Thomas Au

Weird Art

2011-12-12T22:24:00.002-05:00

Taking a Short Break from 3D

2011-12-12T00:07:00.001-05:00

I promised myself I would work on these designs I drew up one day, so I might as well get on it!

Witch Progress

2011-11-29T21:42:00.000-05:00

Hey! Currently, Figuring out if I should sculpt or take time and simulate the hair in Maya.

W.I.P. Witch

2011-05-31T18:38:00.000-04:00

A witch concept I saw online so I decided to model it. It's getting there but it still needs a long way to go till I call it complete. It need the Witches hat, hair, and upper clothing. Once the base of those are done, I'll attach the concept alongside with it.

Sculpting Clothing

2010-12-04T02:23:00.000-05:00

Hey

Sculpting the clothing in Zbrush was harder then I expected. Lesson learnt!

Out.

Veteran W.I.P.

2010-11-16T01:04:00.010-05:00

hey,

Hopefully I can get some clothing and textures on these models one of these days, but here is the War Veteran at a more defined and detailed stage. I can't really push these models too far because of the limited time I have everyday, but, enjoy!

Out.

W.I.P. War Veteran

2010-11-12T01:25:00.002-05:00

Hey

I wanted to model something related to remembrance day (war veteran) and will continue tomorrow for more refined edits. I needed to model something before I sign off because yesterday was an off day, was struggling with perspective. Hope you enjoy!

Out.

Boy Speed Sculpt

2010-11-09T23:59:00.004-05:00

Hey

Just randomly speed sculpted a kid when one of my friends were talking about how everyone loves hogging kid characters. It wasn't hard as I expected.

I also did some update to the hell boy sculpt and added some teeth. Teeth or no teeth?

Enjoy.

Hellboy Speed Sculpt

2010-11-07T23:58:00.004-05:00

Hope you guys like it, I still need to redefine some sections but the overall shape is set in place.

Enjoy.

Zbrush Doodles

2010-09-17T01:32:00.003-04:00

Hey

This is just some Zbrush doodle I was working on last night. It started off as a Nose/mouth Sphere Practice and expanded into this lady :D. Enjoy!

Out.

Zbrush

2010-09-09T17:33:00.005-04:00

Hey

It's been a while since I have posted and I hope I will continue to from now on. I have been working with Zbrush for a while, here's a piece I did some months ago but I will continue to update my progress and upload new models. Sometimes you need a break from a model so I will come to it another time to pose it up with textures. Enjoy :D

Hero Designs

2009-05-19T22:35:00.003-04:00

hello all.
These are some hero designs I drew for one of my short films my group is working on. I compiled them into one image so click for a full view. These are heroes part of a story whom a boy admires and wants to be part of.

Enjoy.

Meet Bulala

2009-04-13T17:02:00.002-04:00

Hello

Decided to update since it has been a while. My shopkeeper design for a short film I am currently working on. Not related to any of my previous post. I drew the hair and apron on separately with photoshop. Some of my friends told me it looked like Samuel L Jackson.

Enjoy!

Some WIP Models.

2009-01-19T20:16:00.004-05:00

Hello, It's been long since I updated but have always been kept busy by Maya. It's really great learning new things and here are some of the models I made to be used eventually in a short film. I drew 10 characters and modeled the ones I thought would be interesting to start off with. These models aren't quite complete yet in their texture stage but I threw things together quickly just to show some process.

1st. Homeless Hippie
A war veteran who loves life doing practically nothing at all.

2. Earl the Salesmen
Earl is divorced and supports a family of 10 child by himself. He is highly motivated and lives to become the best kitchen knife salesmen.

3.Greg the garbage man
The primary character of this story, Greg loves life his city and is determined to clean the it from environmental disasters.

Hope you guys enjoyed these. Feel free to critique and comment.

Gorilla modeling

2008-11-17T15:53:00.007-05:00

Hey

My attempt to model a gorilla I sketched out. I will upload the sketch later which will be attached to my finalized versions of my 3D models (if anyone is wondering where they are). I usually draw out full rotations of my characters before I model which I think is a necessity for me. It was my first time modeling a gorilla and it took a long time. The mesh works a bit differently from a human so I used a different method for the which was challenging. I usually do box modeling but this time I chose to test out curve modeling. There are still a few touch ups on the model but here it is for now. He is supposed to look meaner but I haven't rigged it yet so he's as friendly as Barney, if anyone still remembers the purple dinosaur.

There is a story attached behind this, but the shortest summary I can think of so far is a Gorilla playing whack-a-mole with a tiny cute bird. I'll try to upload more often so stay tuned!

Enjoy!

Taking a Break

2008-11-14T21:50:00.004-05:00

Hello
This model would be my mascot. It is quite simple and was fun to model since this drawing appeals to me for some reason. I took some screen shots of it and tried to add an extra touch to it. Can anybody guess what it is supposed to resemble?

Enjoy

Preview of Characters, Part 1

2008-11-13T16:10:00.004-05:00

Hello all,

I am still alive and been pretty busy learning more about modeling, everyday it's been getting easier and easier. Here are two preview of my characters I will be completing soon but there will only be W.I.P for now. They look pretty similar but are two different characters,

Enjoy.

More Cube Character

2008-07-05T21:23:00.004-04:00

Another design of my cube characters. I haven't modeled anything for ages and i have missed Maya! This was just a warm up and there will be more soon! Hope you all enjoy these designs and I'll keep up to date!

Later!

