As many of you know, I am interning at Accardo Design with Professor Accardo as my boss/mentor and advisor. It’s been an interesting few weeks at his studio and I haven’t updated on my work there for a while so let’s see where I am currently with my assignment! If you recall, I was tasked with 3D modeling Professor Accardo’s original character named Topsy and his best buddy The Professor.
Me, looking dapper, while at Accardo Studios!
Using the program Sculptris by Pixologic, the maker’s of ZBrush, I’ve been sculpting Topsy for a few days now; everyday I add a bit more to him and now I can finally see his likeness! Here we see a screenshot of what I had finished after working on him all week. It’s a rough form of him. I got the basic shapes of his anatomy down and stopped there.
The beginnings of Topsy!
When I was given the assignment, I had intentions of modeling Topsy in Autodesk Maya as that is where my element with art and animation lies. However, Professor Accardo advised I use a different program called Sculptris. This was the first time I had ever heard of Pixologic as well as their awesome programs ZBrush and Sculptris. It is a free program you can easily find by going to Pixologic’s website here. Unfortunately, ZBrush is not a free program but I totally recommend anyone purchase it if you are a 3D modeling enthusiast. If I could afford it, I would totally purchase it myself!
Me, looking dapper, while at Accardo Studios!
After messing with Sculptris for the past few days, I’m starting to get the hang of this program and I find it’s actually quite fun to use! I’m so used to Autodesk Maya that when I first started using Sculptris, I had to sit through two hours worth of tutorials just to figure out what it does. The two programs are just so dramatically different but with some major similarities. If you’ve been reading through my other blogs, you know I’m the type of person whom likes to hit the ground running, so to speak. I never watch tutorials unless I’m totally stumped or doing something that has me feeling way over my head. Well, with Senior Project looming over my head like a bad omen, that’s exactly how I felt so out popped the tutorials!
Midway point.
Anyways, I had a few hours of “free time” away from my Senior Project assignment so I decided to work on him for a while today. Well, more like I needed to work on something else other than that for today or I was going to lose my mind. Either way, he is coming out well and I’m excited to see how he progresses through the week! Stay tuned to see how I finish modeling Topsy and when I finally begin on the more complex looking character The Professor!
What I have now.
In case anyone forgot how he looked, here is The Professor holding his awesome hat named Topsy!
Topsy with The Professor!
