Gruff texturing WIP

Here is the current texturing/shading progress on the barkeep Gruff. As you can see there is a couple of issues with texture seams, particularly around the arms/shoulders. Should be fixed very soon. Still to add, spec/reflection maps for the skin, scars, tattoos and maybe some stitching and other small details.

The main concern right now is whether to keep the texturing on the characters fairly simple in order to help pull them off the background, or use other tricks to achieve the same affect whilst not having too much difference between characters and sets.

Textured in 3D-Coat and Photoshop, rendered in Renderman with a simple 3 point light setup. A lot of the shaders are using procedural bump maps which I quite like the look of too.

Map of the Kingdom of Overhang

What we have here, is a Map of the Kingdom of Overhang. I followed fairly closely to the original concept, the main differences being that it is flipped horizontally due to preference and flow into another shot and the colour grade is quite a bit different.

map concept art

The map is a matte painting which has been projected onto 3D geometry (the 3rd pic is the geometry). It is not quite finished as of yet, but is getting pretty close. In the pic to the left, the gray stuff is the land/water, the green squares are trees that have an alpha channel in the texture and the red is the labels and sun rays.

You may notice that everything is on a heavy slant, that is to help fake the 2D effect in 3D.

3d geometry for the map

We had a request for the extended version of the gruph animation test, so here it is, the deleted scene you weren't meant to see.

Gruph never wanted this shown, but after a heated discussion, 2 fist fights, alot of alcohol and an oddly placed jumping castle, we were able to convince him to release it to the internet....so naturally we did so before he regained conciousness.

facial rig is still under construction, so was left mostly un-animated
sound from mgm logo and toy story 2
animated in aprox 5-6 hours
Gruph roar animation test Deleted Scenes from Alexander 'Hewie' Hewitt on Vimeo.

Forgot the Other Side.

And the pic I forgot to upload yesterday is the other side of the room. As you may or may not be able to see, the laboratory equipment made of glass is not very visible. A mistake, but this is still a WIP so you'll just have to forgive us for that.

Gruph animation Test

Here's a quick animation test using the gruph rig. He's not finished yet, so I was just playing to see what he could do.


Gruph roar animation test from Alexander 'Hewie' Hewitt on Vimeo.

Al's room and Squidly

Here are a couple of new renders. Well actually the work is not new, but the renders havn't been posted before. The first image is of Al's room / laboratory. Is still a work in progress, with not fantastic lighting, and some textures/shaders still to be done. Rendered in Renderman.

The next is a render of Squidly. He is basically Al's lab rat. He may be a baby Krakken, no-one is quite sure. If he is, what do you call a baby Krakken, a Krackling? Shaders and textures not finished yet.

Preliminary Model of Gruffleglenn

Here is some work on the city of Gruffleglenn. Still a work in progress, but you can see the basic layout of the city. In the end this is going to turn into a Matte Painting.

Facebook Page Now Live

Hello Alcoholoversics,

Just a quick post to say that the Facebook page is now live. We will still be doing the blog, but in the interest of social networking and reaching as many people as possible we will also run a Facebook Page.

The main differences between the two will be that the Facebook page will primarily just have pretty pictures and any important notifications. Whereas we will be making a bit more of an effort to have some more in depth stuff on the blog along with the pretty pictures.