sbNewsom's Art Portfolio/Journal

[sbnewsom]

[ArtStation - Stuart Bradley Newsom] (https://www.artstation.com/stuartnewsom)

Hey everyone,

I guess it’s finally a good time to start up a journal for my work. I’ve started Zbrush sculpting over a year ago through the Gnomon’s Introduction to Zbrush 2020 course. It was a short stint and life got in the way until a few weeks ago.

I’m a hobbyist indie game dev (Pipedreams led me in a direction that stupidly prevented me from focusing on actually getting a career in the industry, which I hope will change now). I can do everything and because of that, there was no one area I was really good at aside from game design, level design/building, worldbuilding and atmosphere. Something I’ve always loved was character art and it took me this long to even pursue that sort of love.

One major part that was holding me back as a solo indie game dev was my inability to create everything from scratch (mainly characters). Something that I wasn’t happy with when I started ‘Shadow Over Isolation’. You can check out my Itch.io page at Link for my less ambitious projects.

And here I am, maybe make friends, get critiques and hopefully…finally improve the craft.

My first sculpt back in late 2020
ArtStation - Alien Bust Base Mesh

First sculpt of 2022 with the Introduction to Zbrush 2021 Quickstart
ArtStation - Priest

And here is my captsone project as of 6/19/2022 (Still a work in progress and early on in the pipeline)

(Full Progress thread - https://twitter.com/sbnewsom/status/1536789847075000320)

[sbnewsom]

Since I’ve been sharing progress with my friend’s and peers, I’ll share it here.

Day 1, about over an hour of actual work. Here’s a time-lapse up to where I stopped. Back at it again tomorrow.

(Timelapse)
(1) 01 Skull - YouTube

Day 2. Added Skin Subtool on top of Skull. Added detail to Skin and Skull. Smoothed out Faceplate and added embedded bolts. Hollowed out skull. Tomorrow I should blockout the Nemes and Uraeus.

Day 3. Mostly just worked on the Nemes. Utilizing Marvelous Designer as a base for the first time. It was…a learning process even if it took me all day. Might redo the Nemes as I gradually get use to things. But for now, its a good proxy mesh.

Day 4. Decided to redo Nemes in a different method, with a more unique design. Also sculpted the Uraeus, Serpent Horror. Decided to mess around with themes and materials in Keyshot for the first time.

Day 5 (Took two days off to unwind). I managed to get a lot done today. I redid the Nemes completely with a new direction, I redid the skull and did the skin from scratch, added additional bones including Spine and Mandible.

I also rendered muscles to help assist a more realistic and better proportions for when I decay and sever the head. The Nemes was completely redone to fit more in with the lore of the Dweller of Realities. Bones lining the frame with stretched skin pulling it all together imitating the look of a nightmarish Nemes.

[sbnewsom]

TMI moment here. For those wondering, the Dweller of Realities was derived from my portfolio logo made back in 2014.

There wasn’t much lore to the character back then, but this year it really grew into something better, which I think gave a lot of life to the capstone project.

I wanted to do this character since I wanted to get into Game and Art Streaming and wanted a mascot of sorts for the branding. And to give life to my lil world.

[sbnewsom]

Day 6. As I get closer to the final sculpt, I started carving away at the elements that won’t be present in the final product, like the neck and jaw. These elements are only present to serve the lore and will be used in other places.

I also tried to bring the focus back up to the cranium area by removing some bones that frame the Nemes and added in some asymmetry elements.

[sbnewsom]

Day 7. Merged skin and add a diagonal slice to the base of the head. Retopoed to bring it back into leveled mesh. Added fine detail to skin and teeth. Added Clay Mask to head that gave the “subject” a human like feature pre-mummification.

[sbnewsom]

Day 8. Added some final touches, such as asymmetrical damage, unique shaping to the crest of the bone Nemes and detail to the Skull Frame.

Did a quick retopo for thematic testing, color/material testing and atmospheric design. Brought into Substance Painter then Exported out to Unreal Engine 5 for cinematic rendering.

Here’s the animatic which I hope helps me better see how the design comes out for the final animation.

Atmosphere Test Render (Listen with headphones)

Thematic Atmosphere Test Render