Other Pizzaz...

I just realized I haven't really been representing my full range of works in progress on this blog... so here go the rest of projects I'm hammering away on.

As stated earlier, I have, indeed, been working on the CG head that was eventually cut from the film No One. I have created blend shapes for facial expressions, done texture mapping for diffuse, specular, bump, and obviously displacement mapping. Plus a simple subdermal layer to make the skin appear less linearly colored and even a bit damaged underneath. Photoshop was used for all texturing except for the Displacement (Mudbox) but thinking back on it, perhaps BodyPaint would have worked equally well. Bummer.
Critiques are welcome. This image now rests on my PC desktop, as I normally do with new work-- this way, I can gradually notice things I can improve upon even while working on other things. I've noticed that the specularity may be too high... however, I've noticed in my research that scar tissue usually is more reflective and "shiny" than healthy skin. Also, the current render of the head is lit by a few spot lights; this will eventually be lit much differently and this will hopefully diffuse the specularity a bit.

Model as of June 4:


Color:


Spec:


Bump:


Displacement:


Subdermal:



A while ago, I also completed a heavy compositing tutorial from 3d World magazine about compositing a scene of destruction. The end result looked quite good and I put it on my reel and got much praise for it, but I always felt it was a cheat to use a tutorial on a demo reel, so I'm making my own version of this. It will feature more intense camera tracking, more intense destruction, more intense 3D vehicles, and, most importantly, more INTENSITY!
Here's what's going on in the shot (it is meant to be handheld and amateurish, as if a tourist was filming this scene just moments after it happened-- hopefully, this will heighten the emotional impact of the shot). The lens cap will come off and a moment after, three jets will cut through the sky above. Tilt down to show a smoking, burning building, with several choppers hovering around it. Zoom in to point of impact to show more destruction, a man falling... tilt down to ground level, where debris tumbles down and clouds of dust bloom up. The end.

Here's the background plate that I shot, ironically, on Memorial Day.