All images are screengrabs of the ZBrush canvas with some post processing done in Photoshop.

A slighly more detailed version (click to enlarge)

Unprocessed screengrabs from ZBrush (click to enlarge)

I sculpted this guy from a bunch of ZSpheres without a determined destination. I didn’t use any references this time but let the character design come to me as I went along. That’s one thing I really love about ZBrush, the freedom to just let the juices flow. I GoZ:ed into modo a few times for geometry additions, new SubTool basemeshes and clean ups.

Cheers!

Alright. 24 hours of sculpting done. Time to move on. But hey, it did yield some interesting results. But before getting our hands dirty doing some analyzing, here is a chart of all sculpts done.

I entered this experiment with a few basic rules, the most notable ones were that I had to stop after 60 minutes and that I couldn’t use any references. The 60 minute time limit was simply so I wouldn’t find any excuses not to doodle. I can always spare 60 minutes instead of watching some crappy show on the telly or similar time wasters. And the no references part was simply to force myself to train my inner eye.

I must say that this is the best 24 hours I’ve spent in a long time. The learning experience have been fantastic! I actually find it quite amazing how much difference 24 hours of practice can make.

Taking a look at the screenshot below, one of the first sculptures and the last sculpture from this experiment. Quite a difference how far I can take a sculpt in 60 minutes now compared to when I started this journey.

One of the first and the last sixty minute doodle

Perhaps not as interesting for the casual viewer, but I love to nerd-down in my endeavors. When I analyze my time-lapses and how my techniques have progressed from the first videos to the last ones I am thrilled to see all the evolution. Especially in my anatomy understanding.

The fact that I worked without looking at any references is probably a major reason that have forced myself to better understand anatomy and proportions. I’m kind of seeing everything much clearer now and I don’t need to be winging it anymore like I used to do, but are now much more in control of where I want to go.

I also learned something interesting which I hadn’t realized before. When working with a time limit I quickly saw a pattern that when I went towards a female look I came nowhere near as far into the process as when I went with a male look until the time was up. I had never reflected on this before that I need much more time to get a female to begin to look properly than I need for a male. I actually got so interested in this phenomenon that I did some research on the subject a few days ago, and it turned out that this is very common. It’s the same in drawing. You can either draw male or female likeness faster than the other. This is definitely something I need to work on to even out.

I actually wouldn’t mind keep going with these 60 minute doodles, as I felt that I made huge progress for every new head up til, and including, the very end. There is still many, many more advancements for me to conquer on these subjects.

But I was getting tired of the time limit though, and also spending time building the base when I was not allowed to use base meshes. I actually prefer to start with a base mesh from my 3D package, but for this particular exercise I wanted to make everything from scratch, so I didn’t get any help with the proportions.

As this experiment has really helped me to step up my game to the next level, I’m eager to come up with a new concept to continue evolving my techniques in a fun and productive way. I’ll see what I can think of next.

To end this post, a link to the Vimeo channel containing all time-lapse videos
“I Am Johan’s Sculpted Doodles” at Vimeo

And the final “I am Johan’s Sculpted Doodles” video

I can highly recommend doing projects like this if you’re looking to improve your skills.
Over and out!
Cheers!

It’s not at all intended to be related to my ongoing doodle project, instead I had some fun just sketching around for a while without any goals, restrictions or boundaries and see what I got out of it.

Haha, I found this guy again not that long ago, collecting dust in a forgotten folder. My god what time flies, and yikes, what my personal projects have been set aside for far too long.

I finished him years ago but never got around to render him out for my website. The entire update of my portfolio section have been dragged out for way too long, so I decided to get the ball rolling by render out a web version of him and get The Innkeeper posted. He is more or less the same as when I left him a few years ago, I just updated a few minor things to make him render properly in LightWave 10.x.

Now the second thing, I’ll let you in on a little secret. A few months ago I heard about GTD for the first time. I’m on the eternal quest to boost my productivity so I always try to check out new things to see if they can help me achieve that constant goal.

I’ve for quite some time, as I believe I’ve mentioned more than once in the past, had problems to juggle both work and personal projects at the same time, which in the end has made my personal projects suffer way too much and get the shorter end of the stick.

After reading a few articles on sites like Lifehacker about GTD I was getting curious to explore this productivity system more, so I read Dave Allen’s (@gtdguy) book. I’ve somewhat of a reserved attitude towards these “amazing” systems, but I keep an open mind and pick the pieces that suites my life and workflows. So, I studied the GTD method and setup a personal system and started using some cool software, based on the GTD ideas.

The result after a few months evaluation?

It has actually made a difference. I’m getting more things done, I am working more efficiently than ever before, and something I am especially happy with, is that all my personal projects have started moving forward again. All of them. Really cool!

