Human Male Athletic Final Model (Free Download!!!)

Lucid Earth Book 01(Updated 10/27/09)

I have been saying for quite some time that I want to make a comic book. Well I have really started one this time. I'm making the story and the art all by myself so it is taking a long time to get pages done but I am having a lot of fun so I can't complain.

I plan on providing lower resolution PSD files with each page I make. I am hoping that this will help other learn about digital inking and coloring. I am also thinking that if people wanted to make their own color on my art then this would be an easy way for them to do so. I'm going to do my best to do some cool colors but I could use all the help I can get, so if you can give any pointers I am all ears!

Please ask my permission to use my work in any other manner than what is written above. Thanks!



CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD LAYERED LOW RESOLUTION PHOTOSHOP FILE



CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD LAYERED LOW RESOLUTION PHOTOSHOP FILE



CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD LAYERED LOW RESOLUTION PHOTOSHOP FILE



CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD LAYERED LOW RESOLUTION PHOTOSHOP FILE



CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD LAYERED LOW RESOLUTION PHOTOSHOP FILE



HERE IS THE LATEST WIP FOR PAGE 05

Lucid Earth Character Studies

Here is a character study of Tylor. He is the main character from the race of Kill Kats.



Here is a character that I designed for an upcoming comic that I want to make. Still part of the Lucid Earth Comic book that I am creating. Any feedback would be most welcome! :)

Peace-NickZ. :)

KillKat Male With Gear WIP

Here is something I have been working on for a little bit here and there. I would say more it has been more there than here. Anyway, I'm having fun modeling and sculpting. :)

Comic Book Ink Brushes (Photoshop)

Here are some brushes that I created for digital inking inside of Photoshop for creating comic book art.

You will need to load them as a tool preset, once this is done they will show up as a list to choose from in your brush palette. I would love to see some cool comic book ink brushes that others have made so if you see any post a comment as to where they live.



Click Here To Download The Photoshop Brushes

3RD Eye Blind (FREE ZTool Download)

I finished a little mini project for myself and I thought I would share my work with everyone.

First I was snooping around on the Freedom Of Teach website and I saw there was a “CG Practice Model Download”. I thought it might have been the hi res model that they used to generate their 3D print, but it was just an base mesh with no detail. I’m not sure why but I just stared sculpting on it. ( really didn't need to start anything new at this point.)

At first I was going to do just another organic model but I was rather impressed and inspired by the hard surface modeling that FoOD and Sebcesoir have been generating inside of Zbrush lately. So I gave it a try and here are the results.







I used masks quite a bit. The clay tubes brush worked rather nicely for building up flat surfaces along with the flatten brush and of course the smooth brush to clean up some of my mistakes. I also used the lazy mouse with the standard brush and a custom alpha for generating strait lines.

I found that using some of these custom alphas that I made with the standard brush, with lazy mouse turned on and a lazy step of .01 gave me rather nice results for long smooth thin lines.





I also created a few custom Material Capture shaders for sculpting.



I built a Photoshop file that makes it kinda easy to generate new MatCap shaders. I things on layers to control the over all shading of the material, you can get custom control of a shader if you want to build a MatCapwith this file.



After the model was complete I used Zapplink and Photoshop to build a base color texture. I also wanted to learn more about lighting and baking that to a texture in Maya. So for the color and lit version of the texture I created several passes that separated out the lights, the shadows, Ambient Occlusion (created in XNormal) and then cavity mapping created with ZMapper.



If you would like to download a package with all of this material

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

This Zipp file contains:

Hi Res Zbrush Model
Color Texture (4096 X 4096)
Color and Lighting Texture (4096 X 4096)
5 Custom MatCap Materials
4 Custom Alphas
Layered Photoshop file with all the lighting and color passes (1024 X 1024)
Layered Photoshop file to help build your own custom MatCap Shader.
Maya 2008 Light Rig Scene


When you load the .ZTL file it will be filled with the color white and have the MatCap Grey material already applied to it. If you would like to apply a different material to the object turn on MRGB, choose the Flat Color shader and go Color>Fill Color. You can now pick any shader you wish to view the model with.




If you load the color texture I provided I suggest using the MatCap Pearl Cavity shader to look at the model.

If you use the color and lit texture that I provided then you will need to apply the Flat Color material with the texture applied to view the model correctly.