Boy Fights Robot

2008-04-26T18:54:00.006-04:00

Hello, This is one of my more finalized and recent piece. There is still a bit of work to do on it and i just threw in some quick colors. Hope you Enjoy this for now. My inspiration for this piece came from Tekkon Kinkreet. I drew these 2 character designs out while watching the movie then modeled them after. Later.

Television Cube Robot

2008-04-24T16:51:00.004-04:00

Hello again, This is one of my cube robots I created a while back, just added some details and finishing touches. The idea came from a Television so it kind of resembles one. Enjoy.

Japan Town 07

2008-04-22T18:53:00.009-04:00

Hello, this is one my 1st layouts i created for modeling class. I really enjoyed working on this layout and arranging compositions for these buildings. It was satisfying to see a complete piece when i finished this. There were two problems i encountered while working on this layout and it was the file size. Since it was my 1st layout i created, i just went ahead building everything and not thinking about the technical side of this project until my file size came to 300mb. When layouts are this big, it will not render properly. The rooftops were individual pieces as if it was really being built and one roof had a complete set of 200+ tiles which skyrocketed the file size from 20 to 300mb. The best way to output this piece was to render the buildings separately and then putting them together in Photoshop. Enjoy.

This layout i drew inspired me to model a layout of a Japan town.

3D layout

SIMPLE 3d models

2008-04-21T23:16:00.005-04:00

I like the way designer toys look like and i was wondering if i could model a cube like character to look unique. I modeled them for fun and i hope you can guess what they are. There is something to those types of simple toys i love putting around the computer. I created these a while back and they were the only character models i could create then. I was interested more in environmental modeling before, so stay tune because I'll be posting some up soon. Enjoy.

Seneca animation T-shirt final design of 2008

2008-04-18T21:53:00.004-04:00

Hello
Me and my friend Jun Yu won the new Seneca College animation t-shirt design for 2008. It was a great experience working with him and i am glad everyone liked it. Don't forget to visit his blog if you want to see great concept/design art by Mr. Jun Yu Zhao.

Enjoy =).

"Larry" the beaver

2008-04-18T00:47:00.005-04:00

This beaver is called "Larry", The original 2d designs does not look like this but i just wanted to try a unique shape. Larry the beaver is a slick fellow who is a ladies men even with his beer belly.I'll be uploading the original 2D design of Larry the beaver sometime. I still have to put hair and textures to all my 3D models so what you will be seeing will only be the simple mesh. Enjoy.

Later

My robber

2008-04-17T00:32:00.005-04:00

This is a Robber character, I was supposed to rig it for some classmates to animate but got no time to, but i still want to Rig it soon. Maybe during the summer.

Later

Catapult

2008-04-15T20:23:00.006-04:00

Reference Image by Feng Zhu

I modeled a catapult referenced from Feng Zhu's design from lord of the ring, enjoy. By the way, If I'm wrong with the spelling of modeling, please correct me, I actually researched on it to make sure i was right but i could still be wrong. Modeling and model both have one L only. Feel free to comment and critique any post i put up, i will try to make correction if they are recent pieces i am still working on, thanks.

Later

First lesson

2008-04-15T20:12:00.002-04:00

One of the first objects i modeled. I had so much trouble learning the tools in maya but it's done! I think it's a turkey knife or something used for food.

Later

Maya

2008-04-14T20:14:00.000-04:00

Hello,
This sketch is one of the teachers that taught our class organic/environmental modeling. I still like animation as much as modeling but i decided to concentrate on 3d modeling just because it gave me so much trouble. I had to get it right and perfect it. It is still hard after 6 months of learning but the technical aspects of 3D always grabbed my interest. It felt like there was so much to learn in such a short amount of time, that's why I always admired the people who worked so hard that it seemed like 6 months was all they needed.

This is how I felt when I learnt Maya from scratch, I felt like all my bones were twisting 360 degrees when i couldn't follow along the teacher's in class tutorials. Everyone probably felt that way learning 3D. Shortcuts were also really important because once you miss a step when the teacher was teaching, you would just be staring at what they were doing. It isn't their fault because they are professionals, they have that habit. Even when i am helping others with other programs, i would have to slow down to the point that i need to position myself as a beginner as well. School's almost over and I'm still learning from them, I still have to thank them for starting me off to a 3D career.

This is what maya kept doing to me when i first learned how to model out of a cube. It would go crazy on me then i would go crazy too. I'm sure that happens to most people. There are things that go wrong that you don't know and no one else knows what you did so you have to start over. It's all about the process and i don't mind starting over. I even tried modeling a human face many times with Internet tutorials without any success. None of them worked out for me until i took a video tutorial to follow along. Everyone has their own ways and understanding of how things work and i think i almost found my workflow.
To me, modeling in Maya was all about extruding vertices , faces and edges. Anything can be built from stratch and i really enjoy learning new workflows. Finding the best work flow was always my goal to make time more efficient. Thanks for reading.

Later

Sketchbook Phrase

2008-04-12T01:48:00.001-04:00

Hey,
Why "where nothing happens"? Drawing in a sketchbook always troubled me so i wrote this.
I decided to post my 1st page of my sketchbook because i found this quote useful to me. I always had trouble drawing in my sketchbook trying to get such pretty drawings but i stopped trying every time I look at this quote. I just draw without pressure and I just draw for fun now. I filled this sketchbook mainly with ideas which inspired me to model it with Maya. Hope to be posting soon.

Later.