First Contact

Well since our group finally put up a website for our short, I felt obliged to post a few of the worthwhile things I did for it here. The soldier pictured here though was the final version I wanted for the short, which addressed some issues with animation of her arms. Time however was not on our side so it got left by the wayside. Below that is her gun, and if you notice there's a R+H on the side view. We decided to stick that there after the events that befell Rhythm and Hues. Finally there's the creature of the short, whom we affectionately called Coco. Fun fact, from hi-poly to low-poly (Ha, not really) to textures and rigging, Coco was completed in basically a day. Our previous creature had become a horrible nightmare that was unusable, so I jumped at the chance to save the creature. In the end it worked out for the better, Coco was much much more menacing than what we had before.

Be sure to check out the short's website here: http://artoffirstcontact.weebly.com/

Winter is Coming

After my last post I just had to make another one just so I could use the line from Game of Thrones. So, here we go with Winter.  I'm not too happy with the pose, I tried to get more of an extreme twist from her torso to her waist. I ended up scrapping that because I didn't want to end up spending hours noodling the pose till it was just right. I didn't want to copy the pose I did for Summer, but after putting them together in the second image, I don't think it would of been too bad. Colored Winter just like I did Summer, also colored lines are make things pretty nice lookin'.

Anyways I quickly stuck Summer and Winter together in one image. Kinda surprised that it worked so well, at least I think it kinda looks neat. I also didn't realize how much taller Winter would end up being. Wasn't my original plan to mash them together, but it works. Who knows I might just finish up this lady/swimwear/firearm/season theme I've started with these two. I mean I'm halfway there already haha, just Spring and Fall should be fun to do.

Summer's Bookend

Well I meant to post this at the "official" end of summer on September 21st, but I kind of forgot.  Anyways, I embraced being a male of my species for an hour or so and drew a pretty girl without much clothing... So, I wanted to try something different when I did this and just played with the gradient, lasso, and hue/saturation tools in Photoshop to color this. I thought it looked neat and graphic-y, and was simple way to color. Kinda has a military-girl vibe to it, in which case be careful she knows how to use that gun haha.

Something Cartoony

Just wanted to get something out there that wasn't 3d. Plus, I couldn't sleep. So I drew Marie without her helmet. I wanted to do it all fancy-like but I couldn't spend too long on this. As I type right now my eyes want to close so bad haha. Off to bed as soon as I post this.

Last One I Promise...

Just had to try a couple more...

Rendering Experiments

After my last post I felt like taking another stab at lighting, which I'm not too great at. This time around I lit Marie with three lights, one blue (side), one orange (back), and a slightly red main light source (front). Somewhat happy with how it looked I tried it again messing with the focal length of the camera and depth of field. Which resulted in a neat upshot I thought so I put it up here as well. Now I know that presentation wise it's best to put the model on a 50% grey background, but I'm a big fan of Chiaroscuro and having the black background is just kind of an aesthetic I've grown to like. Although the lights are far too bright here to achieve the proper effect haha.

In other news, I'm sporting a pretty powerful new computer, it's been kicking some serious a** in all my 3d applications. (It did cost me a pretty penny though...) Got these renders with extremely high settings all checked-on done in like a minute each. It's been night and day compared to my old computer. My old one served me well, but if I'm going to make this art thing a career I needed a better workstation.

Also big shout out to our Rigger Mike Swann, for rigging all our characters for First Contact. Went to hell and back getting our characters to work, my hat goes off to him. All that fancy rigging code and script is all black magic to me haha.

Red Light

Found a render I did of Marie while cleaning out some folders on my portable hard drive. Figured I might as well load it up. I think I was playing with rim lighting in Maya when I did this. Not much else to say haha.

Jedi Somethingorother

Had no sleep for the last two days of our massive two-quarter project for our Production Studio class. After school had kicked us out when it closed we went to a friend's house and brought some computers to continue working. I was mostly in a supervisory role as I couldn't do much at the time, so I drew in a friend's sketchbook when I wasn't needed. Originally it was going to be Marie, which is what we named my space marine character in the short, but I took a different route and it ended up as some Jedi-esque character.

