2011 3D DEMO REEL

My 2011 demo reel is here! Please watch in fullscreen!

Globe Preview

The Globe is for avid music listeners, allowing them a new and immersive way to experience their favorite music.

Eddie Redesign

(I didn't make this one)

I have recently decided to enter a fighting game character redesign contest over on polycount.com. I chose to redesign Eddie from the Guilty Gear series. For those who don't know, Zato was an assassin who acquired a shadow demon named Eddie. The demon Eddie gave him crazy powers in exchange for Zato's eyesight, and eventually killed Zato and possesses his dead body to this day. I've always loved playing as Eddie in the game and thought his unique nature would be lend well to a redesign. I was going to redesign Akuma, but this is a REDESIGN contest and we all know Akuma is already perfect.

I've made some pretty massive changes to the character. The most obvious is that I've made Zato a woman. Eddie has always been flamboyant and I figured I might as well just embrace that. I also did away with Zato's clothes, in exchange for a living suit. In a very Venom-esque fashion I decided to play up the possessed aspect. I've also tried to give an even more menacing appearance to Eddie. I really want to drive home the fact that he is an evil body possessing demon.

As for the final pose, I've chosen to go with Eddie's Cerberus..thingy. It is a move I use often and I have always thought it looked cool. I also feel it will make for a nice lush 3D sculptural form. I want to give each of the dog's heads a little personality. Enough jibba jabba, here are my concepts so far.

The first concept that has since been scrapped completely.

The current design. Still need to layout her shinguards. I had a hard time deciding what to do about her eyes. Zato is blind, and wears a blindfold in the game, but I knew there was something more I could do. So, I took her eyes out completely. Less IS more in this case.. literally! (harharhar) I think she looks much darker and creepier without them.

Concepts for the cerberus heads. I could draw these things forever, but I really need to get cracking on my basemeshes. Eddie shapeshifts quite a lot in the game, so I wanted to pull some of that into my sculpt. One of the forms he takes is a shark, so I referenced that for a little homage to another one of my favorite moves! Completely channeled my inner 5 yearold on this one.

As you can see by the render times below this project is going to take awhile.. this isn't even full resolution. Despite the lack of speed things are piecing together quite nicely.

Fett Layout

I tried to go lighter on the details this time.

This one was adjusted to make the distinguishing lines of his helmet more visible.

First Turntable

An-Droid Turntable With Wireframe from Mike DuPree on Vimeo.

Poly Painting

I've been poly painting my model for the last 20 hours. I've never gone as far to lay out the UVs and paint my models in zbrush before but it's definitely something I'm going to be making more of a habit of in the future. I'm learning as i go but here is more progress on the updated model.

More Sculpting

This is a quick character I've been working on. I think this came out of an older piece that I started that never got finished. I'd like to give her a cool helmet at some point.

Sculpting Progress

Update! I imported the glasses and did some more facial modeling. Sculpting the hair kills my eyes but it's almost there.

One of my two animations is rendering this week! How exciting! In the mean time I've decided to keep the momentum going. I'll be doing digitally sculpted busts of celebs that I like. It's not the most imaginative exercise but its great for training my eye. I've started Michael Caine, who is a total bad ass, and would say the sculpt is about 50% done. I've spent about 8 hours on it so far, but I chumped out while sculpting the hair and started sculpting Toshiro Mifune instead haha. BUT here is my progress so far!

Blue

Globe Project

So while storyboard my life away I realized that I was really getting attached to a design of an object in the piece. Since the project I was boarding is a 3D animation, I decided that I would take a break from drawing and go ahead and build the " object " that had captured my attention. Since building it, it has spawned into it's own little side project. I'm delving into the design and functionality of the object a bit more, in hopes that it will make the final piece even stronger. I'm keeping the actually function of the piece under wraps, but here is a peek at what I've been up to in 2011. I would like to introduce you all to the Globe.

We are only 10 days into the new year and I'm already well underway on planning two full pieces and finishing up one short! I'm liking the start to this year, well with out all these mysterious dead animals. Stay tuned for the final video, it will be coming very soon!

Ode to Saturn

Now that I'm done celebrating the holidays I'm back to the grind. This week I'll be finishing up all the storyboards and trying to make sense of them all. I might even start piecing together a rough animatic for the project with Dolor. This pic is a quick bit I did recently for my boys 2pak! Happy MMXI! Boosh!

Sculpt Changes

Haven't be able to work on the project as much as I'd like to due to unsuccessful job hunting but I've decided to make some changes to my pisspoor designs.

Edited the post for a more updated multiangle view of the sculpt.

Kind of Blue

Now that things are starting to finally die down I've gotten the chance to start a little new project. The goal is simple. Redesign the covers of some of my favorite games, albums and movies. I'd like to effectively communicate my connection to the selected works through my redesigns. First up is Mr. Miles Davis.

D.E.M.O.

An excerpt from my current project D.E.M.O. (Digitally Enhanced Mechanical Optics) gallery. Tried to give everyone something hi res this time that they could keep. Go ahead, and set it as your desktop if you'd like (sorry it's a crappy jpeg). A present to my audience that I am so gracious to have.

New Logo

Well the logo itself isn't new, but this is a newer version. I rendered this out before I went to bed last night. I just wanted to take some of the new lighting/rendering tricks, that I've taught myself in my free time, and apply them to something semi-useful. The new shader I've been building is for the buttons that will be on my site (which will be constructed this winter ^_^) But for those 3D folk out there reading this, I advise you to always reuse your shaders and update them. There's no point in rebuilding a material without a purpose. You'd be surprised what materials you can make out of the ones you've already built. And remember above all else, click as many random buttons as you possibly can! This is the pathway to true knowledge.

Final Pieces

I've got 9,237,462 other things I should be doing. This was fun though.

Chess Boxin'

As if I didn't have enough projects occupying my plate right now, for some reason, I decided to start designing a chess set. This is a render of the king. I've still got the queen, knight and 1/3 of the bishop to finish up. I suppose I need a small project to call my own that is beyond the jurisdiction of due dates.