A Decade of 3D Art

The first 3D art I ever did was probably in 1997 or 1998... not positive.  I know I was in 10th grade in high school.  A friend gave me a copy of 3D Studio 4 for DOS (Pirated, of course - lol) and I started playing around in 3D.  All self-taught.

In 2000 I went to my first college.  I was only there a year and a half before I left in search of a better school.  The place I went was a mess, and actually went out of business and closed down a year later.  There was even a big lawsuit...

Anyway, so 2000 I started school.  2004 I graduated.  2005 I got my first industry job.  2006 I didn't make a lot of personal 3D because I spent half the year pregnant and in and out of the hospital.  I made a TON of stuff in 2007 though.  2008 got slow, and I spent 2009 pregnant and then taking care of a newborn so I've done almost no free-time work at all this year.  All my 3D has been for work, and our project is still unnannounced so none of that gets to go on the net.

Just the same, I went through and found as many samples of my work for the last decade, and here it is in all it's old-ass glory.  haha.

2000

All nurbs.  done in maya3.  lol... Our teacher had absolutely NO IDEA what she was doing.  It was her first year teaching and she'd only ever done architecture stuff before it.
Oh yeah - that's totally the same head.  lol... I think at the time I told myself that I'd tweaked the male one to look more masculine... yeah.  riiiight.  lol.


2001

 

 

lol... Okay, so these were for this internship thing that I got roped into my 2nd year at the first crappy college.  These were characters that were already designed and I just had to model and rig them.  Again - still Maya.  Still 100% nurbs because I just didn't know any better and my teacher was a moron.

2002

 

This was after I started going to Digipen Institute of Tech.  We were using 3d studio max and I heard the term "Unwrapping" for the first time.  Seriously.  First time.  I told you the teacher from my first college was an idiot.

Obviously I still sucked with textures, but at least I was using them. hah.  Oh, and Polygons.  Yes.  Polygons.  Oh, and I also learned what "Box Modeling" was for the first time that year.  Yup - just another piece of evidence in the 'teacher at first college was a moron' case.

2003

  

This year at digipen I took a class on Maya with a teacher who knew his shit.  I still didn't, but at least it was improved over my last experience with Maya.

This was a 'model a lowpoly animal' assignment.

Ugh, I couldn't rig shoulders for shit.  Didn't help that I was doing the traditional perfect T pose for the modeling either.  Shoulders always look like shit when it's modeled in that pose.  Where the hell did I learn that crap from anyway?

This is actually a model of my lab partner from that class, Karen Niel.  lol.


2004

Totally forgot about this model - lol.  Did it for a friend.  It was his character.

First time legitimately trying for a *cough* "photo real" *laugh* face.  One of those facial emotion morph target assignments.

When I found this one I was like "Wow... I hardly remember that at all."  Totally blanked on this one.

I really rather liked this one at the time.

Still lots of crap.  Gawd those textures and proportions suck.

I think this was loosely based on Major Kusanagi from GitS.  I really liked the way the jacket came out...  Wow, I'd totally forgotten about this too.  hah.

Hehehe - another one I'd COMPLETELY forgotten about until I went digging through my old stuff.  I actually really liked this guy.  Sort of sentimental I think.

2005

At this point I had a job!  I'd graduated and I was gainfully employed as a collision monkey and prop bitch as an art contractor.  Wooo!  haha.  And so I did fruity stuff like this in my freetime.  His hair came out really good though.  Clothes suck.

And then after working as a contractor on shitty props for a couple months someone came and asked me if I did characters and I'm all like "Yuhuh" and they're like, "k, do a test" and this is what I made for them.  Then they're like "Coo, good enough.  Here's a raise, go rig shit."  And I was all like "fuk yah!"

 I still love this model.  No one else ever does though.  lol

I liked it so much I'm including 2 shots of him here.  suk it.  (Yes HIM - suk it!)

Hey, Look!  Weapons.  These were designed by an awesome artist who goes by the name Wen-M  I think the axe is actually really awesome.

Guh, this one came out crappy.  Also from a design by Wen-M.  I totally didn't do his awesome piece justice.  This could have been so much better.  Oh well.

Lani from FF9!  Woo.  lol.  I had the FF9 Artbook and it had really awesome orthographic drawings of the characters so I picked one for practice.  She's really an unimportant side character.  No one knows who she is.

Never finished it, but this is a model of the Toyota AE86 Trueno.

I OWNED THIS CAR!  FUK YEAH!

This was based on some drawing I came across... I don't really remember much else.  lol...

My shoulders always came out like shit once rigged  I really had trouble with that a lot back then.  lol...

I don't think I ever even rigged this guy.  I got so-far and though 'this just looks like shit' and gave up.  The boots came out good though...

ROFLOL - Wow.  I totally forgot about this one until I stumbled across it in my search.  Wow.  I don't even remember what I was trying to do at the time.  Another free-time model that I got this far and gave up on because I was just starting to hate it.

Hey look!  It's another model I didn't finish!  Coming up next?  The incomplete texture WIP shot!

