dogbot

Dogs and Robots, two of my favorite things. No, no, that’s not my third favorite thing. Keep reading for sketches, models and process.

First the sketch. Yeah, I know, me no sketch too good. But it gets the idea across and let’s me know where I want to go, instead of letting the computer push me around. Computer’s are bullies if you don’t stand up to them with a sketch.

Here’s our investigative pooch in wireframe.

And here’s the model shaded. I model right over my sketches a lot of the time to help me keep the spirit of my crappy, but humanly flawed sketches.

If you’re super curious, click here for a list of all the different little pieces that are in this scene.

Here’s one of the mental ray shaders I used for his paint. So nice an flecky. Bela would be proud.

Here’s all the shaders in the scene. Looks like I didn’t clean them up too good, there’s still some red ones from when I had his tail light glowing red. I liked the red light because it was like a little sensor going off on a metal detector, but it brought too much visual attention to itself, away from the focus of the illustration.

I wanted some really nice lighting and reflections for this puppy, since he is so shiny and all. So, as the base for my lighting, I used a high dynamic range image of a light probe that I took in my mother’s upstairs hallway with all the lights off except in one room.

And then a depth render so I could make his hiney more blurry because it’s further away from the camera.

And plop! There you have it.