I love the challenge of playing with organic shapes, blending them and creating new things whilst keeping a firm purpose for the creature in mind -- so an alien race was the perfect candidate. I feel I work best from a brief, but when given free reign like this it can be fun to just make something a little wacky. After a few silhouettes, I fleshed out the head of something that would become the 'Concampi,' which is a portmanteau of 'conure' and 'scampi.' I'm a bit of an armchair biologist, so I tried to imagine what a spacefaring race might look like that had evolved in a wet, lush world. The result is this gliding amphibious creature with manipulator arms; a species I have little problems envisaging being at home in many environments. They look to be apex predators, and probably ambush prey by dropping down from trees.

I drew inspiration from false vampire bats, dolphins, pterosaurs, parrots, velociraptors and squid amongst other things. This guy sat unused in my hard drive for a long time, having long since served his purpose of receiving a grade.

In my struggles to cram Zbrush into my brain, I am always trying to push my limits. With every model I make I try to make it visibly better than the last even if the styles are very different. I have been testing out differing methods recently in order to get my head around the idea of splicing a model up into different parts. Most of my previous models have all been one unit save for the eyeballs and other little details.

A flaw of mine is that I tend to focus on the details before getting the whole structure in correctly. This is something I have been trying to address as of late, but this creature is proving difficult for me to break down into simple parts because of his complexity. There are a lot of flowing lines, layered muscle and cavities here that I will need to be careful with.

Because I don't yet know what is the accepted and most effective method of beginning a model, I chose to Dynamesh a simple sphere and used mostly the Move brush to create the major deformations. The main skull, the nose, each eyeball, and the eyelid skin are all separately deformed and Dynameshed spheres. The overall shape of the face follows my illustration fairly closely, but the skull is very difficult to parse without the lower jaw, and if I were to have a do-over of the creature I might simplify the design. Perhaps just four eyes instead of six, as I am a little in love with the idea of each eye seeing a different light spectrum.

The lower jaw really helps to bring the face together. It is yet another Dynameshed sphere at quite a low resolution at the moment. My goal with this model is hopefully to create a reasonably high resolution mesh, then use this to learn the Retopology tools inside Zbrush and how detail projection works.

From what I can gather, the very basic principle behind the really amazing stuff you see on ZBrushCentral is a model that has been taken to as far as it can go with Dynamesh or similar, then Retopologised, its details reprojected onto the resultant lower-poly mesh, and then modelling continues anew. 

I appreciate that may have been as good as Martian to some of you, but for those of you whom do understand, I would really appreciate some guidance. I am teaching myself Zbrush, and have just a few books and YouTube available as my resources. These answer a lot of questions, but not all.

Although this is a fun experiment and I can see that it is certainly useful for busts, I think I prefer the ZSphere armature or basemesh approach to beginning a model. Is there a better way to try what I am doing?

My goals with this model are very simple. Although I would like to create things with proper deformation in mind and will do the best I can with the low-poly version, I am unsure whether this will have UVs applied and be textured at this point. It is mainly just for learning the Retopology tools and Transpose when I get to that point.

[jamiepcarr]

Snagglechomp Becomes Snagglechamp

Tonight was the big night for me and my little dinosaur model. Earlier in the day, I applied another layer of bump texturing to the base and finally decided to call it completed. The entire painting process probably took about two hours' elapsed time -- most of the time spent was on waiting for the layers of paint to completely dry.

Here is how he looks, basically. I find the paint job has a lot better subtlety to it in person. My phone does not really do it justice.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was a popular topic of conversation right away! For much of the evening he remained at the front of the lines of models, and many pictures were taken. Initially folks did not believe me when I explained that I had never painted a model before! His paint job stood out apparently.

Here is his Top Trumps card. I had tried to make him relatively balanced. 30 was the maximum points any one stat could have, so I avoided giving him any 30s. This proved to be a poor tactic however, as just about every other submission was statted up with 30s in mind!

The team name was just something I had thought was required; It's a reference to my e-mail. I alone made the model.

I was utterly floored when my name was announced as the winner for the Best Student Submission category. Even as I write this, I am still pleasantly surprised. I received a lovely solid glass trophy, and a copy of my character's card.

I was very surprised and pleased with the attention my entry received, and I am very happy with the results. Although I did not win the printer, there are noises being made about the competition being held next year, and I will gladly compete again. As an aside, this is the first trophy I have won since I was six and received one for a mini-leagues baseball tournament, and means decidedly much more to me!

