Just a quick update on the progress of the Barbarian mesh. I've finalised the base mesh so I can start texturing, but before I do he needs to be sent off to be rigged.

 

 Originally I was going to rig both the Barbarian and the Dragon, but as I have never done it before and I want the rigs to be of the highest standard achievable, I thought it better to have them done by someone has experience.  Therefore I will be sending the Dragon to a former student of Glamorgan Univesity, and the Barbarian will be done by a student in my class who is very talented at rigging.

Today I finally took the base mesh into ZBrush for the first time, the generic face really needed to go! I've used reference to get the right looking face that I'm going for. I want to make him look kind of skin head polish looking. 

I brought him back into Maya to see what he looks like low geometry...I'm happy so far!

Here's the sculpts from ZBrush, just trying to get the facial form right...

I've spent a bit of time doing all the fiddly stuff like belt buckles a body straps, and trying to get the to hung properly. So far I have been using the same technique of selecting certain faces and duplicating them to get the right shape without the headache of having to shape them every time, which has saved me quite a bit of time.

I just quickly colored the different poly groups to get a better feel for the colors.

I decided today that I would make a start on the Barbarian build, I havn't finished the dragon yet but what is left to do can be done later on, it's more important that I get a good start on my next project.

I've built a generic base mesh and extruded faces from various areas of the body to get the tight fitting body armour and shoulder pad.

 

Yesterday we went location hunting for the VFX short film. We diced to go to the Brecon Beacons for the day and explore the landscape for a suitable local. it was a long day, and a longer, very steep climb up the highest mountain, but we did because we are men! 

Although we didn't find exactly what we were looking for it gave us an idea of what we can achieve when filming. So it was successful!

I've been making some good headway with the texturing of the dragon. I watched an Eat 3D tutorial on hand painting your textures in ZBrush so I'm giving it a go! At the moment I think I'll use what I've done so far as a base texture, as there needs to be a lot more detail and time put in, but it's starting to come together. It's nice to see it shaping up right.