Sweet Revenge

Annnndddd I'm back, been way too long since I posted anything on here so... Here's the first of many posts of the evening. Dug through my sketchbook and rooted out some decent pieces.

So, a group of my friends took a class and they did a short that was a bit of a spoof on The Avengers and Halloween (The Holiday, btw) all rolled into one. I dropped by the class a couple times and did some fan art. The three villains of the short, and a poster of their version of the Avengers like the movie poster (but I couldn't find it.) Also some sketchiness of Thor on top as I tried to help one of the guys to animate it. Anyways, that's all for this post. More to come as the night rolls on.

Before I forget, go check out their short!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqr9aOprtlU

Also 13k+ views, I'm amazed I've gotten so many (In light of my lack of updates), thanks again all you anonymous visitors!

Workin' like crazy

I've been slaving away like mad over the last few months on a group project at school. It'll be an animated short, that we only get around 22 weeks to do stuff in, and the space marine here is one of the things I've been working on for it. So in about 9 more weeks my Team should hopefully have a finished product that we're proud of. Got a lot of my friends working on the team as well and we're hauling ass trying to be the best short ever made for all time in that class. Plus, I get to see my character move which is cool. I'll try to post more frequently again as well, been so busy I don't usually have anything to post here.

Space Marines!

All finished sculpting! Now all my problems focus on getting this into a working version for Maya to get all rigged.

zBrush Preview

Hey everyone, it's been a crazy few weeks since I've gotten back to school. We're doing a massive group project over 2 quarters, and it's shaping up to be epic as hell. Got all the best in our major at the campus in the class and we're determined to see this through and succeed.

Anyways I feel terrible not posting as much as I used to here, it really is a nagging thought in my head everytime I'm on a computer. So, here's something at least. One of our characters for the short we're working on. I'll upload a complete turnaround once she's finished, also a big thanks to Eat3D's hard surface zBrush videos, they were instrumental in getting this done. Though the second video of the series is the best at explaining the process.

Can't wait to get our project done, we've all learned new programs. Vue, Topogun (New to us!), and dDO. So here's looking forward to my lil' space lady here running around and fighting stuff. Wish us luck all you anonymous visitors!

Sketchy Suit

Been busy lately, starting a massive group project. Should be really badass when we finished. Anyways this is a cartoony version of the zBrush sculpt I'm working on for the short. Wanted to figure out some form of color scheme. I originally wanted her armor to be some sort of color, and her accent lights to be white. It never wanted to look right though, so I ended up with the reverse of what I wanted. Which I don't think looks too bad, I like it at least. Her 'eye' I should also explain is a holographic display thing, I guess kind of like the Cylon eyes. Except this one doesn't always move from side to side, I guess a cyclops would be a better example. We were thinking about maybe doing a kind of inside the helmet shot like you see in Iron Man to see her face as our short goes on.

Hopefully I get the actual model done soon as it is much more impressive than this lil' sketch I have here. Learning a bunch of cool zBrush stuff for hard surface modeling, and I think it looks pretty darn cool so far.

In other news, Happy New Year, and I've also gotten an internship doing some stuff for a local PBS station. Doing pre production work for a short they're planning. I'll be sure to upload that stuff too if I can.

Monk-y Redo

Hey all, long story short my trusty old tablet finally broke and just got a brand new Intuos5. Hadn't really had the chance to break it in until now. Finals have started for me this week and I just wanted to get that off my mind, so I decided to retry the female monk from Diablo 3 again without lines. I had taken a couple old demo files from one of my professors and tried to figure out how he painted them. Reverse engineering a painting is rather fun when you manage to achieve similar results. She did kinda get stretched since I wasn't really paying attention to anything but how to paint.

Anyways this came out better than I had hoped, considering how unwary I am of using so much color, like the blues/purples in the shadows. It really does make the end result feel... nicer, not really sure why yet.

