Freelance 3D Animator
Ok, so a little more stylised than the last one, but this is the latest painting in my Critical Role Portraits series (I’m calling it that now!)
Today’s portrait is of Ashley Johnson as Pike Trickfoot, a Gnome Cleric.
Below is the WIP gif to show most of the different stages from reference to finish.
Cheers guys!
Ok…. so I might have gone a little more realistic than I usually do here… but that’s fine. Maybe the next one might be a bit more stylised (I’m imagining Travis Willingham’s character Grog to be a bit more stylised, anyway).
This here is Liam O’Brien’s character, Vax’ildan, the Rogue.
I don’t think I could have done this from mind or memory, and yeah, I’ve been using photo reference for all of these CR paintings, but I figured I’d show the original here.
Lastly, below is a gif of my work in progress. Enjoy!
So an old friend of mine got in contact – this guy is a legend, someone I used to be in a punk band with when I was at college (Too Far Forward – we were amazing!). So he told me that he was moving into a place with his partner, and wanted me to do a quick sketch of the two in my cartoony style, something he could put on the mantel piece in his new place. So this lunchtime I set to work!
I threw in some nice block colour for good measure! To the left is the reference image he sent me to work from.
Well, Simon was happy with the final piece, and it was a fun challenge to do something short, quick and simple, not to mention great hearing from an old friend!
Hey guys,
So back in May I posted the OZ AND KATE WEDDING ANIMATION – MODELLING! blog, looking at the design principles used when creating the characters and artwork for my wedding.
Today I have the follow-up post, showing off the Rig I had created for the characters, but the best way to do this was by creating a video.
Or three.
Here they are!
Enjoy!
So it’s taken me a couple of days to paint this Critical Role portrait of Keyleth, played by Marisha Ray. It’s quite polished, and a little too clean maybe, but I am happy with it non the less.
Below is a quick development gif, showing the piece at different stages.
Hey guys, thought it was high time I’d add a few more animations to the blog. These focus on body mechanics and video reference. Some are better than others, but I think they work well as tests.
Below is a number of tests leading to the pieces above
Rig: Ultimate Bony
These are a number of short, snappy game animations focusing on trying to replicate a feeling of a Marionette puppet. I was asked to give it more attitude, which is why some seem to work more cartoon-like than puppet-like. It was interesting trying to achieve a feel of weight with the character being suspended by strings.
Model: Kye Holt Rig: Myself (c) Holovis
Video Reference:
As a personal test, I wanted to see if I could animate a realistic backflip, something that resembled motion capture, but was fully hand keyed. Really happy with the output of this. Obviously it has been sped up to a natural speed from the slow-mo reference.
Model: Arron Manchester Rig: Myself (c) Holovis
I was asked to produce a number of animations of small spiders that would attack a player in an on-rails FPS. These are the different animations created for that project.
Another portrait paint of a character from Critical Role, this time it’s Percival played by Taliesin Jaffe.
I get the feeling I’m going to do a series of these, just trying to better my portrait painting skills.
A quick painting today, just a practice in face painting….
Critical Role’s DM Matthew Mercer.
So I thought I would put up a couple of pictures to show the process I used to create the Vex’ahlia painting.
Originally I was just looking to create an image using a dynamic pose. Rather than trying to imagine one (and possibly throw the entire painting out of whack), I searched until I found an image I was happy with – A female archer in a striking pose.
From this pose, I dissected the major shapes – the torso, arms, head and limbs. From there I painted and erased the line work – a process called line sculpting – until I found the rough shape I wanted. At this point I decided that this would be a picture of Vex’ahlia from Critical Role, an RPG liveplay I listen to at work.
Finding reference images, I determined what the character should be wearing and sculpted those items onto the sketch I had outlined. Some more line-sculpting created the final line art I was pleased with.
I sampled what seemed to be the ‘local’ colour – which is to say the natural colour, as though without lighting and without shading – and filled in the colours on individual layers. I then duplicated these layers and changed the tones to suit the shaded colour, so the entire image was painted as though in shade.
From there I started painting the light, referencing the local colours and painting onto the shadow layers using ‘Lock Opacity’ to avoid colouring out of the lines. Using lock opacity on the line art, I then shaded the lines a dark version of the surrounding colours, making the line art less comic-like and a little more painterly.
Finally I flattened the players and started a process of over-painting and blending lines into the painting. I colour corrected the entire piece to give a more fitting colour pallet and added a fun background using a couple of dots and a lot of motion blur. To finish it off, I painted the lightning arrow and lines and emphasised them with inner and outer glows.
Though I have learned a lot from this piece, it has become clear that there is much more left to learn – I am not happy with how the cloak has come out, or the look of the fur, but I am pleased with the outcome in general.
I have decided that I should spend some time looking at some rudimentary drawing and painting techniques, sketching more and painting direct from reference. I hope to get onto this pretty soon.
Cheers for reading, guys!
Oz
Hey guys, so this week I have been spending quite some time practising some digital painting techniques. I have been watching a lot of Kienan Lafferty’s tutorials on youtube, and, well, this guy is amazing!
So I have wanted to try out a bit of a dynamic pose, and I found a cool reference photo of a female archer, so I decided to do a bit of a Critical Roll fan art piece of Laura Bailey’s character Vex’ahlia.
Now I’m not gonna say it’s the greatest piece in the world, I have so much more to learn, and I think for now I need to focus on small scale studies rather than full body paintings, but I am really happy with how this has turned out, and look forward to pushing myself in the future.
If anyone is interested in checking out some work-in-progress images, I can post them another day.
Either way, this was great fun, and I’m really pleased with how it has turned out.
Let me know what you think!
Cheers
Oz Durose