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WIP : Elegant Seahorse Part I




As promise to myself, I have decided to begin publishing my Work-in-progress pieces on my blog . I hope that by doing this, I can push my self to continue developing my portfolio outside of work and to also get some useful critique and pointers from others.

I spent about 7 hours this week, upgrading my elegant seahorse concept. Before I began working on it, the creature looked like this :



After 7 hours, I was able to base-block the scales on the upper body and play with mid-range details.

After a lot of messing around, I decided that hand-sculpting in the scales would be the best route for this project. Since the seahorse is already posed and asymmetrical, I felt as if hand sculpting vs, using alphas wouldn't be that much of a difference, since I could't lay out alphas on the symmetry line and since the scales needed to flow with the form.


My hope is that by next week, I will have most of the mid level details done on the seahorse body so that I can begin to refine and shape the fins. Now that I have a method, refining the scales is going by rather quickly.

After finishing them, I might have to add back in some of the muscle masses underneath.. The neck feels like it is flattening out.


WIP Elegant Seahorse Part 02 >>

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