Still Alive

Hey all, sorry about not posting for like a month. Just been busy with school and more importantly the first of my portfolio classes. Which also means I will eventually be thrust out into the world to find some form of employment, kind of a scary thought the more I dwell on it.

Anyways, here's some head studies I did yesterday. One of my friends posted one the other day and it got me all fired up to do something in photoshop. It really made me see how rusty I was at painting and that faces are still something I need to focus on more. Especially since I'm aiming my portfolio for character modeling.

So, both studies are of the same girl/ref which you can check out on the poorly updated, but always useful Characterdesigns.com Did the greyscale in like 40mins, I think the color took me considerably longer. Your art skills are like a good knife, you have to take care of it or it dulls.

I'll try to update a bit more, I know I have some drawings laying around somewhere. Just have to find them. There's also a super awesome new zBrush sculpt in the works so you anonymous viewers can look forward to that.

Fire & Ice

Here's a quick sketch I did, just to make something for fun and to 'hopefully' get the rest of my Production Studio class in the mood to work on this, since we begin animating next week.

You wouldn't think it but this is severely edited in photoshop haha, well unless your monitor's colors are different than mine, then you can probably tell. I reposed the characters forever trying to find the right angles and changed the colors to red and blue. Also it's so much cleaner than it actually is, Photoshop really is amazing isn't it?

The Villainess

Well here's some turnarounds from my Production Studio class. Tis' the ice based villain of our story, complete with alter ego as well. The story has quite a twist, at least we think so and despite it being so dead serious I think it'll be fun.

Not all here is my work, the super villain costume was created by my friend Lee, who you can check out here http://deadpoolrus.deviantart.com/. I edited his turnarounds and I guess you can still see the eraser marks from his original line art. Her alter ego is all my idea, and I had originally drawn her head too big, thank god for photoshop haha.

Anyways hopefully the costume scan looks ok, I didn't scan it myself I don't have the original.

A Pretty Face

I've realized lately, I've been drawing nothing but some really generic faces. They literally feel all the same, and while every artist develops their own sort of default face for men and women I felt like I needed to draw more of them from reference. I kind of worked myself into this spot since most of my boredom sketches are all about glorified muscular definition and I've never really focused on the face. So yesterday afternoon I had some time to kill, and

Anyways I felt like I should focus on faces for awhile when I have the chance. So yesterday afternoon I had some time to kill, and sketched this up.The reference for this comes from http://characterdesigns.com/ which is a great reference resource, and while he doesn't update much anymore there are more than plenty of images to practice anatomy, some clothes, and props. Go to the left, and click on 'photosets' under 'Archives'. I forget which set this is from but you'll recognize it if you find it haha.

Anyways that's all I got for now. I just realized I haven't slept since 6am yesterday and it's 5:30am now. Time to get some sleep. Also wow I'm at 5.5k views already and I haven't even posted for awhile. I think this is probably the most popular web-thing I've ever made on the internet haha. Thanks again to all you anonymous visitors.

Anatomy Drawin'

Again here's some forgotten sketches I found from last quarter. Practicing my own little brand of anatomy I suppose. Been really messing up lately, I hadn't really watched Anime for like a year and I binged on it over my break. Consequently my sleep schedule is messed up and I'm drawing legs much longer than I usually do. The stuff you watch really influences you! Which is why it's important to always practice your basics, and do Life Drawing. 

Even a sharp blade dulls without sharping! Practice Practice Practice!

Mystic Girl

Here's a sketch from like 3 weeks ago, I completely forgot it was in my sketchbook. Anyways, I don't think I had any idea in mind when I drew this out. Just kind of attacked it from an artistic vacuum, which comprised of me going "Hmm...I think this looks neat" as I drew random shapes on top of the anatomy to form her armor. I think it fits together well considering I had no direction in mind.

It's really nice to draw like this once in awhile. Remembering all your techniques and design philosophies you learn in classes/books takes it's toll when you draw. I believe one of my professors explained to me roughly as your brain draws it pulls on all you've learned sub-consciously, and when you consciously think about those things, it hinders you.  When you draw without letting all your training take up your brain's RAM (Processing) I believe you create much easier.