Deadlines and more deadlines!

Hello! Firstly I'd like to apologise for not posting in a while but to be honest I have been pretty stressed with the amount of work we have been given and I focused more on that than updating this blog...

However, Uni is back and therefore I will be posting more regularly again.
I'd like to dedicate this post to my character project which I have been working on over Easter. I was given the option to re-submit it for a chance to get a better grade and how could I refuse to that?

First thing I did was to take a 3D render of my character and do a couple of quick overpaints in order to improve its overall look. Ever since I finished the project back in December I kept thinking that the textures were not working very well and now is the chance to do something about it.

I replaced the shoulder armor for a chest piece as well as making the reds more prominent. I played a little bit with the patterns on its robes and in the end I decided to go with a combination of two of them.

Due to the change on the shape of the character I had to move the UVs around, although I tried to keep the biggest parts on the same spot in order to make the re-texturing process a lot easier.
Then it was Zbrush time! I improved the silhouette of the character by simply using the move brush and then I focused on the small detail such as wrinkles, cloth folds and hand texture. One of the critiques I got was that my character didn't look Chinese enough so I focused quite a lot on the facial features such as the jaw line, nose and eye shape.

One of the biggest flaws on this project was my rig, specially the fingers. They looked broken, therefore I decided to re-do the rig but this time around I will be using CAT rig due to my previous experience with it. I also plan on having a little kung fu animation, or at least I'll have an idle animation.

I hope that my effort will pay off and that I can bump my grades up because my first year wasn't so good and I am trying to redeem myself this year.

And this is it for today, coming soon.....Is technology killing communication? This was the topic I chose for our formal presentation this year and well...I'll get into detail on the next post.

See you soon!