I am currently altering the deal I’ve had with my website and have started to make some use of this space again. I have a very solid plan how my projects will continue going forward from now on and somewhat of a schedule as a well. Dang! Lot’s of things I’ve wanted to do for quite some time, but work etc always seemed to get in the way. Now I am actually pursuing my passion projects again.

Okay I better stop now, before I start to sound like a “religious” person about this whole GTD thing. I can recommend to dedicate some time to carefully check it out though, if you’re a productivity junkie like me.

The fourth session of my summer experiment.

My doodling rules are:
60 minutes // from scratch // no references // no shirts // no shoes

I’ll post a session to my Journal from this experiment now and then, if you’re interested to see every session coming up, feel free to check out my Vimeo channel. Also check out the channel for more information and what my goals are with these sessions.

“I Am Johan’s Sculpted Doodles” at Vimeo

Check out my “I Am Johan’s Sculpted Doodles” channel at Vimeo

This daily sculpt is kind of a warm up session, but I also hope to gain some positive side effects as I progress during these sessions.

• Keep my skills fresh.
• Explore new techniques.
• Optimize my workflows.
• Improvise ideas.
• Improve my speed.
• Have some fun.

My rules for this experiment:

• 60 minutes time constraint. When my timer rings, I end the session.
• Start completely from scratch with a blank canvas and work from there.
• No references. The session should be improvised to see where the doodle takes me.
• No shirts, no shoes.

I’ll keep adding videos to the above Vimeo channel for some time, and evaluate my timelapses to see where I can improve my techniques. If interested, feel free to follow the videos as I keep posting them.

See you at Vimeo

Anyway, I’ve just delivered my last project for the week, so I decided to take few days and work with personal projects, which also is an excellent opportunity for me to get my journal going again.

I’ve been looking for an excuse to make a science fiction soldier for some time to be able to play around with a few different techniques I want to explore. Earlier today I draw some concept art for a Space Marine. Here is a couple of orthographic views that I’ve drawn which I’ll use as modelling reference.

I was quite inspired by the Warhammer 40K miniature figure game while I draw this guy, so if you are into that you’ll probably find some familiarity. I’ll see how much of this initial design that I will keep when I model him or if I stray away in some other direction.
He will, of course, also be equipped with some really heavy weaponry. Really heavy! I’ll start working on that when the actual character is modeled and ready.

Alright, that’s about it for this entry, but it was an entry anyway, more to come shortly as I continue working on this project.

Over and out!

I’ve doodled for an hour or two, no references used – just having some fun while trying to sculpt a decent head from a couple of ZSpheres. The neck, what to say, looooong…

Late Night Doodling in ZBrush

Well, now I guess I’ll catch the late night run of Stargate SG-1 or something on the telly and see if I can get some sleep at last.

Til next time…

Doodling Session in ZBrush - Muscle Guy

I had some time to kill today while waiting for renders to finish, and it has been some time since I had a doodle session, so I sketched around in ZBrush for a while and created this character. Nothing special, I just wanted to brush up a bit on male muscularity. Well, the renders are done, and this is how far I got, but it was a fun session. I just a draw out a few ZSpheres and then I worked almost exclusively with the clay brush. I just love that brush. The image above is a screenshot from ZBrush (cropped just above the nudity limit ;) ), I didn’t bother to make a render of it as I was just having some sculpting fun.

Todays horror moment; when I started up ZBrush my license file had been corrupted somehow, so it shut down. That sent chills down my spine, for real (I found out later that this is not that uncommon that it happens). But a quick call to Pixologic sorted it out and I was up and running again. Gotta love companies with great support. I just hope this doesn’t happen during non office hours while having a deadline, I guess it was good it happened today, so I can prepare and have a backup plan ready if that would ever occur.

Until next time… cheers!

Elly - Click for render and breakdown

Alright, it was time to wrap this baby up.

I could go on and on to keep detailing and refining her, but I felt I’d reached the point where I’d accomplished what I wanted with this project, mainly researching some new techniques for my workflow and touch some base with FiberFX in 9.6.

The final render can be found in my 3D portfolio together with a breakdown. (I’m so happy I finally got my act together and fixed the framework for my site last week so I can start adding new content without any hassle)

Well, this was the first darling to get completed, I have a couple of more dusty projects I’m resurrecting and completing and this first one was simple enough to get my feet wet with, and it was a great opportunity to explore some of the new LigthWave 9.6 goodies.

Now it’s time to move on towards some more complex characters, and theoretically I should increase my speed some on the next one, as I don’t think I’ll spend any time to do research for new techniques as I did now. I’m in the mood for just using my current arsenal of techniques and do a straightforward project from A to B.

I have a busy week coming up, but I will get the next one started towards the end of it. Until then, cheers!