Outlaws Tales is an online 3d graphic novel told in the style of a Science Fiction Western. And before I say anymore, it’s not your typical attempt at a 3d comic/graphic novel, the characters aren’t from one of these procedural character creation software’s either, it’s all Maya, Zbrush and Photoshop, every element is custom built. I like to think it sits somewhere between gaming graphics and VFX. It’s also my personal project/portfolio, inspired by Spaghetti Westerns and Sci Fi movies. Intially it was born out of frustration from working at Striker3d on their 3d cartoon strip. As much as I enjoyed the job there I always felt restrained from not being able to express myself as an artist and telling my stories.
So after spending the good part of 3 years developing the story and characters, I’ve finally managed to almost complete the first chapter fully in 3d, which is online now at www.outlaws-tales.com . The project itself is massive and will probably take me another few years to finish it. I’m hoping to release a comic book of the first part this year and get it out there…I’d love to see it as a movie or even an episodic tv series like along the lines of Firefly or Heroes, that type of thing.
Please tell us about your work on the HeadCases and how easy it was to create caricatures, where anatomy proportions are not practically possible?
Headcases was my first big freelance gig over a year ago and was probably the most fun I’ve ever had on any single project so far. All the cg work for Headcases was created by Red Vision, a VFX house, with studios in Manchester and the other in London sharing the work load. I was based in the London Studio, and I was the only character modeler there. I was initially brought on board to help the character designer ‘fix’ the characters that were sent from the Manchester studio to London for approval. Anything that didn’t resemble the concept art was given to me for correcting. There were a few messy meshes to deal with, I’m very particular with my meshes, and I must admit to sounding off after receiving a model with a 9 sided poly on it, I was not impressed. After about a week I think there was a realization that I was actually pretty good and from then on I was given full characters to build.
I was building a full character in around 3 days complete with uv’s and textures, plus correcting the stuff from Manchester. I was lucky though as I had the character designer in the same studio, so if I had a problem with his sketches I could have him explain it or adjust it straight away without the back and forth. I managed to build up my own library of body parts in order to speed the process up as well and this was basically due to the fact that the show was of a certain style so there wasn’t a real need to keep making limbs over and over or clothing unless it was absolutely necessary.
Overall creating the caricatures for Headcases didn’t really pose a great deal of problems for me personally. Though I do remember making the model of Amy Winehouse and getting it signed off only having to revisit it a day after because she had gone and changed her hairstyle from a black beehive style to a cropped blonde with a headscarf. But that’s a celebrity for you! I think the more extreme the caricatures were in their looks the easier they were to do because the characteristics are so clear you can just see what you have to do and go for it, the Amy Winehouse model is a prime example of this as opposed to a model I remade of Katie Holmes(a couple of times), she’s a pretty lady and has a subtle looking face so it’s harder to exaggerate the features. If anything, she has nice big eyes!
