speaker-0: Let's talk about Wolverine Sculpt Sketch. I love this one. I'm kind of into this like 3D that looks like 2D.
speaker-1: Since this is like a sculpt sketch for me, I have limited time, so I wanted this to look good only from one angle. I even used clay builder for fainting. Yeah, and RGB intensity, so this is how I ratio. I think it is by default something here. So if you just raise it.
speaker-0: ⁓ so it makes it more opaque because it's like not as sensitive.
speaker-1: it feels like oil painting you know with if you have something yeah even if you see i've painted the reflected orange like
speaker-0: And then like bounce light, yeah, dude, it's so sick.
speaker-1: you
speaker-0: And welcome to Pixel Peeps, the show where we take a deeper dive and closer look at some of today's best digital artwork along with the artists that create them. Today I have with me Rishikesh Nandalaskar. He's been a professional modeler and sculptor for over 20 years. He's worked for Rhythm and Hughes, Framestore, and Sideshow Collectibles, to name a few. He's also a 3D art educator online. He's an instructor at Think Tank and he makes his own tutorials and awesome content linked. Below in the description, check out some his tutorials. He just released a one recently. Also, the link to this high-quality artwork, like in full resolution, along with his other art, is there. So check out the links in the description. Also, before jumping in, I want to mention that I made a change to my Discord community. It's now completely members only or private, so like not anyone can join. And we made that change to cut down on people, like their spam and also self-promotion and you know the community. Can just grow to just become like a Discord community and the conversation gets away from 3D. So now the only way to join is to either join here on YouTube as a member or Patreon. There's a new tier just for the community at three bucks a month. So if you used to be in the community or you're looking to join a 3D art community and you're serious about it, you know, take a look. Three bucks a month. And ⁓ yeah, we do like co-working sessions. Obviously, really talented people in there. We did a challenge recently with the helmet where a bunch of the community members All joining a competition, a friendly competition, ⁓ with a prize actually, ⁓ for texturing this helmet demo and really cool to see. So a lot of talented people in there, really cool stuff, and we hope to do something like that, some kind of event every month. Yeah, without further ado, let's jump in and learn some more from Rishikesh. Let's talk about this men in yellow Wolverine Sculpt Sketch. Yeah, thanks for coming on and everything. And I definitely wanted to ⁓ talk to you. You have a lot of awesome artwork, obviously. But yeah, this one in particular, you know, when we when we talked about chatting, what would we chat about? I love this one. I'm kind of into this like, you know, 3D that looks like 2D, if you want to call it that, and different styles of 3D and a lot of just cool stuff coming out. And I just think you hit such an awesome style here based on the the concept and everything, but like just the way the brush strokes are and the model. So yeah, can't wait to get into it. But yeah, really, really awesome. Really awesome result. Yeah, dude. Yeah, so maybe some just quick ⁓ basic
speaker-1: I'm glad to know you like it, Arndt.
speaker-0: questions right off the rip of ⁓ some things that would be good to know is like why did you initially decide to do this ⁓ artwork? What was the kind of initial inspiration and how long did it take? Yeah.
speaker-1: So basically, ⁓ all this started when I purchased the Cintiq for the first time now, which is like six months back. And then the coincidence was that I had to go for a vacation two days later. And the Cintiq had just arrived home. And I said, ⁓ I have to kind of put my hands on the Cintiq fast something, something very quick, right? And I usually do a lot of quick stuff every week. Not everything makes to the social media there. Wolverine is one of my favorite characters and I thought okay why not let's try that because I have done lot of Wolverines before but I wanted to do something with an open mouth as well. So said okay let's start doing it and that's how I get started on this Wolverine ⁓ sculpt sketch which I call and I will let you know why I call this sculpt sketch later on.
speaker-0: Yeah, great, cool. Yeah, and I I s when we got on I saw that Wolverine you made two behind you, so yeah, great way to test the Cintiq, that's cool. Yeah. And then what softwares are used for this image for the
speaker-1: This is just Zubrush and Photoshop for the post-production a little bit, not much.
speaker-0: Yeah, love it. Wow. Even like the little highlights on the teeth or is that some photoshop?
speaker-1: Yeah, that's the disturb power plastic set up from T-Rex.
speaker-0: Hell yeah, dude. All right, sweet. Okay. But maybe before ⁓ we take a look at like what it looks like in ZBrush and maybe kind of like how you start these things, you know, now that you finish and everything, what what was like the hardest part about this project for you?
speaker-1: The hardest part about short projects is that you don't know what's the output going to be. And for me, since this is like a sketch for me, I don't bother about it. I didn't know that I'm going to post it later on. I just wanted to enjoy the process on my Cintiq. I wanted to get my hands on the Cintiq. I wanted to feel it, basically. I was like itching to get it because I didn't want to go to the vacation and then come back after two weeks. Then I could see my Cintiq in front of me. ⁓ So the process of how it's going to look was a bit of challenging because I had in my mind that I wanted something painterly, ⁓ which I have not done much before. I have done few, but since I have limited time, I just wanted to use very limited brushes and maybe just paint in ZBrush itself and render in ZBrush itself. So I don't want to go out of the software. Basically, finish this in 10 to 15 hours, like divided into two days. ⁓ take the final illustrations to my vacation and like post it from there.
speaker-0: Okay, great. So ⁓ did you did I hear you right too that when you started, you know, posting wasn't ⁓ you d didn't need to, right? It was just like it came out nice in the end and you're like, sweet I'll post
speaker-1: Yeah, no. ⁓ Yeah, I always think that if you trust your process, most of your artwork kind of ends up going into the social media or your portfolio. So that's what I did. And because I had that experience on doing like a lot of self sketches, I thought maybe it might go, but let's see, know, like just talking to myself, just do your best. If it happens, it happens.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's great. I mean you can see here we got lots of reactions and like I loved it and everything too. So it's I've had that happen a couple of times. I think that's great. It's almost like the purest form is you're doing it for these certain reasons. It comes out nice, you share it, it resonates with people. Yep. And you weren't you know, that wasn't the number one goal. So yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, maybe we could take a look then. I'd love to see like what like the source files look like and how you start these things and trying to learn a little bit more about your process.
speaker-1: Yeah, so I started with a spear. Yeah, basically I like to do the small projects as you call it bricks, guess, bricks and pillars, right? For me it's like pre-workouts, you know? So basically, start it from scratch so that you can, you know, stretch your muscles and stuff like that. So yeah, start with the spear and then just pull off the basic skull shape.
speaker-0: All right, great.
speaker-1: And at this point, I don't bother about anything, no proportion. I didn't even know how big the skull is there right now. Later on, I will change it if it requires further rendering. Then I just, you know, pull off, just use dynamics. If you see it's just dynamic.
speaker-0: And you're starting to have you're starting to add multiple objects already, right? The eyes are
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So basically that helps me to kind of, you know, ⁓ have a nice separation of the eyes with the sockets and the It's very clean because if you just start sculpting the eyes with the eyelids, it can get very quickly mushy, which is fine. You can do it. But I'm basically trying to be economical with the time, you know, like trying to save time. So this is what helps me. even for the teeth, I just put some placeholder primitives from ⁓ ZBrush. and then just split off the whole body.
speaker-0: Now is this body a separate it is right? The body separate too. ⁓ okay, cool. Nice. You're still pulling and dynamic and okay, cool.
speaker-1: No, not yet. So I just keep doing that. I know it looks ugly.
speaker-0: No, it looks good. And also it's pretty dense for Dynamesh, huh? I ⁓ I'm curious like if you do or when you do make a kind of a proper base mesh with Zero Mesh or if you do that. Yeah.
speaker-1: I will do it later on. For now, what I do is I just quickly pull off all the shapes. So I don't care. It's like playing with the clay, right? yeah, it like that. Yeah. As soon as I feel it starts getting heavier, then maybe I'll just reduce the resolution sometimes and I can go back. So this might be a file where it gets dense, but there might be files where it has gone lower as well. So yeah, I keep playing with the resolution. yeah. there. So let's try start refining the as well. the teeth are being made inside Gbrush like no presets. this see I can use presets and teeth which are available in Gbrush or I can download a teeth set as well. But I just want to see how I can push myself because this is not a production model at all. why not play with it, know, and see how much I know about it. So fight that as well.
speaker-0: Yeah. So ⁓ just something about that, I think now that you mentioned that, I feel like with the smaller projects, studies and stuff, I find that I make a lot more from scratch and in actual production work, is where you do a lot of the cheating, if you want to call it that, where you use stuff that you know, because why not? You're just saving time and everything. Yes, yes.
speaker-1: Yeah, for production, I think it's a right way of doing it because ⁓ you are doing a service or we're getting paid for something. You have a limited time and you have to hit the benchmark of quality work, right? So we don't want to have those kinds of practices all there. It's better to do those kinds of stuff here, like in your sculpt sketches or like practice sketches. For my clients, I try to use my base meshes. have my base meshes.
speaker-0: Yeah, even starting from a sphere is like extra difficulty, but it's just for like, you know, practicing and right.
speaker-1: Basically, it kind of gives you the confidence while sculpting even with the base mesh. If you keep sculpting with spear or any primitives, when you actually go with the base mesh, it actually helps you to have more confidence while sculpting. So yeah, that's the reason. So it's like doing a pre-workout instead of even directly going for heavy
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. I was thinking that too. It's like training with weights or something and then it's easier when you take the weights off. Yeah.
speaker-1: Exactly. So yeah, I just pulled up the whole body and then if you see ⁓ even the mark, I just put some damage standard marks on this neckline there. So here, if you see, I've started to Z remesh this. So that I can now get slightly lower resolution, which I can switch from lower to the higher. And I basically reprojected the details from my dynamesh model to get the details. And then now from here, I continue adding more details. So now, even if it's high, I can quickly go low and make the proportion changes if I need. And now I have the liberty to make proportion changes and see how it kind of works. Because the thing is, I have limited time, so I wanted this to look good only from one angle. ⁓ I didn't think about a turntable or 3D print at this stage. So this was kind of the angle I think I wanted. And I knew that I'm going to prop this part. So I just wanted to keep it clean as much as possible. ⁓ And then I started adding the beard. So all this are mostly very simple brushes I'm using like the clay build up standard, Damien standard, smooth brushes, some masks. That's it, not much. Only for this beard I use this nice to brush here. It's called Scales A. It's available in Jewish.
speaker-0: Wheels, huh? ⁓ wow. Interesting. Maybe like a little bit less sharp ⁓ version of snake hook kind?
speaker-1: Yeah, sweet. Kind of, yeah. This accidentally, I kind of discovered this, like it was lying in a Zubosh lightbox, I guess. So now I brought it out in my shortcuts here and here, I guess. So yeah, I think it kind of give it a nice look. Kind of over the apps a little bit, so give it a nice beard look. And let's see.
speaker-0: Now what about the like design, you know? Is it did you have a main inspiration or concept?
speaker-1: me, it's like, know, Wolverine is such a popular character, like everyone does Wolverine, right? So there's not much doing or searching for references. my, because I've done like at least five or six Wolverines before. So if you just make a nice portrait with a beard or without beard, just put a mask with fins and a yellow vest, that's it. You have your Wolverine in hand, right? Yeah. ⁓
speaker-0: I I think you definitely humble about it 'cause I think it's a I know I did a Wolverine too. And you know, there's a lot of different directions you can go. I Wolverine as a character and you you just even though you did it in three D, and we're gonna get to like how it looks more like a painting, but like in the end it's like a sick concept painting, like it could be a comic book cover of Wolverine. Like it is an awesome Wolverine design too and the expression and everything. So you did a great job not only with the style or whatever, but you know, you like created a a Wolverine look. That's sick. Yeah.
speaker-1: Thank you man. I'm very much inspired for Arkane as everyone does. But of course it's not like that. basically I wanted to do a painting in ZBrush, like poly painting. And I knew that I have limited time so I couldn't do something realistic. ⁓ And I love comic characters. The comic style. If you see my Instagram page or my portfolio, I have a lot of comic style stuff. I basically also paint the shadows and the lights a little bit in such a way that ⁓ maybe I'll explain you later when I... come to the polyp in stuff. But I still went on to Pinterest, which is my favorite place to go and search for references to see some styles you can take from. yeah, most of it from the arc and kind of a style.
speaker-0: Yeah, th these are cool. What was the inspiration for these products?
speaker-1: I I saw it from some of the references on Pinterest. It was long back, so I'm not sure. But I kind of interpreted it like, you know, it's kind of ripped off. Stamdex is of his cloth or costume. He just comes out and kind of curled or something like that. But without a texture, we can also think about something else, like some alien thing coming out of his body or something like that. But for me, it was more of ripped off. thin spandex parts of his costume and then they are so thick that they kind of curl onto it themselves. So that was...
speaker-0: Cool gives it more energy. Hey here we go. Look at that. Wow, big jump. How long did you spend doing the painting?
speaker-1: Painting was like ⁓ three hours or four hours or five hours max. Not much. Yeah, because painting becomes super quick because I was a commercial, I'm basically a commercial artist by education. So I love painting and drawing a lot, but then later on, you know, as you progress in your career, you have to start focusing and I started focusing on ⁓ sculpting, but I painting and drawing as well.
speaker-0: ⁓ god, I mean that that you should do more like this too. I mean, I know you are doing like the series, but yeah, the painting is yeah, it's very sophisticated. I w well first I'll just comment like looking at the finished work, the way that there's color, like kind of bounce lighting, and then there's also like visible brush strokes in certain directions. We can see it on his trap and then on the the hooded part, like you know, there's it feels like a very confident painter where you're just like you're doing stuff and it looks great and there's not second guessing or whatever. So definitely comes across. I would love ⁓ I'm you know, I just worked on a project too where I painted in Z brush for like the same kind of reasons, just 'cause it's fun and Arcane's awesome and it seems easy to do. I had trouble y you know, your yours looks very much like maybe a painting done in Photoshop or something, you know? And in with mine, I was just using basic stuff and so like you in Z brush, you know, like you'll see the brush kind of like dot dot dot, you know? Yeah. And it it wasn't as I didn't know how to do like creamy, smooth brush strokes. So anyways, it'd be cool to see if Yeah. How you're doing it.
speaker-1: Yes, so basically there is a brush called our paint.
speaker-0: Called it's just called paint, right? It's in the default
speaker-1: I call it R-Paint because I take some small changes here and there. It's a paintbrush basically. So think it has good settings there. So these are the settings for it. Or if you just use a standard brush with those settings, that should work.
speaker-0: And you can go pretty fast, huh? Like you can make pretty fast strokes and it won't it'll be smooth.
speaker-1: Yeah, it should. Yeah, that is very pretty smooth. Yeah, it is and it is
speaker-0: And did you even do a little ⁓ pressure size thing or no? Taper it? Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. So what I do is I usually just take down the RGB intensity and I kind of mix it with that. And that if I want to something like that. So I play with the RGB intensity. Also, I think with the paint brush, sometimes it doesn't give you that creamy strokes. Yeah. So what I do sometimes is I go to brush, tablet pressure. and RGB intensity so this is how I ratio I think it is by default something here so if you just raise it you kind of so let's see taking it down
speaker-0: ⁓ so it makes it more opaque because it's like not as sensitive to the pressure, is that right?
speaker-1: So now I have to push really hard to get there. even if you're not seeing it, it's not giving me that creamy thing, right? OK, cool, So yeah. So even this, I kind of discovered there. Let me undo this.
speaker-0: I'm gonna have to try these brush settings because yeah, for some reason like the only way I could get clean lines was to go very slowly. I don't know why it would like so anyways, yeah, I'll try to copy these settings and
speaker-1: That's cool. is really cool because even I was having the same issue before and like that's what happens you know when you do such quick projects you can ⁓ okay how do I do this you know I don't have time and let's search or let's do something and in that process I found that tablet pressure thing and yeah it's kind of a cheat actually because it's basically changing I the tablet pressure for everything I'm not sure but it works for painting so it's okay sometimes I do research ZBrush it gets buggy if you kind of mess up with that tablet pressure thing. But for painting it worked fine. This is that paintbrush and I also use this one. think it's a paintbrush as well but then with this alpha I think it's alpha 62 or you can even use any alpha.
speaker-0: That and that's to get your little hash marks there? Okay? ⁓ yeah, hell yeah, dude.
speaker-1: So you just play around like oil painting, you know, like. So basically I'm not trying to implement lighting very deliberately. I'm trying to mix it in such a way that, you know, even if you have an albedo color, it has variations, right? So I'm trying to mix it like that. So even if it has to lit in a software, it will work. It should work. Basically, I'm not trying to hard code it like, okay, the light is coming only from one direction. So that's how, if you see from all the direction, it's kind of works.
speaker-0: Yeah, this is great.
speaker-1: I've to the tones of not letting the viewer know where the actual highlight might be or where the light source might be.
speaker-0: Ambient right now. ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah, top down ambient, like maybe you can feel it over here on top of his head. But I can see that it's kind of in my shin leather, which has a nice variation on his albedo as well. So that's kind
speaker-0: So shout out to your guys Brow, bro. It looks sick. The front view. You don't you don't you know you don't get to appreciate the front view very much in the finals. It looks awesome. Looks like a looks like a crazy, you know, Joker Batman. You know what I mean? Yeah, you should do some Batmans too, dude. So did you know at this point, did you know how you were gonna render it or you know, are you experimenting kind of the whole time? Do you know if there's gonna be a cash shadow? Okay
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because at this point I thought, I'm not sure how it's going to look or how should I present it. My final aim for all my skull sketches are I want to make my sketches a bit presentable. But I'm not sure how it's going to look. But that's fine with me. I'm just trying to see that how I can do with ZBrush render passes, few of them. But I think even for this, I didn't even use much that render passes, I think. But I'll show you that later. So now I'm like doing some subtle changes. Yeah, so this is like a toy plastic shader. So if I fill object, so that shader is gone. So if I just use a toy plastic there with material all fill object.
speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Would you mind zooming into the teeth there? Is this towards the the end? Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, great. So you can see there's some color that you're painting and also it looks like, you know, to break up the highlight 'cause the highlight has these interesting shapes on all the teeth. So you have to be messing with the the surface form, right? ⁓
speaker-1: So I just do some random build up or standard just not to make it smooth.
speaker-0: The little light the little the little white dances around and it really does look like how you would just dot it on with some Yeah, on with a white paint or whatever if you were doing a two D. Yeah, that's really awesome. Very successful.
speaker-1: And I didn't even have time for this X thing, so I thought, let's just make the symbol there of X and then since I eventually thought of having this as the angle, ⁓ know, this highly kind of makes sense as well. So it's kind of cheating, but I didn't mind that. The thing is, see, this is like a thumbnail for me, like a thumbnail sketch. So if I have to put this into production later on, I can do that.
speaker-0: No.
speaker-1: I can make a nice logo there, like a 3D one. can basically, I have to neutralize this face and do a retopo and unwrap it, ⁓ texture it in Substance Painter or something like that and render it out in Arnold. ⁓ But I know that will take lot of time. This will take just maybe a day or maximum two. That's it. So that's the purpose of this project. Now I'll show you the one I did before. So basically, you must... be knowing that I have done a tutorial for this, like whole course of step by step, like full real time recording and commentary as well with the sped up one. So if you see this one, so this is the ⁓ older one basically, you know, and it took the same amount of time. And if you see it has a bit of a different look to it. So this was the one actually I did in that 10 hours, right? And then There were lot of comments on Instagram saying that you we want to see how your process is. But I didn't record this one. And then I said, OK, people want to know about it. And even I wanted to show the steps, everything. ⁓ So basically, I redid the whole Wolverine again. Wow. Second time. And this is the difference. Nice. And because I'm doing it second time, it becomes more crispier, more better than the previous one. And with the same amount of time. So that's the plus point of doing the sketchings. Because now it has been embedded into my brain, right? And I know what to do in the watch tabs. So if I took 10 to 15 hours for first one, maybe I took like a couple of hours less on this one. So I already increased my speed as well with the paint. And one more thing, if you use, I even use clay builder for fainting. if I just use builder and like use RGB.
speaker-0: Yeah, great, man. take you okay, yeah. So you t you take off the sculpting and you just use our
speaker-1: Yeah, the Rian and if you just, you see that. ⁓ yeah. It feels like oil painting, you know, with, if you have season thing. So if you just lower the intensity a little bit. So you can nicely. So this basically, since you have a control on the strokes, then you can kind of move around as per the liking. And if you don't like it, just basically, you know, overlap with the neighboring color, take it off. So basically start building.
speaker-0: That is nice actually.
speaker-1: the colors on top of each other. Just how people or the artists paint the miniatures, they kind of the colors on top of each other. So you can use a similar method, but of course you have to have your intensity of RGB a bit less so that they start overlapping and kind of builds up lot of colors on top of each other. So those subtle changes makes a lot of difference sometimes. It makes it feel like painterly.
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean that I think the subtle brush strokes and color work is is what took it to another level. Yeah. You can tell you've painted a lot before. Yeah.
speaker-1: And then I also use, I think, this one with very thin brush there to get those strokes. So because it has a nice dark color there, so when I put a stroke, kind of, you know, so it gives a nice highlights there. So similarly with the black lines. I kept it very sketchy, like use a ball pen for sketching. Kind of feel I wanted to for this character.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. like you know is it one of those things where like it's made to look like it's made with a pet and with a lot of energy but you're like meticulously slowly making it f fat and then thinks
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, also when I do this, maybe not for this character, but if maybe I'm not sure if I get time to show the Cyclops, I deliberately put those lines in particular areas so that even if it has to rotate, kind of doesn't look that bad. Because there are other techniques as well where you people are, know, like duplicating the mesh and like flipping it off and then putting the black color to get the outline right. So there's one more technique, but then if Since I didn't have time and I wanted to just use these brushes and finish off this project. This was a technique I had. I go to a specific angle and like see if it works from this angle and doesn't. So if it's not working from there, maybe I'll paint it off and again, redo that a little bit. What that is more clear on my other project, let's cycle up one, where I learned these things on this will rain.
speaker-0: Cool. How how much of the time would you say, you know, in your two days or two kind of sessions? Was it like mostly fifty fifty? Were the first part's modeling and the second part's the painting? Or did one part take longer than the other?
speaker-1: I think modeling I spent a lot, like 60 and then 40 for painting. Modeling is definitely more because I wanted, because once you have your forms kind of what you like, paint will just enhance it. ⁓ So yeah. And the paint for me goes very quickly, that form making.
speaker-0: great. You could really like do ⁓ you know like conceptual art and paintings and you know you
speaker-1: Yeah, so basically when I was in VFX industry, right, ⁓ that's what actually ⁓ made me apart from the models as well. And I'll also suggest, you know, people who are watching this that or want to get into the industry, that this kind of approach helps your supervisors in your VFX studio. I'm not sure in gaming how it works, because mostly my time was spent in VFX. Well, what happens is the client understands of some vague drawing sometimes to the supervisor and then the supervisor kind of approaches the modeler or can you sculpt or model this something like that. And I've seen a lot of modelers just spending weeks modeling it, then showing it to supervisors and then it's a long process to get the approval, right? ⁓ And I thought of, why not just quickly do a sculpt in the pose of the drawing which they have given and also render it out using poly paint and because sometimes the concepts they have given are painted as well. So I tried to recreate that in 3D. So it looks like concept art. And when you move it, they can go, oh, wow. So they kind of approve it very immediately. And the supervisor was happy, right? OK, yeah, the concept is approved. So now the modeler can sit on it for weeks and finish it off. my part of concept sculpting gets kind of appreciated by my supervisors. It's really cool that after that, I always used to get concept sculpting most of the times. And I should do this quick sculpting with painting. So my personal work actually helped me even in that. That's why I always tell students or upcoming artists that keep on doing your personal work. That is more important than, I think, even the job sometimes. Because in job, happens sometimes, you not necessarily get cool work to do when you enter the industry. And the best part is you go home, do your own stuff, right? No one is stopping you. you can do cooler stuff than what you get in the studio and you start putting it on your portfolio or like social media, share it with supervisors, check it out anyways, they know and then they say okay let's try this guy for sculpting next time. So that's a better way of getting the cool models to yourself.
speaker-0: Yeah. No a hundred percent. I mean, yeah, I I I definitely echo that. I hope people keep it up in a in a healthy way. And also like there's there's there's the creative satisfaction, which is huge. I think it's so good for morality and yeah, and not getting tied up in your job 'cause as you say you don't choose what you work on. Exactly. But also even like every time it's it's it it's happens in unexpected ways, but you've already pointed out in this project and you're like years in, right? That That you stumbled upon some brushes, you you know, you found ⁓ a brush setting to get a certain effect. And I find that happens all the time in personal work is we're able to experiment and play around and you like learn stuff and then on the actual job, I feel like I'm more using that stuff than exper like, you know, than taking time to play around. So you're playing around with your personal stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, what's this? It's like a statue.
speaker-1: Yeah, so basically once I made the whole tutorial, you I thought I will also give my buyers or whoever have purchased that thing to learn the course with the model itself. And I made a 3D printable model. So this is one. I think I also tested that with one of my printer friends. So he made the support for it, pre-supports, because I have a printer right now, but I have not yet started testing it out. So he helped me with the pre-supports and stuff. So this is what I gave it to him. So he made it. And then I have put it as a free model for them who have purchased this ⁓ course so that if they want, they can have look at it or if they want, can print it out and keep it on the desk. Something like that. ⁓
speaker-0: Do you have any of these printed yet? Has have you seen one in in real life?
speaker-1: Yeah, it's not with me, but I have the video I show you
speaker-0: Hell yeah. Yeah. Hell yeah, dude.
speaker-1: Yeah, so we printed it and basically because when I put my stuff as an STL, I want proof, you know, like, okay, has been tested. I don't want just one to upload the STL file and like it's broken. So Zuko is one of my friends who tested this out and we printed that and then I uploaded it for people to know. So basically I made use of my sculpt sketch as well.
speaker-0: Yeah, awesome dude. Yeah, yeah. Could I see the do I don't know if you have a Photoshop file with the passage or whatever. Like it'd be cool to see how you're returning it, you know, from Z Rush to a finished image. Yeah.
speaker-1: One second. So basically for this, I just use the shadow pass, not much. It's very subtle and most of it was the brightness and contrast and a subtle color balance changes. That's it, not much. But a lot of other projects which I have, I've done a lot of different passes to get different effects. But as I said, I was limited for this time. You just got the renders from ZBrush. Let me see if I can share that.
speaker-0: And are you doing it on like unlit material or the skin shade material or the skin shade four or whatever? So it's like kinda bright. But a little bit of shading then. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, the screen shadow. Yeah. Okay, cool. And I use the mask thing to just cut off the whole thing very nicely. And then I just paint off like a background with a gradient, like a radial gradient, and maybe put a nice logo there, which I want. And that's where I thought about this name, Sculpt Sketch. I said, okay, this is very quick. And like, if you see the first one, right, it's like it has the sketchy lines and stuff. So I thought, okay, so I'm doing something like Sculpt and Sketch. So let's put in a Sculpt Sketch.
speaker-0: Yeah, I love it.
speaker-1: And like these are different renders
speaker-0: Okay, yeah, for your presentation. Cool. Yeah, so pretty simple a lot done in Z Rush really. Yeah, yeah.
speaker-1: So yeah, so I just share some of the settings which I use. So basically, if you go to render BPR shadows, I kind of use this at 50, angle at 100. It kind of gives a soft shadow. Rest I keep as it is. And then when I render it,
speaker-0: Are you are you moving the light? Are you positioning the light before? ⁓ no.
speaker-1: not for this one. But sometimes what happens is if I don't see the highlight of the eyes, then I kind of move it down till I see the highlight. And it has still not affected the whole model much because of the way I've painted it. So I've still got the highlights as well there and it kind of pops out now. ⁓ And then once you render it, you get your render passes and export this to Photoshop and comp it as I showed you just now.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, even if you see I have painted the reflected orange light.
speaker-0: Like bounce light. Yeah, dude. It's so sick.
speaker-1: Yeah, so it makes a lot of difference to stats, you know, making it pop out.
speaker-0: Yeah. The painting really took it to the next I it's awesome model, like I say. And like the design again, like you know, you see all the angles are very sharp and all this like direction, a lot of energy. So yeah, very cool. Would you what would you say is like the main thing or the biggest thing that you learned or or kind of taking away from this? Seems like it may have influenced your your future ones too. What was the main takeaway?
speaker-1: Cool. Cheers, Yeah, the main takeaway was ⁓ I learned the new painting skills here. I should do it more in Substance Painter as well before, but some of the brushes which I used here, like now I discovered the scale brush here, then the paint brush, techniques of how to kind of get the shapes quickly and make it presentable at the end. So that was the takeaway from this. So I always say like, you Don't get demotivated in between because there's this process where you start. Let me show you one image if I can. Should I? Yeah, please. I have done this long back for some of my students. Yeah. Yeah. So long back I've done it for side Academy or I think they're in Wales. So I think so I've done it for them. But I wanted to, you know, put my thought process and how people or artists sometimes struggle. I might be wrong, but this is what I feel and.
speaker-0: Yes.
speaker-1: that's what I'm trying to explain here. You when you start a project, you are super excited, are adrenaline so high that you want to get started soon and do a lot of stuff. So the first 70 % is your fastest way of being, maybe 60 or 70 % maybe, somewhere around there, where you start sculpting, go to a level where you find, oh it's looking cool, cool, cool. And then at a point it comes where it starts dipping a bit, where it slows down, you don't know how to carry forward, how to take it ahead. and you kind of come to a plateau where it's doing nothing for you. And then most of your work kind of gets shelved. When you go into the deep like this, it gets shelved, you just want to do something new because you have already spent like a few weeks and you got bored with that work sometimes. So you again, maybe after a few weeks, you want to do a new concept. So you again go back. But if you don't break this circle, of trusting the process, you will always go into that loop. If you trust the process, kind of ⁓ climb it a bit higher, you learn new skills, you kind of search for other artists who doing stuff and try to increment that into your work and try to kind of finish your work, even if it's good or bad, try to finish it off. And that's where the final 10 % comes and you kind of finish it. And you feel good about it. gives you a confidence boost, right? once you hit that, you know the process. And once you know the process, you know that I'm going to hit the demortation point, and I know how to tackle that. So that's how I explain
speaker-0: So that that's and then when they drop down the plateau, that's the people that like, you know, it gets tough or they're not happy and then they start over because it's it's easier and it's more fun to start, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think this is super common. I love that you're depicting the trust the process there of just someone walking over an invisible bridge like Indiana Jones or something. That that's a really good way to put it. You gotta j you gotta just you just gotta you know, you just gotta know that the bridge is there.
speaker-1: Yeah, this happened with my very first project in my career, know, like ⁓ it was in 2003 when I was working on a challenge competition on CG Society, you know, it was there. I think, let me, this one, any time sooner or later, this is a very old one, this from 2003.
speaker-0: Maybe maybe but if it's pretty vague.
speaker-1: Yeah, it is very old. So I've been doing this personal work since that time. Like this is... And I was in the gaming industry that time, you know, like, and I didn't get cool stuff to work. So I started doing these challenges and stuff. So what happened? Yeah, it got the sixth place. It was a, I think, international competition that time. And the thing is, I finished this whole stuff. It was a three month competition and I used 3D Max Studio that time. and it got kind of finished but I didn't like it so I didn't want to submit it but one of my colleagues he said he came to my side and said you know Rishi why don't you just try a different angle and you know it to perspective and render it out that's where I tried it I liked it I submitted I even won one of the prizes there and that actually taught me a lesson trust the process you know like you have done it good it's just that maybe look at it from a different perspective you might completely change the way you look at your own stuff which might not be looking good. that's how I kind of treated that throughout my career and it helped me a lot. So trust me.
speaker-0: Great. I mean, ⁓ another thing I I tell people in the same kind of line of advice is that if you are starting a lot and then stopping and letting yourself stop and restart, it it is one, it's kind of training a groove that you probably don't want to be doing. Now it gets easier and easier to bail. But also if you see what's happening, if there's the whole process, you're getting the most reps and experience in the beginning. And and what we all want is to make work that Yeah. We're proud of and we feel like is a reflection of our skills. And if you're not doing that last ten percent, then you're never gonna get better then you won't be able to do that. Like you do have you do have to finish projects that you think are not your best to learn how to do it. So that is your best.
