Blog Posts - Kat Yu - Art Director

Paladin Girl - Progress

4/13/2017

Wow, it's been a LONG time since my last post :(!
I've been so busy with work and a bit spread thin on time, I just haven't been able to work on personal stuff at all, really... Not for about a year now (sounds so insane, I know).

Hopefully that's about to change. I've recently been extremely inspired, seeing more and more beautiful work/talented artists/new art styles I want to learn/new mediums to explore/old mediums to get the hang of again - I really just want to dive back into it full force.

I'm starting off by finishing this project I've already started (I hate not finishing things!), and ideally making quick work of it so I can move onto the next thing.
First up is the Dark Paladin Girl I started a really long while back.

Paladin Girl

Concept:

I had already started working on the sculpt a while ago, before I dropped the project. When I picked it back up, recently, I decided I would do very little focus on sculpting detail, and would get right into retopologizing, so I could hurry into texturing.

Sculpt:
Note: These are NOT the final colors, nor what the materials will look like at all.

As of 2 days ago, I have her retopologized and UVed. Maps will probably be 1024 and 512 respectively. May even go lower.

Retopo + UV:

Next steps are to just start painting!

I have been on the fence on how to render her, but I think I'm going to go very painterly so it has a style similar to certain (mobile) works.

Reference:

Made by Lary Yu. Click for link

Allstar Heroes

Allstar Heroes

Planning on finishing this project up within the next couple weeks when I have spare time after work/on (free) weekends!

Stay tuned for updates! :)

Demon Hunter Wrap Up

2/26/2016

It's taken a bit (too) long to wrap this one up, but we're finally here. I changed the route I went with this character, and decided to just do hand painted instead of PBR - something about the model aesthetic just beckoned me to stick with hand painted! (Which means I'll have to make a different PBR piece, but I digress....). I was fortunate enough to have my mentor, Josh, help me transform this character greatly. In terms of the sculpt/model she went from too symmetrical, not really honed in on style, and boring, to quite the opposite. And in terms of texturing, I got a great demo on some fundamentals I need to keep practicing in order to focus the eye on the face, and reduce too much noisiness in unwanted areas.

If you want more detailed info of this character, please check her out on the home page of my site.
Here are some final shots of the model:

If you want to see progress images of the final version, please check out the piece on the home page of my site. For this blog post, I thought it would be kind of cool to include the stylistic transformation she's gone through.

Demon Hunter Update~

2/8/2016

I'm a little late on posting this, but here's an update to my Demon Hunter. (Slow progress, I know -_-)
This time I managed to get the retopology of all the small pieces finished. I also UVed the whole piece.
I'm planning for her to have a total of 2 maps, and she'll be textured in PBR, but before I start texturing her, I'll need to bake out her normal maps. Still got quite a bit of work on this, but I'll be on the grind.

Just a little info:
She ended up being just over 20k tris. This is a bit higher than I usually go, but I really wanted to model out some finer details/make this a higher detail piece. We'll see how it goes.

Digital Painting - Study (WIP)

12/26/2015

I haven't done one of these in a REALLY long time (I mean like, many years), but I felt like doing a study today!
My eye used to be pretty sharp in terms of reading shapes/spacing, but it's definitely gotten pretty rusty without practice (as you can see in this piece). I also want this to be a color study, so I wont be using color picker. I quickly did the background, and have started the face already (not shown).

Demon Hunter Update

12/16/2015

Since my last update, Demon Hunter has changed quite a bit, but progress HAS been slow due to trying to find time around work (and partially failing. Sorry!)
I finished her sculpt, which was really just an addition of small bits and pieces and the addition of embellishments, and some very slight polypaint. This is what that looks like:

I've also been working on the retopology. I plan to finish all the retopology by the end of this weekend, so I can begin working on her in Substance. Thanks to the help of Josh Singh, I'll be able to make this my first PBR piece!

Demon Hunter Update

10/12/2015

Hello Hello! It's been a while since I've updated.

I've been pretty busy with work for the past couple months, but have found some time here and there to work on this character... slowly... but surely. I managed to make the hair a bit more dynamic, as well as the scarf. And a couple weeks ago, I tweaked the face quite a bit.

What's left to do are some pretty high details on her corset and top. Thanks to my mentor, Josh Singh, I now know of a pretty cool technique that will help me do that, and hopefully speed up the process. I'm hoping to finish this up by next weekend.

**ON THAT NOTE, I plan on streaming pretty seriously starting this week. That will probably include working on this character, so please tune in! www.twitch.tv/meowmixnomz **

Demon Hunter Re-work

8/6/2015

It's been a while since I've been able to do some personal work, but I've decided to re-work my older Overwatch-styled Demon Hunter. I decided I wanted to make her whole torso, instead of just the bust, and I'm going to make it pretty detailed.
Here's what I have so far:

And this is these are the concepts I'm going off of:

I intend on sculpting in all the detail on her top and corset. Also, I like her scarf a bit emphasized as it is, but I may change it.

Sketchy Panda Games - 3D Character Art!

7/13/2015

It's been a while since I've updated since it's been a busy few weeks, and I have some good news!

I'm happy to announce that I'm now the 3D character artist for Sketchy Panda Games, and will be working with the team to develop the content for their upcoming Kickstarter! For those who aren't familiar, we are working on a game call Aberford, which is a story driven zombie game set in the 1950's. To get all the details on this game, you can check out the website www.sketchypandagames.com or the very active tumblr account http://sketchypandagames.tumblr.com/

I just wanted to share my art test with everyone! This is Peggy, and she will be one of the main characters of Aberford. Of course, this is just an art test (and only the sculpt of the finalized version), so the final version will look different in comparison. Unfortunately, I wont be able to post any progress photos of production, so this will be a bit of a teaser/beginning of good news.

Mobile Character Progress

6/20/2015

I finally got back from my Japan trip, and started sculpting my mobile character! She's really early on, but I figured I'd upload some early progress after my hiatus.

I still need to figure out how I'm going to handle the eyes, and need to pull some shapes together. But so far, I feel like I'm learning a lot since I don't usually deal with chibis. There's also been some problem solving, going from 2D reference to a 3D piece.

Upcoming Character Project!~

6/1/2015

It's been a long time since I last updated! Since my last post, I've been through a lot: finishing up my thesis, doing my final thesis presentation, finishing the semester, graduation, and taking care of visiting friends/family. Finally, I've had about a week to myself, and I already have a few projects in mind.

The next project I'm going to be working on is a mobile character (that looks very much like a chibi). I figured this would be a good project since mobile is now so huge, not to mention I'm in a hub of mobile developers (the Bay Area).

The concept I've recently made draws some pretty strong inspiration from a Chinese mobile game called Allstar Heroes. A lot of their style clearly stems from WoW, particularly in armor and weapon design, as well as character classes.
My character is a fighting (sword+shield) class, much like a paladin or knight.
I'll be making a few more sketches to work out articulation, as well as to figure out final posing, but below is my first sketch.