I wish I could show this new character I’m working on, but alas, it will have to wait!

Here are some viewport grabs:

If you ask how long the hair took to make, I’d probably answer “FOREVER!!!” and I wouldn’t be lying by much. Yep, it’s built card by card, and the polycount is over 20k triangles; it is pretty low poly hair, kind of like in-game hair I’ve built for some of the games I worked on, but with way more cards. The hairstyle still needs some tuning and tweaking, both in terms of geometry and shading. It will get tessellated at rendertime with mental ray’s subD approximation so it will look smooth in final render. One thing that bugs me and I haven’t found the solution for it yet (but anyone reading this who might know the trick please let me know!) – when I render raytrace shadows with mental ray, regardless of method (simple, sorted or segments) I will always get fully transparent areas of cards to drop faint shadow, and I’d much more prefer if they would drop no shadow at all. This can be fixed in post and isn’t even noticeable when cast onto an object with SSS material that will disperse the edge of alpha cards – and of course soft shadows would totally take care of it – but the second render in this post (rendered originally in only 512 pixels square!) took over half an hour to complete because casting soft raytrace shadows through shitload of alpha cards takes forever. And I couldn’t even get depth map shadows to show up, let alone cast properly through alpha cards.

Yves is still awaiting to get her clothes, but dry-cleaning was closed this weekend, so perhaps one day…

To commemorate this jubilee post, Yves is now getting some company in form of a space policeman, who went mainstream last week and now hangs out on YouTube:

Here’s the render (which is by no means final, in fact, it is QUITE unfinished):

When they heard there’s some party and celebration going on FogLog, these guys here, especially the drunk lady and lovebug, decided it would be unforgivable if I were to leave them out, so here they come:

конец!

<rant>I’m having trouble finding challenges that don’t call for fighter type characters, which I’m not really interested in. Maybe being a woman has something to do with it. Oh, and a peace frog! Make love, not war, people! And “put those guns down, boys” – says DJ Horace “the Pacifist” Walsh on K-Jah radio in GTA3 :) But alas, all I’ve been seeing is characters with weapons. Because you simply can’t kill anyone with poison, by throwing him out of the window, or any more sophisticated method that would also require some thought put into it, e.g. do it so that not even detectives Goran and Eames can ever find you. Forget about about smart characters – all we need is guns, boobs, and long legs, because if you make character with realistic proportions, people will comment that it looks too chubby, or that the legs are way too short. Sigh… </rant>

Anyways… here’s the brief:

Background
After doing some thinking and brainstorming, I picked to do a female character. Her code name is Yves. She had an extensive espionage training with some secret government agency, so she knows the ins and outs of getting the information she needs to find the fugitives. After managing to escape the agency and lose her trail, she arrived at the capital and decided to do bounty hunting until she has enough money to join the elite circles and that way gain influence in society, which would in turn help her push her own agenda. She is very smart and confident, and knows how much she is worth. People that know her well don’t believe she is completely human. Some kind of wicked perfection, one of her friends said. She is also versed with various assassination techniques which were part of her training, but her priority in this bounty hunting gig is to blend in with the crowd and keep low profile, while making sure her occupation remains a secret, and it’s not her thing to go around killing people that are on her way, as that would raise suspicion and make her the kind of fugitive she is hunting for big bucks.

Being a very attractive woman, she uses her looks to seduce men and women alike to get information she needs. She also has a partner who is just a behind the scenes hacker guy that hooks up to the surveillance cameras throughout the city and guides her to avoid danger. She has a brain implant that hooks her directly to the net, and also her eyes are like cameras that send video feed to her partner to help him help her with guidance.

Visuals
I wanted to have a mix of masculine and feminine facial features; masculine to show a hint of brutality and feminine to make her seductive. She really has no remorse, but that’s not to say that she lacks emotions entirely. These days she’s trying to blend in with hipster crowd, because she found out that one of the gangs that hangs out at Rock’n'Shock bar might be sheltering a very valuable fugitive. She knows just the way to get to them.

Inspritation / Reference
Here’s the reference and inspiration sheet I’ve put together:

I’ve started with a female base model I’ve made some time ago, which is up for grabs in downloads section.

And here are the WIPs:

Hurray for a productive weekend ahead!

Here’s another render, color corrected:

The last piece was done as a paintover of zBrush sculpt, with some photographic sources added in, and lots of tonal adjustments and reshaping. The sketch next to it was a study from a still, and the first two sheets are just sketchbook pages, some were done with reference, some without.

This large dump should make up for the lack of updates this year. Here are the studies and sketches from the past two months or so.

And here is something different – this is the poster I did for a short film by Juan Reinoso, called Flowers For Norma, after Stephen King’s story:

And some other junk: Cathrine from Jules et Jim

Some framing / mood exploration in black and white:

And some more imaginary heads, except for three that were done from reference, but I’ll let you guess which ones are those: