Polybook – Aaron “The Cabbage Detective” Rudderham

[Aaron Rudderham]

Hey there!

Well the punishment has been decided. If I don’t complete these two projects before the first of February I must sing “Bicycle Race” by Queen on an exercise bike whilst eat a popsicle and with someone pelting fake snow at me. Quite a tall order so it’s rather good I won’t have to do it… right?

So delving into 2D more now, did quite a few of the details and blocked out the main colours. I’m still at the “I don’t know wtf I’m doing” stage of 2D art but hey I was at that stage with 3D for like 6 months and I’m still there every so often.

So once I add hands, add more details such as wrinkles and shininess, add more nuance to the colours, add the text, make the background more interesting, replace the cropped cereal which is just a placeholder and about 30 other things and then I’ll have a below average product, neat! Gotta start somewhere though, right? Haha

Also if you’re curious this is what it looks like in the render so far:

Well if you’ll excuse me I’ma head back to work, but until next time (or until I start perusing the other polybooks again) I wish you a good day, Happy Blending!

[yukino hatake]

@thecabbagedetective 

Damn wish I could see you’re punishment xd would be so fun. But now onto you’re work. There is indeed still some work like extra details. Especially the flakes looks more like Paper pieces floating on milk. But once you will start adding details extra shading and lightning this will be really cool. I really love the concept you went for Aaron. I’ll keep on rooting to see this be completed. Again you’re doing a great job keep this up buddy

[silentheart00]

@thecabbagedetective Hey, it’s coming together for sure.  it looks like your unwrap is causing some wonky issues with the texture on the cereal box (look at the circle), so be cautious of that.  It would probably work best to unwrap the unsubsurfed box and then apply the subsurf after texturing in this case.  Also looks like you haven’t quite erased out the “bleeding” color for the sphere, either.  Top, slightly to the right, and bottom right.

[Aaron Rudderham]

@yukinoh1989 Thaaaaank you! Hopefully the finished project will live up to your expectations!

[Aaron Rudderham]

@silentheart00 Wow how didn’t I notice that, cheers for pointing that out, that would’ve been embarrassing. Thanks for pointing that out!

[Aaron Rudderham]

2 outta 3 done now!

“Demons need a healthy start to the day too, and what could be better than a big bowl of Sinnamon Bone Crunch Flakes?”

It was fun trying to merge my 2D and 3D skills together, especially when you consider that my 2D skills are… questionable haha. Either way is was a very awesome project to work on and I’m very happy that it’s finally complete.

For those curious I posted it on the gallery here, on Twitter here and on ArtStation here. I’m done with Blender for the night, but come tomorrow I’ll take yet another browse throughout the CG Cookie forums and return to The Eye… With a Sack. Until then, have a good day and happy Blending!

[Aaron Rudderham]

“Armed with only sheer determination and threatening fingerguns, one fierce little eyeball will protect his valuables at any cost. Meet Isaac, the eye with a sack.” 

With only an hour and a half left I just scraped in, finishing all of my projects before February, so no hilariously embarrassing video for you! HA!

Well I intend to continue the Acting for Animator’s course, so you’ll get a lesser version of that. Bugger.

After some initial trepidation with the rigging it actually went surprisingly smoothly. The exception being the eyeball, had to move that manually because it just wouldn’t work. I was going for a rather simple background and I think I pulled it off well, especially the hills back there. I’ll be doing a clay render in the morning and then I’ll be uploading it to the gallery, but until then, have a good night and happy Blending!

[Aaron Rudderham]

Also one thing I forgot to mention is that whilst I have been on Twitter for a while (which you can see here) but I’m now also on Instagram and Tumblr, so if you’re into any of those and want to follow me there then go ahead!

[smurfmier1985]

@thecabbagedetective This turned out as a fun and colorful piece, I like it makes me smile 😊

Since you mention wanting to do the acting for animators, I’ve been wondering.. are you still aiming to go into game dev? Or have your plans for the future changed? The things you’ve been modeling are looking better every time your doing a new project, you’re getting better with shading too, but you haven’t done anything game related so far (besides playing a lot of games of course 😛). And acting for animators doesn’t necessarily convey in this realm as well (unless you want to become a game animator, like me 😬). Nothing wrong with doing a course just for fun of course, but it made me wonder about your future plans.

Last year you mentioned you were working on a ‘script’ (you used another word for it but I forgot what it’s called), a ‘script’ for the dream game you hoped to one day make, but I haven’t heard you mentioning it since. Is the dream still alive?

Sorry, just being curious over here 😎😛

[Aaron Rudderham]

@smurfmier1985 Why thank you!

And my answer to that is yes! Whilst it’s incredibly unrealistic my dream is to create a videogame by myself, as in my eyes I see it as the ultimate creative challenge, as you have to learn so many things such as modelling, animating, drawing, music, programming etc to make it decent, let alone great. My first project would need to be small, obviously. Unfortunately I might not get to do some animating for a while due to me wanting to enter two competitions: the NVIDIA Metropia 2042: Characters of the Future competition and The Rookie Awards 2019, though I’m still going to attempt to make things that would assist me in making games, such as anatomy, rigging, hair cards etc, though I’m not sure if I have enough suitable pieces for The Rookies (as you’re supposed to display a portfolio, so I’ll let you and the others be the judge of that) so I might just make a few pieces and dive head first into animating.

I believe you’re referring to the GDD, or Game Design Document, in which yeah I’ve written out the 1-page and 10-page version, but considering that this is my dream game it’s also not the game I’d make first so I thought it’d be best not to go “all in” on it just yet, not until I understand how to make games.

I appreciate the curiosity! It allows me to share my thoughts and ideas in a way that would come off as self centered if I was just throwing it up into the air, so it’s always nice to talk about this stuff. Have a good day now and I’ll be sure to pop into your polybook sometime today!

[smurfmier1985]

@thecabbagedetective You have enough pieces to fill a portfolio, but if you’re aiming to show a game related portfolio you’ve got some work to do 😉 a great portfolio is usually focused on a specialty though, I think yours at the moment is a bit more general? Might be something to consider, thinking about what the focus of your portfolio should be. Unless you want to score a job as a 3D generalist of course, or at a smaller company where you have to wear different hats of the 3D process.

By the way, some inspirational videos for you: This guy is making his dream game all by himself and is documenting the process, they’re fun to watch and I’ve picked up a few ideas from it 😊

He’s using Unreal Engine and the build in Blueprint System to make it. Blueprint is great for artists! It is Visual Scripting, so using nodes instead of coding. Unity will also get its own visual scripting system by the way, I believe somewhere this year, and I’ve already bugged Gonzo about making a course for it, he seemed very into it. So that would be a great course and tool for you once you want to create your first game, coding made easy and fast 😬

I like talking about making games. I’m aiming to becoming a game animator someday, as well as at some point making a playable level myself to be able to actually use the game animations I create, should be fun! So it’s great to have someone to talk about it 😃

Good luck with the contests! Keep us updated 😬👍🏻

  

PS Wayne is working on a Rigging Bootcamp, it’s currently in the preproduction stage. So if you’re willing to wait a bit with learning that you will have a great learning resource for it 😎

[Palo Piktor]

@thecabbagedetective  Hi Aaron. Would you be interested to join me and some other volunteers on the journey of creating an open world postapocalyptic Metro/Stalker style game ?   Consider it as warmup before working on your own game 🙂

[Aaron Rudderham]

@smurfmier1985 Yeah, one thing that’s always concerned me is I want to learn everything, which I love learning don’t get me wrong, but in terms of job prospects it doesn’t help. Hence why I’m gonna have to either wave the little white flag and commit to one avenue or pray to some higher being in that being a generalist pays off (not to imply specializing is bad, far from it, it’s just I personally don’t like the idea of doing it). Though wearing different hats for a small company sounds neat, especially if it’s an indie video game studio…

I’m definitely going to be keeping an eye on those vids, cheers! Maybe I’ll do something similar in the future. I like the idea of the blueprints but to my knowledge of Unreal and coding they’re best utilized when used in unison with C++, so I still definitely want to learn that. Would probably be a great way to start, as you said, get some assets moving and whatnot.

Thank you for the good luck, and I wish you an equal amount in your animating!

Wayne is working on a Rigging Bootcamp

That’s all you had to say…

[Aaron Rudderham]

@thepainter I’m admittedly going to be quite a bit busy for the next few months so not sure how much I could help in that time but if you’re okay with that and my current skill level then by all means shoot me either an email or a Twitter/Instagram DM (they’re open) so we can further discuss!

[Aaron Rudderham]

So I decided to enter Nvidia’s Characters of the Future competition (details here if any of you are interested in joining) by starting out and doing absolutely nothing related to characters and/or the future whatsoever! I decided to model one of the props in the scene, namely a dumbbell:

I was going for a slightly stylized photoreal look (is that a thing?) and outside of a few details like scratches on the handle I think I did a pretty good job so far. Though the “screws” are looking oddly matte, despite having very low roughness. Maybe it’s the HDRI or the depth of field, I’m not sure…

Well with that, I wish you all a good night and happy Blending!

[Author]

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