Merry Christmas!

...or whatever your preferred holiday of choice is. Anyways wish everyone the best, and hopefully you're enjoying time with friends and family.

So, I had been hoping to get this finished before Christmas, but Skyrim is an incredible time waster haha. I figured I should post something even if it's unfinished. My usual block of text about the work will come when I post the finished version.

Materials & Lighting Final

Here's my quick demo reel of the projects I did in my Materials and Lighting class. First was a still life, I just picked a bunch of stuff I liked. Second was an Outdoor scene, and I had a lot of trouble with that one. I did a different scene right up until the day before class, then I changed it that day and finished the railroad tracks you see in the video. Finally we have my spaceship command bridge on what my professor said was the "dirtiest f•••ing spaceship he's ever seen" which is mostly my fault haha, I'm planning on working over the whole thing, or doing a new scene over break. Cause I'm not too happy with it. Especially compared to my friend's final, his was really great. I don't feel like I deserve an A compared to what he did. Just have to put more practice into materials and lighting, just giving up cause you aren't good at something is dumb. Practice and more practice is the only way you'll get better

There be remade Dragons

Not much to say about this one. All I did was add suggestions, I got from my friends about the previous version. Added more exhaust vent spikes, some added flair to the hips, a more stumpy tail (My own suggestion), lengthened the front legs, and closed the mouth a little plus some glow-y mist as well. Anyways I do feel this one is better thanks to all my friend's comments.

There be Dragons

Close up of the head

So like Skyrim is coming out soon... and well that wasn't the reason I did these. I found out there was a contest for a Facebook game I play to kill time, and they were looking for users to create what they thought the new dragon players would get would look like. Of course I found the contest an hour and a half before it was over, and missed the deadline by an hour... but you never know. I might get lucky haha.

The basic idea was it had to be a dragon that would inhabit this macabre, dreary graveyard-like expansion in the game. Which had all these blue glowing gems/lights. The expansion was also a place that collected souls and allowed you to revive your dead troops. It would also be a powerful unit that you had to charge with souls. My dragon would have to fit those criteria.

Anyways, did this up with a few quick silhouettes. Sketched out some rough lineart, and base color (purple in this case). Then set about refining lines, anatomy (or whatever I thought looked cool), and adding/subtracting modifications as I went. Then a quick color for shadow, and a lighter blu-ish purple for the lights which I felt made it match with the color scheme of the expansion. I ended up not wanting to do the wings (no rule in the contest said it had to have wings), so I made what I already had into these sort of vents, spewing energy/smoke/steam, in an attempt to make it mesh with the gems on the chest. Which had this sort of glowing mist falling from it. Which I felt really added to the dragon since it was soul powered. Then I played around adding kind of these glowing fractures/cracks in the horns. Then I realized I was overdue for the contest haha. So, I quickly finished the tail and threw my signature on it and called it done.

Sketchbook tiem!1

Here's some of my sketchbook stuff I've been up to lately, more interesting stuff coming soon I hope.

Titan Wireframe

One of my friends requested a wireframe for my vehicle, so here it is.
133k faces

Adv Drawing Final

So here's an early post of my Advance Drawing for Animation final. I'm so disappointed with it. I had planned to do 3 separate compositions. 2 Character based things, and 1 multi-character Composition. Needless to say I only got 1 finished. Just too much trouble for me with my 3D class's homework, and the fact that I kept redoing stuff because I couldn't get anything I liked going either.
So I had this one almost done, and figured I might as well go all out. Sadly, I couldn't get the version of this to work the way I wanted either. So after some back and forth between my professor, I cropped it down, got rid of my skeleton warriors, gave her a scythe, and went all Spawn-like on her hair.
It's not what I wanted to finish with, but I'm glad it came out decent. Hopefully my professor likes the changes I made, as well as seeing some of his suggestions included in this as well.
Some days you just can't get stuff going, and despite that you still have to crank out work regardless. It doesn't do anyone any good to give up and not turn something in. Better to have something than nothing right?

Saving the Day...

...one Nuke at a time. Anyways here's my final for my Camera Techniques class. Nothing special about the animation, more of a pre-vis sort of thing. All about the camera shots, and apparently I did a good job which was contrary to my belief the day before class. So much stress is off my back now that I got this done.

The Titan

A quick AO pass of my vehicle for my camera techniques class. It started as a mech, but then that was shot down by my professor, so a truck with a giant missile on it's back was apparently the next best thing. Anyways I did go easy on the tires, since my computer at home can't handle complex ones. And also if you think you're going to put rivets on something when you start it. Put them on immeadiately, doing them all by hand after the fact, is a giant pain lol.

