Deer Design

This is a detailed design of the fantasy style deer, they are showing grazing and relaxing, the deer will have green/brown antlers which will spring forth flowers at the tips, this design was inspired from other fantasy concept art, also because my project is set on a different planet, I believed that there should be some variation to the animals and making a consistent art style. The art style I decided on was animals are more in tune with nature and because of the climate and environment, plants and flowers grow from the bodies of the animals.

Pup Design - Howling

 This drawing was made in an attempt to show the wolf cub sitting down while howling with its face up, the proportions and angle of the drawing are not completely accurate which is why it does not look as good as it should, If I get the chance in the future I will re-draw this image with a better perspective to ensure it does not confuse the viewers eyes, but for the time being I will not include it within my designs.

Pup Design - Scratching

This is a quick sketch of a wolf pup in the middle of scratching itself, this will be a main part of the pup's animation cycle, it will be seen resting and scratching itself, being carefree, this drawing emphasises on the fur and the direction in which it is moving away from the body. Due to the angle of the pup some of the detail is hard to distinguish, I will ensure in the future when re-creating my storyboards that this is rectified and made clearer.

Wolf Design

The original design of my character had changed from a werewolf style to a normal wolf on all fours, this was due to the fact that the previously made 3D wolfman model was just not good enough. This drawing is a detailed look at how the wolf will stride in the final animation, the colour of its eyes and the length of its tail, emphasis has been added on the muscles around the legs and the spine bones to show the shape of the wolf

Wolf Man Basic

I began with a basic werewolf model found on the Mudbox Community Library, I then took it into maya and changed some of the proportions to fit what I needed for my character.

I moved onto then sculpting the features starting with the face, I first blocked out the bones using references of wolf skeletons  to see the structure of the face, I then added muscle density on top to show the size it would be finished.
I moved onto changing the shape of the ears and creating the holes for the eyes, I added muscle/eyebrows above and around the eyes to further exaggerate the wolf like features. I then created a sphere, duplicated it and moved them both into position for the eyes. I moved onto working on the nose and mouth, using tools such as the pinch, flatten and  knife.

I then moved onto adding muscle definition across the body, feet and hands, to show that these alien wolf like creatures are strong and portray ferocity. I also added in detail on the feet and hands such as nails/claws and skin pads underneath the feet.

I then went onto adding some detail and definition to the tail and back of the model. I continued onto using stencils and paint layers to create the fur like details all over the model, I also painted the model in a dark grey with some white highlights. This is a basic version of the character, I will add more detail to this in the future so that it can be used for my animation project.

I finished up by creating a turntable to show off the model in a 360 rotation

Finishing The Bridge

From the original mesh I created, before I could use Mudbox to begin sculpting, I needed to fix the UVs. At the moment they were all over the place and not well placed for applying a detailed texture to.

I fixed the UVs using planer mapping on the X, Y and Z axis. A checker texture was applied to see and ensure the sizes of each part of the UV's were even all over the model. 

Now that the UVs were fixed, I could export the model to Mudbox to begin sculpting, I began by first creating multiple layers of subdivisions, this allowed me to add more detail by increasing the number of polygons of the model, I started on the basic lower levels first by adding some shape changes to the model

 I then moved onto the higher levels and added increased amounts of detail on the basic changes, some of the things such as dints, warps of the wood, chipped corners etc. I finished up by moving up and down the layers to smooth out the model.

 I moved onto painting the Specular Map onto the model based on the geometry, overall the model is made of wood so it would not give off that much shine, so I used a dark colour for the spec map, I flooded the layer black and then used the dry brush tool to paint over the ridges as they would shine slightly more.

Now that the normal and specular map have been created, I needed to extract them from the model and save them as seperate .targa and .tiff formats to apply them to my model back in Maya. 

With the specular and normal maps created, I now needed to create the diffuse map also known as the texture map, to do this I downloaded a basic wood texture and a basic green moss texture, I then created layers and seperated them, I first applied the moss layer onto with an overlay applied to it, I changed the opacity down to blend it in with the wood texture.

I then created a copy of the moss texture, set it to overlay and opacity down to 60%, I then used the rubber tool on about 15-20% opacity to remove some of the moss details, this was done to add some variation to the moss layer, because in real life, it doesn't evenly grow everywhere, there are some places where more light/water is available so it grows in more concentration.

Ordinarily this would be enough variation but I found it was not enough, I used 2 filters which were Render:Clouds and Render:Fibers, I also set both of these to overlay and brought the opacity down to blend them in with the textures.

 I then created a normal map based on the original wood texture, I then brought in the normal map created in Mudbox using the sculpting I did, I brought the opacity down to subtly merge both details.

 I then went back to Maya and applied the diffuse, normal and specular maps back on to the original model, I added some lighting to see just how well it looked, I found the model still looked too basic.

 I decided to add in abit more variation to the model, I did this by adding in some extra edge loops on the existing edges, and then distorting them using the scale and transform tools. Giving me the final finished look I desired for the model

Storyboard