Many of the other submissions were wonderful, and I am happy to have taken part. It has been a real learning experience and I met some lovely people along the way, as well. 

The model itself is accompanying the other submissions in a tour around Manchester, and is being photographed professionally, so I will have some properly nice pictures of the model here in future.

Thanks for reading, and onto the next project!

[jamiepcarr]

Just the base left to do now!

[jamiepcarr]

Rough Side and Better Side, Base Coat 1st Layer.

There is not much I can do about the horrific rough side, but I am doing my best! I never use real media paints so this is very new and scary for me.

[jamiepcarr]

The Manifestation of Snagglechomp

I have been engaged in a rather nasty battle against a combination of flu and cold these past few days, and so my ability to create has been more than a little hampered -- unless creating a massive wastebin full of kleenexes is anything to brag about.

Today was exciting however, as it was the day to pick up my printed model. I had been looking forward to seeing Snagglechomp being made into something tangible. The results have taught me a lot.

The feeling of holding something in my hand that had come right from my brain was a new and fun experience. As I held the little model in my hands, I thought back to pulling out those first few Zspheres in the armature stage, and how all that digital faff had culminated in this actual object that weighed something and took up real space. Here he is overseeing my celebratory burrito:

Unfortunately, the little two-fingered hands proved to be a problem at this scale, which I thought they might. The left hand turned out mostly alright, but the right one is completely mangled after very gently prising away most of the support material. It could not be helped, the fingers were just too small to withstand even the small force of having their supports removed. There are two small holes in either side of the depressions in his muzzle. These holes can be sealed with paint or even clear nail varnish before priming, but it is still something to keep in mind.

It is obvious that through necessity of saving material the printers had to scrap the internal pocket that I made and do it themselves, (a favour for which I am grateful.)  Knowledge on how to do this correctly is something I will research and learn in time. The unfortunate side of this is that since I did not do the hollowing out myself, thickening out some of these sensitive areas, like these muzzle depressions, was not under my direct control. I also feel a little guilty for making busywork for someone else.

The teeth are another problem area, as I suspected they might be. How to model them to show up correctly was something that puzzled me, and I just gave my best stab at it. Next time, having seen how these slices of filament work and how thick they are, I think the solution would be to just make the teeth bigger and have fewer. Fortunately the general shapes of the face carried through and he still has his goofy grin.

Because of the way he was printed, one side was absolutely covered in scaffolding material. Unfortunately this has half of him very pitted and scarred with a significant loss of detail, the extent to which is not quite apparent in the picture. I have done my best with a modelling knife for now, but I will need to get some sandpaper to try and file down some of these bits. Acetone was also suggested to me, but I only have one shot at this model and do not want to risk him becoming a blob.

Tomorrow, I am going to ask the people at Games Workshop for some hints at painting on plastic, as realmedia is not my forte. The colourscheme I have chosen for Snagglechomp involves at least one passover with an airbrush or similar, and I hope they have one I can use.

[jamiepcarr]

The Creation of Snagglechomp

For my entry into the aforementioned 3DPrintCup, the biggest challenge in getting started wasn't that I'm admittedly a bit of a procrastinator on personal projects. It lay instead on what to make that I felt would both appeal to the artists on the judging panel, and fall within my beginner's remit at Zbrush. I have never made something for 3D printing before, and I have only ever made a handful of models -- I've taken even fewer through to something I could call 'completion.'

I puzzled for a long time on what to do. I knew from early on my subject matter would be organic and non-human, as that's what I have the most fun creating. I needed to keep in mind though that the finished figure was only going to be at maximum 5 inches tall and 9 inches long, so the shapes needed to be very stylised and exaggerated to help bring out the overall impression of the model despite loss of detail. 

I have a lot of fun playing tabletop games, and a big part of what I get out of them is that I enjoy only being limited by my imagination when it comes to the types of characters I can play. My favourite is a big lioness warrior character. Initially, I thought a very stylised version of her would be my submission. I thought I'd try and 'squish' her down into something very cute, friendly and easy to pose -- a must since I'd never posed anything in Zbrush before.

Though the idea was cute, I was having problems with its execution. I decided to scrap it and think of something else.

