Author: Matt Hill

Hello everyone,

Here’s my final comic! Unfortunately, the scene didn’t really call for any works from my past work so I was unable to incorporate it here. I suppose if you call the font creative then it’s from the past. Ultimately, I’m very happy with how the comic came out in relation to the story. The detective ends up being transmuted into a snake to the feed the ever growing hunger of our ancient Knight-Shaman, Anguis. I went for a very traditional superhero/supervillain comic feel with the retro text and text bubbles. It may be a little small in the thumbnail, as the actual file that was finished was 3000×3000 to really preserve all the details. (I can provide this if necessary)

So here’s my entire scene rendered. The goal of the lighting and texturing was to be a very gloomy and haunted basement vibe. The toughest part was finding the right light reflection parameters for most of the objects. The walls, floor, and table were all textured based on images while most of the metal (boots, pauldron on shoulder, and belt) had Phong shader usage in order to maximize reflectivity. I’m really happy with how the handle of the sickle turned out as I was aiming for a bumpy leather handle. I know the render is a bit dark but the cover of the book is supposed to be visibly green snakeskin, as if the book were made of it.

I have some previous knowledge of ZBrush for personal projects so I actually decided to start sculpting from a Dynamesh sphere and progressively add parts. I then exported it as a .obj to Maya for some extra touches (removing the hand of one side as Anguis does not have 2 hands). I’m still getting down some of the finer points of ZBrush like extracting his shoulder to create a real looking pauldron. I did have a tough time getting the smoothing settings right as I sculpted in a pretty low poly mode. I also have no idea how to do hair in ZBrush or Maya so that will have to be figured out real soon. The thick legs were essentially my way of making his armored cloth/skirt and then the boots were kind of a nightmare to sculpt out. I might just try to do only the boots in Maya at this point. Not sure what happened on the face render but oh well. I think Maya’s smoothing algorithm may have messed up some of the more detailed features I had implemented in ZBrush that can be seen in the first render.

My first concept art is of the character Anguis, the Knight Shaman.

Exiled over 2000 years prior to the mystery scenario, Anguis has gained eternal youth through the “sacrifice” of human souls to turn them into his body’s own eternal fuel. He, or “it” is the last remaining Pentral on the planet, desperately attempting to uncover his people’s secrets. Unfortunately, all things come with a price. The Pentral do not take kindly to secret stealers and a trap ultimately robbed Anguis of his right hand. His armor is heavily skewed in a snake theme that will eventually align with the theme of the story being snakes. He also wields the Greatstaff of Serpents; a necessary piece of the puzzle that provides the power to destroy and transmute a human soul. However, it’s not the only item of Serpents in the world. Our detective soon might find another…

Anguis’ pose in the frontal view is a classic example of his people’s serpent like body and maneuvering in battle — able to flex and contort the body in all combinations similar to that of a snake.

Here is my mystery scene. My goal was to make a really interesting dungeon centered around snakes, leaving the mystery in the metallic boots and sickle on the ritual circle, as well as what could lie in the book and if there’s anything in the frame on the back wall.

The overall scene is below. (apologies for wall texture, still playing around with getting it right)

A zoom on the metallic boots and book.

And a final zoom on the circle, wand, and sickle.

Snakes…it always has to be snakes. What kind of a detective investigates snakes? I’m supposed to be solving murder mysteries not acting like a zookeeper.

The detective angrily stepped out of his cruiser into the quickly strengthening rain. As the rain touched his torn jacket, he could barely make out the house betwixt many curled trees. The trees almost…enveloped the house. But purposefully. The branches fingered their way into and out of the windows in an eerie statement of possession.

Well, he thought, at least I’ll have a hell of a story to scare the kids with when I get home. His metallic, green boots heard the pitter patter of rain as they stomped their way towards the house, glumly carrying their owner into the unknown. By the time he had come within 10 feet of what he thought was the door, a hissing sound began to grow in his mind.

He calmly stated to himself, “It’s just the steam from the furnace.” desperately hoping that the decrepit “fortress” had a furnace and nothing something else. The door swung open, almost as if it were being opened to welcome a new vict- guest. The architecture of the house was somehow normal. Living room here, kitchen there. However, the house gave an illusion of almost being shaped in an enormous circle. The arching walls over him reminded him of his favorite movie The Hobbit.