speaker-1: Yeah, that's so important. So I think if students or people can know about that, that will help. Because the thing is we learn the hardware sometimes, but when they kind of listen to this thing, I hope they can implement it immediately so that they know, OK, I'm going to go through these phases and these guys have talked about it. So maybe that might help them to kind of know that trust the processing.
speaker-0: Absolutely man. It's great to hear you say it and it's one of the reasons why I like talking to people and sharing it with other people that are interested in this stuff because they hear they'll hear the same kinds of things and they go, ⁓ this is part of it. This is the process, you know? Yeah, exactly. It's to feel doubt and ⁓ and all that and just push through.
speaker-1: Yeah, just imagine, I'm doing this for the second time, right? I just told you that I have to recreate this whole stuff. It's such a boring thing to recreate something. But I did it with the same enthusiasm because I just thought, OK, why not? Let's see. ⁓ Can it be better than before? file sometimes crashes. I don't cry. Yeah. Because I think, OK, maybe it has happened for the good. Maybe I'll do better than before instead of, ⁓ I haven't done such a good job before. Instead of thinking that, just think I'll do better than what I did before.
speaker-0: Like Ben Great attitude. And I I've noticed that I don't crash as much anymore. Thank goodness. But yeah, anytime that would happen and we lose a bunch of work, ⁓ if you've you know finally muster it up, it's almost always better, right? Maybe always it's better. About that, I usually ask people at the end of their project, like when talking about this, I'll say, if you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently? So it's kind of interesting because you did do it twice. So maybe you could speak on what are the most tangible differences when you did it again. What were the things you intentionally did differently? What did you like more about it? Is there anything that you didn't like from the first time that you intentionally avoided? Like what what's the difference? Yeah.
speaker-1: The only thing happened here was I was kind of conscious of doing second time so I knew I wanted to do it more finished than before because the first one which I did was more fluidly done I wanted to do the same thing but in a finished manner but then when I was comparing it with the before and after he looks kind of a beefy which I wanted that look but ⁓ I didn't get that much he kind of slightly leaned down it still looks good not that bad ⁓ but this had that beef loop which I wanted in the first part. So those things happen, but that's fine. I got a you know, finished thing. Now, if you see the previous one, it is not as finished from this side. I didn't even try to paint this one, but since I was doing a tutorial and the course thing, I wanted to make it finish for everyone who kind of wants to enjoy this whole thing.
speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ I see ⁓ more of a three D model now.
speaker-1: Exactly. And the thing is, it took the same amount of time. And for the proof, I have the real-time footage I've provided with that thing. So yeah, I enjoyed a lot doing second time. But that's because I was doing a tutorial. Maybe I will not do it every day or on every project. Yeah, it becomes a bit dull. But as you said, if file crashes, maybe you have to do something second time, or things like this in such instances. We have to do that. Other than that, second time is not that enjoyable but the only thing you can think positive is how do I do it better.
speaker-0: Great. ⁓ another question I like to ask people is is what would you tell your younger self? What kind of advice would you give your younger self? I know you t we mentioned about trusting the process and you know, that kind of lesson in two thousand three. Is that the kind of thing it would be or or if you could go back and give yourself a little piece of advice when you were coming up over there?
speaker-1: I think in the beginning, my time management was not that great, like working wise. But as I started getting the jobs, what happens is you work from nine to five lots of times, right? And I've seen people going very late from the office. And then I was thinking, you know, how do I kind of do the job and still work on the personal projects, you know? So that's where the type management kind of clicked for me and I said, okay, whatever happens. I'm going to come on time in the office, maybe early, like an hour or half an hour early, know, plan everything, whatever the task is, and visualize everything that I have to finish this by the end of the day, like five o'clock. I don't want to sit like till seven o'clock or nine o'clock, you know. So I had to plan that, and I just started executing that because my aim was to go home. Yeah. And you, you know, good work to my service, like whatever job I'm doing, I don't want to do any less work for them. So I do the best in that eight or nine hours and try to not waste time here and there. Finish it off, go back home as soon as possible, get ready and start your juicy stuff. More juicy stuff sometimes. ⁓ So slowly I kind of realized that later in my career. But when I realized it, I kind of gained a lot of confidence in my work while doing the jobs which I'm doing in VFX because... My speed started increasing, my confidence started increasing. So what type of projects or creatures or what it is, I could do it very quickly because of that. So yeah, that helped me a lot. So if I could have done it earlier, maybe I could have been slightly more better probably. So yeah, that was one of the things, time management, I think very important for artists. Even today, I think if you cannot manage the time, it's going to be very tough, even for personal work. Exactly. Basically, you need to visualize everything in your mind a little bit like, okay, this is what I want kind of, of course, when you start doing it, you will kind of realize how it's in which direction is going a hint which you have in your mind should always be there. It will help you as I said, towards the process thing.
speaker-0: Yeah. Alright, yeah, well what are you making next? I know you did ⁓ yeah. Cyclops and are you doing more of these and you want to show that? What are the what are the next projects you're doing?
speaker-1: Yes.
speaker-0: This is great man. This is like a different style though too. Yeah. It's like cell shaded.
speaker-1: different slide right yeah yeah one single tick of the concept which is that thing
speaker-0: Nice, yeah the a the hair highlight is sick too. Crazy.
speaker-1: So, yeah, even Scott was kind of happy about it. He kind of liked it. So, the thing is, as I said, you know, I made these outlines very deliberate so that it looks kind of good from this beauty shot as well. And then when you kind of rotate it, it still kind of helps. So, I put it in such a way that it kind of... You can see the outline here. And when you rotate it, it still kind of looks not that bad. It kind of looks like a comic drawing there. So, this is quite simplified and very graphical sculpt. And then for this, I think I took... it to Marmoset and just do the quick lighting a little bit. Let me see if I have that because I want you to try it out there. So yeah, I'm still in the learning stage of Marmoset. Unreal, I have to still touch it. It is for an easier kind of feel. I said it's very nice. And it has those settings in the cameras, like a lot of post-production settings. It's really cool. Yeah, definitely. I think I did this on.
speaker-0: Mars that's fun and easy.
speaker-1: So this was a more in-bama set. So it kind of gives a nice depth of field. So there's two lights, one is the pre-light, one is the back light. That's it. I have put the lights deliberately on the back so that it kind of mimics the highlight which I have painted already.
speaker-0: Cool.
speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. And then just, think I use a few shaders for the highlights over here on this red part, but not much. Try to keep it simple. Yeah, very cool. And then in Photoshop, sync. ⁓ one second. Yeah. So that did. Yeah. So when I rendered it out of Mano set, I kind of felt, ⁓ it has to kind of pop out a little bit more and I was like experimenting with what kind of background I want and stuff. And those background.
speaker-0: Yeah, nice.
speaker-1: kind of makes a lot of difference sometimes, you know. So I trying different colors and different shades and this is kind of the color which I kind of liked and I thought that kind of complementing the orange and the yellowish. So this one and I just added those few strokes there and kind of kind of make it a bit nicer there. So if you see this is just one pass from Marmoset and that's it. With some brightness and contrast and some color correction like with the color balance thing. Yeah, this thing I usually use. to try and change if I wanted warmer or cooler. And that's it for this one. So yeah, this is just like a two day project again, which I made. ⁓ And the thing is this personal project don't pay you, but it basically makes you happy.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I can see you already got two going. I mean I you might as well do the whole X Men, you Yeah, sick man. All right. Well, ⁓ anything you like to let people know about that's that are listening, I'm gonna put obviously your your socials and your ⁓ art station project in the description, but yeah, you mentioned you have tutorials and anything else if people wanna learn more about what you do or learn more from you, ⁓ where can they go?
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, I'll do that. Yeah, I think I have my sub-sketch course on my art station. So if people like to see my workflow. So basically I have done, I think, 10 hours recording with commentary, as well as there's a full real-time footage also been provided without the commentary, because that's like 20 or 15 hours of work. And I also done an iPad version of the Catwoman. Is it the Catwoman? Yeah, think so. So I've done that as well. So they can try it out if they want to use iPad. So if you're going out somewhere and if you have an iPad, you can still try things in ZBrush on that. So because I was not comfortable doing iPad when I was out, but then I was stuck outside for four days. But luckily I had my iPad. I said, OK, let me try. And it was fun. It is a bit slow because you're not used to the UI and stuff. But it was fun. I completed that. I added that as a bonus chapter in the course. yeah, if people want to have a look at it.
speaker-0: Yeah. have you thought about trying things like Nomad? I think Nomad is
speaker-1: I've seen a lot of cool stuff coming out of Nomad. I think the shadows and stuff works quite well.
speaker-0: Me too. I haven't tried it yet, but yeah, it looks cool.
speaker-1: Zivrus is because I'm so used to Zivrus, know, like just I'm used to Maya. It's very difficult to shift. Like I want to learn Blender for years, but it's very difficult to shift, know. Yeah, it is. Maybe I'm old school, but I want to shift things at some point. yeah, no matter I'm seeing people showing some nice shadows and stuff in real time. It's really cool. Maybe I'd like to try that out. Yeah.
speaker-0: Exactly. Yeah, it feels like you can do honestly, it feels like you could make this qu level stuff on an iPad end to end 'cause you wouldn't need like Marmoset and Photoshop and all that stuff. So that's what's interesting to me. But I don't do much work on the iPad, but when I see people posting I think wow, that's cool. I if I was younger and I probably would get into that.
speaker-1: I said like, you know, I don't try and go to iPad. It's only when I'm outside. If I don't have anything, let's do something. So yeah, iPad is the way to go.
speaker-0: Yeah. Well ⁓ yeah, then like I said, I'll put links below if you guys wanna check out you know, obviously check out this full work in resolution and I mean in its full glory there. And then check out his sculpt sketch tutorial and everything. Thank you very much for your time, Rashikesh. I I appreciate it, dude. Been a fan for a while. I know we corresponded
speaker-1: Basically, to let everyone know, even I started rendering learning from you. My first one was that guy in the yellow.
speaker-0: Yeah, the Arnold ⁓ tutorial, yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, so that was my first thing in that actually to boost my confidence of renting in Arnold because before that I never used to render stuff. Your tutorial really helped me. ⁓ I'm to go through your Unreal thing as well. Hopefully some went soon because I'm busy with my commission work and this personal stuff. But yeah, I have to go through that.
speaker-0: ⁓ great. I know, we all want to learn a bunch of things. I appreciate it, dude. And I mean you're cooking up awesome stuff, so you're inspiring too. And cheese. ⁓ thank you for sharing your process with everyone. I mean it's inspiring stuff and you know, I'm I love hearing this. I'm sure a lot of other people do and thank you, man. So yeah, thank you. And thank you everyone for listening up till now. And ⁓ yeah, other than that, catch you guys in the next one.
