Character Art Production Notes

This is my next "hobby" project that I'm going to do in my spare time. I'm shooting for a character that is vaguely FF7 style to go along with that sword. Hopefully I'll be able to include plenty of my own redefined style as well.

Production Goals for character art - first pass

Conceptualization 20hrs

>Learn, Research, Read CGtalk, Conceptart.org, B. Hogarth
>Practice
>Draw a bunch of concepts like at least 10
>C&C and revisions

Modeling 8hrs

>Mass Blocking
>Details

UV Mapping 1.5 hrs

>Layout UV's
>Export to PS

Texturing 4 hrs

>Basic Colors
>Lighting
>Texture
>Details
>Polishing

Rigging 3 hrs

>Make Skeleton
>Set Envelope
>Weight Paint

Animation (walk cycle and attack) 7 hrs

>Learn about storing animations and mixer
>Key Frame
>Tweak F-curves and Dopesheet
>Mix Animations in Mixer

Total time: 45 hrs approx

Photos

I've been out shooting photos of various spots on campus for Amanda at delta: Poe interior and exterior, DHHill Library, and The Court of the Carolina. I used a snazzy Canon powershot G6 7.2 MegaPixel camera. Minor edits to a few pics done in Picasa 2.
Here's the shots:

Textures

I recently discovered how to easily make seamless textures for use with 3D graphics.
The basic process is:

• Shooting a picture with a digital camera of the texture with as little perspective as possible
• Cropping the picture in Photoshop or GIMP to a square size that is a power of 2 (games require power of two sizes like 256, 512, 1024, etc. I suggest using 1024x1024 and resizing later if you need a smaller texture)
• Offsetting the image to x/2 which should give you 4 tiles of the same image
• Blurring the edges with the clone tool and painting fuzzy brush strokes along the edges with this tool.
• Offsetting the image by x/2 again and voila, you have a seamless texture ready for games!
• 

Welcome

Hi and welcome to my portfolio blog. As a chronicle of my work in and outside of the office, this blog is for assessing my work for DELTA [NCSU] and my own personal projects. It will serve as an open forum for any comments and critiques of my work, so feel free to leave a message about anything from personal response to stylistic comments to "how'd you do that?"

This is also to showcase my progress as a designer for anyone who is interested.

What to expect from me:

• Anything--- I'm training myself to be a modern-day renaissance man. While I would hardly say I have the skills needed to claim that title yet, I'm working on various creative design ventures.

• 3D Realtime graphic art. In other words, video game art. This is mostly what I do here at Delta and at home on my own. I really enjoy 3d modelling and creating characters. I'm also learning texturing and animation. Application of choice: Softimage XSI 4.2 Full Academic Version
  
• 2D Vector Art. This is my new hobby, I think I enjoy it more than Rasterized graphics like Photoshop. My Roomate, Eric, has got me started on designing webcomics. Preferred hardware/software: Wacom Graphire 3 6X8 and Inkscape.
• Digital Photography/Photo Editing. I think I inherited an eye and a desire for photography from my Grandfather and have since been interested in it. Preferred Hardware/Software: Minolta XGM 35mm SLR/scanner, or for digital, whatever I check out from work or the College of Design, and Photoshop CS, Photoshop Elements, GIMP, and Picasa 2.
• Digital film editing. I've done a few projects from school with this and I really enjoy editing films on the computer. I have an idea for a short film (live action) that I'm in the process of writing. Preferred hardware/software: DVC camcorders (whatever I have access to), AfterEffects.
• Web design. It's been a while since I've done any design which was mostly html coding at that point, but I'm getting geared up for learning dreamweaver in the office soon. Preferred Software: Html, notepad, mozilla firefox, dreamweaver, css.
• Not-so-visual arts related artistic ventures such as creative writing and music. I consider myself as a "musician" rather than just, say, a guitarist. I play guitar (I have taken and taught lessons), bass guitar, and djembe (my new hobby), and I sing as well. I have performed in the Lincoln Center, NYC, at Avery Fisher hall with the National Youth Choir among other venues and accomplishments like All-State Choir.

Ok, that's enough yapping for now, I'll get to posting exciting content next...