Hi all and welcome to this Open Tutorial 
Throughout this thread I will be sharing my process for creating my next piece of artwork. Rather than this being a standard work in progress thread, or a tutorial, where you follow each step I post I though you could all work along side me. By doing this we can help each other as we share and discover new techniques. Hopefully in the end we will all learn something.
Its going to be a bit of an experiment, but if your interested in joining please subscribe to this feed, or joing the CGTalk thread and feel free to chirp in with comments or even upload your own versions of the work.
So what will we be doing?
Well, late last year I posted a thread allowing early subscribers to choose what image we will recreate. The result was The Tug of Danger by Dean Yeagle.
This will be quite a good piece to redo in 3D as it has many elements we can cover. As well as modeling and texturing we can also look at skin, hair, fur, grass and other elements of the environment.
Its important to add here that we are not going to do an exact copy, line for line, colour for colour. Instead we will use this as a base concept to work from. Yes, we will try and keep true to Deans work, especially Mandy, but the environment will probably change slightly.
What software will you need to use?
Well I am using Silo, Maya (8.5) and Photoshop (CS3) but feel free to use 3D Studio, XSI or whichever you like. I will post steps in an open, non-app specific way but when we come to hair and shaders, which will be Maya specific, it would be good for you to post other ways to achieve similar results in your chosen package.
You can find trial versions of the software here -
Silo – http://www.nevercenter.com/download/
Maya – http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7635018
Photoshop – http://www.adobe.com/go/tryphotoshop
What will I be sharing?
As this is a tutorial I will be more than happy to upload models and shaders etc. as I go along, as well as lots of images. I will be using the final render in my portfolio, and converting this thread into a proper tutorial but I will only include my own posts, so don’t worry.
How frequently will I be posting?
I can`t commit to uploading updates on a daily basis, it may even be a few days between posts depending on how busy I am…but the beauty of this thread will be that you can all upload your work for the community to comment on. I will however check in once a day, and leave feedback where possible.
So, sign up, subscribe or just pop back from time to time…I will post the first step shortly
