Kick 'em 3D Design.

Well hasn't it been a long time since my last post! I've been extremely busy, sick and had to move house over the past couple of months (chuck in a little procrastination on the side and you have a pretty horrible mix). Oh, yes, and I must announce that I have been accepted into the Auckland Media Design School here in New Zealand, it's the most prestigious design school in our country and they get employers from Gameloft, 2K, Grinding Gears and others coming in every time a group of graduates completes the degree. Doing another three year degree is a little daunting, but I have no doubt that I'll absolutely love it :D. I've also been working furiously and found little spare time to complete any projects in Maya, but alas, things have calmed down a little and I've managed to complete another creation in Maya today :). This was an exercise in low poly counts for me and while there is most likely still too larger an amount, it's a drastic change from my Ch...

Heya guys! I've been busy over the past week getting these guys together and taking photos of my progress. I did this to share what the process is for me while I paint models. In my previous post you would have seen my tutorial for stripping a tank, well I followed the same process for these guys. I bought eight Chaos Space Marines for $15 US on Ebay and managed to strip them so they looked damn near brand new. First off, here's the before photo: As you can see, the paint's pretty caked on, but that's no issue if you're patient. After stripping: Most of the paint will come off after the first try, but  it often takes two to three soaks to get everything. Undercoat: This was accomplished by simply grabbing an acrylic based black and brushing over the models lightly, it usually only takes me one application to completely cover  a single model. Also for undercoating, whether it's black or white, I tend to use normal acrylic based paints as ...

Hello, all once again! Today I thought I'd post up a tutorial on how to strip Warhammer 40k miniatures. Of course this can be used for most any other wargaming miniature as well, I've only ever collected 40k so that's what I'll be using in this tutorial. Before I begin let me clarify that this is not scientifically backed up, it is simply what I have experienced over years of collecting/stripping Games Workshop models. For those of you searching for a material to strip painted models without melting the model itself I use acetone based nail polish remover, I've tried acetone free but found it's results far less satisfying and quite a bit more damaging to the models as they need more time to soak before they can be stripped. First of all you'll need to find an an old plastic cup (or container depending on the type on mini being stripped). Only fill enough of the cup to cover a single mini.This is because in the past, to my saddening detriment, that soak...

Hi, all! I've been waiting to do this post for about a week now and am very excited. I am not ashamed to say that this is my best free hand portrait so far, and looking back when i first started ten months ago, and very proud to display this for everyone to see. This post will show a progression of the steps I took to complete my latest character portrait as well as a comparison to what I did ten months ago and in between. Thanks for reading/looking! Okay, so it turns out that I have somehow misplaced the photos that I took that displayed the complete process, but I have managed to find a couple, including the final, completed piece. I can tell you however, that I simply began by dividing the page into quarters then took measurements from the picture and scaled them up. I mostly just alternated between a 2B and 6B pencil. To get the finishing touches, my wife went out and bought a lead pencil and a knead-able eraser, both of which are absolutely amazing and es...

It's been a crazy past week with 3d modeling for me! I'm finally putting together my portfolio so I can apply for my creative technologies degree. I've been waiting to complete this project for a while and I think it'll be the star of my collection. It's taken a long time for me to muster up the courage to actually finish this one, but boy am I glad I did because I keep seeing improvements every time I use Maya. When I first started I never thought I would have improved so much that I could create a decent looking tank. When I first began this about two months ago, I really struggled with the shapes and trying to get the details correct, thus I abandoned the project until about a week and a half ago. After picking it up I found that I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge this project presented, especially since seeing the improvements in my latest creations. Anyway, here you go! I've added some extra lighting into these last few to try and bring ...

Heyo! I've been struck by a super creative bug this week which has netted some really good results in my modeling through Maya. I was really surprised when I began work on these two creations because I re-learned a lesson that I thought I had already learned back when I first began! However, after transferring from my previous project to my latest two, I realized that I hadn't been using this simple lesson at all! Anyway, all I had been forgetting was to separate each part of my design into individual polygons! I kind of had been doing this, but when I'd finished with a part, I'd merge them all into one object which just made it a complete nightmare to edit parts of the design  later on in the project. Lesson learned! On a side note, there has been a lot of little things that have clicked for me when using Maya which have resulted in much cleaner and precise finished products and superbly faster finish times. To the purpose of this post! I have just finished cre...

Hello you wonderful people! It's been around a week, closer to two, since my last post so I thought that I'd update everyone on what's been happening. I've been taking photos when the opportunity strikes and also completed a drawing (My best drawing yet is still in the works, but almost completed). But what's been taking up a lot of my time is my latest project in Maya. It's big, but I've been absolutely loving it. By now you would have guessed that I'm a huge Warhammer 40k fan, and a after creating so much of my scenery in real life, I thought to myself, why don't I try recreating it in Maya? So here I've been for the past week, creating my own, 3d wargaming board. It's not finished yet, but I have created all of the buildings, I've just got a few rocks etc. to place then I'll post it up. For now, you'll have to content yourself with a couple of photos I took on the street and a drawing of Rhino APC from 40k :D. Again, and ...

Hey again! I've been procrastinating over my current project (which is quite large) and haven't been doing anything in Maya because I feel I need to complete the project first, which has led me to not using Maya at all. So I decided to do something a bit easier, to make sure I can do simple things that look nice. Here I tried creating a rusted 3d sign based on something I saw in town. I've still got a lot to learn texture wise, but at least I'm experimenting. So without further ado:   Thanks for having a look!

Hello! Welcome to my first actual post about a painting I've done. Now, it's taken me an extremely long time to actually get around to doing some painting (I've no excuse, I just didn't want to challenge myself) so I kicked myself up the bum and decided to give one a go today. I only had one decent sized canvas and this one had been cut (not sure how), which detracts a fair bit from the scene, I also didn't have the money to go out and purchase another one, so I just made do. I make no claims about being the greatest artist in the world, I know I am merely a novice, but I do enjoy it (when I actually get a round to doing it) and was very surprised with what I came up with, especially since the last time I completed a painting was over ten years ago, and in highschool for that matter. So without further ado, here it is: As you can see I'm not very good with trees, but I think I did pretty well with the clouds, shrubbery and hills despite the length of ...

Man did I ever enjoy this completing this model! I took a fraction of the time it did for the original and I'm getting used to a bit more texturing now. I've also begun experimenting the likes of skulls, so my current one on the front of the bike isn't too good. Nonetheless I'm happy with how it turned out seeing as how it was my first attempt at creating a skull in Maya :D. Here it is in wire-frame (it looks a mess but the separate components are below :p): And a pic of all of the separate components in wire-frame: This is the part I am most proud of, I've worked hard at this and am very pleased with the final, rendered result. I feel I've made huge progress since I started 7 months ago; I can model pretty accurately, get proportions damn near spot on, am working at bump mapping, have gotten pretty good with lights, and am keeping my poly's pretty tidy (although I could do better :D).  To highlight how much I...