Racial Faces

I normal draw Asians and Caucasian women so I thought I'd do an African woman. My first paper sketch in a little while.

The tools I used were a HB2 pencil, free hand horizontal/vertical pencil measurements (on paper and for my reference), and a relative scale with the front of the face as the reference point.

Process overview:
blar! I'll make this readable when I get back from work! ya thanksgiving black friday!

I started with a line from; the forehead to brow, to the bottom of the nose, and down to the chin.

I then drew an angled line representing the nose and another for the brow line.

hair line and strand that stretches from the top of the head to the shoulder to isolate the face/neck.

then the cheek "Y" to find the plane of the face. connecting the left arm of the Y to the edge of the brow, and extending the foot of the Y to the chin.

Did a little more brow/nose work blocking in the nose and connecting it to the outside brow. Then found the top of the eyelid for my photo ref and then the bottom and traced them across.

you can see I did a lot of griding. I tried just drawing angles but it looked wrong so i stick to finding the estimated distance with straightish horizontals and verticals given my reference scale than used the negative space of a triangle to find the curve. Such as I did on the forehead. You can see I grid it off and then find the triangle in relation to the straight lines to get my curve.

after I had the eyes I traced in a sort of "S" shape from where the ear should be to the bottom of the chin to get the shaded jaw area.

I went back and forth between the hair proportions and the neck shading.

Then I moved onto getting the arm in place, the finding the front plane, or light facing plane of the arm. Then found a reasonable cutoff point do box out the length and shade it in a little.

The I found the deltoid's end and the area of the armpit. Then shaded that in.

Thats pretty much it, thanks for reading!

Gioteck EX05 Multi-format Wired Headset - Postmortem Review

Before I talk about the EX-05 (multi-format, wired, black). I want to give you some perspective on the writer (me). This was my first set of "actual" headphones. The only other headphones I've had in the past were Logitech mono headsets. I am by no mean's an audio expert or audiophile. So bear that in mind while reading this review.
The number ratings I give for each bullet point in my review are based on my satisfaction with the product. With the EX-05 being my only experience and basis for 'over the ear' headphones.
Alright now that's out of the way!

My standing opinion of the EX-05 is this; These headphones are great! Now for the nitty gritty.

Price for Quality: (3-5)
I paid $50 (usd) for these at Target. The overall quality for the price was alright. I would have expected a little more durability out of the EX-05's for the cost.

Sound Quality: (5-5)
Sounds are very clear and crisp. The audio balance makes it easy to hear smaller details and voices apart from music. The full tonal range is captured well, I was not left feeling 'flat', or close to ear sound.

Sound Leakage: (5-5)
Depending on the volume you are using and the output of the software you are using. The sound leaked from the ear cups is going to be minimal to a moderately load whisper. As long as you don't have creepers in a quite room with you. No one going about their business should hear what you are listening to.

Microphone Quality: (3-5)
The microphone is very good when in a quite environment. It picked up my voice at a whisper to a yell without cutting out or popping. Though I do not normally have a quite environment. The mic will pick up almost anything from the creeks and crack of the headphones plastic to your roommates laughing in the next room crystal clear. Noise cancellation is nonexistent.

Comfort: (5-5 stars)
They were super comfortable! My EX-05's ear cups held little to no heat, was large enough to comfortably house my ears without contacting the cups or inner liner, and the materials felt good when worn.
The clamping pressure was enough to keep the headphones in place as long as I didn't tilt my head to any extreme angels or make really sudden movements.
The headband was comfortable when warn correctly. But could be very uncomfortable, digging into the skull if worn more forward on the head. I wore it sitting far back on my head.
I have spent upwards of 20 hours wearing the EX-05. After ten or so minutes I forget I am wearing them. They are very lighting. I experienced little to no fatigue when wearing the EX-05. I dare say they were even a joy to wear.

