Product Description

d'artiste: Character Modeling 2 presents the techniques of leading character modelers Kevin Lanning, Zack Petroc, and Timur "Taron" Baysal. Each master artist showcases his approaches and techniques in modeling characters and creatures for film and game projects through expansive graphic tutorials. Kevin Lanning of Epic Games takes you behind the scenes of creating characters for the triple-platinum Xbox 360 game 'Gears of War' with tutorials on workflows for creating high-polygon and low-polygon characters. An invited artist gallery provides the opportunity for the master artists to single out inspirational artists and comment on the character work of the greater cg community.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #183973 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 191 pages

About the Author
Kevin Lanning

For the past four years Kevin has been working as a Character and Creature Modeler at Epic Games. His most recent work can be seen in Epic's blockbuster hit for the Xbox 360, `Gears of War'.

Timur Baysal

His feature film credits include: `Syriana', `Reeker', `Gothika', `Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams', `Impostor', `Megiddo: The Omega Code 2', `Dracula 2000', `Battlefield Earth' and `Dogma'.

Zack Petroc
Zack is currently working as a freelance Art Director and Concept Designer for feature film and games. He is also the author of several training DVDs from The Gnomon Workshop.

Customer Reviews

Top quality tips from the professionals
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R2Y8PSQOFV64I2 Character Modeling 2 is an art book at heart with an in depth look at the 3D production process of 3 different artists. It's part of the d'artiste series where artists are featured with their tutorials.

The featured artists in this issue are Kevin Lanning, Timur "Taron" Baysal and Zack Petroc. Each of them comes with a short biography on their life and career in computer graphics.

This is not strictly a tutorial book even though it might look that way. It's a "making of" book that provides multiple screenshots of work in progress. The accompanying captions describes the workflow and techniques used. Different 3D software packages are used, such as Lightwave, 3ds Max, Maya, ZBrush, Mudbox, etc. The workflow and techniques presented are universal and can be applied easily to other software, even if the controls are different. That being said, the book provides very useful information and look into different workflows of professional 3D artists.

These guys have been in the computer graphics industry for a long time. Each artist has a gallery included, which showcase the 3D models and projects they have worked on. Each artwork is captioned. It's nothing less than impressive.

Here's the list of "tutorials":
High-poly workflow
Low-poly workflow
Rip and process workflow
Box modeling
ZBrush and texturing
Character creation
Workarounds

There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.

An amazing showcase of 3D Art
It book is clearly a high quality product, every page is a high quality glossy paper and the book comes in a card sleeve to protect it.

The first part of the book focuses Kevin Lanning's work on Gears of War and gives you an amazing insight into how the characters of one of the most graphically impressive games ever made were created.

The second part is a showcase of Timur Baysal's weird and wonderful 3D art, a tutorial on box modelling a head.

The third part features work from Zack Petroc which also features a tutorial on character creation.

All three parts include a background of each artist, comments of every piece shown and a number of other pieces from other artists that were selected by the above artists.