speaker-1: Cheers. Bye bye. Cheers.
speaker-1: Since this is like a sculpt sketch for me, I have limited time, so I wanted this to look good only from one angle. I even used clay builder for fainting. Yeah, and RGB intensity, so this is how I ratio. I think it is by default something here. So if you just raise it.
speaker-0: ⁓ so it makes it more opaque because it's like not as sensitive.
speaker-1: it feels like oil painting you know with if you have something yeah even if you see i've painted the reflected orange like
speaker-0: And then like bounce light, yeah, dude, it's so sick.
speaker-1: you
speaker-0: And welcome to Pixel Peeps, the show where we take a deeper dive and closer look at some of today's best digital artwork along with the artists that create them. Today I have with me Rishikesh Nandalaskar. He's been a professional modeler and sculptor for over 20 years. He's worked for Rhythm and Hughes, Framestore, and Sideshow Collectibles, to name a few. He's also a 3D art educator online. He's an instructor at Think Tank and he makes his own tutorials and awesome content linked. Below in the description, check out some his tutorials. He just released a one recently. Also, the link to this high-quality artwork, like in full resolution, along with his other art, is there. So check out the links in the description. Also, before jumping in, I want to mention that I made a change to my Discord community. It's now completely members only or private, so like not anyone can join. And we made that change to cut down on people, like their spam and also self-promotion and you know the community. Can just grow to just become like a Discord community and the conversation gets away from 3D. So now the only way to join is to either join here on YouTube as a member or Patreon. There's a new tier just for the community at three bucks a month. So if you used to be in the community or you're looking to join a 3D art community and you're serious about it, you know, take a look. Three bucks a month. And ⁓ yeah, we do like co-working sessions. Obviously, really talented people in there. We did a challenge recently with the helmet where a bunch of the community members All joining a competition, a friendly competition, ⁓ with a prize actually, ⁓ for texturing this helmet demo and really cool to see. So a lot of talented people in there, really cool stuff, and we hope to do something like that, some kind of event every month. Yeah, without further ado, let's jump in and learn some more from Rishikesh. Let's talk about this men in yellow Wolverine Sculpt Sketch. Yeah, thanks for coming on and everything. And I definitely wanted to ⁓ talk to you. You have a lot of awesome artwork, obviously. But yeah, this one in particular, you know, when we when we talked about chatting, what would we chat about? I love this one. I'm kind of into this like, you know, 3D that looks like 2D, if you want to call it that, and different styles of 3D and a lot of just cool stuff coming out. And I just think you hit such an awesome style here based on the the concept and everything, but like just the way the brush strokes are and the model. So yeah, can't wait to get into it. But yeah, really, really awesome. Really awesome result. Yeah, dude. Yeah, so maybe some just quick ⁓ basic
speaker-1: I'm glad to know you like it, Arndt.
speaker-0: questions right off the rip of ⁓ some things that would be good to know is like why did you initially decide to do this ⁓ artwork? What was the kind of initial inspiration and how long did it take? Yeah.
speaker-1: So basically, ⁓ all this started when I purchased the Cintiq for the first time now, which is like six months back. And then the coincidence was that I had to go for a vacation two days later. And the Cintiq had just arrived home. And I said, ⁓ I have to kind of put my hands on the Cintiq fast something, something very quick, right? And I usually do a lot of quick stuff every week. Not everything makes to the social media there. Wolverine is one of my favorite characters and I thought okay why not let's try that because I have done lot of Wolverines before but I wanted to do something with an open mouth as well. So said okay let's start doing it and that's how I get started on this Wolverine ⁓ sculpt sketch which I call and I will let you know why I call this sculpt sketch later on.
speaker-0: Yeah, great, cool. Yeah, and I I s when we got on I saw that Wolverine you made two behind you, so yeah, great way to test the Cintiq, that's cool. Yeah. And then what softwares are used for this image for the
speaker-1: This is just Zubrush and Photoshop for the post-production a little bit, not much.
speaker-0: Yeah, love it. Wow. Even like the little highlights on the teeth or is that some photoshop?
speaker-1: Yeah, that's the disturb power plastic set up from T-Rex.
speaker-0: Hell yeah, dude. All right, sweet. Okay. But maybe before ⁓ we take a look at like what it looks like in ZBrush and maybe kind of like how you start these things, you know, now that you finish and everything, what what was like the hardest part about this project for you?
speaker-1: The hardest part about short projects is that you don't know what's the output going to be. And for me, since this is like a sketch for me, I don't bother about it. I didn't know that I'm going to post it later on. I just wanted to enjoy the process on my Cintiq. I wanted to get my hands on the Cintiq. I wanted to feel it, basically. I was like itching to get it because I didn't want to go to the vacation and then come back after two weeks. Then I could see my Cintiq in front of me. ⁓ So the process of how it's going to look was a bit of challenging because I had in my mind that I wanted something painterly, ⁓ which I have not done much before. I have done few, but since I have limited time, I just wanted to use very limited brushes and maybe just paint in ZBrush itself and render in ZBrush itself. So I don't want to go out of the software. Basically, finish this in 10 to 15 hours, like divided into two days. ⁓ take the final illustrations to my vacation and like post it from there.
speaker-0: Okay, great. So ⁓ did you did I hear you right too that when you started, you know, posting wasn't ⁓ you d didn't need to, right? It was just like it came out nice in the end and you're like, sweet I'll post
speaker-1: Yeah, no. ⁓ Yeah, I always think that if you trust your process, most of your artwork kind of ends up going into the social media or your portfolio. So that's what I did. And because I had that experience on doing like a lot of self sketches, I thought maybe it might go, but let's see, know, like just talking to myself, just do your best. If it happens, it happens.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's great. I mean you can see here we got lots of reactions and like I loved it and everything too. So it's I've had that happen a couple of times. I think that's great. It's almost like the purest form is you're doing it for these certain reasons. It comes out nice, you share it, it resonates with people. Yep. And you weren't you know, that wasn't the number one goal. So yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, maybe we could take a look then. I'd love to see like what like the source files look like and how you start these things and trying to learn a little bit more about your process.
speaker-1: Yeah, so I started with a spear. Yeah, basically I like to do the small projects as you call it bricks, guess, bricks and pillars, right? For me it's like pre-workouts, you know? So basically, start it from scratch so that you can, you know, stretch your muscles and stuff like that. So yeah, start with the spear and then just pull off the basic skull shape.
speaker-0: All right, great.
speaker-1: And at this point, I don't bother about anything, no proportion. I didn't even know how big the skull is there right now. Later on, I will change it if it requires further rendering. Then I just, you know, pull off, just use dynamics. If you see it's just dynamic.
speaker-0: And you're starting to have you're starting to add multiple objects already, right? The eyes are
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So basically that helps me to kind of, you know, ⁓ have a nice separation of the eyes with the sockets and the It's very clean because if you just start sculpting the eyes with the eyelids, it can get very quickly mushy, which is fine. You can do it. But I'm basically trying to be economical with the time, you know, like trying to save time. So this is what helps me. even for the teeth, I just put some placeholder primitives from ⁓ ZBrush. and then just split off the whole body.
speaker-0: Now is this body a separate it is right? The body separate too. ⁓ okay, cool. Nice. You're still pulling and dynamic and okay, cool.
speaker-1: No, not yet. So I just keep doing that. I know it looks ugly.
speaker-0: No, it looks good. And also it's pretty dense for Dynamesh, huh? I ⁓ I'm curious like if you do or when you do make a kind of a proper base mesh with Zero Mesh or if you do that. Yeah.
speaker-1: I will do it later on. For now, what I do is I just quickly pull off all the shapes. So I don't care. It's like playing with the clay, right? yeah, it like that. Yeah. As soon as I feel it starts getting heavier, then maybe I'll just reduce the resolution sometimes and I can go back. So this might be a file where it gets dense, but there might be files where it has gone lower as well. So yeah, I keep playing with the resolution. yeah. there. So let's try start refining the as well. the teeth are being made inside Gbrush like no presets. this see I can use presets and teeth which are available in Gbrush or I can download a teeth set as well. But I just want to see how I can push myself because this is not a production model at all. why not play with it, know, and see how much I know about it. So fight that as well.
speaker-0: Yeah. So ⁓ just something about that, I think now that you mentioned that, I feel like with the smaller projects, studies and stuff, I find that I make a lot more from scratch and in actual production work, is where you do a lot of the cheating, if you want to call it that, where you use stuff that you know, because why not? You're just saving time and everything. Yes, yes.
speaker-1: Yeah, for production, I think it's a right way of doing it because ⁓ you are doing a service or we're getting paid for something. You have a limited time and you have to hit the benchmark of quality work, right? So we don't want to have those kinds of practices all there. It's better to do those kinds of stuff here, like in your sculpt sketches or like practice sketches. For my clients, I try to use my base meshes. have my base meshes.
speaker-0: Yeah, even starting from a sphere is like extra difficulty, but it's just for like, you know, practicing and right.
speaker-1: Basically, it kind of gives you the confidence while sculpting even with the base mesh. If you keep sculpting with spear or any primitives, when you actually go with the base mesh, it actually helps you to have more confidence while sculpting. So yeah, that's the reason. So it's like doing a pre-workout instead of even directly going for heavy
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. I was thinking that too. It's like training with weights or something and then it's easier when you take the weights off. Yeah.
speaker-1: Exactly. So yeah, I just pulled up the whole body and then if you see ⁓ even the mark, I just put some damage standard marks on this neckline there. So here, if you see, I've started to Z remesh this. So that I can now get slightly lower resolution, which I can switch from lower to the higher. And I basically reprojected the details from my dynamesh model to get the details. And then now from here, I continue adding more details. So now, even if it's high, I can quickly go low and make the proportion changes if I need. And now I have the liberty to make proportion changes and see how it kind of works. Because the thing is, I have limited time, so I wanted this to look good only from one angle. ⁓ I didn't think about a turntable or 3D print at this stage. So this was kind of the angle I think I wanted. And I knew that I'm going to prop this part. So I just wanted to keep it clean as much as possible. ⁓ And then I started adding the beard. So all this are mostly very simple brushes I'm using like the clay build up standard, Damien standard, smooth brushes, some masks. That's it, not much. Only for this beard I use this nice to brush here. It's called Scales A. It's available in Jewish.
speaker-0: Wheels, huh? ⁓ wow. Interesting. Maybe like a little bit less sharp ⁓ version of snake hook kind?
speaker-1: Yeah, sweet. Kind of, yeah. This accidentally, I kind of discovered this, like it was lying in a Zubosh lightbox, I guess. So now I brought it out in my shortcuts here and here, I guess. So yeah, I think it kind of give it a nice look. Kind of over the apps a little bit, so give it a nice beard look. And let's see.
speaker-0: Now what about the like design, you know? Is it did you have a main inspiration or concept?
