I Don’t Do Humans
Funny story. A repeat client comes along and says “We really like your work, and we’d really like you to make a 3D version of this person, from his bust.” “That’s fine,” say I “if you can take photos of the bust from front and both sides with it on a turntable, using a locked-off camera then we should be golden”. While it’s true that I don’t do a huge amount of character animation, it’s also true that a shape’s a shape. So you’d think. So duly I get 23 photos with different zoom settings and centration for each and every one. I love my job, but a sense of humour really does help! So anyway, in the course of trawling through my old projects, I came across these.
A minor twang on the jaw s’patches – easy bit of retopologisation there – and the Fiber Factory IV settings don’t seem to have translated perfectly to FibreFX. The skin texture really needs a bit of work. But to get a little bit of human-work into the reel, it’d probably do for a mid-ground character. Besides, in a high-tech industry, it’s good to show your human side.
The really funny thing was that whilst all concerned were agreed that I’d made a reasonable facsimile of the bust itself, the gent in question was always thought to look like a photo taken 20 years earlier when he was equipped with a truly magnificent moustache. Therefore, this bit of work was never used. He might make a good pub landlord or something…. I’ll see where I can slot him in.
Flicking back and forth between these two images, I recall all the many places where drawing gridlines between the essential pieces of anatomy did me no good at all, as the camera height, position, range to object and zoom factor varied every single time. *sighs* Still, if this was easy, anyone could do it. Right?