Texturing and Actual Drawings?????

 This week meant texturing and I realised that it's going to take me longer than I thought to become better at hand painting textures. But it's a matter of practicing and expanding my knowledge on the subject. So here's how I've been getting on with that stage of the project although I warn you it's nothing amazing. 

After talking to Mike Kelly in his lesson I decided on focusing mainly on completing the gorilla character over both of the characters as the project brief only really states for one character and of course it's better to have one really good one instead of two average characters.
So following his advice I carried on texturing and adjusting the gorilla character.
At this point I have the albedo, roughness, and normal map done as it will most likely go into Unreal as it looks a hell of a lot better than in Max just down to the renders and especially the final beauty shots.

This is how my character is looking, there is still a lot to fix and tweak in the texture sheets and these renders are only in max so it should hopefully look considerably better in Unreal with PBR. 

I'm feeling alright about this character, I know it could be greatly improved but I find I lose patience with character projects as I've definitely become less enthusiastic about this one over time, however I'm still trying to make it as good as I can. 

As part of this project I also made a physical model of the gorilla. It's made out of a wire skeleton and then tin foil wrapped around it to bulk out the overall shape and then finished off with sculpey. It's not very good as modelling isn't my strongest and I burnt it's feet but I'm still glad it's done. 

Even though I said I was focusing mainly on the gorilla I have also done all textures for the hippo as well so the albedo, roughness and normal maps are all fairly complete however are not finished to the spec of the gorilla as it's less focused. I'm not particularly happy with how this character looks as I think the mesh and overall look has let me down slightly which is all my fault, however I'll still carry on with it.

My next task for the last 3 days of the project are to have the gorilla in particular rigged and set it in a pose for final beauty shots and if I have time also the hippo. Rigging should be able to be done in a matter of hours which still gives me time to fix and anything and get it into engine to be adjusted if necessary.

Also an update on life drawing from the last few weeks. I've been enjoying doing different things like focusing on the figure and skeleton together to see how it relates and also focusing on feet and hands. 

I've been using chalk pastels a lot recently and although its sometimes really hard to handle, as I'm more of a generic pencil user, it's been really good trying out new media and getting the hang of it.

A week or so ago I also got the chance to go into Geoff's life drawing class and I feel I got some nice dynamic poses and quick sketches out of it. I definitely want to go again when I have the time and there are classes open.

I also did a really quick shoddy Interstellar drawing as a break from work. I strongly recommend you go see this film. For reals.