Dorn update

Hi guys, im about to finish Dorn, made some progression about the whole scene, added lights and made a quick render in vray. Of course it is super grainy, its just a preview, but you should get the idea:)

Ultra marines review

Hi guys, hope you had a nice christmas:) Im back at home and already working on Dorn. Buuut, I watched Ultramarines the movie and just wanted to write a review and my thoughts about the movie. Would be cool if some of you would post their thuoughts as well when you watched the movie.

Well as we all know it looks horrible, and this through the entire movie. However there are a few shots which are looking really cool, superior than the overall quality – but on the other hand there are also shots who look really bad^^ The animation is super poor and there is basically no shot which I could name where I saw fantastic animations. That’s really sad, because now they dont only look as if they were made from Lego, now they actually behave as they were made from it:D You can see this all in the trailers, the quality does not change and this really was and is the final quality which they describe as “distinctive and powerfull look”. In fact it is distinctive, but well….not meant in a positive way. However when I watched the credits I wondered how many artists they had and how many people were working on this movie – the final visual quality is hardly good enough to be a fan project. My hope was the story and the overall atmosphere, but it also failed in that points…The Ultramarines are depicted as some rookies who are looking like normal guys working at the harbour wearing plastic armors with no weight. Equipped with cardboard bolters they get to their first mission and really seem not to be so sure what they are doing there and I wonder how those guys have become space marines…if those noobs are the hardest troups the emperor’s got – you better make friends with the chaos force:) I dont want to spoiler here, but overall the story is very very simple and lame, it’s a shame that there is the name of Dan Abnett signed under it. The narration of the movie is sooo hobby filmer like, bad direction, no real suspense, too long shots, lots of horror movie  like clichés and no deep dialogues or character developement. So all is just good enough to be shown as a hobby team project and not as the official GW W40k movie… Our all bad expectations have become true and although almost all comments on their site and blog have said that it all looks awfull, they did not change. But one thing that’s positive about the movie is the music. It really got some atmosphere in it and fits to the whole 240k theme, epic choirs and lots of deep orchestral sounds – I really liked it, that is in my opinion the best to say about the whole movie. I even wouldn’t say that you have to watch this movie as a W40k fan, or a hardcore Ultramarines player, it is really trash and myself being a fan of this universe (not so much ultramarines) I would not recommend anyone to watch the film but to buy the books GW offers. For me the movie does not reflect the true spirit and atmosphere of the W40k universe, but shows it in a very uncool and “wannabe tough guys” look…I really enjoy the books, That is true W40k atmosphere and the Horus Heresy is so damn clever, interesting and super epic story which obviously will never be shown in a movie excpet you have  billions dollar budget and time for dozens of movies:)

I will not say that my movie will be better, but I hope to reflect the dark atmosphere and the coldness of the 41st millenium by following a short mission of the Inquisition and the grey knights. My possibilities are so limited, I have no chance to realise all my ideas or to show intense story developements in 15 minutes, but I do have the chance to show all fans my interpretation of the W40k franchise as I think how it should be. I cant make the W40k block buster movie alone of which we all dream, but I spend 2 years or even more to show at least visual eye candy with  Space Marines in motion and not only on painted images:) But one funny thing, the Ultramarines story is basically that simple as my story, but I make a short movie and they did a 70 min movie out of it…. Oh emperor, what have they done:D

To sum it up, my rating for Ultramarines the movie would be 1 of 10 stars – maybe 1,5 from 10. Seen from a technical professional movie it almost gets 0 points, story and narration not even more for today’s time. Music and overall impression makes the 1 point:)

Dorn chained

OK so after lots of unhappy days of working on Dorn I didnt feel that I was happy about it, so I started from 0 again with a new base mesh and new idea. I still really like the head device, so I kept that, also the very muscular body. But this time I interpreted the title of the challenge a bit different…
I see always the typical tough guy warriors here, but no I decided to put Dorn in the role of a creature that has been kept in prison due to his dangerous strength. He was also blinded by attaching this torture helmet on his head what only fed his rage. Gaining all his powers Dorn is now going to fight for his freedom and breaks his chains in his prison.
So it is more like an inner warrior aspect, his will to break free.
With that in mind, I created a basemesh, sculpted one day all details in, exported the base mesh to Max, build a simple rig, set him into pose, added the chains and the base, exported it to mudbox again and started adding the new details by sculpting from a displacement map. This is the current progress I really like it now, and I feel much better about the old version of Dorn. That had also a few cool aspects, but somehow I missed an expression in the sculpt…

