I know it has been forever since I posted… I am sorry about that. I know at one point I had a decent amount of viewers, but I have been so neglectful of my site, I really am not so sure any more! Well, this post is for the people who may check in every now and then. So an update about me… Long over due:

My girlfriend moved to Idaho to live with me and my family for a few months. While there we both started looking for work. After searching for quite some time, I landed an interview with a company based out of Austin Texas. The company is a smaller studio, but they were interested in my character work. They asked me to come to Austin for an interview. While this was going on, my girlfriend had an art test with a company called Certain Affinity, also in Austin. So the two of us were hopeful…

After a few days, the company Taylor did the test for decided to go a different route. So she applied to Vigil Games. A few days later they hired her on the spot! Now Taylor is working as an environment artist for Vigil on a Warhammer title. So COOL! We moved to Austin together and I decided to take my chances and look for work here. I started speaking with Junction Point Studios here in Austin about a month after we moved. They needed a texture artist for their project. After an interview process they hired me! So I am now a junior texture artist at DISNEY! That is right… Junction Point is owned and operated 100% by the Walt Disney corp! I am so pleased to call myself a Disney artist.

I just finished my first week there and I had a blast. I am learning so much and people in the studio are really great. Nice people, fun project, lots to learn! I am living the dream right now and I am so happy to be in the industry.

Because of moving and getting a job… Some of my personal work has been on hold. The Voodoo Woman may not be finished for some time… I honestly don’t know when I will get to her. I want to, but another side project has taken priority. I have been working on a game with some friends in my freetime. It will be finished early early 2012. So I will update on that as I go. We already have the engine in place and all the code working, now all we need are art assets. It will be pretty damn cool.

Anyways this post is starting to turn into a little ranty… So I will call it a night here. Thank you to the people who supported me. Much <3. Please follow my Deviant Art for updates, and I will try and post them here when I can… I will do better!

Bret

On top of my full time job at Disney, I have taken on full time freelance work as well. I am currently working on a game in my spare time right now and between this and my full time day job I no longer have time to finish this model. I plan to revisit her as soon as my time allows. Until then, I wanted to let viewers know this model is on hold.

This is my most current work in progress. The Voodoo Queen. My goal is to have this model game resolution and rendered real time in the Unreal Engine. My goal is to be under 17,000 triangles for this model with one 2048 texture sheet. I am unsure where the concept is from or who it is by, I apologize.

Concept by The Great Oharu.

The maps: Normal, Spec, Color.

The ZBrush sculpt.

Presentation shot rendered in Softimage.

Software used:
Softimage 2011 for base mesh modeling.
Zbrush 4 for high resolution sculpture.
TopoGun for retoplogy.
Headus UVLayout for UV Mapping.
Maya 2011 for light map generation.
XNormals for normal map generation.
Photoshop 4 for texturing diffuse and specular.
Softimage 2011 for lighting and rendering.

Link to an interview that has a rendered image of a WIP of this model: Link.

I joined up with Mountainwheel Games not too long ago and began work on this model right away. The project “Dead Man Zand” is an adventure puzzle game, but not much more than that has been announced. You can read more about the project here. The work has been fairly low poly and stylized cartoony. It has been a fun project to work on. You can also see more on the IndieDB site here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/dead-man-zand

Real time render in Marmoset Game Engine.

Concept in the middle with a painted ZBrush sculpt on the left and the blank ZBrush sculpt on the right.

A comparison of the different stages of the model process: The ZBrush sculpt, the game resolution model and finally the game resolution model in a game engine with normal maps and a light map displayed.

The maps: Color and Spec.

Software used:
Softimage 2011 for base mesh modeling.
Zbrush 4 for high resolution sculpture.
TopoGun for retoplogy.
Headus UVLayout for UV Mapping.
Maya 2012 for light map generation.
Maya 2012 for normal map generation.
Photoshop 4 for texturing diffuse and specular.
Marmoset Game Engine for real-time lighting and rendering.

Kratos, topic: God of War. Sculpted from a basemesh.

Draenei, topic: World of Warcraft. Sculpted from a basemesh.

Rango, topic: the movie Rango. Sculpted from four ZSpheres.

Hellboy, topic: Hellboy. Sculpted from a basemesh.

Sirius Black, topic: Harry Potter. Sculpted from a basemesh.

Moria Orc, topic: Lord of the Rings. Sculpted from a basemesh. (Teeth and rings modeled earlier before sculpt).

Greedo, topic: Star Wars. Sculpted from a ZSphere. 45 mins.

Mervyn Pumpkinhead, topic: The Sandman comics. Sculpted from 2 ZSpheres and modeled the hat after. 45 mins.

Captain Crunch, topic: Cereal Mascots. Sculpted from 4 ZSpheres. 30 mins.

I would love some feedback so if you have something to say, please leave me a comment below.

So what have I been up to? Well… Right now my priority is to secure myself a job, and I have been doing everything in my power to make that happen. Starting with new portfolio content, a new site and updated resume that I will be writing today.

As for life, I am practicing my Soo Bahk Do on a regular daily basis and I love it. I plan to start blogging again, and maybe even get a monthly inspiration going again for September. So I hope some of my readers are out there. Stay tuned!

Bret

The one hour speed sculpt that started this project.

Real time render in Marmoset Game Engine.

The ZBrush sculpt.

Wireframes.

The maps: Color and Spec.

Software used:
Softimage 2011 for base mesh modeling.
Zbrush 4 for high resolution sculpture.
Headus UVLayout for UV Mapping.
Maya 2011 for light map, ao map, and normal map generation.
Photoshop 4 for texturing diffuse and specular.
Marmoset Toolbag for lighting and rendering.