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I’ve done a bit more ZBrushing on this guy, but the big breakthrough for me was rigging and posing him in Maya. I used a plugin called The Setup Machine that enabled me to rig the figure in about 15 minutes.

This is exciting, as it’s the first figure that I’ve sculpted, rigged, and is animatable! WooHoo!

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In the post below I uploaded a couple of images that I rendered in Maya of a copy of Ray Harryhausen’s Cyclops character that I sculpted in ZBrush. After I uploaded it, I noticed that it looked a bit different than it was intended to. For technical reasons that I’m still figuring out, the proprtions of the character changed when I imported it to Maya.

The images above are how the guy looks in ZBrush. I’m right in the middle of a leaning curve with this stuff, but I’m beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I just want to get to the point where I can concieve an idea, sculpt it, rig it and animate it! Is that too much to ask?!?

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This weekend I went to the San Diego Comic-Con to hang out with some friends, but I really went to meet Ray Harryhausen. He was there signing books, DVDs, figures and comics that were for sale. I went first thing in the morning to the booth he was at, and I was relieved, and amazed that there weren’t more people lined up to meet him.

Harryhausen was one of the handful of heroes to my friends and myself as we made our way into the SFX and animation industries. We used to study his films on super 8 in search of the magic secrets of animation. When I met him, and shook his hand, I was still hoping that some of that magic would rub off. Ray Harryhausen inspired at least two generations of filmmakers with his superhuman efforts; there must be some sort of medal available for a man that animated seven skeletons fighting live actors, in an era when video tap wasn’t even a concept, let alone a reality.

After half the day wandering around the con and having lunch with friends, I went back up to my hotel room to relax, and the next thing I know I’ve got my computer on, with ZBrush loaded, and continued sculpting a CG figure of the Cyclops from 7th Voyage of Sinbad, that I had started earlier in the week. I got so involved with it, that I never did get back down to the convention that day. And by the time I couldn’t see anymore and had to call it a night, I was determined to go back to the Harryhausen booth and buy a DVD just so I could meet him again.

It’s not every day you get to meet a guy that was a one man genre, single-handedly drawing, sculpting and animating virtually every frame of film he ever worked on. And it’s not everyday you get to shake the hand that shook Willis O’Brien’s hand. So I was determined to make the most of it. Unfortunately, I was very much tongue tied, but I was at least able to tell Mr. Harryhausen how much he means to us, and the effect he had in steering us in the directions that we eventually went.

The images posted above are of a work very much in progress, it still needs much more sculpting and detailing before it’s done.

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The rendered images above are of my Draggin’ Dragon character, which is a work in progress, the ones below are a test figure to see if I could get anatomical detail. Both the models were done using ZBrush2, over the July 4th weekend in between my freelance work and family fun.

ZBrush is an amazingly intuitive program. Before I bought it, I watched a few tutorial videos at the Pixologic website and the ZBrush Central forum. Immediately after opening the box and installing the software I was able to sculpt most of the guy below in one evening. It is the most comfortable 3D modeling environment I’ve used, because it’s designed for the way pencil pushers like me think. Very cool!

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