The Nightmare Starts! Hope it's done before christmas...

Well, I always start my english conversations with the word "well", I'm Juan García Hueso, known as Juanxo for my friends, Nekokawaii11 for some people on the internet, and Pato (Duck) for a minority people. 

I'm from Valencia (Spain) land of oranges, paella, fire and bats.

I worked some months in Future Lighthouse in three VR Projects, I've done some 3D mini games with my friends and tried to do other ones that for some reasons that escapes from me, are dead. (something regular in this world). I worked as freelance for mobile games, 3D models, renders, videos, photomanipulation, graphic design, and much more of funny computer stuff.

-And now what? 

Now I'm trying to work in my city. Now I want to stay with my family, with my girlfriend and my friends, and my room's stuff of course, I love my place.

So, I'm working hard to find work here.

Meanwhile I'm working in the VR game OvAl (You can watch stuff here), doing a game with some friends, and making the Halloween Town, form the Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas movie.

This blog is for that, to show my progress, and,,, 

I'm going to start with my personal one, Halloween Town.

This project was born in the year 2012-2013 when I was a newbie, and I did lots of things, but I was a bit depressed with the quality and I left the project temporarily. When my projects in Future Lighthouse were done I went back to my city and bought new pieces for the computer (I suffered a nice graphic card explosion and I didn't have money for a new one). And I went back with lots of forces wanting to resume the project.

(2013-Screen Capture)

A few weeks later, after gathering lots of references, this is what I've done:

(91 Reference files of photos from the real props)

I'm using the 2013 geometry as placeholders (3d space reference), I sculpted the terrain in Unreal 4, and now, I'm making the new models and some textures to test how it will looks.

The first model was the Town Hall.

I was amazed with the high number of geometry that the video game "Dark Souls 3" had on screen in real time, so I'm mixing high-poly with mid-poly objects and the results are amazing too!

Then, I did an iconic model of the town, the fountain:

(Mid-Poly Screencap)

I'm in love with the fountain, it was my first model made from 0 in ZBrush.

(High-Poly Screencap)

And of course, it was made in high first for the bake. I was impatient, because I was sending pictures constantly to my family and friends, and one friend was always asking me if I will send to him the fountain to make the water for his demo reel. So I asked what he needed, and he said that he needed the textures.

I was like, Oh my gosh! I need to do like 30 buildings first... Well, calm down, I said to myself, I will do the first texture now.

(Mid-Poly fountain with textures and the High-poly baking)

AWESOME, my fountain was so cool, I was excited, it was very emotional. I'm giving all my love on this and I can see it in the things I'm making.

But the good news were close to the end, I wanted to see if the Town Hall had the same feeling, the same power, well, it didn't.

(WIP of the previous version of the Town Hall)

Looks good? 

-NOPE. It sucks. I was very worried, the bricks were inverted (If you take a close look you can see that the bevel is outside and the brick inside), dind't fit the side bricks, and the resolution (OMG).

WTF was happening to me, was like a PlayStation 2 texture inside a Playstation 3 game. I don't know if I was tired or burnt of all the work of that day. 

Then, I had a cold after a Game Jam, a nice Game Jam. Where I gave everything I could and more, as you can see here. The Game Jam was a 48h challenge and I was very proud about the things I did.

But how I was saying, I had a cold. A bad one, so I was out 1 week with fever.

When I got well I was a bit scared about resuming the Halloween Town project, so I focused in the other ones and put it aside.

And one day, I was thinking about the damn Town Hall all the day,,, how can I do the DAMN hall as awesome as the fuc***g fountain,,, (I was very angry with myself)

But I had an idea, it was very crazy because it was going to be a lot of hard work. But I started.

The first step was split the Uv's in five sets.

(Substance Painter Screencap)

Then, the hard work, I did lots of "swift loops" around the objects in 3Ds Max and...

(Zbrush Screencap)

Yes, I sculpted one to one ALL THE STUPID BRICKS. But I was waiting an awesome result, like the fountain, I was giving life to the model by modeling that!

And yes, I was right:

(Substance Painter Screencap)

I'm proud again. Maybe was hard work but not the hardest, and I love the moment when you end and you can see the best result, I love my work.

(The word Well was used 6 times in the first entry, not bad,,,)