Creating a brand

 

Now is time to explain who is this strange guy!
It is the product of the process of creating a brand for a new, hypothetical company.
This was a project for a graphic course: we have to create a new company and its main product, no limit to the imagination, requirement was to be coherent and convincing.
I imagined a start-up that was going to develop an A.I. capable of replacing its owner in all the aspects of the social/web life: gaming, chatting, posting comments and so on.
Obviously the A.I. was configurable and reporting to the owner on a schedule defined by the owner itself.
Starting from this idea there was the task of choosing a proper name, and the right font for it.
The next step was creating a graphic logo for the company.
I ended this phase with the horizontal log:

And also the compact version:

The next phase in the project was creating something special for the company and there, as you already guessed, the compact version of the name became central, with just some simple transformations a small robot character could be created:

So the small robot became the friendly interface of the A.I., especially for humans not much knowing about computers. And it was also a key graphical/emotional element for the possible applications:

It won the benevolence of the course members, and also a 3D render for the final page of the  Brand Development Guide.
As said in a previous post: all the elements of the character have a real meaning! :)

A new little friend

 

A new little guy was added to the number of sketches and creations!
Ok it is just a simple 3d model, and also quite schematic... so what can make it so interesting?
Trust me: there is a reason for each element of this simple model.
More on this in a future post :)

Apatosaurus (low poly)

Here it is another dinosaur, this time an Apatosaurus.
I think I'm going to create a group of them and then set up a scene of some kind (obviously I will not have enough time to do any of that ) ... we will see ;).
And now a bit of movement:

Rat Marauder 3D - next step

The Rat Marauder model has been retouched a bit during the past months.
The result is that has just some basic materials and textures but, ...
I've tried adding some hairs and now there are 5 hair particle systems applied to the model, but I did something more ...
I've experimented a bit with the armor he is wearing and the possibilities of animating it togheter with the body and:

Here it is it: with a bit of effort I managed the linking of the armor to the body (the most useful function available for achieving this result was not functionig in blender, hope they replaced/restored it now), and a constant struggle with the hair system was needed for doing almost everything, but in the end there is a model that can switch from low res to high res with its rig and hairs working because no modifier was applied but the mirror (the above render is a mix: low res hammer and armor high res for the body).

Stegosaurus (low poly)

Some months are passed from the last post. During this period I've made some different things, one of which was modeling a bit, as usual using Blender, and the result was a new dinosaur low poly model.

This time it is a Stegosaurus, with a basic rig to make some simple animation and poses.

Rat Marauder 3D

And now, at the end of the year, back to 3D!
One of the Rat Marauders found the way to the 3D realm and a new model was born :)
As you can see there are more details than in the original sketch: there is an armour and a great war-hammer as weapon.
 

Unity 1 - Black Knight

After having create the main structure of a simple game in Blender Game Engine, I tried some simple experiments in a different 3D engine: Unity.
I think I'm going to try some more ... :) but for now simply the import of an animated model, created in Blender, and the use of scripts for testing the animations.
For the Black Knight you can use the following keys:

- Right Arrow, starts ccw rotation.
- Left Arrow, starts cw rotation.
- W, walk.
- R, run.
- Space Bar, attack.
- I, idle.

The small game project (more details on that in a future post) is waiting for the new Blender release to see if, at the least, the use of a game controller is correctly enabled as in older versions of the software.

Low-poly cartoon Dragon

And now: ... the main character ... the hero ... the small (and a bit fat ;) ) dragon Alex !!
Yes, here is the man who can solve the quest. Not really a man but ... child likes dragons, or so it seems. Obviously there is nothing to say about the name and who chose it (quite easy to guess, no ?)
I liked the idea of modeling a cute low poly dragon and, when it was finished, even Alex liked it and decided its name ad asked me to make it walk ...
From there it was easy thinking of doing even something more, it took a lots of time, but now the main structure of a simple game done in Blender BGE is ready and more ideas are coming! :)

Low-poly cartoon Black Knight

Some times ago I posted a picture of a low res model of a cartoon ghost.
Now is the time of the Black Knight.
They are both elements of a project that is based on Blender and the Blender Game Engine.
My last spare time was dedicated to thar and now, the base structure of the whole project is quite ready, there is still a lot of work to do, and some diasappointing findings are slowing down the progress but it is surely an interesting way of learning new things.
First of all, I found, that the 2.74 release of Blender is not more capable of reading correctly the events generated by an Xbox controller, hopefully this will be restored into the next patch or release.
Second I'm having a lots of trouble in using sounds, at the point that I'm really leaving them out of the project for now.
Third I found a 'bug' involving near sensor and the navigation mesh, I used a Python script to avoid the wrong results of that.
But going back to the small guy of the picture: he is a real bad guy! And he is going to use his sword to hunt down the main character, helped by the ghost, obviously! :)

