Nuggetty Goodness

This week's random head started out as Eurydiche from Tanith Lee's Faces Under Water, and ended up as... well, what you see here.

I find that for every piece that turns out the way I initially envisioned it, there's another 20 (or more!) that turn out nothing like what I had in mind in the first place. This, of course, is one of those 'nothing likes'. For one thing, Lee does mention that Eurydiche, when she wears a mask, wears a huuuuuuuuge butterfly. But I just couldn't get the butterfly to work. Alas!

One thing I've noticed about Asian games vs Western ones - Asian games have boys that are sooooo much prettier! (At least, to my tastes, anyway. ;))

It's rather interesting really. If you had, as a random example, a Western-based game with a guy who looked like Final Fantasy's Seifer Almasy, or, God forbid, Sephiroth, it would be a general joke that they just had to be gay. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. ~_o Being gay, that is.)

Just take WoW's Blood Elf guys, for example. It's pretty much a given that they look 'gay'. It just seems that when it comes to Western-made games, there's this impression that, 'If a guy is beautiful (yes! I used that horrible word to refer to a male specimen, ohnoes!) then he must be gay. And if you play such a fellow, you're either a gay guy, or a chick.'

Yet when it comes to Asian games, that issue rarely comes up, if at all.

And you know what? As a girly, I so, so much prefer the male eye candy provided by Asian games. It just seems to me that in Asian games, there's an understanding that when it comes to looks, while you can certainly pack a guy with so full of muscley macho cues that his whole look just screams, 'GWARRRR ME SMUSH!' (Street Fighter's Zangief, for instance,) there's still the understanding that speed, grace and elegance can also be masculine. (See other examples above, or Balrog/Vega, if you prefer more Street Fighter stuffs. XD)

For me at least, the argument that, 'If I have to stare at an avatar for hours, I want it to be cute!' rings totally true. Unfortunately, this means that in MMOs, I tend to play girl avatars. Not because I'm a girl, but because the boys look horrible or strange or unappealing.

But in Jade Dynasty, for example, that I play on and off (mostly off), I have 3 male toons and counting. Why? Because they're hawt!

WTB, moar hawt boys in games please!

Fine, fine, nuggeet, but what does this have to do with today's sketch, you rambling chunk of batter-covered chicken goodness?

Well... after all that raving about the wonder of Bishonen, I must confess...

I don't really like Manga style art. I think it's mostly because it gets Mang(a)led way too much. It seems some take 'Manga' as 'I can throw all knowledge of anatomy, proportion, and everything else right out the window, because after all, it's "my Manga style"'. That being said, I do like some very specific Manga artists - those like Yoshitaka Amano, whose abstraction of anatomy obviously comes from a sound knowledge of it.

So! Nuggeet likes the whole Bishonen thing, but she doesn't like manga, oh noes! Wut to do!?

...make my own I guess. XD

And that, my nuggets, is this rant's rather convoluted link to this week's sketch.

(Oh yeah, and so far it's  only heads cause heads come really easily to me, and I'm a really lazy nugget.)

 

Having been rejected, poor little Pixelloid hung his head with sadness and decided to evolve from Pixelloid-chu to Ironball-Mon! -_-

We'll probably be using this style...

I haven't done pixel art since I stopped doing graphics for mobile games, quite a few years ago.

My current workplace is revamping its website, and pixel art was considered as one of the accents. Sadly, after poor Pixelloid here was made, we realised that pixel art wouldn't quite fit the style.

So alas, here is my wonewee widdle wobot. Snurfle!

I blame this week's random comic book femme fatale type on Travis Hulsey who filled my head with comicbook talk shortly before I waddled off to scribble this...

I'm like a kid in a candy store with ZBrush right now! >.> Or, as an old friend says, like a Pikachu on crack.

Butbut... so many TOYS!

After sculpting the model, I started playing with polypaint, which lets you paint textures, material, and colour directly onto the 3d model.

Then I kinda got distracted by trying to render skin using skin textures, and running around the interwebz checking out lighting and stuff.

And then came render... look at all those buttons, OOH SHINY! *has a Kikigasm*

As a result, half the poor fellow's hair (well more than half, to be honest), is unpainted, since I ran off in all directions at once, poinging in glee. XD

In some ways, I think being a newbie at anything really opens up so many possibilities, because you do things in strange ways, before you realise that people don't do them that way.

Apparently, it's generally not done to render hair directly in ZBrush, without extensions or plugins of any sort... which is what I've done here.

I think the eyebrows work well, and with some work, the main hair could be decent. However, I haven't figured out how to do eyelashes and still keep my model in 3D form. Those are apparently either modelled with the snake brush tool (among others) in 2.5D, or added in post-pro in Photoshop.

Still...SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

...really should at least block in the rest of the hair though. XD

So, a mere 4 months after buying my new PC laptop, I suddenly realise that this means I can play with zBrush!

What I really love about zBrush is how totally intuitive the sculpting process is. If you know how to sculpt in 3d (as in, with real, traditional clay, etc), you know how to sculpt in zBrush. I do understand that there's a lot of things like polygon counts and whatnots that models made in zBrush have downsides in... but I hope in my nuggetheart that this is the kind of interface that 3D programs can move towards. I have no idea if that's practical within my nugget shelflife of course, but in the meanwhile... VIRTUAL SUPER SCULPEY! WOOT!

I've also learned that the top part of the sphere should not form the front of your 'face'. -_- It only took me 4 hours to figure out how to patch the hole in the mesh. Ah noobie goodness.