Breaking away from the assignment posts with this one. I’m going to fill you in on another little summer project I did.

During my time procrastinating with work and perusing the internet, I came across an incredibly talented artist/illustrator called Tiago Hoisel. This guy creates the most beautiful inspiring images and his caricatured style is brilliant, giving a comedic finish to all his work. The image that caught my eye in particular the depiction of a guy running away from a leopard after he has been playing dot-to-dot on its coat, shown at the bottom of this post. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to have a go at recreating it in 3D. Thankfully Tiago was kind enough to allow me to attempt it!

I was planning on using this project as a way of exploring certain parts of a CGI workflow, in particular the texturing aspects including UV wrapping, texture painting, bump and specular maps and finally a SSS shader. It is a work in progress, still very early on in its stages. I’ve currently concentrated on the main characters face – probably rushing in to detail far too early but enjoying it nonetheless.

I’ve been using Maya’s hair systems to create his hair and the loose straw strands on his hat. The hat mainly consists of a bump map which creates a decent looking finish. Currently, I’m working on making his eyes look far more believable as they look a bit dead right now. The texture map is also a little plain/simple right now but hopefully I’ll get some time to add detail to it at a later point.

The next big step will be to add some sub-surface scattering to give him that ruddy glow portrayed in the illustration. In hindsight, I also feel I haven’t quite got the facial proportions correct to the illustration yet, so lots more work to do! Hopefully I’ll be able to work on it during term time, maybe the lecturers will be kind to us this year and not give us too much work!