speaker-1: me, it's like, know, Wolverine is such a popular character, like everyone does Wolverine, right? So there's not much doing or searching for references. my, because I've done like at least five or six Wolverines before. So if you just make a nice portrait with a beard or without beard, just put a mask with fins and a yellow vest, that's it. You have your Wolverine in hand, right? Yeah. ⁓
speaker-0: I I think you definitely humble about it 'cause I think it's a I know I did a Wolverine too. And you know, there's a lot of different directions you can go. I Wolverine as a character and you you just even though you did it in three D, and we're gonna get to like how it looks more like a painting, but like in the end it's like a sick concept painting, like it could be a comic book cover of Wolverine. Like it is an awesome Wolverine design too and the expression and everything. So you did a great job not only with the style or whatever, but you know, you like created a a Wolverine look. That's sick. Yeah.
speaker-1: Thank you man. I'm very much inspired for Arkane as everyone does. But of course it's not like that. basically I wanted to do a painting in ZBrush, like poly painting. And I knew that I have limited time so I couldn't do something realistic. ⁓ And I love comic characters. The comic style. If you see my Instagram page or my portfolio, I have a lot of comic style stuff. I basically also paint the shadows and the lights a little bit in such a way that ⁓ maybe I'll explain you later when I... come to the polyp in stuff. But I still went on to Pinterest, which is my favorite place to go and search for references to see some styles you can take from. yeah, most of it from the arc and kind of a style.
speaker-0: Yeah, th these are cool. What was the inspiration for these products?
speaker-1: I I saw it from some of the references on Pinterest. It was long back, so I'm not sure. But I kind of interpreted it like, you know, it's kind of ripped off. Stamdex is of his cloth or costume. He just comes out and kind of curled or something like that. But without a texture, we can also think about something else, like some alien thing coming out of his body or something like that. But for me, it was more of ripped off. thin spandex parts of his costume and then they are so thick that they kind of curl onto it themselves. So that was...
speaker-0: Cool gives it more energy. Hey here we go. Look at that. Wow, big jump. How long did you spend doing the painting?
speaker-1: Painting was like ⁓ three hours or four hours or five hours max. Not much. Yeah, because painting becomes super quick because I was a commercial, I'm basically a commercial artist by education. So I love painting and drawing a lot, but then later on, you know, as you progress in your career, you have to start focusing and I started focusing on ⁓ sculpting, but I painting and drawing as well.
speaker-0: ⁓ god, I mean that that you should do more like this too. I mean, I know you are doing like the series, but yeah, the painting is yeah, it's very sophisticated. I w well first I'll just comment like looking at the finished work, the way that there's color, like kind of bounce lighting, and then there's also like visible brush strokes in certain directions. We can see it on his trap and then on the the hooded part, like you know, there's it feels like a very confident painter where you're just like you're doing stuff and it looks great and there's not second guessing or whatever. So definitely comes across. I would love ⁓ I'm you know, I just worked on a project too where I painted in Z brush for like the same kind of reasons, just 'cause it's fun and Arcane's awesome and it seems easy to do. I had trouble y you know, your yours looks very much like maybe a painting done in Photoshop or something, you know? And in with mine, I was just using basic stuff and so like you in Z brush, you know, like you'll see the brush kind of like dot dot dot, you know? Yeah. And it it wasn't as I didn't know how to do like creamy, smooth brush strokes. So anyways, it'd be cool to see if Yeah. How you're doing it.
speaker-1: Yes, so basically there is a brush called our paint.
speaker-0: Called it's just called paint, right? It's in the default
speaker-1: I call it R-Paint because I take some small changes here and there. It's a paintbrush basically. So think it has good settings there. So these are the settings for it. Or if you just use a standard brush with those settings, that should work.
speaker-0: And you can go pretty fast, huh? Like you can make pretty fast strokes and it won't it'll be smooth.
speaker-1: Yeah, it should. Yeah, that is very pretty smooth. Yeah, it is and it is
speaker-0: And did you even do a little ⁓ pressure size thing or no? Taper it? Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. So what I do is I usually just take down the RGB intensity and I kind of mix it with that. And that if I want to something like that. So I play with the RGB intensity. Also, I think with the paint brush, sometimes it doesn't give you that creamy strokes. Yeah. So what I do sometimes is I go to brush, tablet pressure. and RGB intensity so this is how I ratio I think it is by default something here so if you just raise it you kind of so let's see taking it down
speaker-0: ⁓ so it makes it more opaque because it's like not as sensitive to the pressure, is that right?
speaker-1: So now I have to push really hard to get there. even if you're not seeing it, it's not giving me that creamy thing, right? OK, cool, So yeah. So even this, I kind of discovered there. Let me undo this.
speaker-0: I'm gonna have to try these brush settings because yeah, for some reason like the only way I could get clean lines was to go very slowly. I don't know why it would like so anyways, yeah, I'll try to copy these settings and
speaker-1: That's cool. is really cool because even I was having the same issue before and like that's what happens you know when you do such quick projects you can ⁓ okay how do I do this you know I don't have time and let's search or let's do something and in that process I found that tablet pressure thing and yeah it's kind of a cheat actually because it's basically changing I the tablet pressure for everything I'm not sure but it works for painting so it's okay sometimes I do research ZBrush it gets buggy if you kind of mess up with that tablet pressure thing. But for painting it worked fine. This is that paintbrush and I also use this one. think it's a paintbrush as well but then with this alpha I think it's alpha 62 or you can even use any alpha.
speaker-0: That and that's to get your little hash marks there? Okay? ⁓ yeah, hell yeah, dude.
speaker-1: So you just play around like oil painting, you know, like. So basically I'm not trying to implement lighting very deliberately. I'm trying to mix it in such a way that, you know, even if you have an albedo color, it has variations, right? So I'm trying to mix it like that. So even if it has to lit in a software, it will work. It should work. Basically, I'm not trying to hard code it like, okay, the light is coming only from one direction. So that's how, if you see from all the direction, it's kind of works.
speaker-0: Yeah, this is great.
speaker-1: I've to the tones of not letting the viewer know where the actual highlight might be or where the light source might be.
speaker-0: Ambient right now. ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah, top down ambient, like maybe you can feel it over here on top of his head. But I can see that it's kind of in my shin leather, which has a nice variation on his albedo as well. So that's kind
speaker-0: So shout out to your guys Brow, bro. It looks sick. The front view. You don't you don't you know you don't get to appreciate the front view very much in the finals. It looks awesome. Looks like a looks like a crazy, you know, Joker Batman. You know what I mean? Yeah, you should do some Batmans too, dude. So did you know at this point, did you know how you were gonna render it or you know, are you experimenting kind of the whole time? Do you know if there's gonna be a cash shadow? Okay
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because at this point I thought, I'm not sure how it's going to look or how should I present it. My final aim for all my skull sketches are I want to make my sketches a bit presentable. But I'm not sure how it's going to look. But that's fine with me. I'm just trying to see that how I can do with ZBrush render passes, few of them. But I think even for this, I didn't even use much that render passes, I think. But I'll show you that later. So now I'm like doing some subtle changes. Yeah, so this is like a toy plastic shader. So if I fill object, so that shader is gone. So if I just use a toy plastic there with material all fill object.
speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Would you mind zooming into the teeth there? Is this towards the the end? Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, great. So you can see there's some color that you're painting and also it looks like, you know, to break up the highlight 'cause the highlight has these interesting shapes on all the teeth. So you have to be messing with the the surface form, right? ⁓
speaker-1: So I just do some random build up or standard just not to make it smooth.
speaker-0: The little light the little the little white dances around and it really does look like how you would just dot it on with some Yeah, on with a white paint or whatever if you were doing a two D. Yeah, that's really awesome. Very successful.
speaker-1: And I didn't even have time for this X thing, so I thought, let's just make the symbol there of X and then since I eventually thought of having this as the angle, ⁓ know, this highly kind of makes sense as well. So it's kind of cheating, but I didn't mind that. The thing is, see, this is like a thumbnail for me, like a thumbnail sketch. So if I have to put this into production later on, I can do that.
speaker-0: No.
speaker-1: I can make a nice logo there, like a 3D one. can basically, I have to neutralize this face and do a retopo and unwrap it, ⁓ texture it in Substance Painter or something like that and render it out in Arnold. ⁓ But I know that will take lot of time. This will take just maybe a day or maximum two. That's it. So that's the purpose of this project. Now I'll show you the one I did before. So basically, you must... be knowing that I have done a tutorial for this, like whole course of step by step, like full real time recording and commentary as well with the sped up one. So if you see this one, so this is the ⁓ older one basically, you know, and it took the same amount of time. And if you see it has a bit of a different look to it. So this was the one actually I did in that 10 hours, right? And then There were lot of comments on Instagram saying that you we want to see how your process is. But I didn't record this one. And then I said, OK, people want to know about it. And even I wanted to show the steps, everything. ⁓ So basically, I redid the whole Wolverine again. Wow. Second time. And this is the difference. Nice. And because I'm doing it second time, it becomes more crispier, more better than the previous one. And with the same amount of time. So that's the plus point of doing the sketchings. Because now it has been embedded into my brain, right? And I know what to do in the watch tabs. So if I took 10 to 15 hours for first one, maybe I took like a couple of hours less on this one. So I already increased my speed as well with the paint. And one more thing, if you use, I even use clay builder for fainting. if I just use builder and like use RGB.
speaker-0: Yeah, great, man. take you okay, yeah. So you t you take off the sculpting and you just use our
speaker-1: Yeah, the Rian and if you just, you see that. ⁓ yeah. It feels like oil painting, you know, with, if you have season thing. So if you just lower the intensity a little bit. So you can nicely. So this basically, since you have a control on the strokes, then you can kind of move around as per the liking. And if you don't like it, just basically, you know, overlap with the neighboring color, take it off. So basically start building.
speaker-0: That is nice actually.
speaker-1: the colors on top of each other. Just how people or the artists paint the miniatures, they kind of the colors on top of each other. So you can use a similar method, but of course you have to have your intensity of RGB a bit less so that they start overlapping and kind of builds up lot of colors on top of each other. So those subtle changes makes a lot of difference sometimes. It makes it feel like painterly.