So anyway, this guy was for a contest thing that was about making an original megaman villian.  He was based off GeminiMan I think...   Anyway - obviously, I never finished it.  lol

This was one of those self-improvement models.  Trying to push myself out of my comfort zone by doing high-poly and aiming for realism.  And then hiding all of the things horribly wrong with it by using 'artistic lighting'.

This was my first time ever experimenting with a skin shader.  Obviously the hair is still just cheep-o planer alpha'd hair.

2006

This was for a contest Blizzard held.  It was before the Dranei (how the hell DO you spell that?) were announced. Was supposed to be an original race, or something.  Don't really remember.

Wow.  So fruity.  I really like the way the torso's texture came out though.  Felt like my first really successful hand-painting of a torso texture.  Gugh... Violet hair?  wtf was I thinking....

They let me make characters at work!  Wooo.  lol...  I got to make characters in a published game for the first time.

A couple guys at work talked me into this.  First off - we were working on syphon filter games and the main character's name is Gabe.  So they thought it would be hilarious if we had Gabe from Penny Arcade running around in the game instead.  This model is modeled to the size and specifications for our game and at one point I even exported him and we had him running around in Dark Mirror for PSP - all in-house dev tool only.  Obviously this never got out of the studio.  But it was funny.  It was amazing that all of the animations still worked on it flawlessly.

2007

This was more of that 'trying to push myself out of my comfort zone by doing high poly' stuff.  Was my first real foray into trying out normal maps.

Gugh, this could have been so much better.  Was based off a design by Wen-M, and once again, I really didn't do it justice.  The design really required a totally different style then what I was experimenting with, and the whole thing was just a mess in the end.  But I did use this as a learning experiment for cloth sim.

lol.  This was a request for someone.  You know.  Anime schoolgirl.  Yeah.

Hatsune Miku!  lol.  I actually made this back when almost no one state-side had any idea who this character was.  I'm all lamely proud of my early adopter fandom.  hah.

So all of that hand-painted stuff above was practice for this.  These were all made for a freetime 'we know this isn't actually going to get made, but we're screwing around for fun anyway' game idea that I did w/ some people.  Oh, and yea it's obscenely obvious that I used BJDs for the style reference.

Another character for that thing.

And another.  heh - I loved this character.  She was freaky.

Hey look!  I got to do more characters for work.  Spiffy.

Guh, this came out horrible.  Was trying something and didn't follow through ehough.  Face if fugly.  The sleeve has cloth sim on it, though.

 I never really did 3D fanart.  I always wanted to make a model of Monkey D Luffy, and I finally did.  Even learn'd sumthin since I had to figure out how to do stretchy bones for his rig.

After having done Miku, when Rin was first announced I decided to do a model of her too.

Another failure on my part.  Tried to do a model of yet another of Wen's designs and I never liked the final product.  The face is just no good.

2008

 

This was still WIP... never did finish this for real.  Another early experiment with normal maps and zbrush.

Guh - hate it.

Zbrush is way better at making ugly wrinkly things than trying to make clean pretty things.  At least it is when you still have no idea how to use it.  This was me trying to figure it out.  That program still confuses the shit out of me.  blarg.  I really need to dedicate more time to mastering it.

Aaaannndd - it's a model I started and didn't finish!  Wooo.  Had a lot of those in 2008.

More aimlessly playing around in zbrush

Creating the rig for this guy was interesting.  Especially the wings.

I still wish I had finished this.  I still want to go back to it too, just don't think I have time.  *sigh*

It's a model of the Thousand Sunny - the Pirate Ship from One Piece.

So my work on Resistance moved into the realm of environment art.  My first foray into levels.  Well, not really - I did a level in Logan's shadow too, but in Resistance I did three levels, and was responsible for a lot more.

And more level art.

2009

This year is probably best summed up by unfinished stuff.  I was pregnant for the first half of 2009, and took care of an infant for the rest.  I had ABSOLUTELY NO TIME for free-time 3d art.  And all of my 3d art at work has been for projects that are not only still unreleased, but still unannounced, so obviously none of that gets to go on the net.

So here.  Unfinished art from 2009.

 
So, I'd been doing more enviornment art at work and finally thought about taking a crack at doing something like that in my freetime.  I wanted to make the environment for this big thing I'd had in my head for ages and I actually started messing around with it.

Aerial view.  It was an island.  Yup.  A big island with pretty blue water.

And a HUGE tree.  Oh yeah.  Very RPGish.  So original.  And so very unfinished.

I love this characters design.  Check it out here -> Pirate-Ninja-Voodoo-Witch

I still want to finish this one.

So what else defined 2009 for me?  I got totally effing obsessed with Twilight.  Hey! I'm a girl.  Screw you.  I can love stupid girly shit too, you know.  :P

Yeah, so I modeled Edward Cullen.  Oh yeah.  You know it.  He's hot.

And this is a bust of what Alice Cullen looks like in my head, because Ashley Greene from the movies looks nothing like her.

So there you go.  The last decades worth of 3D art from moi.