Read Digital Art Live Issue 38 : Character Art – Super Skin

Welcome to Issue 38!

Welcome to our ‘Super Skin’ issue!

 

Get sci-fi artwork, inspiration and in-depth interviews with digital artists for free each month

Subscribe now and receive the PDF FREE every month

DAVEY ABBO

We talk about tools and more, with this leading maker of unusual 3D characters for the DAZ Store.

DAZ STUDIO | ZBRUSH

“When sculpting onto a Genesis figure, this is helped greatly by DAZ’s Morph Loader Pro plugin, which I was kindly granted access to. It allows me to export a Genesis figure at Sub Division level 4 to sculpt on inside of Zbrush, giving great results with nice definition.”

AS DIMENSION

We visit sunny Greece to ask Anestis Skitzis about his intense work with ultra-real human skin shaders in DAZ Studio.

DAZ STUDIO | SHADERS

“I have been learning traditional painting for 15 years … I always observe humans and nature, their perspectives, how lights falls and shadows gather, on what materials, and how the light reacts on them. I always tell new users: Observe! Observe! Observe!”

PIXELUNA

Pixeluna talks about her latest creations, how to create great store renders, and how picture research becomes new skin types.

DAZ STUDIO | ZBRUSH

“… I am working on a morph set that is ‘something fun’ to play with and can be used for different types of genres. … we try to put ourselves in the buyer’s shoes and give them options to play with the set. ‘Build your own style’ and you will be known for what you build.”

PLUS….

OUR LIVE WEBINARS!

EDITORIAL

INDEX OF BACK ISSUES

POSER : LA FEMME REVIEW

CONTESTS

GALLERY

IMAGINARIUM

Part of our Interview with DAVEY ABBO

DAL: Davey, welcome the Digital Art Live in-depth magazine interview. It’s a pleasure for our free magazine to interview such a fine maker of content and characters for the DAZ characters. DA: Thank you very much. DAL: Firstly, let’s start at the beginning. When did your creativity first emerge, and what form did it take?

DA: From a young age I’ve always enjoyed drawing and making things. Art was my favourite subject when I was at school, along with Technical Drawing. I had good teachers as well which does help and there was plenty of encouragement.

DAL: Ah yes, I remember ‘Technical Drawing’. I’d find it highly fascinating today, but at age 12 I had no interest in it all. The way I remember it, it was taught in an incredibly dull and rote manner by the Gym teacher. But was there someone in those early years who helped you to nurture your talent?

DA: I guess my Mum was someone who inspired me to draw. She’s very good and she dabbles in watercolour, inks, pastels and acrylics. Seeing her drawing and painting landscapes, animals and portraits from an early age… well now, that makes one want to have a go too, or at least it did so with me. I’m not as good putting pencil or brush to paper though, so I tend to doodle nowadays.

DAL: What was your first encounter with creative digital software? Did you go straight to DAZ Studio, or did you find your way there via a more circuitous route?

DA: About 20 years ago I was working in Visual Management, they used all kinds of software, some of which I’ve stuck with. I still use the Corel products on a daily basis, Coreldraw X7 is used for all my vector work and Corel Paintshop Pro X8 for image editing. One colleague who worked with us was ‘into 3D’ and he had a version of Poser. Working in 2D myself, I was amazed at how you could alter the 3D figures and pose them and so on. I think I’ve been using DAZ Studio for around 10 years, now. Just as a hobby really. I also bought a copy of Bryce and Carrara which was mind boggling at first.

DAL: Wow, trying to juggle the learning of both at once would have been a bit of a handful! DA: Bryce was the one that really got me going, and I found it easy to create simple 3D scenes and objects and then I was able to import DAZ Studio figures into these when needed. DAL: Ah yes, we had a review of the final Bryce a few issues ago, and looked at the bridge between them if any reader is interested.

DA: So eventually started to use DAZ Studio a lot more. The more I used DAZ the better results I was getting, and after a while I had built up quite a product library for Genesis 2 figures, thus allowing me to create some lovely work.

DAL: What difficulties did you have to overcome with the DAZ software, when you were first learning it?

DA: Pretty much everything! I prefer to just muck around with software programs, as opposed to sit reading tutorials on how to do things. To give yourself a little project and see how you go, how hard can it be? Posing is straight forward, fitting clothes and accessories to figures again is very simple, Lighting is the one thing that I struggle with and still do now. Not that it’s hard to light a scene but in my opinion it’s the one thing that can really make a scene. So most of my time spent in putting a render together was spent on lighting, I now have presets that I’ve created to save me rendering 50 to 60 images until I was happy with the outcome. I’d just like to say, as well, that the Team at DAZ has been a great help. They’ve given me plenty of encouragement and guidance and I wouldn’t be creating the morphs and items I am now without their continued support.