My biggest inspiration towards visual effects came to me as a kid watching Jurassic Park. I was fascinated with the early CG work that I feel still largely holds up today, and as an already dinosaur-obsessed child, I was hooked. Well meaning relatives bought me Barbies and dolls and whatnot when I was growing up, but they were always eschewed in favour of the dino toys. My main use for them was as references for drawing.

As an adult where that type of thing is concerned, not much has changed. Movie monster favourites Predator and Alien figurines adorn my walls, as do dinosaurs and Godzilla. My final submission for my Foundations in Game Art course I completed earlier this year was a tyrannosaurus rex.

The concept/mood painting, done by myself:

Whilst the course was centred fundamentally around Maya, I had begun to teach myself Zbrush. I used the painting of this guy as my basis and began to model what would become my final submission:

I didn't get the chance to learn how to put a normal map on this guy correctly as I never UV'd the master sculpt, but hey, this same time a year ago I didn't know what a vertex was, let alone how to move it around. He's still not as finished as I'd like him to be... But onwards and upwards.

Looking at the fun I'd had building that dino for my course and facing the  looming submission deadline, I took a look through some very old sketches for inspiration.

Ancient. Almost three years old, but... Who can argue with a gigantic charging carnivorous dinosaur fitted with neural implants that feed into the guidance system of a back-mounted artillery gun? With lasers? Yeah, no one, that's who, so I got to work squishifying him and making him simpler, cuter, flowing a little better.

This is the quick idea I came up with. I like the tight S curve of his fat head and want to emphasize that in the final piece. It shows up right away in the armature I start to make in Zbrush. At this point the deadline is three days away and I have tons of stuff to do.

ZSphere armature.

Adaptive Skin. Right away I can tell that fat head and S-shaped neck are going to be problematic when I start modelling, but I like the shape too much to sacrifice it. So I switch out of that hideous Red Matcap material, into my preferred one of White Cavity, and I get going...

Stuff still looks lumpy and weird, keep going...

At this point, I start thinking something is wrong. He's not flowing as well as I want him to. He generally ascribes to the drawing I've made, but he looks... Off, somehow. Eventually I feel that I've not stylised his head enough. He has a pseudo-realistically proportioned head curved up on this blobby body and he looks like he's going to fall over onto what looks like some monstrous dino uni-boob. It's not going to do. Need to exaggerate more.

I squish his head up, widen and enlarge his eyes to give him a youthful appearance, give him more of a smile, and try to sort out the volumes making up his chest. I want him to have a heavy, thick, powerful looking neck that's cartoonish and silly, but I also don't want it to look as if he's going to fall over.

I start defining the musculature a little more. I make it evident that he's a little pudgy by adding blubber on his tummy and wrinkles in his hide. His face has a smug grin on it that I feel expresses a lot about his personality. It's at this point also that I realise I'm going to have to sacrifice the gun. I figure that the model is going to be hard enough to detail at 5 inches high and the comically oversized gun is going to dwarf him too much. In addition the deadline is rapidly approaching. So, I give him some back spikes, begin to tighten up the curves, and smooth him out. Time to learn just how Transpose works, exactly.

After a few experiments with rigging, I decide just slight changes to break up the symmetry is the way to go with this one. The exaggerated pose I had in mind tears apart the model and would need too much time to repair. I still have hollowing out to do and the deadline is hours away.I open him up in Maya and fashion what I hope is an acceptable hollowed out pocket using edge-loop modelling, which I stick inside him. I left the ankles, arms, and eyes solid for strength. Another view:

Importing him back into Zbrush as a combined single object, I fumble around with the 3D Printing Exporter plugin and hope to whatever deities might exist that I've done it right. Zbrush spits out an OBJ that imports fine into Maya and 3DCoat, so I figure I'm good.

Here's the image I knocked out fairly quickly for use as the picture on the Top Trumps style card for use at the competition. Everyone and their dog does green dinosaurs or brown ones. I figure I want mine to really stand out, and bright colours will emphasize his fun personality and proportions.

And that's all for Snagglechomp. I realise it's a little bit of a wordy entry, but the contest seemed to want a diary styled entry with works in progress. I'm really hoping the judges like my submission, and will take into account that I'm very new at Zbrush and 3D art in general! I went in with lofty ambitions for my first try at this, (go big or go home!) and although this time I wasn't able to hit all my targets, I still had fun and learned a lot for next time. If I get that printer I plan to use it.

Thanks for reading,

-Jay