Artist Snapshot: August and the Surprise Lizards!
Introduction
Well, hello again! For this post I wanted to go over my favorites of what I created for and inspired by a new month long event I found called Smaugust! Smaugust, as explained by this blog post, is a month long series of different daily prompts. Its similar to Inktober but focused on dragons instead of ink drawings. While I did have plans to work on the fortune teller character I talked about in my last post, I decided to shift focus to these pieces simply because I like dragons.
Because I had a few different artworks I wanted to show off and talk about, I decided to take this post in a different direction. Rather than going in-depth about my process like in my “Concept to Creation” series, I wanted to instead go over my general thoughts about each artwork. So lets get started!
Smaugust 2024
Pocket Watch Dragon
This was actually the last prompt of the month, but I had an idea for it immediately so I completed it first. Basically, I thought that a tiny dragon sleeping in the lid of a pocket watch was a cute idea, with the comic lettering both filling the empty space and making a cheesy pun. Its a bit simple, but I was worried that adding detail to the dragon would take away from how cute I wanted it to look. If I had to do anything again, I probably would remake the pocket watch part because it looks a little warped.
Lantern Dragon
My personal favorite out of all the artworks I actually did do for Smaugust. Again, tiny dragons is really just the trend for me this month. This one’s in a lantern this time.
The lantern dragon has more detail in the horns and various large scales, but to make him more cute and cat-like I included large eyes and ears into the design. When coloring, the various oranges and yellows on his shoulders, scales, and face were built up and blended in with the yellow base color I blocked in first. That yellow is still seen on his ears and horns. The shading was done in a similar manner, dark purplish blue with bright yellow highlights. Finally, I did add an extra filter over the whole thing to make him glow a bit brighter.
The lantern, while I liked the design I did for the side panels, had its issues. The perspective was off, making it look weirdly flat right behind the dragon. Plus, while I took out the panel in front to show of the dragon more, redesigning that part to frame the dragon rather than taking a random piece off would have made more sense. Its just something I’ll need to keep in mind next time.
The Surprise Lizard Wizard
Finally here he is, the lizard wizard! Though, because of his lack of magic sparkles he looks more like a wizard cleric. I don’t have a Concept to Creation for this guy because that would require a concept and I simply didn’t have one. While thinking about my next 3d artwork, the previously mentioned fortune teller, started sculpting a dragon head inspired by the Smaugust event going on on Cara. It spiraled from there and 16 days later I ended up with a pretty great looking creature design. The final lizard wizard has both positives and negatives, and I’ll go over them here.
What kept me going on this guy was just what I was learning while making him. I didn’t know before making this that it was possible to transpose detail from a sculpt onto a low-poly mesh by baking it into a normal map texture. I found enough tutorials on it for it to seem like common knowledge, like the one linked here, but for some reason I never learned the process until now. The baked normal map allowed me to include a lot of detail from the sculpt that would’ve been lost otherwise, which made him look great in the renders. I liked the final result so much I did the same process for a lot of his other accessories as well.
String Beads
In addition, I learned how to make a chain in Blender’s geometry nodes. Basically, I had it generate a collection of beads to follow a curve from beginning to end, the number of beads depending on the size of each bead, the distance between beads, and the length of the curve. The beads themselves were individual objects grouped together and made to repeat over the length of the curve. A pattern formed based on which bead went before the other in the collection. Then, I made the curve itself a bit thicker to look like a string.
I used these chains to make an anklet and a string of charms to go around the tree staff. I also had a string go over the water bottle, as can be seen in the turnaround. However, I got rid of that for the walk cycle because it was too cumbersome to animate. Because of how curves work I couldn’t really bind it to the rig with anything except basic parenting to objects or bones. That worked fine for the anklet and staff decoration, but the belt that the hip was attached to was in a very flexible spot, right at the hips and controlled by multiple bones. To properly keep it attached to the hip would’ve taken a lot more work to animate than I wanted to get into for this project, so I scrapped it and moved on.
The Lizard Wizard Staff
Moving on to the staff, which was probably one of my more ambitious props. My initial design had two long pieces of wood weaving into one another before curling into itself at the top. This makes it look more naturally grown rather than manufactured. I felt this fit the rest of the lizard’s design as someone more in-tune with nature. But since he was initially supposed to be a dragon, I added the charms around the staff to display his interest in shiny things despite trying to be non-materialistic.
With the actual prop, it looks just like the original sketch, but that’s where my ambition got to me. Its main issue is the visible UV seams. I found it impossible to hide the seams because of how the staff twists into itself. This wouldn’t have been a problem except that my attempts to adjust the normal map in post then use it to make the texture only emphasized where the seams were in some locations. There are a few more issues with the prop, from the leaves to the weird smoothness of the staff from up close, and I have different theories on how to improve this for future props. But overall, it does look great from a distance, even if the smaller details make it less than perfect.
Animation
In the animation shown here, I had a turnaround, a walk cycle, and a small animation to show different facial expressions. While the body moved really well in all of them, the cloth simulation I had a bit of trouble with. I had cloth simulation on the cowl, the hip bag, and the skirt. While I got the cowl and the bag working, I just could not find a way for the skirt to simulate properly. No matter what I tried it was always either bunching up, clipping through the legs, or both. If I had to guess, it had something to do with either how I pinned it or the skirt’s geometry. Since I didn’t want to spend another 16 days beating my head against a wall, I ended up disabling the simulation for the walk cycle altogether.
Despite all the trouble I had with this character, and the relative spontaneity of it all, I enjoyed working on him and I learned a lot. I especially love how his skin, bracer, and cowl turned out. The rough textures of his skin and bracer were made by mixing the normal map with a slight noise texture, a similar method done with the cowl to create that rough cloth look. I actually did record my entire process in making him, starting from when I finished sculpting the head, complete with a few clips where I explain my process and what I plan to do. I have recordings for a few of my other 3D projects too, so if I’m able to edit them all down to a reasonable time I may upload them to YouTube. Only time will tell.
And That’s About It!
That wraps up what I worked on this month! A few artworks for Cara’s Smaugust and a new character to add to the roster. I do have an account on Cara so if you do too then come join the party! I’m on there at least once a day so come say hi!
If you read this through thank you for doing so. I plan to include these artist snapshots along with my comics and Concept to Creation series as a way of just checking in if I hadn’t completed any big projects at the moment. My next project to work on will either be the fortune teller or one of the process videos mentioned above.
Until next time!
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