BestGFX

Ben Mauro is a US born concept designer and digital sculptor. He studied industrial design and entertainment design at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He has been working in Wellington, New Zealand at Weta Workshop since 2009 and over the past few years has contributed to a vast array of Film, Television and Videogame projects such as ‘The Hobbit Trilogy’, ‘Elysium’ and ‘Valerian’ among many others. Before coming to Weta he worked as a freelancer for various clients including LucasFilm, Rhythm & Hues, Activision, EuropaCorp, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures Animation, Insomniac Games, Design Studio Press and Vishwa Robotics. While most of his time is taken up by his duties at Weta, he continues to offer his design services to clients around the world.

In this tutorial we will go through the character design process as well as go over various painting techniques. During the course of this tutorial, we will go over the sketch and design process for creating NPCs (Non-Player Characters). We will take, from beginning to end, the entire process of creating a Goblin minion that could be handed off to an art team to move into further development. We'll create several armor sets for the goblin to wear.

BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) is a new and exciting DVD series developed to showcase the creation of a game cinematic sequence. The series follows a team of artists as they demonstrate their production techniques from concept phase to final rendered animation.

For students heading into set design, the ability to sketch and render environments is essential. Learn how to plan out perspectives, set up compositions, establish lighting, and create mood in this detailed step-by-step demonstration. This lecture also covers the materials used in the design industry as well as sketching techniques, thumbnails, and warm-up excersies.