Just like the Shire. Must have been cozy.

Stepping around with his flashlight, the hissing multiplied. The detective began to think out his steps and act more deliberate in order to ground himself.

I’m not crazy. But this isn’t a horror story either. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for the hissing.

His own thoughts began to distract him from his quest, as he quickly found himself walking down into the basement, the turning point of any good detective story.

They said there would be snakes…thought I was going to a fuckin’ zoo. But no, here I am like I’m in the damn Blair Witch Project.

The detective felt a cold presence on his shoulder as he made his final steps into the damp basement that was plain wrong. His mouth could barely utter “What in the world…?” as he realized the basement was made of stone and the house sitting on top of it wood. “No…” he eeked out. This wasn’t stone at all. It was painted over to look as if it were stone. His fingers slowly moved their way across the walls.

Scaley.

Is this what they meant by snakes? What kind of sick freak makes a room from snakeskin?

This thought evaporated quickly as he turned to the far corner. His pupils widened, spotting the enormous crimson “circle on the floor” with an object lying in its center.

He had heard of these circles as a child. Ancient denizens of the area practiced a forbidden style of magic that had been lost after a plague wiped them out. But this area felt…fresh. As if it were still being used. The air was clogged and white noise crowding out silence. He walked over to the circle and picked up the object.

I was never a Harry Potter fan but even I know this is a wand. This can’t be real…they said that all the Serpent Wands were destroyed with the plague…and there’s an entire shelf of them just on that wall. This isn’t adding up.

As he knelt down to touch the circle, his stomach turned.

The circle had not been composed of paint…but…

Blood.

The consistency of the blood was…well, inconsistent. The detective had seen enough crime scenes to know what human blood feels and smells like between the fingers.

Is this snake blood? The ancient hymn said something about serpent essence…is this what they meant?

This render was inspired by the robot Eva from Wall-e. I’ve always loved the simplicity and sleek design of the robot. I had a lot of trouble contouring everything into nice curves. And for some reason, the model is in the top of the image and not centralized. Not sure what happened there.

My self portrait is centered around the fundamental things that I am composed of. Most of the composition is shaped around a photo of me in my goalie equipment, which is where I feel I’m at home the most and best describes me. The background is a nice mountain/ice lake setting, an integral part of how I grew up either on the ice or exploring cold, remote areas of New England. I decided to have the mountain top in the ‘brain’ part of the image as I’m always thinking of where to explore next, while the hockey net is in the heart area as it’s what I love to do. I placed the title of my fraternity in my mouth as you can usually find me talking about it or to my brothers. I think that’s a pretty good explanation? Oh, and the wing was added because when I’m in my elements that are shown here, I feel as if I’m flying.

URL’s for the photos I used are here:

https://pngtree.com/freebackground/cool-blue-purple-gradient-banner_561188.html

http://www.qygjxz.com/hockey-wallpaper/5601830.html

https://www.mountainphotography.com/images/xl/20091106-Icy-Ice-Lakes-Sunrise.jpg

Font is Broken Glass via dafont.com

My first word was obsession. The look I was aiming for here was almost in a crazy mental state and almost do a chalkboard effect that simulates a teacher making a student write the same thing out 100’s of times. As the person writes the conjugations of obsession more, they get obsessed with it and it leads to their downfall, denoted by blurred and distorted writing, as they are lost to anything but the word. 

My second word was transition. The idea here was essentially to match fonts to each major life transition; in order they are childhood (relaxed, kid-like font), adolescence (the rebel/crazy font and color), college (Times New Roman is something every student knows), adulthood (signing documents and making the ‘green’), retirement (going on vacation), and death (destroyed, decaying font.)

The last word was Panic. Clearly here, the small man is panicking due to the crushing spiked walls quickly approaching him.

My vector tracing submission will be of the character Marth from the Fire Emblem series. I haven’t actually ever played this series however I’m an enormous fan of the Super Smash Bros. franchise and have played competitively for some time now. Marth is the character I typically use and this is the character render from the newest installation of the series. I focused less on exact detail and color matching and instead focused on the overall form of the character shaping (sword, cape shadows/depth, armor). The ending amount of vector shapes in this design was in the 300s and came mostly out of the fact that the cloth needed more attention than other areas (such as the eyes/hair/background elements) to truly bring out some aspect of depth in the image.