You will also need to flip the texture vertically.

I hope you enjoy! :)

Peace-NickZ. :)

I just wanted to post one last pic. I got my 3D print in the mail and I just wanted to say a big thanks to Gabriel from CRYSTALLINE MODELS for making this print possible!

Take a look at their site when you get some time http://crystallinemodels.com

Here is a shot to show off the scale of the final print.

DeadDrone Solider

I have recently become obsessed with comic books again. Yes again, I have always loved comic books and super heroes and I have always wanted to create my own comic book. So I have been trying to discover the best way to go about this.

I have always drawn traditionally with a pencil and inked with rapidograph pens. Well after drawing again, I devised this process where I would thumbnail everything out at like 1/8 the final drawing size, then blow this up to final size in the computer, print that, then light box and redraw the image, then ink, (I was trying to see if I could get away with just penciling and no ink….not so sold on the look. Only person I have seen that can pull this off is Joe Madureira when colored by Christian Lichtner) then I need to scan that into the computer, clean up the image and then start to digital paint. Man…lot of work eh?

So to try to avoid some of the steps I am trying to force myself to draw directly into the computer using a Wacom tablet. There are many advantages when working directly in the computer; you can move your drawing around with ease, keep everything on layers so you can try new stuff and never worry about messing up part of your drawing that you like, you can save multiple versions of your work, try various color combinations with ease.

The down side is that it is very unnatural to draw on a tablet and see it update on a monitor. I have been working at it for over a month and it still doesn’t feel natural to me. It is getting better but I am still fighting the computer to draw certain shapes and lines that are no problem with traditional tools.

Well I wanted to show off a test piece that I did for myself. It’s mutant – robot, hybrid, cowboy. Why, I have no idea but I do know that I had fun making him. With that said here is the line and color work that I created in Photoshop.







As I become more comfortable with the process I hope to make brushes and techniques that I am using available for everyone!

Peace –NickZ. :)

ZBRUSH 3D GRID SUB TOOL

Here is a sub tool that I made so you can have a grid inside of Zbush. I made a centimeter and meter version. This Sub Tool is very easy to add to any existing Sub Tool using Sub Tool Master.

NickZ. Fun In The Mud

I was trying out the new demo of Mudbox 2009, loaded up their default head and sculpted this bust. I then baked out an Ambient Occlusion map using their map baking tool. Speed is pretty good for baking out an AO map. They have added a lot of nice things to this version! In the Zip file there is a Mud 2009 file, an OBJ at the highest sub D level in case you want to view the model in another application and the AO map is saved out as a PNG.



CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE MODEL!!!

Peace-NickZ. :)

NickZ ZBrush Brush Hotkeys

I recently made some hot keys in ZBrush to make Brush selection much easier.



CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

I mapped the brushes to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0.

To use the hotkeys, unzip the file, put the files into the correct ZStartup folders (I named the folders according to their location) Print out the cheat sheet that I made and enjoy.

P.S. I like to change the settings for the clay brush (Mapped to key #4) I also like to use the Standard brush with alpha and lazy mouse for fine detail wrinkles (Mapped to # 9)

Peace-NickZ. :)

Heavy Demon WIP 001

I'm taking my digital human male model and seeing how far I can push the mesh before it causes problems. So far so good. I need at least 6subdivision levels to keep the mesh from falling apart. (I'm currently at sub d level 5 and you can see some polys in the neck/trap area.)WIP as of 9/1/08

Here is an update for 09/02/08
I also added some armor.



Adding some skulls 09/04/08



Changed this guy up quite a bit. Still very WIP!! 04/21/09



Peace-NickZ. :)

Spartan Soldier

Here is something that I am working on for a new side project. Using my Human Male Model as a base.

I need to make an attachment holder for the sword to tie it to the body. Need to set up UV's and pull everything into ZBrush to start sculpting.

This is in Maya's viewport rendered in real-time with "high quality" rendering.



Update as of 3/13/09 (ZBrush Sculpt Update)



Update as of 3/18/09 (Maya Mental Ray Render)



Update as of 4/15/09 (ZBrush Body Changes)




Update as of 4/15/09 (ZBrush head for Body Changes)

Fancy PS Color Picker

Click Here To Download The Photoshop Layered File.

Goat Man (Pencil & PS)