That’s a massive compliment form you Etcher. Thanks very much!
Eric
Howdy Folks.
I’ve been taking Marke DeDecker’s game character sculpting class at Gnomon this past semester. Wow, what an awesome class! I been doing ZBrush for film and video/TV projects for a long time but this is the first time I’ve done any character work with games in mind. Its a whole new world for me and I can see why its so addictive for some many people. Very cool challenge.
Anyways. I picked a design from Carlos Huante’s website (http://www.carloshuanteart.com/). He is one of my favorite designers (and yours too probably). I’m, not done yet but here is the work so far in ZBrush. This is the hi res sculpt that has been PolyPainted. I spent a few minutes designing a material in ZBrush that is reminiscent of his drawing style so it has bright colors and a thin dark outline. I’m working on texturing the low poly game mesh at the moment. I’ll post those when the project is finished.
Here is a visual representation of the stages i went through in making the Carlos Huante character sculpt.
Retoplogy in Modo:
Sculpt on the retopo version:
another retopo to create the game topology and more hi res detail sculpting
why so many retopo?
Love it all. Very nice work. 
I did one quick retopo to make a more sculpting friendly mesh from the original ZSphere mesh and then another to make a more game friendly mesh. Not really unusual to do it more than once.
BTW I had a typo in my original post, its Mark Dedecker not Marke Dedecker.
Very cool design of the alien!
Excellent! And I love this thread.
Great work.
Here are some test renders from the Marmoset rendering engine which emulates Unreal. Still working on textures. I abandoned the original rainbow colors used in Carlos Huante’s concept. they look good in ZBrush but in Marmoset they made the alien look like some kind of disco hippy. I need to do the guns next.
My instructor - the great Mark Dedecker - has named this character “Todd”. I think Carlos’ original design was for one of the MIB movies.
It’s true, I can’t seem to ever finish a project. i left my game character for a little while (previous posts) so I could start making models for an animated short I have in mind. this is a minor character - a little mite, similar to a dust mite. This is the ZBrush render.
other views:
chocolate bug? 
Cool stuff dude
Here’s my li’l mite rendered in Modo with a little Pshop compositing (for color correction and DOF). Yeah, the colors are inconsistent between images but I’m messing around with the look. My goal is to rig and animate in Maya and render in Modo (comp in AE or Nuke - don’t really know Nuke but it’s a good excuse to learn). I’m working towards a translucent effect, not quite perfect yet but I like where its going.
Larger versions are on my website at www.bloopatone.com
Attachments
Tops. love the details and the close-up. the shader is well done as well.
nice mite
that’s the mightiest mite i’ve seen all year! nice work.
was just reading one of your books during lunch break. also nice work.
f~
Alien came out really well ! D@mn mite is creepy as hell… larger versions on your website eh … I’m def not going there… . 
.
I know, I need to go and do a final render of the Huante alien, but I got sidetracked by the mite. You guys know how it is. Thanks for the responses. Glad you like the book fidget. Which book is it? Maya or ZBrush?
Hello guys.
here are a few renders from a project I did a year ago for a client (Digizyme). This is my attempt a t a photo real, anatomically correct ant (Pheidole obscurithorax). I think I got fairly close but keep in mind that its not always possible to find an exact image of the underside of the thorax or the back of a mandible for a specific ant species. so in some small parts I did have to invent a little.
This was rendered in mental ray/Maya and composited in After Effects. All textures, normal, and displacement maps, were created in ZBrush using Polypainting. I have an animated version as well which I will try and post when I get a chance.
The head of the ant may seem big if you’re not familiar with the wide variety of ant shapes. In reality I actually scaled it down! Ant proportions can be all over the map. My reference for these images was rpimarily from the photography of Alexander Wild (http://www.alexanderwild.com/Ants/Taxonomic-List-of-Ant-Genera/Pheidole/8708721_amTKB#642058051_iYE2X) also from the books of E. O Wilson (The Superorganism, The Leaf Cutter Ants, and The Diversity of Life).
here is the model in ZBrush.
