Blast from the past...

I scoured through some old project hard drives and found all the directories of the outsourced vendor work I managed when I was at Microsoft. There are THOUSANDS of buildings...this is a small fraction cobbled together in a collage. Mostly Beijing, Taipei, Hong Kong and a few randoms. These are all in-game screenshots proving that the specular and normal maps are working..that's why there's a hotspot on most of the images.

Latest improvements...

I showed this to a mentor of mine, Scott Wells. He's a Sr. Character Artist working on the latest and greatest Call of Duty characters. He had all sorts of suggestions to improve the quality and realism...things I hadn't even thought of. I'm feeling extremely grateful to have people like Scott willing to help me improve...it's a great feeling.

Japanese sculpt

I used to work with a guy named Woonam Kim.....he was from S. Korea and is a true Renaissance man. Former special forces officer in the ROK Army. Asian Literature scholar as well as a marathon runner. Did I mention black belt in numerous martial arts disciplines? Finished his Master of Fine Arts in Animation at Cal Arts in the early 'oughts and now has eight or nine Hollywood movie credits to his name.
We were talking about the Asian face one day and the differences between Malaysians and Phillipinos and Koreans. I asked him what he thought about the differences between Caucasians and he famously retorted "I don't know...all white people look the same to me anyways..." I laughed and have always remembered that comment...what a perfect counter statement to the usual western perspective.

Just thought I'd tell you about Woonam because he has nothing to do with this Japanese character I'm making. I'm only one day into this so far...at level 5 on the face. I modeled it in Max which took about three days for the head and whole body. I went a little nuts on the shoes and pants...but hey, why not....there's good detail in there.

Bomb Disposal Officer

This is a character I started late last year. I did the helmet and some equipment on top of a head I created for the soldier. I'm now working through the body and equipment/radios getting it quad-modeled and edged for porting to zbrush.

Final Renders

Woohoo! C'est fini!

Just added the iron sight, charging handle, and a few odds and ends to the grip and receiver. It's hard to believe it's done! I've been working on this rifle quite assiduously for three months.

Stock & Digital Sight additions

Just the charging handle and old iron sight remaining...