My latest class with Visualarium is back, now under ZBrushWorkshops!
The contents are basically the same as last time, just so the people who missed it will be able to catch up with the ones who had the chance to be part of it.

I’ll be guiding you every step through the process of sculpting, posing, texturing, lighting and rendering. You will get to know my personal approach to those tasks, learn a little about character development, story telling, composition and other fundamental things that can make you a better artist, more so than only a better technician.

Please, check the official page and sign up if you’re interested!

http://www.zbrushworkshops.com/zbw-masters-detail/?slug=Character-Creation#

You will only have about a week to sign up. The Master Class will be streamed every Saturday, from 1pm to 3pm (or a little later, depending on the schedule) and the head count is growing fast, so don’t miss it!

Big thanks to Ryan Kingslien for inviting me.

See you all there!

Cheers,
-Kris

Here you can check a cool interview with our talented team of artsists at ILM, presented by Pixologic, makers of the software ZBrush:

Thanks to our model supervisor Geoff Campbell for the opportunity and thank you Pixologic for the great job putting this interview together!!!

-Kris

If you’re curious to know more about what I’ve done on this movie, here is a short list of what to look for:

Hero characters:
- Waffles (the spiky looking horned toad) – model, displacement and facial shapes
- The Spirit of The West (Stylized Clint Eastwood) – model, displacement and facial shapes
- The Mayor (the old turtle on the wheelchair) – model, displacement and facial shapes
- The Roadrunners (a.k.a. the horses…) – final model/accessories, displacement and facial shapes
- I also did the displacement detail work on Roadkill’s face, which was a great model done by “Rock” and painted by Justin Holt.

Background characters:
- Curly (the barber) – model and facial shapes
- Boseefus (the young rodent with a mullet) – model
- Dynamite Kid (the rodent in the bucket, with a sling-shot) – model

I also did some work on the environment and props, modeling houses (watch shop, the barrel house, flat iron and the huge livery that gets destroyed by the hawk during the chase sequence) and accessories for some of the characters (golf club bags, clothes, hats, shoes, sunglasses for Kinski etc).

*Update: just got the DVD and grabbed a couple of screenshots to illustrate some of the models I worked on:

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Directed and co-written by Gore Verbinski, Rango is a great western/comedy that just happens to be animated.  It has a ton of personality, thanks to the exceptionally twisted designs done by Mark ‘Crash’ McCreery and brilliantly executed by ILM, as one of the most realistic looking fully animated films to date . The fine details are all over it and are just mind-blowing. I’m so proud to be part of this incredible movie, together with a legion of very talented folks at ILM. Everyone should be VERY proud of the work done on it. It looks absolutely gorgeous!

So, together with some ILM folks and a lot of general public, I “officially” watched Rango with my wife Jessica yesterday at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco. Funny thing was that while I was waiting outside with my friend Sunny, I noticed the actor Danny Glover sitting right in front of us, eating some pop corn. I told Sunny “it’s Danny Glover”. He said “nooo… wait… it’s him!”. Not sure if he watched Rango though, but still a cool little fanboy fact…

I just want to say I had a BLAST! I’m really, REALLY proud of the work done by the whole team. It’s definitely the movie I’m the proudest to be part of, since I started in this industry back in 2004.

Unbelievable work by all supervisors. Tim Alexander did such an amazing job on this. All the nit-picking during dailies shows in the final product, that has to be seen to be believed! Detail wise, you had never seen anything like this in a fully animated movie, almost guaranteed. Textures, shaders, animation, models, FX, comp etc etc etc, it just look stunning, in my fully biased opinion. So, Tim, you’re THE MAN! Thank you.

Huge thanks to Geoff Campbell for being such an amazing model supervisor. All the trust he put in our hands with some very tricky characters. Things we had to learn together. Just priceless. Besides, Geoff is one of the kindest persons I’d ever met in my life. Thank you SO MUCH, Geoff!

Another HUGE thanks goes to John Knoll, who gave me the opportunity to work on a certain character called “The Spirit of The West”. Thank you so much for trusting me with that, John!

Thanks Hal Hickel for all the input on the animation side, making sure our models would be able to “act”.

An ENORMOUS thank you to Mark ‘Crash‘ McCreery for being such a kind, calm, brilliant artist. His concepts for this movie were out of this world and the way he helped us to translate those concepts into digital characters full of soul was amazing. So easy to work with someone like him and I just can’t wait for the next project. Also thanks to Aaron McBride and John Bell, our brilliant concept artists at ILM.

Thank you so much Justin Holt, for texturing my models, specially the Mayor and the Spirit of The West. Also, the monumental work he did on Rattlesnake Jake (modeled by Patrick Gagne) and the Roadkill (modeled by Rock). You’re a rock star man!

A huge thanks to Shawn Kelly for the animation done on the Spirit of The West. You brought it home, man!

Big thanks goes to Jung-Seung, Michael Koperwas and Sunny Wei, for being so supportive and helpful during the whole process. The ability to share and the gift of teaching is strong with these ones!

Thank you all involved on making my models look good on the big screen. TDs, riggers, FX artists, viewpainters, lookdev artists, animators etc etc etc. Definitely an incredible team effort. Also thanks to all managers, behind the scenes people, accountants, technical people that made sure this could be rendered, etc etc etc.

Last but not least, thank you Gore Verbinski for trusting us on this amazing and crazy project. You were the general in front of this army and obviously nothing of this would be possible without your genius work and ideas. This movie is truly a little master piece (and by little I mean, epic!)

Oh! My name in the credits was not too shabby either. For the first time it didn’t get lost in the crowd

Verdict: go watch it now!

Watch it and pass the word around!

-Kris

Well, I had a VERY good reason for disappearing from here for a couple of months. Our son Mathias Julian Costa was born last December the 7th, at 11:20pm, twenty days before my very own birthday!
I can’t believe he is almost three months old now. He is a very sweet boy who looks a ton like both me and Jessica combined, although some people tend to think he is a “mini-me”, but these people had never seen Jessica’s baby pictures, apparently, because he also looks a lot like his mommy. Anyway, life has changed quite a bit around here. Jessica is doing an incredible job being a very loving and hard working mom and I’m just so proud of her and this little guy, who is constantly learning on a daily basis and gives us the most beautiful smiles every morning, that just make our days brighter from the get go. Everyday I can’t wait to get home and give this little guy a big little hug and kiss his mommy for being so kind to us. So, yeah, life is good right now… really good in fact.

I love you, Jessica and I simply adore you, Mathias. I’m blessed.

-Kris

… from my CG work. It’s been a fun ride this far, but it’s time to try something different. I’m taking a little break from my CG work mainly because that’s what I do for a living, working with it daily. I’m planning to use my spare time from now on (other than taking care of our new born baby) learning more about photography and sculpture. I’ll get back to some CG eventually, but hopefully not any time soon.

-Kris

It’s time to organize things a little better. I hope you enjoy the new/cleaner layout as much as I do. If you notice something wrong with it, please drop me a message I’ll try to fix it when I have the time.

Enjoy.

-Kris

Here’s a little collection of my doodles. Those characters were born in ZBrush, with no previous concept in mind. Later on, references were used to help me to define the personalities of some of them.

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