Durability (1-5)
This is where the EX-05 really falls down. My headset broke only a few months after purchase from Target. My right ear cup (the mic cup) went out after the control box got yanked. Even before that the audio would crackle or be significantly reduced if a volume dial was tilted or you touched the control box wrong. With a bit of fiddling it would be fixed in a second or two. But this should not have happened in the first place. The control box was a major source of issues.
The ear cup height adjustment bands were the other major issue with my EX-05. A lot of pressure is repeatedly placed on the plastic plate that holds the ear-cup bands to the headband. This plate proved to be flimsy when it busted one day when I picked up my headphones. It was the twisting force applied by the ear-cup band when held that broke the plate.

Compatibility: (5-5)
Tried the ex-05 out on most of the systems that had a usb or correct sized jack; PC (windows 7), ps2, ps3, TV monitor, xbox360, as well as my htc "hero s". Hooking up to all of the listed systems was as easy as plugging in the usb. Save for my xbox360, that did take a little doing with the audio cables.

Annoyances:
Every now and then the length adjustable enclosure (the part between the headband and the ear cups) caught stray hairs and yanked them out when removing the headphones.

The control box was far too close to the headset and dangled at a very inconvenient location, frequently getting caught on me, my chair, and the local environment. It was far to delicate for this kind of daily beating of being yanked and bouncing off things whenever I got up.

My Final rating for the 'Gioteck EX05 Multi-format Headset for PS3, Xbox360,PC, & Mac' is a 4 out of five (average of all bullet points). If the durability was significantly improved this would be a hands down recommendation to buy. Though, as it stands they are a great headset as long as you are very delicate with them.

I hope this helped you make a more informed choice.

I've included some photos to help you get a feel for how they fit.

look into my face O.O

Bench Wood - Color - Final

Back and front shot. Still a newbie at lighting and rendering/materialing in Unity. Assets are screen grab from Unity. Hand painted the texture and none-dynamic shadows. This is the diffuse map with some point lights and directional light.

So here are the UV's with the painted shadows and cleaner texture. Though, I think I could still make the details sharper. I'm going to call this done, as it is only a background item in my scene. I'll be doing a surfer board and palm tree next. Then finish it all off with a tiling sand texture and some reeds or something.

You can download the current version of the bench and it's texture at >> videogame-loots.weebly.com/fre… << for no cost.

There is a 3d preview if you click on the image above the download file.

Thank for viewing!

Bench Wood - Color - WIP 03

Screen grab from blender once again. I've been at work every day so I've not had much time for this between getting home eating and passing out in prep for work the next day. But the asset is progressing slowly.

I am trying to break my habit of starting projects and not bring them to a full polished finish, so this one will for sure make it all the way to a stand alone unity presentation . As well as a tentative multi-asset scene. =P

This is of course for practice to take blender through the "full" lowpoly asset workflow. That being a low poly and all of it's maps. I've been heavily considering doing a few level of detail models for kicks. Even though this mesh is already really low poly.

I did play around with adding in some more polys here and there to make the bench look less rigid but ended up just leaving it as is. Perhaps in future installments of seating props I'll do a high to low poly workflow but, for now I'm just going to paint on the normals with a height map ala Photoshop nvidia filter. And finish off the diffuse and spec maps as soon as possible.

I've got the base photo textures in place and looking more or less the way I want. So now I'm going to paint over it and clean up the grainy photo texture. Then I'll do the spec/gloss and normal map. The plan is to have this be part of a small 6 asset or so beach scene.

I would like to start a legit and organized shop soon. But i'll wait on paying for the service until I have at least 10-20 assets ready to go, and or a small scene of cohesive assets.

Anyway Thanks for continuing to view my progress, don't forgot to visit my shop and pick up the bench! See you next time, and come again soon!

You can download the current version of the bench and it's texture at >> videogame-loots.weebly.com/fre… << for no cost.

Bench Wood - Color - WIP 02

I think since the stock image I pulled for the color texture is so low rez I'll do a paint over of it to clean / crisp it up.

here is a sample to look over in the round.

Bench Wood - Color - WIP 01

Work in progress screen grab of the color map for the bench.

viewport screen grab (shadeless)

Edge padding of 1 pixel an island and 4 pixel spacing between each island. All islands are lined up to a pixel. The color map is 512x512.

UV layout

Wood Bench

A quick model for a block-in of a beach scene. You can download the model here. >> wood bench <<

All level of detail models in the beach folder

 wires

estimated distance of the level of detail models.