Progress Review - Poster

This is the Poster I did for the next step of my FyP, the Progress Review, where I had to explain "where I am now" in my project, if I changed some idea from the begining, a Mindmap of my project, what I did and what I have to do next. I was working the last week on this, and I'll have to make a short presentation.

First Sketches and Basemesh

Sketches

Well I started last week with some sketches for my Centaur creature using the references from research. I didn't finish all of them yet, it's just a WIP, I'll upload when it was complete. I haven't decided the design for my Centaur so I'll keep working on different shapes, details and also give him a context (who is, place where he lives, maybe personality, etc).

Basemesh and first details in sculpt

I was also working in the basemesh for my creature which I'll use when I had decided the design for my beast. I did a simple shape for a centaur in digital sculpt, where it can see the main muscles in both parts, human and horse, that I'll use as a reference. I worked in two different shapes, one of them with fitted muscles and the other one over muscled. I did a basemesh in low poly putting correctly the loops too, ready for animators could work on it. My idea is to have a creature in low poly between 15.000 - 20.000 tris.

Research

Well, last two weeks I was working in my Creature for the FyP. Firstly I started with the research I began last month about Fantasy Creatures. I started with some research about Creatures on different Mythologies like: Greek, Norse, Roman, Chinese, etc. And I was searching about Creatures in video games as well. It was really caotic because the field it's very wide, and it was very difficult to try to decide which kind of Creature I would like to work, because I liked a lot of them, but I needed to choose just one. Some of the examples that I was looking for:


Greek Mythology Creatures

Cerberus

Medusa

Manticore

Norse Mythology Creatures

Jötnar

Níðhöggr

Sleipnir

Roman Mythology Creatures

Daemon

Oceanid

Faun

Vermilion Bird (Zhu Que)

Chinese Mythology Creatures

Black Tortoise (Xuan Wu)

Azure Dragon (Qing Long)

Creatures in video games

Monster Hunter Saga

Elder Scrolls Saga

Final Fantasy Saga

Bioshock Saga

The Centaur

Finally I chose one of the Greek's Mythology Creatures, the Centaur. The choice was given by several reasons. The most important reason was because I wanted to work in a character using real references from human and animal anatomy, and the Centaur is half human and half horse. Another reason was because I am most familiar with Greek Mythology from the others. I did a minotaur in the past and I like a lot this kind of creatures so I knew that I could enjoy a lot working on this character. Some of the examples are:

Human and animal anatomy

One of the main points of my FyP is to work using real human and animal anatomy to make my Creature looks real. Often in video games and movies we can find imaginary creatures that looks wrong or there is something that make us that it's impossible a creature like that could live. I did a research about anatomy of human and horse to use them in my creature. Some of the examples are:

Books

Another good source of information were some books that I'm using to help me for example in anatomy for fantasy creatures, to draw fantasy characters, human body or digital sculpt human body.

1.- Dixon, Matt. (2010). The Fantasy Artist’s Figure Drawing Bible. London: Quarto Publishing

2.- Spencer, Scott. (2010). Zbrush Digital Sculpting Human Anatomy. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.

3.- Fabry, Glenn. (2013). Anatomy for Fantasy Artists. 2nd Edition. London: Quarto Inc

4.- Goldfinger, Elliot. (1991). Human Anatomy for Artists: The Elements of Form. New York: OUP

5.- Hudspeth, E.B. (2013). The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black. Philadelphia, PA: Quirk Books