Zbrush Dinosaurs and 3D Prints

[edu]

As i've said in the past, i love this model, and this pose specially. I love relaxed poses, quite tired of always roaring/excited animals. As you are not releasing this one, i hope you work on a second rex sometime soon!

[Bokisaurus]

Lovely rex! How about a medusaceratops next?

[Gorgonzola]

Lovely rex! How about a medusaceratops next?

Medusaceratops would be pretty fun to do.  Fortunately nearly all ceratopsians have the same body morph so it's not hard to change one into another.

Here's a colored render of the Allosaurus I just finished for Chris (BladeOfTheMoon.) This isn't the final pose that was decided, but I wanted to change it up. I'll be sending him this painted up fellow in his finalized pose once I texture the base too.



And for those curious, here's some WIP shots I took of the Allosaurus as I worked on it. I took my T. rex model that I sculpted late last year and modified that, pushing and pulling shapes until I got the silhouette looking right. After that it was a matter of carving and sculpting the surface to get the proportions in line for this type of animal, since the proportions of a rex are crazier. Then detail, detail, detail.

[tyrantqueen]

I like the colour schemes you use for your dinosaurs How do you come up with them?

[Gorgonzola]

I like the colour schemes you use for your dinosaurs How do you come up with them?

Haphazardly, lol. 

I've done some color studies in the past with dinosaurs, coming up with color schemes and all that but the majority of the time I find my brain ends up grinding to a halt if I'm trying too hard to think of something that's neat and wow and all that.

With the past three (Nasuto, Rex, and the Allosaurus), I pretty much go into it with a vague idea and let it build out from there. For instance, the Allosaurus started with the thought of "Not like the rex" and "Wouldn't mind him having a blue head." Once I got a little into it I quickly looked up some reference of pheasants or a turkey and went from there.  It's a very back and forth process, with the reference and imagination informing each other the entire time. Typically it usually starts with an idea, and once something hits on that it'll make me think "You know, it kinda looks like a bit like this..." which causes me to do a google search or two of some images just to see if it is what I'm thinking. Then back into Zbrush to keep painting, using some of that knowledge to go along a bit further until I get another idea.

They all do start off pretty much the same though - warm, pinkish and red hues, followed by laying in some light and dark zones (usually of a neutral grey brown, or a beige.) Now that I think about it, it's not too different from airbrushing I imagine, despite never picking one up in my life. But it's a lot of building up in layers and trying out certain stuff, then painting over it if it doesn't work too well, then going in and tightening stuff up once you do have a solid idea.

I do also have a morgue file of my favorite color schemes I've seen people paint dinosaurs in...a lot of Copper's paint ups in there, haha.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Thought I would ask and please forgive...is this the Allosaurus then being sold for Blades park or another version that can  be ordered? I would love to purchase this fellow, and I could use a nice allosaur sculpt in my collection, I am exceptionally weak in theropds in general. The one thing about the model that keeps pulling my eyes is the almost starved body cavity and upper legs.....does it look shrink wrapped to anyone else, or am I just being too critical?]
From underneath the stomach and ribs look barrel chested and full but from the side you can count every rib

[fabricious]

Thank you for giving us an insight in your workflow! I have tried getting into zbrush myself but can't seem to find a proper beginning (or enough patience) to really get started. Nice work!

[Gorgonzola]

Thank you for giving us an insight in your workflow! I have tried getting into zbrush myself but can't seem to find a proper beginning (or enough patience) to really get started. Nice work!

It does have an exceptionally steep learning curve because it's UI is pretty opaque and you have to do several set up things to even begin sculpting, but once you get past that it's only limited by your sculpting ability. I made the switch pretty easily because I sculpted traditionally for a few years in chavant and sculpey. I've found sculpting in Zbrush is very much like wax sculpting, since you don't need to plan an armature and you can build up the form by drawing over it (versus how you would go about it in sculpey which would be add a blob and tweak tweak tweak carve carve carve...there's still a lot of that but I also do a lot of hatching and laying in strips of form.)

Thought I would ask and please forgive...is this the Allosaurus then being sold for Blades park or another version that can  be ordered? I would love to purchase this fellow, and I could use a nice allosaur sculpt in my collection, I am exceptionally weak in theropds in general. The one thing about the model that keeps pulling my eyes is the almost starved body cavity and upper legs.....does it look shrink wrapped to anyone else, or am I just being too critical?]
From underneath the stomach and ribs look barrel chested and full but from the side you can count every rib

Yep! This is the Allosaurus being sold for Blade's park, albeit one of the rejected poses we were developing before the final was decided. There won't be another version available to order, from me at least, since this was a commission. I believe it's available for purchase now, at 1/72 scale...

Regarding the ribs - I see what you mean, so let me lay out my thought process for it. I do like to indicate the ribs a bit more pronounced than they probably should be, since once I start to add in wrinkles and skin detail it gets knocked back, a lot. You can kinda see it in some of the WIP photos, certain stuff is pretty pronounced but once it goes towards the finishing side of things it gets lost in the detail and gets pushed back.  It is a bit of a fine line though, since you can go from "nice detail" to "gaunt looking thing" really quick.

Hope that answered your question, Amargasaurus, but let me know if I misinterpreted it!

[fabricious]

If I may ask: Do you use reference images within zbrush or do you sculpt from scratch and fix the sculptures afterwards? I had a bit of trouble getting image planes set up (since zbrush decided to crash on me several times) which kind of kept me from trying again for the past week.

[Gorgonzola]

If I may ask: Do you use reference images within zbrush or do you sculpt from scratch and fix the sculptures afterwards? I had a bit of trouble getting image planes set up (since zbrush decided to crash on me several times) which kind of kept me from trying again for the past week.

A bit of both - I'll use the floor grid set to the y axis and I'll put a side view image of the Dino in there to block in the silhouette and get the general shape and detail. From there though I refer to all my other reference to get the shape refined.

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Beautiful coloring Andrew ! I knew you make it look awesome when you got the chance !

Here's the link for ordering : https://www.shapeways.com/model/2015478/backyard-terrors-allosaurus-1-72.html?modelId=2015478&materialId=6

The base is a separate piece and has to be ordered separately.

[dutchdinolover]

Epic allosaurus! Blade, is there going to be a 1/40 scale version as well? I would be very much interested! Cheers

[alexeratops]

Nice Big Al! Which one are you making next?

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Dutchdinolover, we decided on a smaller piece for now since the cost was so much more at 1:40.  I could probably ask Andrew if we could upload a 1:40 version if your really interested.  Of course every one bought benefits our Park here and helps us. I'm not taking a dime from it.

Are you asking me Alexeratops ? If so I'm not sure. The Rex would be the obvious choice, but we may do a vote.  Of course that all depends on how well this sells. If it's not a good investment this will be only one. 

[Gorgonzola]

Nice Big Al! Which one are you making next?

For myself, I dunno. I've been reworking my Carnotaurus model since I've learned SO MUCH since I did that model ages ago, but that's been mostly just picking away at it whenever I have free time. I also have the giraffatitan that I was working on, but that one I've also been picking away at bit by bit.

I've also started doing some models of some other stuff that's been bouncing around in my head, monsters and such, that sort of thing...kinda just using what I got to expand out some skills and all that.

But for dinosaurs?  A short list of ones I've considered tackling recently...

Carnotaurus (which is actually happening since the model is still being blocked in and all that)
Ouranosaurus (Wanted to try my hand at another hadrosaur since it's been awhile)
some ceratopsian (it'd be a relatively quick turn around time since besides some minor body proportion adjustments most of the difference is in the head)
Stegosaurus (an old favorite (something that I seem to say a lot, but I like my dinosaurs), and one that I attempted to sculpt way early on and failed.)
Some feathered maniraptor? (Would be nice to try out modeling a feathered body, would be a real deviation and challenge.)

For my personal choices, I like to do whatever one is interesting to me at the time. Currently it's the Carnotaurus since I wanted to see how it'd look with my current skill set versus the original one I put out. Beyond that, I don't rightly know except for some vague notions.

[tyrantqueen]

Will you be releasing any more resin kits in future?

[Gorgonzola]

Will you be releasing any more resin kits in future?

There's one that's in production as we speak! File is sent off to the printers, just waiting for them to queue it up into their production and get going on it.

It'll be released through Dan's like last time, so I'll let him announce it once it's ready.

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Ouranosaurus would be interesting..been trying to decide which hadrosaurs to make for the Park in 2016...that would be a good one.

[tyrantqueen]

Shantungosaurus in 1/20 scale...that would be awesome and massive

[Gorgonzola]

Hey everyone!  No new dinosaurs to show yet, and I have nothing new to report on the Nasutoceratops (though it's still coming along in production) but I wanted to share something neat: my first podcast interview!

Listen to me ramble about dinosaur sculpting, and learning in art in my weirdly nasally voice. I give a shout-out to the Dinosaur Toy forum and a few of my favorite paleoartists!

http://www.pencilkings.com/andrew-sides/