I drew Aidenne in the context of a Mucha painting (Daydream). I've been doodling around on ideas for a tattoo for several years and this is the basis for one idea.

I drew this for my wife for our 2nd Anniversary. I'm going to have to do a lot more of this. He's such a special and interesting child.

Every tues and weds we have open life drawing sessions. I've been dropping in. I feel so $%@%@ alive when I'm in there. I can shuffle papers and write documents all day....and then when I start pushing that pencil around, I just feel invigorated.

I went to the Seattle Aquarium today. What a fantastic place that is! Here's a couple fellas that held still. I took some crappy photos of some other animals....if I get that special itch I might draw them too...

20,000 views?

I know this is kind of silly, but I thought it was interesting. My YouTube channel hit 20,000 views the other day with 200 subscribers. It appears the most popular video is how to export polypainted textures out of Zbrush. I should post a bunch of the other videos I made at DigiPen....here's the channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/kpburgess?feature=guide

Concept for a character I'm working on...

I finally found some time to put pencil to paper and draw this character up. It's based off a design by a friend of mine (Stephen Daniele). He had this whole world and game put together and wanted to start making the characters and environments for it. He's a mercenary type personality in an archaeologist/Indiana Jones context. Y'know how Han Solo could never figure out if he wanted to join the rebels or not? This mercenary hasn't figured out if he's going to help or steal from his employers.

Zbrush Tutorials on YouTube!

Hi All,
I've spent this past week making several youtube videos for Zbrush instruction. It's one thing to practice with zbrush and get really great technique nailed down. It's another issue to understand the logistics and setup necessary to get all that great zbrushy goodness out of zbrush and into a game texture and real time model. These videos are designed to answer all those complicated questions. If you're into zbrush, this stuff is for you! Feel free to post comments and/or suggestions.

http://www.youtube.com/user/kpburgess/videos

Remember Hermey? Here's his twin sister....

A good friend of mine gave me a sketch and asked me to model a character for her. She's got this short film planned...this is very preliminary. I modeled it in Max and then brought it into Zbrush for a quick surface touch up. Once my friend buys off on it, I'll go crazy in zbrush with the surface details.

Ahhhh, Xbox Avatars...quick and dirty

I got called by one of my favorite freelance companys: "hey Kevin, can you make three xbox avatars in a week including textures?".

Uh, hell yes!

Unfortunately, right in the middle of Number 1, I get an email that says the project has been cancelled. I guess the client expected Rock Band quality instead of Mii, I mean, Xbox Avatar quality. That's a big miscommunication, but, these things happen. Here's what I busted out in 11 hours.

Finished 'dem fins...

I took about a day and a half to model them, and four days to texture them. I spent a lot of time on the texture process because I wanted to learn some new stuff. I'm in LOVE with spotlight in Zbrush...and of course polypainting. About 40% of this is photosource and the remaining 60% is handpainting. I only had three useful photos to work from and the light was different between all three....so really, handpainting it was my only option in the end. Polypainting in zbrush makes it FUN, rather than drudgery.

Aquafin by ScubaPro

Here's a couple views of a model I just made. I'm currently making the UVs and will rig and animate this with an existing female scuba diving character...textures coming soon.

Three HER Interactive Characters + Rig + Lip Sync + Body Poses & Animation

I also rigged and animated these two characters for HER Interactive. I have to make a very loud shout-out to Mark Dygert (aka Vig), the Animation Lead over at HER. He taught me more about rigging, lip sync and Motion Builder in three months than I've ever been able to accumulate on my own. He's a one-man 3D orchestra. If you're ever up on Polycount.com, he's the senior dawg and he goes by Vig.

Each of these characters were modeled, zbrushed, and textured in two business weeks....80 hours. Another week to rig and create morph targets and about a week and a half to two weeks to lip sync, body pose, and animate. It was an extremely aggressive schedule but it worked out and I hear from those that matter that they're happy.

Next Gen Workflow

I'm most comfortable with a Max->Zbrush->Max workflow. I am very fluent with Maya as well, but really like modeling in Max much better. The new Graphite toolset leapfrogs Maya in a variety of significant ways. The character seen here will be released later this month by HER Interactive (www.herinteractive.com). It's called Secrets Can Kill Remastered.

Modern Soldier

This is a character that I originally started way back in early 2009...but when I took a directed study class with Ann Sidenblad (www.silk-leaf.com) as my advisor, I completely overhauled it. Well.....I redid it actually. She taught me how to model with clean quads and how to make fabric...the net result was that I came away feeling much stronger about how quickly I can make a high quality model.

Low res version finished...on to zBrush...

When I say "low res", I kind of mean low res that has all the edges needed to maintain volume when a smooth is applied. So, it's more like medium res. I'll bring that into zbrush, subdivide to level 3, 4, 5, and eventually 7....all the while sculpting detail at each level.

Assyrian / Egyptian / Akkadian / Sumerian?

Not sure what to call this, but it fits in that genre of style. A friend of mine is a phenomenal concept artist...check his stuff out at www.stephendaniele.com. We're putting some things together.

Orrian progress...

Helmet is finished except for the leather straps in the rear and the fangs. Currently working on the large teeth attached to piece of armor on her shoulders. The concept art has described enough to do the job, but there are bits where I just make it up in order to avoid being bogged down for lack of clarity.

Academy of Art University, Class of 2010

Imagine a room the size of a soccer field crammed with graduates poking each other in the eye with sharp cornered hats. The invite said the commencement ceremonies were supposed to start at 9:30am SHARP! We stood there like lemmings for 2.5 hours:



Here's the main event setting:



The MFA banner I walked in behind:



Doin' the perp walk:

About a third of the armor...

Created this armor with high res methods today....I'm doing it this way so the edges stay tight in zbrush and I won't lose any volume when I subdivide.

ART TEST!!! It's on...it's sooo on...

I was given an art test last week by a local game company. I'm working on it at night from roughly 8pm to 1am....in-between logging on to the Academy and seeing what my students are up to. I usually get around 3 or 4 questions a day so I answer those and then get busy with this character.

This is the female base form that goes underneath the armor. The game company in question would probably not appreciate me posting the concept art so WHAT I'm doing will have to remain under wraps. I'll describe the HOW instead.

About four evenings x four hours = 16 hours = two business days to model this. It's far too high poly right now...but I'm going to finish the modeling/sculpting and then dial down the triangles once I'm done with zbrush.