So I expect it to be finished next week before new year…I also got an idea for a second entry which is allowed, dont know yet if Im that crazy and make a second character. But that idea is really something else and more a funny interpretation of the warrior challenge – I often see that somehow all cg judges loves funny stuff and dont care about cool space marines…the world is crazy I tell ya:D

But for now, I wish you all merry christmas:) thanks to you all for supporting my movie and to follow my blog, I hope its still interesting to follow the progress:) Oh btw, I ordered a new workstation as my personal christmas present;) Its the best of the best what you can buy as a standard human:) Finally a six core extreme cpu:) But I will tell you more about it, when its here, overclocked  and proper working hehe – anyway it’s just for Lordi, that should make the all day render testing and sculpting process more easy:)

Seeya

 

Dorny

Todays update…Guess I was inspired by a good old firend o’ mine named Sarge;)

Guess I will be finished in 2 or 3 days…Some parts already have textures on it, but most of the objects even doesn’t got UV’s on it. So maybe in 3 days the first rendered images will come;) But of course, the mudbox viewport also is looking quite nice for being realtime. Right now, Dorn is taking 8 gb of RAM on my machine, so with windows and stuff together Im around 10 gb of ram usage…only 2 left:D Guess I need to buy a new machine^^

 

Dorn

Hi guys, was working again on Dorn the complete day…just wanted to show the newest progress – just screengrabs from mudbox, so still no HQ rendered images..I added lots of spikes growing out of his skin, which was looking kinda cool:) btw thats why he got his name, “Dorn” means “thorn” in german;)

Also I ran some cloth simulations with Thorghus yesterday night, after getting mad with the awfull cloth simulation in 3DS max I got some nice results finally… So yes I’m not working fully on Dorn, when I can’t see him anymore I continue with Lordi^^

Torquemada in 3D World mag

Hi,

just wanted to tell you that my latest image of Torquemada has been published in the 3D world magazine. That’s the second time this year, last time I was published with my Captain Lysander from the imperial fists;)

Btw right now I got holiday from work for the rest of the year, so I finish my warrior hopefully this week and then continue hardcore working on Lordi:) Seeya soon:)

Throne room

If you can call it that…The last two days I worked on the throne room, or better said, the room in which Torquemada has his nice seat and giving orders. Basically this is not a room, its really a huge hall – you enter it through the biiig door, for which Aldo Luna painted the image for. Anyway I wont show this area in the blog, just to keep the suprise:) What I can say is that this hall is now really big and already hast taken 5 mio polygons. I have a clear vision in mind and thus the work is done already very quickly. However I guess I will need one or two more evenings to finish this hall. So again the inquisition ship gets more and more complete – during the weekend I also worked on the ship exterior and basically completed the space scene (well, maybe to 98%). So this scene is done and can be animated and rendered and saved as a final footage:) Now that I got a bit of geometry inside the ship I can also start the pre visualisation, animating cameras, characters(very abstract and simple first) to see how it would look like and to get a feel for the narration of the beginning of  The Lord Inquisitor.

So, hopefully I will recieve some models soon from Ben that I can use, that would make the progress even faster:) Anyway Lordi is again a tiny bit more complete and I can go to bed happily and continue reading my W40k book of the Horus Heresy:) seeya

New corridor

Hi guys,

I think I will finish the warrior sculpt in 2 or 3 days, so I will start make Dorn in 3D at the end of december, so that it looks like I needed that much time for him to sculpt:) I dont need to worry about rigging, skinning and all that stuff, so that makes the process a lot faster. There is not much action in the challenge forum right now, so I dont wanna be the first who post a 90% finished model after one month:D So thats why put the challenge a short time away and was motivated to make something for Lordi this evening. this took me a few hours to create, and of course there is still lots to do regarding detailing and texturing, but I like the direction the ship interior is coming along. Ben, Im sorry I guess I did your job now already, but I really need those corridors urgently^^ I admit these blue light stripes are a bit distracting now, but I will change that the next days – this guy is also just painted in for scale issues. Anyway Im totally motivated to continue with Lordi, while keeping in mind that I gotta finish the warrior end of next month, so stay tuned, there will be updates again yay:)

New concept

So after some different concepts, I came up with a version I kinda like. I named him “Dorn” 😉 I guess I will work on him and modify different aspects while working in 3D.

Btw, just got a job propsal as a senior art director at naughty dog, who just delivered Uncharted 2. Senior art director with my age of 25 seems rather strange but I feel honoured:)

New warriors concept

So, here is the next one:) And I’m already missing my Lordi project:) Hope I finish this soon, so I can get back to the movie:)