Music of Nature

After a long time there is the animation related to the Leaf screnshot of a precedent post.
This was an idea born a long time ago and in its first version the storyboard included a tall plant (possibly a tree), a small pond, some vegetation and a sunrise. Then the semplification, and the search for what was my focus of interest in all the visualzation.
Now there is a minimal number of elements and the overall atmosphere is different from the first sketch but, really, is more near to what moved me toward this scene in the first time.
The story is about the discovering of the music hide inside the nature, as the drops falling from a leaf. It can be a difficult process and can run slowly at the start, but when its rules are grasped it runs faster as it becomes easier.
The project is completely done in Blender. The Leaf is a  complex model with a minimal depth and lot of details. The drop moving along the leaf surface is the result of a fluid simulation. Sad to say but there are not much instruments n Blender to work on the geometry resulting from a simulation, so, in the end, this was the best I could achieve in a reasonable time.
There is no sound but, if I will find what is needed and some more spare time, it could be that I can try to match the video with a simple sound project: it will start from the sounds of a quiet field, then giving space to the splash of the first drop, and then to the the sound of a single note released when it collides with the water surface. Easy but I think it cold creat a good oveall effect, just have to find the time to test this idea! ;)

Low-poly cartoon Ghost

This is the ghost character that I've modeled for a new idea I was working on, and as usual Who knows if there will be time enough for making the idea a real thing ... For the moment some 'strange' models are taking shape of low-poly and cartoonish characters and it is quite enjoiable following the toon's style :)
All the elements I'm modeling are designed for a childish graphic effect and for use in real-time ... more to follow in future posts!

Leaf

I'm just working at a new project in Blender the animation is not still finished but I'm using the render of a still frame as background for my new tablet. Rendered using Cycles.

Cloister

An old animation done in Blender. A lots of details (look at the roof tiles, no textures there), procedural texture, particles for the pebbles and the grass, fluid simulations, reflections...the render took an awful amount of time...the fly of a little bird in a cloister. I enjoied very much modelling this scene...and the texturing and lighting  was done in internal render (shadow areas are deliberately a bit overexposed for showing the details). The worst thing was discovering the limit for the details of the fluid in its rendering context.

Triceratops

This year I've had very few spare moments for doing 3D, just a bit of time for doing this other low poly model: a small triceratops. Hopefully I can succeed and spare some more hours next week and try to animate it :).

Animations 2D/3D

Some exercises collected for a basic Computer Aniation course. Most of them done on a netPC,  using an A6 wacom tablet, a low cost Cell animation software, and, obviously, the completely free Blender for the 3D sequences. Just to show how even using a low budget you can give your students the way for moving the first steps into the Computer Animation world. This kind of project was appreciated and I got the abilitation for teaching CA to the "Arti e Mestieri" School of Rome, Italy. Don't know if they are going to call me for some lesssons (there is just one course). Nontheless it was amusing trying to put the pieces togheter, avoinding the great names of the animation software.

MotorTV Logo



This is the render for the animation of a TV channel logo travelling along an highway and entering a city. Modelling was quite a task: the sequence was quite short and there were a lots of things that I had to show. There are many details, even if you can't really focus on them.

 

And this is the final version of the shot, with music, and effects int he final. The cuts between the cameras changes are a bit more 'crude' and sometimes are too fast and look a bit worse than the original render.

All in all I'm no really displeased with the result: there are all the shots, the features and the objects requested. And, more, you can catch quite a bunch of good stills for use in other context: brochures, slide show and the like.
Modelling and rendering done in Softimage and XSI.



New Zbrush Alien Creature

What happens when you mix the Creature from the Balck Lagoon, Alien, and the creatures of the old game Space Hulk?
Surely something strange, and what follows is just one possibility...but in truth, first I made the model, and just then saw what was 'inside' :)

Modelled in Blender, then imported in Zbrush for sculpting

Next time I'll post a sculpted model I hope it will be completely done in Blender.



Dragons

I always liked fantasy creatures and Dragons in a special way :) :

 

This one is the oldest attempt I ever made at modelling one of this creatures. Done in Rhino 3D at that time welding meshes and Nurbs surfaces was all but easy, and subsurfaces were long to come but for LightWave.

And there is another model done in Rhino 3D, but this time there were better tools for welding surfaces.

 

   

And obviouslly there are drawings (wacom tablet helps much ;) ):

    And finally again 3D and Blender 2.5 and a short walk cycle:

Queen film logo in Softimage

Just a sutdy for a logo animation realized in Softimage.

ZBrush sculpting exercise

 

  

I've tried some sculpiting in ZBrush. Started from a low-poly version created in Blender for a game coding project, then imported in ZBrush and added details, making geometry similar to original drawing. This is still an unfinished model, but enjoied really much this way of modelling.

Really I have to switch to a 64 bit operative system and give Blender a try with high resolution models.

With 32 bit system there is no way to reach the same details you can manage in other applications like ZBrush (Blender crashes for lack of memory resources).

So I've done a couple of experiments in ZBrush.
Hope in a near future I can change OS and post something sculpted in Blender, I'm a fan of free software :)