--I started this project after i took some time off. For this piece i wanted to just throw myself into the details and the goal was to create something that was fantasty driven but subtle enough to seem as though it could feasibly exist. I wanted to create something wholly from myself without mimicing someone else's concepts. My fiance suggested the theme of alien farmer and it sounded like a fun challenge. I pursued my initial idea of an alien gas harvester. I wanted him to be an older blue collar worker with more common apparel and gear but worn and used. I also knew i wanted to keep fairly human-esque anatomy and proportions so i could also turn it into an anatomy study. I wanted to portray a sense of 'worn determination'. I chose the specific proportions of larger hands and feet to portray more a sense of him working w/ his hands and feet to get his tasks done. I also wanted to portray his mild alien-ness in the form of his evolved Olfactory glands which help him detect subtle molecular changes in the air.
--I built him in such a way that i could have a 'nude' basemesh and gear and clothing as seperate pieces so i could focus on each completely as opposed to using the tricks of game models and only creating what you 'see' and 'need' prior to proxying, mirroring, etc. All of his base mesh was created in maya and then imported into zbrush to sculpt out the details. Initially I wanted to keep it a sculpt but I think I would like to eventually take it to game resolution complete with textures and materials. The final images are renders from zbrush.
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WIP Harvester
I started making the actual harvester he uses in his trade. I thought it would be a fun image for an older blue collar guy to be effortlessly pulling around this behemoth of a machine while going through his daily job routines. So i started w/ some blocky 3d concepts to get a sense of the shape and put a lot more thought into the logistics of such a machine as i was playing with shapes. The core elements i wanted to portray was a typical road tanker crossed w/ these spider like support legs with repulsor lifts and a gyro mounted stabilizing arm to assist in moving it around. I try to make sure everything can be fully articulated if it was a real object, so all the pieces or the legs and gyro arm are setup heirarchally to swivel or bend appropriately. It's still very much a WIP and this is only maybe 20% of the modeling done (about 3 days into the construction of the vehicle itself). I might end up upping the scale of the tanks themselves and I still need to add the extending vacuum arm off the top and the tons of hoses, cables, and details to bring this piece to life.
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-all images in this post are the copyright of Adam Smith
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