Movie Mermaid Concept (2nd Iteration)

Movie Mermaid Concept

I just started working on the conception of a mermaid model for a friend's feature movie using ZBrush and Photoshop.

After sculpting and poly painting the model, I took several passes(Base, Skin, Color, AO, Reflection, Tight Spec, Med Spec, and Rim) by applying ZBrush's diffrent materials on the model:

Base

Skin

Color

AO

Reflection

Tight Spec

Medium Spec

Rim

Afterwards I combine the previous passes in photoshop, and with a little paint over and blur effects end up with the current concept pieces:

Head Render

Perspective Render

Tail Render

Mermaid Swimming

My Layers in photoshop starting with the lower layers up were:

• Base
• Skin (Hue at 60%)
• Color (Color at 64%)
• AO (Overlay)
• Reflection (Overlay)
• Tight Spec (Pin Light)
• Med Spec (Pin Light)
• Rim (Color Dodge between 95-100%)

Grapple Poster Concept

Below is a poster concept I made for our capstone game at FIEA.

Amina who is grappling through the air looks a bit pissy, but it's understandable considering there's a giant mechanical spider-thing behind you destroying your town.

Revised Concept:

Previous Concept:

The process of making the poster was lighting the in-game models in Maya, rendering them out, and polishing everything up in photoshop.

The models were created by the artists on our team:

Amina model by Nisa Matinez

Destrozar Model by Karen McCarthy

Portfolio Piece 2: Skyway

The Skyway is a large mechanical structure used for the transportation of crystal minerals in our capstone game, Grapple, that the player can use as both transportation and a weapon against the the giant enemy mech, Destrozar.

Below are screenshots of the Skyway being rendered in the UDK engine.

For this project I ended up dividing the model into two groups to maximize the amount of texture space.

Textures for the upper half of the Skyaway.

Textures for the Skyway's base + tracks.

Emissive map for the power core and generator.

All together 2 Diffuse, 2 Normal, 2 Specular, and 1 Emissive 2048x2048 maps were used.


These are some of the high poly models I used to bake down a normal map.

Below are the wire frames of the low poly model.

Portfolio Piece 1

Wire Frame of the Medium Enemy model.

Enemy model's Texture Map.

Final render of the Medium Enemy model.

Yay Props...

Props, they give the environment character, yet not many people seem willing to make them.

Stoke the Fire

Nothing pulls an environment together better than setting it on fire and watching it burn.

Above are the sprites and effects made using Unreal's Cascade in UDK

Let There Be Light

The lighting in Grapple allows both Amina to see where she is grappling while catching some sun.

Above are four different screen-caps of real time gameplay in the environment. Clockwise from the top left:
- Normal light shinning over the buildings. - Hot burning environment  - Rising smoke through the buildings - Final assent to the power tower saturating the environment around it. 

The Local Populace

Below is the female resident of Jabal Makasem - 

She was painted in photoshop. Her attire resembles the traditional Moroccan garb with a bit of a western feel to keep her close to the main charachter.

Rome Wasn't Built In A Day

Below are the various iterations of our environment concepts for Grapple's city. This is where the main character, Amina, would be grappling between the rooftops and through the streets.

This first concept was a silhouette-esk image of the Tatooine like buildings from Star Wars found in Algeria with overlaying metallic mechanical structures surrounding the building.  

In the next iteration a simple traditional Moroccan building was used instead that had overlaying mechanical contraptions made of metal, yet with much less than in the last concept.

The buildings then became less fancy and more simplified to represent a working class society. Less designs in the metals are used and placement is more 'slapped on' as if the city is under constant construction.

These last two concepts were paint-overs of  a grey-box model of the city created by our environment modeler. They were meant to capture the look and feel of what the city could look like and whether or not it feels right. In these models we wanted the city to feel more lively and lived in with market stalls and stands littered around the city.

Meet Our Lovable Enemy Model

This is the majestic mech enemy that has been introduced to the lovely peaks of Jabal Makasem (sure you can try pronouncing it). He leaps from building to building attempting to navigate the city for the main character Amina.

I started out by hard surface modeling a high poly version in Maya then worked my way down to the low poly version with 8042 Tris. For baking down the normal maps I used xNormal and then textured the rest in Photoshop.