Scared Silly Entry by Matt Mitman

[chemeleon]

Managed to free up some time this weekend, so decided to enter the contest. Because I've waited till so late to start on my entry, just going to do a character instead of a full scene, and since I'm primarily a game artist, I plan on creating a lowpoly version and normal mapping it once the highpoly work is done. I'm not much for drawing polished concepts typically, so just did a quick ortho sketch before jumping into zbrush. Basic idea is a pumpkin man/scarecrow carving his own face.
pumpkinMan.jpg

And after 3 or 4 hours in zbrush:
pumpkinMan_wip1.jpg

So far its mostly done in zbrush, based off a base human mesh I had for the body and a sphere for the pumpkin. The initial vines and the shirt were laid out in topogun on top of the body sketch since I wasnt quite able to get them how I wanted just with zbrush. And now, back to work...

[chemeleon]

Pretty much done with the highpoly modelling now, and put a base layer of color on everything.

pumpkinMan_wip2.jpg

[chemeleon]

Normal maps generated and applied to lowpoly (~5000tris) mesh created with topogun and max.

pumpkinMan_wip3.jpg

[fizzy]

Really nice style you've got here, I likethe render and lighting. Looking forward to what else you're going to do.

Pete B

[amronellc]

Great Model, I think you have a great plan. How are you going to pose it, to make it "Scared silly"?

[chemeleon]

textures are done for now, mostly just a couple photo overlays on the base colors except for the leaf, which was a quick model in zbrush since I'll probably use it in the final scene. For now, planning on keeping the scene fairly simple, abstract background, stool for him to sit on with maybe some vines crawling around his feet, and posed as if he's carving the other eye out. I typically spend several days this time of year carving pumpkins (didnt get around to it this time though) so it seems appropriate to me :)

pumpkinMan_wip4.jpg

[LittleDedder]

good looking textures

[chemeleon]

Did a quick sculpt of stool and vines for the background props, will texture and add leaves tommorow.

vines_wip1.jpg

[Slosh]

You are very good at turning your sketch into 3D...they look exactly alike! Nice concept, too.

[chemeleon]

Thanks for the comments so far everyone :)

Finished off the vines and stool. Wanted to keep things fairly muted so the character would pop out better. Just need to toss together the backdrop (planning on a kinda abstract random brush strokes thing) and then pose and render everything together.

vines_wip2.jpg

[fizzy]

I reckon this is gooing to look very nice. What sort of colours are you going to go for in the background?

Pete B

[chemeleon]

currently I'm figuring on browns, yellows, and oranges, typical fall colors, but I plan on experimenting a bit when I start on it, so that may change completely .

[fizzy]

Nice pastel colours?

[animastur]

Well work at lowpoly,...nice concept and texture. :lol:

[chemeleon]

Ended up going with brown and green as the primary colors. Painted a rough color backdrop in zbrush using a scatter brush with a couple of the alphas zbrush includes, then brought into photoshop and dropped a couple photos on top set to multiply to add some muted detail to the upper portion. Rendered the stool and vines in zbrush, will probably have to rerender them once I decide on lighting for the pumpkin guy when I pose him in the scene. And since I want the option to do a 13x19" print of this for my wall when I'm done, been working at the somewhat ridiculously large resolution of 5700x3900 (the final layered .psd for it is over half a gig), which my pc is not too happy with :)

So, at 1/8 full resolution....

backdrop_wip1.jpg

[LittleDedder]

Nice looking background.

looking forward to final!

[cinnamonstix]

Wow the background really creates a "mood". It's very nice! Character is great.

[fizzy]

Backgrounds amazing, better then what I had in mind. That's not to say I didn't have faith in what you can do, more my idea of how I'd do it wasn't as good :)

[alonso varela]

really good art work, the art and details line is the same from the skech start, congrats! I like it!

:)

[chemeleon]

Its finally essentially done now :)

Going to wait and see what I think of it in the morning, but I'd say this is about 99% complete now. So lets see, specs...

8.6 million points for the props
6.7 million points for the character
3835 Tris for the normal mapped lowpoly version
2048x2048 resolution diffuse, normal map, and specular maps for the lowpoly body, with seperate 1024 maps for the pumpkin, and a set of 256x256 for the leaves (mainly so big because I knew I wanted to render this huge).
Final image resolution is 5700 x 3900 pixels

All highpoly work, prop painting, posing, and about half the rendering done in Zbrush (came to about 70% of the time I spent working on this). Lowpoly was started in Topogun and finished off in 3dsmax. And of course lowpoly textures and final composition were done in photoshop.

pumpkinMan_wip5.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%2774719%27,%27pumpkinMan_wip5.jp g%27,1,0%29)

[AngelJ]

Chemeleon,

Nice!! You should did get this one done pretty fast considering when you entered. Like how it turned out, background sure helps give your character more umph. Only thing for me is something about the stool maybe the width of the seat showing or the perspective that the top is shown of the stool makes it seem oddly large compared to the pumpkin carver. Thanks for participating and sharing!! Keep em coming! :tu: :tu:

[Seavannah]

that's a very cool pic indeed. wow how fast you did that. love the idea of it too.

[LittleDedder]

Nice work

[sasquatchpoacher]

Cool character! Nice work.

[fizzy]

Lovely. Colours work very well together and the characters pose is great.


Pete B

[chemeleon]

Decided to make a few last minute changes. Turned the head a bit more towards the camera, and scaled him up a bit since AngelJ was right, and the stool was dwarfing him a bit.

SSFinal_MattMitman.jpg