Hmmm……..

Who rides a World War II bike, is a Marvel character, and smokes "see-gars"?

Expect to see this, and its' rider at SDCC 2010 at the Morpheus Prototypes booth!!! To give you an idea of scale.....the base is 20" from right to left!!! :O

Project Updates!

Keeping up with the pre-San Diego Comic Con work load has been tough, no doubt about it! But we've broken on through to the other side and are only 2 days away from leaving for California. I wanted to post several pieces that have been completed by Idol Workshop in that time period. We'll be posting these images, with more details, over at ZBrushCentral, within a week or so of the con ending.

Also expect to see signs of life on a book showcasing many of the top notch pieces that have come from Idol Workshop over the past year or so. The book will showcase the artistic process, from concept to digital sculpt to print to cast to paint! It will also present digital sculpting for rapid prototyping tips and processes used in creating these top tier collectibles.

On to the work!

This is the G.I. Joe Flint vs. Zartan Diorama. Figures are 9" scale. Primary Sculptor: Greg Callahan

Colossus LSB. Primary Sculptor: David Giraud

Magneto LSB. Sculptors: David Giraud and Adam Ross

Keep a lookout for some a possible MAJOR prime piece of sculpture to debut at SDCC....*maybe*. These things take time...and on occasion lots of it!

Optimus Prime Maquette Preview

This piece was previewed a couple of months ago, but here's the rockin' video for your "re-consumption". (Is that kinda like a "verp"?...nevermind)

Sideshow indicated in a Q&A session that the finished piece *might* be at SDCC this year. We pray it makes it...it's a product of over a year of development. The Japanese have always been at the pinnacle of robotic sculpture, and if this piece makes even one of them think "damn.", then it's successful!

Under the Radar

So it's been nearly 4 months since the last post, and for that I apologize. Luckily it's been because of an abundance of projects coming through, some of which have gone public and others that will be as SDCC approaches. Since the last post, one major project has gone public and the other has been released. The Mark Brooks Psylocke comiquette went public, and you can view it here: (pics will be posted on IW soon!)

Sideshow Mark Brooks Psylocke Comiquette

Here's one image to whet your palate:

The other project that was shipped was Mark Brooks' Scarlet Witch Comiquette. It seems to be trending as a fan favorite and sold out in about 2 minutes! Fans have been receiving them, and others have been posting reviews. Check out this one by Dr. Teng from www.whatsyourobsession.com :

That's it for now regarding releases. Word on the street is that Optimus Prime *might* be making an appearance at SDCC, and that's per questions answered at Sideshow Collectibles website.

The next tutorial will likely be titled "Digital Surface Interaction: The beaten redheaded stepchild of digital sculpting".....crude and long, I know. It will be dealing with accurately having your character's suit, belts, guns, or other various accessories interact correctly with each other to illustrate believable surface deformations imposed upon one another. Sure to be a crowd pleaser

ZBrush Bug Notice

To those of you who haven't already discovered these lovely nuggets, Z 3.5 has some secrets awaiting when it comes to the use of Decimation Master, Print Exporter, and appending subtools. At the root of the problem is a bug that is running throughout that will randomly change the scale factor and XYZ offsets of seemingly random subtools. The subtools will appear to all be in scale to each other, but upon export, the nasty truth is uncovered. If you were to then import these models into another piece of software, you'll discover that some parts have changed scale and relative XYZ position. You may experience this problem after using Decimation Master on a part (main culprit) or you may find this happening after appending subtools from another ZTL. There is no knowledge of how to definitively fix this bug. Here's what you can do:

-On you Tool menu, select each subtool and check the Scale and XYZ Offset values under "Export". If the scale is not 0 or 1, and the XYZ offsets are not 0, you should reset them before you export your parts.
-You may perform what was mentioned above, only to find out that some parts read correctly in "Export", but are still off. I have found that in my ZTLs that have this problem, even though some read correctly but aren't, they are still off by the same values as the ones that do show the discrepancy in your "Export" values. You need to find out what the scaling factor should be in order to get it to the right size. In my case, the parts that were off and the values showed this were:

Scale: 118.5709
X Offset: .170627
Y Offset: -.293222
Z Offset: -.196549

The parts where this was the case, I reset the values and everything was fine. However, I needed to find a scaling factor to accomodate for the parts that were *still* off, but read correctly. To find the Scale factor, you divide the target value by reality. In this case, I divided 1 by 118.5709 and got .008438256014999. Z only carries out to the 6th decimal point, but that is plenty efficient to get it to export at the correct size. Other software packages carry the values out further, so truncate to your specific need. So you apply that .0084xxxx value to the Scale under the Export menu, so that now the part will export correctly. Now you have to worry about the relative XYZ position being off. To remedy this, just invert the values of the offsets listed above (even though they currently read 0) and the part will return to its correct position upon export. The weird thing in all of this is that you should see NO changes in scale or positioning of your part on screen.

Some people have no problems like this, but a fair number do, and there's no known fix for it at the moment. I'll continue to update this post as more information is discovered or unique situations encountered. Until then, CHECK THOSE VALUES!!!

Snake Eyes vs. Ninjas Diorama

This is the latest piece from Sideshow Collectibles via Idol Workshop. It was sculpted by the magnanimous David Giraud!

Just one example of much more love to come!!

Watch your cornholes!

It's a great feeling to be able to share your knowledge with others, and to teach them things that will help them with their art and careers. However, in this day and age and in this economy, being the blond haired fellah in this video is a more frequent occurrence. Does that mean we'll stop sharing the knowledge? No. Does that mean we have ample supply of Kung-Fu grip and kneecapping action? Hellz yes.

ZBrush 3.5R3 Lazy Mouse Bug Workaround

The Lazy Mouse bug in Z has brought productivity to a crawl over the past week and a half,  and just when all hope was lost, a partial workaround was found.  It's pretty darned annoying to do, but much less annoying than Z crashing every 2.25 minutes.  For every 3 strokes of any particular brush that you have Lazy Mouse applied to, hold shift and smooth an empty area with low values set on smooth.....do 3 more strokes (no more), rinse, repeat.  So far this has enabled work to continue in a slightly more expedited manner.  This tip was passed along by Greg Callahan, whose sculpts you will be seeing very soon......WELL worth the wait.

Yoda induced dirt nap….

As mentioned in the previous post, we don't always do projects in their entirety.  The easiest and often times most efficient use of digital is in the realm of hard surface modeling.  It's infinitely faster and cheaper to do it this way. PLUS, you then have a model that you can print at any scale you want, without loss of fidelity.  Such is the case with this piece.  The helmet for this unfortunate clone trooper was done digitally.  We were able to match some problem areas of detail with reference provided by the licensor in order to get it approved.  It doesn't take modeling an entire project to bring a sense of pride about having been involved in a sculpt...this is definitely one such piece.  Small muppet dudes murdering humans is always funny.

Sometimes it’s the little things…..

So we don't always do big honkin' pieces like LSB's or Comiquettes or even dioramas.  Sometimes we're just brought in to take care of a small aspect of a larger project that would otherwise take someone an inordinate amount of time to complete by traditional means, or in this case, the bust was finished and time was short.  Digital sculpting isn't just about doing projects full monte.  It's also a toolbox that we use in small ways behind the scenes to make life easier for folks and to improve the pipeline in general.  In this case, we just sculpted the nameplate for this Hulk bust.  Kudos to Eric Schall, it looks marvelous.