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean that I think the subtle brush strokes and color work is is what took it to another level. Yeah. You can tell you've painted a lot before. Yeah.
speaker-1: And then I also use, I think, this one with very thin brush there to get those strokes. So because it has a nice dark color there, so when I put a stroke, kind of, you know, so it gives a nice highlights there. So similarly with the black lines. I kept it very sketchy, like use a ball pen for sketching. Kind of feel I wanted to for this character.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. like you know is it one of those things where like it's made to look like it's made with a pet and with a lot of energy but you're like meticulously slowly making it f fat and then thinks
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, also when I do this, maybe not for this character, but if maybe I'm not sure if I get time to show the Cyclops, I deliberately put those lines in particular areas so that even if it has to rotate, kind of doesn't look that bad. Because there are other techniques as well where you people are, know, like duplicating the mesh and like flipping it off and then putting the black color to get the outline right. So there's one more technique, but then if Since I didn't have time and I wanted to just use these brushes and finish off this project. This was a technique I had. I go to a specific angle and like see if it works from this angle and doesn't. So if it's not working from there, maybe I'll paint it off and again, redo that a little bit. What that is more clear on my other project, let's cycle up one, where I learned these things on this will rain.
speaker-0: Cool. How how much of the time would you say, you know, in your two days or two kind of sessions? Was it like mostly fifty fifty? Were the first part's modeling and the second part's the painting? Or did one part take longer than the other?
speaker-1: I think modeling I spent a lot, like 60 and then 40 for painting. Modeling is definitely more because I wanted, because once you have your forms kind of what you like, paint will just enhance it. ⁓ So yeah. And the paint for me goes very quickly, that form making.
speaker-0: great. You could really like do ⁓ you know like conceptual art and paintings and you know you
speaker-1: Yeah, so basically when I was in VFX industry, right, ⁓ that's what actually ⁓ made me apart from the models as well. And I'll also suggest, you know, people who are watching this that or want to get into the industry, that this kind of approach helps your supervisors in your VFX studio. I'm not sure in gaming how it works, because mostly my time was spent in VFX. Well, what happens is the client understands of some vague drawing sometimes to the supervisor and then the supervisor kind of approaches the modeler or can you sculpt or model this something like that. And I've seen a lot of modelers just spending weeks modeling it, then showing it to supervisors and then it's a long process to get the approval, right? ⁓ And I thought of, why not just quickly do a sculpt in the pose of the drawing which they have given and also render it out using poly paint and because sometimes the concepts they have given are painted as well. So I tried to recreate that in 3D. So it looks like concept art. And when you move it, they can go, oh, wow. So they kind of approve it very immediately. And the supervisor was happy, right? OK, yeah, the concept is approved. So now the modeler can sit on it for weeks and finish it off. my part of concept sculpting gets kind of appreciated by my supervisors. It's really cool that after that, I always used to get concept sculpting most of the times. And I should do this quick sculpting with painting. So my personal work actually helped me even in that. That's why I always tell students or upcoming artists that keep on doing your personal work. That is more important than, I think, even the job sometimes. Because in job, happens sometimes, you not necessarily get cool work to do when you enter the industry. And the best part is you go home, do your own stuff, right? No one is stopping you. you can do cooler stuff than what you get in the studio and you start putting it on your portfolio or like social media, share it with supervisors, check it out anyways, they know and then they say okay let's try this guy for sculpting next time. So that's a better way of getting the cool models to yourself.
speaker-0: Yeah. No a hundred percent. I mean, yeah, I I I definitely echo that. I hope people keep it up in a in a healthy way. And also like there's there's there's the creative satisfaction, which is huge. I think it's so good for morality and yeah, and not getting tied up in your job 'cause as you say you don't choose what you work on. Exactly. But also even like every time it's it's it it's happens in unexpected ways, but you've already pointed out in this project and you're like years in, right? That That you stumbled upon some brushes, you you know, you found ⁓ a brush setting to get a certain effect. And I find that happens all the time in personal work is we're able to experiment and play around and you like learn stuff and then on the actual job, I feel like I'm more using that stuff than exper like, you know, than taking time to play around. So you're playing around with your personal stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, what's this? It's like a statue.
speaker-1: Yeah, so basically once I made the whole tutorial, you I thought I will also give my buyers or whoever have purchased that thing to learn the course with the model itself. And I made a 3D printable model. So this is one. I think I also tested that with one of my printer friends. So he made the support for it, pre-supports, because I have a printer right now, but I have not yet started testing it out. So he helped me with the pre-supports and stuff. So this is what I gave it to him. So he made it. And then I have put it as a free model for them who have purchased this ⁓ course so that if they want, they can have look at it or if they want, can print it out and keep it on the desk. Something like that. ⁓
speaker-0: Do you have any of these printed yet? Has have you seen one in in real life?
speaker-1: Yeah, it's not with me, but I have the video I show you
speaker-0: Hell yeah. Yeah. Hell yeah, dude.
speaker-1: Yeah, so we printed it and basically because when I put my stuff as an STL, I want proof, you know, like, okay, has been tested. I don't want just one to upload the STL file and like it's broken. So Zuko is one of my friends who tested this out and we printed that and then I uploaded it for people to know. So basically I made use of my sculpt sketch as well.
speaker-0: Yeah, awesome dude. Yeah, yeah. Could I see the do I don't know if you have a Photoshop file with the passage or whatever. Like it'd be cool to see how you're returning it, you know, from Z Rush to a finished image. Yeah.
speaker-1: One second. So basically for this, I just use the shadow pass, not much. It's very subtle and most of it was the brightness and contrast and a subtle color balance changes. That's it, not much. But a lot of other projects which I have, I've done a lot of different passes to get different effects. But as I said, I was limited for this time. You just got the renders from ZBrush. Let me see if I can share that.
speaker-0: And are you doing it on like unlit material or the skin shade material or the skin shade four or whatever? So it's like kinda bright. But a little bit of shading then. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, the screen shadow. Yeah. Okay, cool. And I use the mask thing to just cut off the whole thing very nicely. And then I just paint off like a background with a gradient, like a radial gradient, and maybe put a nice logo there, which I want. And that's where I thought about this name, Sculpt Sketch. I said, okay, this is very quick. And like, if you see the first one, right, it's like it has the sketchy lines and stuff. So I thought, okay, so I'm doing something like Sculpt and Sketch. So let's put in a Sculpt Sketch.
speaker-0: Yeah, I love it.
speaker-1: And like these are different renders
speaker-0: Okay, yeah, for your presentation. Cool. Yeah, so pretty simple a lot done in Z Rush really. Yeah, yeah.
speaker-1: So yeah, so I just share some of the settings which I use. So basically, if you go to render BPR shadows, I kind of use this at 50, angle at 100. It kind of gives a soft shadow. Rest I keep as it is. And then when I render it,
speaker-0: Are you are you moving the light? Are you positioning the light before? ⁓ no.
speaker-1: not for this one. But sometimes what happens is if I don't see the highlight of the eyes, then I kind of move it down till I see the highlight. And it has still not affected the whole model much because of the way I've painted it. So I've still got the highlights as well there and it kind of pops out now. ⁓ And then once you render it, you get your render passes and export this to Photoshop and comp it as I showed you just now.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, even if you see I have painted the reflected orange light.
speaker-0: Like bounce light. Yeah, dude. It's so sick.
speaker-1: Yeah, so it makes a lot of difference to stats, you know, making it pop out.
speaker-0: Yeah. The painting really took it to the next I it's awesome model, like I say. And like the design again, like you know, you see all the angles are very sharp and all this like direction, a lot of energy. So yeah, very cool. Would you what would you say is like the main thing or the biggest thing that you learned or or kind of taking away from this? Seems like it may have influenced your your future ones too. What was the main takeaway?
speaker-1: Cool. Cheers, Yeah, the main takeaway was ⁓ I learned the new painting skills here. I should do it more in Substance Painter as well before, but some of the brushes which I used here, like now I discovered the scale brush here, then the paint brush, techniques of how to kind of get the shapes quickly and make it presentable at the end. So that was the takeaway from this. So I always say like, you Don't get demotivated in between because there's this process where you start. Let me show you one image if I can. Should I? Yeah, please. I have done this long back for some of my students. Yeah. Yeah. So long back I've done it for side Academy or I think they're in Wales. So I think so I've done it for them. But I wanted to, you know, put my thought process and how people or artists sometimes struggle. I might be wrong, but this is what I feel and.
speaker-0: Yes.
speaker-1: that's what I'm trying to explain here. You when you start a project, you are super excited, are adrenaline so high that you want to get started soon and do a lot of stuff. So the first 70 % is your fastest way of being, maybe 60 or 70 % maybe, somewhere around there, where you start sculpting, go to a level where you find, oh it's looking cool, cool, cool. And then at a point it comes where it starts dipping a bit, where it slows down, you don't know how to carry forward, how to take it ahead. and you kind of come to a plateau where it's doing nothing for you. And then most of your work kind of gets shelved. When you go into the deep like this, it gets shelved, you just want to do something new because you have already spent like a few weeks and you got bored with that work sometimes. So you again, maybe after a few weeks, you want to do a new concept. So you again go back. But if you don't break this circle, of trusting the process, you will always go into that loop. If you trust the process, kind of ⁓ climb it a bit higher, you learn new skills, you kind of search for other artists who doing stuff and try to increment that into your work and try to kind of finish your work, even if it's good or bad, try to finish it off. And that's where the final 10 % comes and you kind of finish it. And you feel good about it. gives you a confidence boost, right? once you hit that, you know the process. And once you know the process, you know that I'm going to hit the demortation point, and I know how to tackle that. So that's how I explain
speaker-0: So that that's and then when they drop down the plateau, that's the people that like, you know, it gets tough or they're not happy and then they start over because it's it's easier and it's more fun to start, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think this is super common. I love that you're depicting the trust the process there of just someone walking over an invisible bridge like Indiana Jones or something. That that's a really good way to put it. You gotta j you gotta just you just gotta you know, you just gotta know that the bridge is there.
speaker-1: Yeah, this happened with my very first project in my career, know, like ⁓ it was in 2003 when I was working on a challenge competition on CG Society, you know, it was there. I think, let me, this one, any time sooner or later, this is a very old one, this from 2003.
speaker-0: Maybe maybe but if it's pretty vague.
speaker-1: Yeah, it is very old. So I've been doing this personal work since that time. Like this is... And I was in the gaming industry that time, you know, like, and I didn't get cool stuff to work. So I started doing these challenges and stuff. So what happened? Yeah, it got the sixth place. It was a, I think, international competition that time. And the thing is, I finished this whole stuff. It was a three month competition and I used 3D Max Studio that time. and it got kind of finished but I didn't like it so I didn't want to submit it but one of my colleagues he said he came to my side and said you know Rishi why don't you just try a different angle and you know it to perspective and render it out that's where I tried it I liked it I submitted I even won one of the prizes there and that actually taught me a lesson trust the process you know like you have done it good it's just that maybe look at it from a different perspective you might completely change the way you look at your own stuff which might not be looking good. that's how I kind of treated that throughout my career and it helped me a lot. So trust me.
speaker-0: Great. I mean, ⁓ another thing I I tell people in the same kind of line of advice is that if you are starting a lot and then stopping and letting yourself stop and restart, it it is one, it's kind of training a groove that you probably don't want to be doing. Now it gets easier and easier to bail. But also if you see what's happening, if there's the whole process, you're getting the most reps and experience in the beginning. And and what we all want is to make work that Yeah. We're proud of and we feel like is a reflection of our skills. And if you're not doing that last ten percent, then you're never gonna get better then you won't be able to do that. Like you do have you do have to finish projects that you think are not your best to learn how to do it. So that is your best.
