It's.......Tad!

After some tutorials and problem solving I've managed my way through Mental Ray. It defintately presents interesting dilemas that are not typical of using the maya software renderer. I'm happy with the look. My next step now that I've used Mental Ray for the first time and Sub-Surface Scattering...I will now make my way onto the techniques in the book, "Stop Staring: 2nd Edition".
Comments, crits welcome.

Busy week

So it's been a very busy week. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get as much personal artwork done. Next week will be different. For the time being I'm posting two sketches and a line drawing. The line drawing is something I came up with when I was working on my Gnome project and had gotten a really bad migraine. During the migraine I decided to sketch a weird self-port of (since I had gnomes on my mind) gnomes ripping open my head and poking my brain. This drawing entitled "migraine" for the time being is yet another project I'm working on and am currently in the process of painting it in Painter X. I'm also working on an anti-war poster and a few other traditional styles pieces of work that are going on along side my 3d art. Expect to see updates on Tad next week and most likely the 3d model of the gnome.

Side work

My gnome is coming along very well...in the meantime...since my gnome is a fairly higher rez character, I decided to create one of my sketches in 3D.

I had sketched a large eyed, tadpole kind of character. I came up with a little backstory for him and am actually interested in creating a very short story for him...something I could create during the time that my project with the gnome will still be heavily in the pre-prod stage. These are some images of "Tad".

I've included the first sketch of Tad that I drew. With this sketch I've included four renders of Tad at the end of the modeling.
I plan on texturing him with a sub-surface scattering shader and plan on rendering him in mental ray.

I figure since my gnome is more complex in detail I can use Tad to learn the process of a number of things: Sub-Surface Scattering, Mental Ray and to learn the animation and rigging techniques Jason Osipa teaches in his second edition of Stop Staring. I figure I can practice these things on a simple character and make sure I've got them handled...and then move on to a much more complex character such as the gnome.