Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Making Haviland Tuf's cat of the book Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin. Part 1.

George Raymond Richard Martin (also known as GRRM) is a famous American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and television producer. Everybody knows that he is the author of the series of epic fantasy novels A Song of Ice and Fire, which was adapted into the Emmy Award-winning series Game of Thrones. He’s also a great amazing science fiction writer.
 
I've always been an admirer of "classical" science fiction. I especially appreciate the founding fathers of modern science fiction: Clifford Donald Simak (also known as Clifford Simak), Isaac Asimov, sir Arthur Charles Clarke (Arthur Clarke), Robert Sheckley etc.

Novels and short stories by George Martin written in genre of science fiction are continuation the best traditions in world science fiction. George Martin is an amazing literary master who will never betray William Faulkner's principle of "writing only about the conflict in the human heart", while he gives readers endless new worlds full of romance and adventures.

Tuf Voyaging is a science fiction fix-up novel by George Martin created from several short fiction stories about adventures of Haviland Tuf. He is extraordinary person, exceptionally unorthodox and I’d say he’s genius. Haviland Tuf is tall, bald, pale, overweight, a very clever man, able to intellectual development incessantly. He is also very well-behaved, civilized, moral, discreet person, phlegmatic, vegetarian, cat-loving-but-otherwise very solitary...  

In the novel Tuf becomes the master of the Ark - a huge starship. The Ark is a very powerful warship with advanced ecological engineering technologies of the Earth Civilization - the Federal Empire's Ecological Engineering Corp of the Earth. The Ark is a Seedship because it has the power to create life, new genetic combinations and new biological species. Haviland Tuf use the Ark exclusively for peaceful and humane purposes offering his own effective ecological solutions for the Galaxy worlds with environmental, social, humanitarian problems.

It’s not a portrait of a particular cat but more of a collective image, a sculptural sketch. I like cats very much and the main character of the novel is also very fond of cats too ))) It is also visual tutorials with video workflow records.

I used free photos of cats and anatomical references from the Internet as my source inspiration and some free Internet resources, for example, close-up photos: Macro Shots Of Cat Eyes , Cats Protection / UK's Largest Feline Welfare Charity and so on. Sculpture of famous artist George Lundeen is also an enduring source of inspiration for me. A native of Holdrege, Nebraska, Lundeen George Lundeen established his sculpting studio in Loveland, Colorado in the mid-1970s where he currently lives and works. He sculpted figures compositions,  portraits and interpretive works alike for universities, municipalities, foundations, and corporations. Mr. Lundeen is a member of the National Academy of Design and the National Sculpture Society.









Full-figure rendering / clay material:


Full-figure rendering / metal-effect material:


Full-figure conceptual rendering:


Turntable video:

 

Turntable video:

 

Separate renderings:







Workflow screenshots / creating overall shapes from Dynamesh / Zbrush:


Creating base mesh for sculpting / video workflow / part 1:

 

Creating base mesh for sculpting / video workflow / part 2:

 





Creating base mesh for sculpting / Turntable video: 


Retopology with ZRemesher guides:


Project Retopology steps:







Creating details:



Сreating details workflow:

3 comments:

  1. My God, Darya, you are brilliant. A Renaissance person in every way. May I tell you a story about cat's eyes? I worked for 3M Company in the 1970s. They make retro-reflective sheeting, ued in license plates. When the light from a following car shines on the license plate of the car in front, the light bounces right back to the driver and he can see in time to stop in case the front car has lost power. Light can act in three ways when it strikes a surface: reflect, refract, or retro-reflect right back to the source. That only occurs once in nature - in the eyes of cats. So cats appear to have a light inside them, unlike any other animals. Ancient people saw this and so gave cats credit for mysterious powers. 3M found a way to recreate retro-reflection. It was first used by Stanley Kubrick in making 2001: A Space Odyssey, and 3M won an Oscar for it. It ended the need for costly 'rear-screen projection' by providing more efficient 'front-screen projection.

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    Replies
    1. Dear Tom, thank you very much for such an interesting and pleasant comment. You are an even more amazing person: you have a deep analytical intelligence and the broadest erudition. Thank you a lot!

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  2. Darya, I am in awe of your ability to express rich and profound human feelings with the newest technologies. A rare and much needed combination. Kudos!

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