speaker-1: Yeah, that's so important. So I think if students or people can know about that, that will help. Because the thing is we learn the hardware sometimes, but when they kind of listen to this thing, I hope they can implement it immediately so that they know, OK, I'm going to go through these phases and these guys have talked about it. So maybe that might help them to kind of know that trust the processing.
speaker-0: Absolutely man. It's great to hear you say it and it's one of the reasons why I like talking to people and sharing it with other people that are interested in this stuff because they hear they'll hear the same kinds of things and they go, ⁓ this is part of it. This is the process, you know? Yeah, exactly. It's to feel doubt and ⁓ and all that and just push through.
speaker-1: Yeah, just imagine, I'm doing this for the second time, right? I just told you that I have to recreate this whole stuff. It's such a boring thing to recreate something. But I did it with the same enthusiasm because I just thought, OK, why not? Let's see. ⁓ Can it be better than before? file sometimes crashes. I don't cry. Yeah. Because I think, OK, maybe it has happened for the good. Maybe I'll do better than before instead of, ⁓ I haven't done such a good job before. Instead of thinking that, just think I'll do better than what I did before.
speaker-0: Like Ben Great attitude. And I I've noticed that I don't crash as much anymore. Thank goodness. But yeah, anytime that would happen and we lose a bunch of work, ⁓ if you've you know finally muster it up, it's almost always better, right? Maybe always it's better. About that, I usually ask people at the end of their project, like when talking about this, I'll say, if you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently? So it's kind of interesting because you did do it twice. So maybe you could speak on what are the most tangible differences when you did it again. What were the things you intentionally did differently? What did you like more about it? Is there anything that you didn't like from the first time that you intentionally avoided? Like what what's the difference? Yeah.
speaker-1: The only thing happened here was I was kind of conscious of doing second time so I knew I wanted to do it more finished than before because the first one which I did was more fluidly done I wanted to do the same thing but in a finished manner but then when I was comparing it with the before and after he looks kind of a beefy which I wanted that look but ⁓ I didn't get that much he kind of slightly leaned down it still looks good not that bad ⁓ but this had that beef loop which I wanted in the first part. So those things happen, but that's fine. I got a you know, finished thing. Now, if you see the previous one, it is not as finished from this side. I didn't even try to paint this one, but since I was doing a tutorial and the course thing, I wanted to make it finish for everyone who kind of wants to enjoy this whole thing.
speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ I see ⁓ more of a three D model now.
speaker-1: Exactly. And the thing is, it took the same amount of time. And for the proof, I have the real-time footage I've provided with that thing. So yeah, I enjoyed a lot doing second time. But that's because I was doing a tutorial. Maybe I will not do it every day or on every project. Yeah, it becomes a bit dull. But as you said, if file crashes, maybe you have to do something second time, or things like this in such instances. We have to do that. Other than that, second time is not that enjoyable but the only thing you can think positive is how do I do it better.
speaker-0: Great. ⁓ another question I like to ask people is is what would you tell your younger self? What kind of advice would you give your younger self? I know you t we mentioned about trusting the process and you know, that kind of lesson in two thousand three. Is that the kind of thing it would be or or if you could go back and give yourself a little piece of advice when you were coming up over there?
speaker-1: I think in the beginning, my time management was not that great, like working wise. But as I started getting the jobs, what happens is you work from nine to five lots of times, right? And I've seen people going very late from the office. And then I was thinking, you know, how do I kind of do the job and still work on the personal projects, you know? So that's where the type management kind of clicked for me and I said, okay, whatever happens. I'm going to come on time in the office, maybe early, like an hour or half an hour early, know, plan everything, whatever the task is, and visualize everything that I have to finish this by the end of the day, like five o'clock. I don't want to sit like till seven o'clock or nine o'clock, you know. So I had to plan that, and I just started executing that because my aim was to go home. Yeah. And you, you know, good work to my service, like whatever job I'm doing, I don't want to do any less work for them. So I do the best in that eight or nine hours and try to not waste time here and there. Finish it off, go back home as soon as possible, get ready and start your juicy stuff. More juicy stuff sometimes. ⁓ So slowly I kind of realized that later in my career. But when I realized it, I kind of gained a lot of confidence in my work while doing the jobs which I'm doing in VFX because... My speed started increasing, my confidence started increasing. So what type of projects or creatures or what it is, I could do it very quickly because of that. So yeah, that helped me a lot. So if I could have done it earlier, maybe I could have been slightly more better probably. So yeah, that was one of the things, time management, I think very important for artists. Even today, I think if you cannot manage the time, it's going to be very tough, even for personal work. Exactly. Basically, you need to visualize everything in your mind a little bit like, okay, this is what I want kind of, of course, when you start doing it, you will kind of realize how it's in which direction is going a hint which you have in your mind should always be there. It will help you as I said, towards the process thing.
speaker-0: Yeah. Alright, yeah, well what are you making next? I know you did ⁓ yeah. Cyclops and are you doing more of these and you want to show that? What are the what are the next projects you're doing?
speaker-1: Yes.
speaker-0: This is great man. This is like a different style though too. Yeah. It's like cell shaded.
speaker-1: different slide right yeah yeah one single tick of the concept which is that thing
speaker-0: Nice, yeah the a the hair highlight is sick too. Crazy.
speaker-1: So, yeah, even Scott was kind of happy about it. He kind of liked it. So, the thing is, as I said, you know, I made these outlines very deliberate so that it looks kind of good from this beauty shot as well. And then when you kind of rotate it, it still kind of helps. So, I put it in such a way that it kind of... You can see the outline here. And when you rotate it, it still kind of looks not that bad. It kind of looks like a comic drawing there. So, this is quite simplified and very graphical sculpt. And then for this, I think I took... it to Marmoset and just do the quick lighting a little bit. Let me see if I have that because I want you to try it out there. So yeah, I'm still in the learning stage of Marmoset. Unreal, I have to still touch it. It is for an easier kind of feel. I said it's very nice. And it has those settings in the cameras, like a lot of post-production settings. It's really cool. Yeah, definitely. I think I did this on.
speaker-0: Mars that's fun and easy.
speaker-1: So this was a more in-bama set. So it kind of gives a nice depth of field. So there's two lights, one is the pre-light, one is the back light. That's it. I have put the lights deliberately on the back so that it kind of mimics the highlight which I have painted already.
speaker-0: Cool.
speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. And then just, think I use a few shaders for the highlights over here on this red part, but not much. Try to keep it simple. Yeah, very cool. And then in Photoshop, sync. ⁓ one second. Yeah. So that did. Yeah. So when I rendered it out of Mano set, I kind of felt, ⁓ it has to kind of pop out a little bit more and I was like experimenting with what kind of background I want and stuff. And those background.
speaker-0: Yeah, nice.
speaker-1: kind of makes a lot of difference sometimes, you know. So I trying different colors and different shades and this is kind of the color which I kind of liked and I thought that kind of complementing the orange and the yellowish. So this one and I just added those few strokes there and kind of kind of make it a bit nicer there. So if you see this is just one pass from Marmoset and that's it. With some brightness and contrast and some color correction like with the color balance thing. Yeah, this thing I usually use. to try and change if I wanted warmer or cooler. And that's it for this one. So yeah, this is just like a two day project again, which I made. ⁓ And the thing is this personal project don't pay you, but it basically makes you happy.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I can see you already got two going. I mean I you might as well do the whole X Men, you Yeah, sick man. All right. Well, ⁓ anything you like to let people know about that's that are listening, I'm gonna put obviously your your socials and your ⁓ art station project in the description, but yeah, you mentioned you have tutorials and anything else if people wanna learn more about what you do or learn more from you, ⁓ where can they go?
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, I'll do that. Yeah, I think I have my sub-sketch course on my art station. So if people like to see my workflow. So basically I have done, I think, 10 hours recording with commentary, as well as there's a full real-time footage also been provided without the commentary, because that's like 20 or 15 hours of work. And I also done an iPad version of the Catwoman. Is it the Catwoman? Yeah, think so. So I've done that as well. So they can try it out if they want to use iPad. So if you're going out somewhere and if you have an iPad, you can still try things in ZBrush on that. So because I was not comfortable doing iPad when I was out, but then I was stuck outside for four days. But luckily I had my iPad. I said, OK, let me try. And it was fun. It is a bit slow because you're not used to the UI and stuff. But it was fun. I completed that. I added that as a bonus chapter in the course. yeah, if people want to have a look at it.
speaker-0: Yeah. have you thought about trying things like Nomad? I think Nomad is
speaker-1: I've seen a lot of cool stuff coming out of Nomad. I think the shadows and stuff works quite well.
speaker-0: Me too. I haven't tried it yet, but yeah, it looks cool.
speaker-1: Zivrus is because I'm so used to Zivrus, know, like just I'm used to Maya. It's very difficult to shift. Like I want to learn Blender for years, but it's very difficult to shift, know. Yeah, it is. Maybe I'm old school, but I want to shift things at some point. yeah, no matter I'm seeing people showing some nice shadows and stuff in real time. It's really cool. Maybe I'd like to try that out. Yeah.
speaker-0: Exactly. Yeah, it feels like you can do honestly, it feels like you could make this qu level stuff on an iPad end to end 'cause you wouldn't need like Marmoset and Photoshop and all that stuff. So that's what's interesting to me. But I don't do much work on the iPad, but when I see people posting I think wow, that's cool. I if I was younger and I probably would get into that.
speaker-1: I said like, you know, I don't try and go to iPad. It's only when I'm outside. If I don't have anything, let's do something. So yeah, iPad is the way to go.
speaker-0: Yeah. Well ⁓ yeah, then like I said, I'll put links below if you guys wanna check out you know, obviously check out this full work in resolution and I mean in its full glory there. And then check out his sculpt sketch tutorial and everything. Thank you very much for your time, Rashikesh. I I appreciate it, dude. Been a fan for a while. I know we corresponded
speaker-1: Basically, to let everyone know, even I started rendering learning from you. My first one was that guy in the yellow.
speaker-0: Yeah, the Arnold ⁓ tutorial, yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, so that was my first thing in that actually to boost my confidence of renting in Arnold because before that I never used to render stuff. Your tutorial really helped me. ⁓ I'm to go through your Unreal thing as well. Hopefully some went soon because I'm busy with my commission work and this personal stuff. But yeah, I have to go through that.
speaker-0: ⁓ great. I know, we all want to learn a bunch of things. I appreciate it, dude. And I mean you're cooking up awesome stuff, so you're inspiring too. And cheese. ⁓ thank you for sharing your process with everyone. I mean it's inspiring stuff and you know, I'm I love hearing this. I'm sure a lot of other people do and thank you, man. So yeah, thank you. And thank you everyone for listening up till now. And ⁓ yeah, other than that, catch you guys in the next one.
speaker-1: Cheers. Bye bye. Cheers.
