So I haven't really shared much in the last year. I am going to change that!

It's time to share more of the developments and insights of the current Blender Open Movie Project "Sprite Fright"!
Much has been going on and I'd love to give a short tour through some of my work on the characters that was going on in the past 6 months :)

If you already want WIPs, files, making-of's and more insights check out on the Blender Cloud and subscribe to support us and Blender development in general :3

Also credit for most of the things I'm showing also goes to other members of the team like Andy Goralczyk, Vivien Lulkowski, Simon Thommes, Demeter Dzadik and Pablo Furnier.

So ... change of plans. I did prepare for fully joining the SculptJanuary this year to complete 31 topics once again.
Let's just say I didn't really feel inspired enough in the end and my plan kinda didn't add up. At the same time I felt much more intensely about finally finishing up the timelapse videos from last year and uploading them to my YouTube channel.

Here's a little trailer/intro to the playlist:

Showing all timelapses in a row shows off the challenge I put myself in last year: Always sculpting one topics from the last one.
One more reason to finally show this off :)

I intent to upload 1 video per day throughout the current SculptJanuary, with the first 2 already being online + Day 10 from months ago:

Apart from this I will also participate for a handful of topics for the current SculptJanuary but with a bit more effort and time invested in each one than last year.
I also intend to use the new recordings that come from that for new tutorials in the Speed Sculpting Workshop since I still have plenty of ideas to cover ^^

Have fun sculpting everyone and I'll be back soon with more :)

This year the rules are loosened up a lot more and the random winners for prizes have been removed.
I also cannot recommend this section from the website enough:

Sculpting daily for an entire month is quite an intense challenge so try not to shoot for the stars and watch out for your health!

I'm also spending a bit of time right now on the render setup for my entries of this year and my sculpting & recording setup overall.
Here's a little preview of what I'm going for ^^

In comparission to the setup from last year:

I'll be back soon by posting my first entries.
Happy new year everybody!

I think I should post more blog updates here! :D

Since my detailed character creation course on the Blender Cloud is progressings slowly I wanted to give at least a somewhat complete version before the year ends.
So I created a ~30 min long YouTube version that covers my entire production workflow for stylized charatcers in Blender 2.81.
This video covers all 3D related steps from the early sculpting to the final asset and render.

Finally here are the last WIP files about the character creation of Rain!
As always there's more detailed descriptions and the files on the Blender Cloud :)

Here are the original rough poses and the final polished one to the right. All of these were first made with a rough rigify rig with automatic weights and then converted to ShapeKeys (Blendshapes) with additional sculpting on top to fix deformation issues and create the expression.

I also uploaded 2 more .blend files about the texturing/shading workflow/setup and the pose exploration for the final presentation.

I also created a few bonus tutorials for the course and one of them is freely available and also added to the Blender Fundamentals YouTube series:

Now that I have all the renders and screenshots together I will upload this character as an artwork to my profile.Hopefully soon there's also going to be te next chapter of the character creation course that this character is made for.
Stay tuned!

Some new and exiting updates for the Stylised Character Workflow course!
I published the first chapter of tutorials and uploaded a few more course files and Rain files to the Blender Cloud.

You can now find the first batch of tutorials here.

I also uploaded a few more files including screenshots of the retopology & UV maps.

You can find the file for both over here on the Cloud.

I hope I will be back soon with more files and tutorials. Some bonus videos are still on their way and the second chapter is in progress.
Cheers!

Forgot to post an update on Rain last week!
I continued to upload the individual project files of the character creation onto the Blender Cloud until the first batch of tutorials is ready.
I'm almost done now and will release them real soon! :D
Here's a look at the new stuff. More on the Blender Cloud!

First off I uploaded the .blend file for the individual steps of creating the body sculpt and all existing cloth layers and the mix between them to find the best outfit.

After that I cleaned up the expression tests a bit more. Here are all the final ones side by side:

You can find the .blend file on the Cloud as well with the original, refined & final (asymmetrical) sculpts. I also included some annotation layers for guide-lines on what I did for each expression and simplified versions of the important facial muscles.

Next up I'll hopefully post about the first chapter of tutorials being released!
See ya soon :D

In the following weeks while finishing the Blender 2.8 Character Course I will upload the individual stages of the character creation.
Here's the first one with the original head sculpt of Rain:

I also went ahead and uploaded screenshots of the original variations of the head sculpt to find the final design, as well as the .blend file containing all the sculpted meshes.

Check them out on the Blender Cloud if you are interested:

More on the body sculpt and the original outfits soon!
Cheers!