hughomalley – Hugh O'Malley Photographer Shanghai

bobby sands diary

I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul.

bobby sands was an irish patriot who was a member of the irish republican army. he died in the maze prison in 1981 as a result of a hunger strike he started as a protest against the methods used by the british to treat incarcerated irish prisoners. while on hunger strike he was elected to the british parliament as an mp.

he kept a diary for the first 17 days of his hunger strike which you can read here. well worth reading.

there’s also an amazing movie hunger directed by steve mcqueen and starring michael fassbender both of whom are incredible artists. fassbender’s mother is irish and allegedly is the great grandniece of michael collins who was a highly influential irish revolutionary.

i also came across a documentary called 66 days – 66 days being the number of days it took him to die from starvation. looks interesting but i haven’t gotten around to watching yet.

tiocfaidh ár lá

by Hugh O'Malley, Beauty Photographer and Videographer based in Shanghai

hieronymous bosch

so i started this journey to create some characters inspired by hieronymous bosch paintings and i know the skills i need to learn on the way. the skills include, in no particular order

sculpting in zbrush
retopologizing
generate uv maps
texture baking
importing, painting and exporting from substance painter
creating a texture that mirrors cracked paint as in an old painting
rigging the character in cinema 4d (or maya?)
building a very simple scene or just a 360 for output
posting on social/blog

i’m sure i’ll update this list as i progress

i know this is a huge amount of learning but my goal is to produce one character a week. my first project took me a lot longer than a week to learn the basic skills but the file was mostly done in a little over a week from start to finish. the final output is not a masterpiece and it’s not rigged and the textures are stretched and messy and the 360 is meh.

at this point my goal is not to produce a beautiful artwork every week but to build up my skills and get used to the software and see what the stumbling blocks will be and to refine the process over time and to hone my vision. i don’t want to get hung up on creating ‘perfect’ artworks from the start as i feel that will impede my progress, induce procrastination and be of little value at the outset. later when i have more developed characters

i deliberately am starting with very simple characters and i aim to increase the complexity over time.

by Hugh O'Malley, Beauty Photographer and Videographer based in Shanghai