Sleepy Time with God of War

So, I could not get to sleep last night. Spending 7 hours in Photoshop after the fact, has done nothing but keep me awake. Quickest good painting I've ever done I think, so I guess it's a speed painting? I did neglect some areas like his left hand... yeah speed painting it is.

Anyways, it didn't start out as Kratos. I was just painting a generic man body, and then I started to think it would look good as Kratos from God of War. So I did as much as I could by memory, then nabbed a few reference photos from Google, and the rest is pretty much history.

The face was the toughest part, because everyone (at least every gamer) knows what Kratos looks like so getting his face to where it looked like him took the longest out of anything. I guess that's what's difficult about established characters.

Once it's popular you have to stick with it no matter what. Like Shrek, sure the movies are fun but his design is lame, and because it became popular they had to keep it. Lesson here is, always do your best when you make a new character.

Anyways I'm off track, Kratos, 7 hours, done, I sleep now.

Hades meets Persephone REDUX!

Added the suggestions of my Professor, and classmates. Not much else to say, I do like this one more though.

More Psychology Sketches

I honestly think, my Psychology class is pointless. I don't learn anything, the Professor just shows us videos, and I mess around in my sketchbook and I still have an A. Oh well, felt like messing with some more stylized faces and things.

Trying to get a bit of the sniper from TF2, and well just drawing pretty faces...

Hades meets Persephone

Well here it is finished. Hades meeting Persephone. Not quite the same as the myth as he technically comes bursting out of the ground and grabs here. I thought having them walking past each other was a kinder way to show their meeting.

Trying to get the background to show the character of each person. Like how Hades has this chaotic mass, with burning embers in the distance. Which was an idea my professor gave me the great suggestion for. Then of course the sort of nice softness of nature and Persephone juxtaposed next to it.

Even more simply it's sharps vs rounds in terms of my initial idea. Really fun to do, and I like how it came out, usually my Photoshop only paintings end up pretty chaotically wrong. Luckily the class this is for teaches me all that fun stuff about composition.

Of course I had to put some sort of God of War hint in here somewhere, since I'm a huge fan of the games. Originally I was going to copy GoW's Hades' spikes that he had popping up throughout his body, and a bit of Persephone's dress from the games. I ended up forgoing the Hades' spikes and settled for the the lower backside of Persephone's dress from Chains of Olympus (at least from the concept art).

Hades in da House...

HW for my Advanced Drawing for Animation Class. More of a compositional class though, but still fun. Anyways, we had to pick a greek myth of some sort and then give 3 variations upon the chosen subject. I picked Hades, cause Zeus is overrated.

So, the top row are some quick roughs I did for Hades. the first is Hercules asking Hades for permission to borrow Cerberus. The middle is just Hades looking cool (Although my professor pointed out how it's similar to Dante's Inferno, where Hades along with people like Judas are frozen around the final circle of Hell.) Lastly, I have Hades meeting his woman-to-be, Persephone.

My Professor said he liked them all, but as you can see by the lower row, he liked the first and last best. (I felt pretty belittled watching him do the quick painting on the bottom left in like half an hour.) So like I was saying he gave me suggestions and some ideas for how I could improve the two.

I ended up deciding to do the 3rd choice, because I didn't have the advantage of a partial paintover to get started. Plus, I really really liked that one to begin with. Although I do like what my Professor did with the first one. Anyways, I'm about done with the 3rd one right now, and maybe I'll have time to do the first one as well. Time will tell haha.

Intro Pre-Vis, Revised

Can't believe I didn't post up my revised pre-vis intro project for Motion Graphics class. This is super old now, but I figured I should get it up. Trimmed stuff up, and made the art more refined. Still wish I had more time than I had to make it look prettier. As well as more time to find better foley and music. Mostly my fault for doing so many takes, requiring me to crank out unique drawings for each one.
In hindsight I would of made it super simple, but much much more focused and refined. Doing stuff like this really makes you appreciate the people who do this for a living, even the simple stuff. If it looks like it'd be easy to do, it just means the person who made it, is good at their job. Haha I was so disillusioned when I went in to school.

Colored Psych Notes

Colored a few of em up after I got something to eat.
From left to right, the character to me just seemed to be some sort of desert nomad and following suit, nabbed some desert colors from a photo and gave him some earthy/sandy-ness.

The middle is Ká one of my older characters, been messing with her design as of late, mostly trying to figure out what works. Still sports her chinese palace red armor with aged gold highlights. Took a lot of the green jade areas out and left the shoulder ones, mostly to draw attention to her face area, and made her glowing eye a bit more wispy I suppose. I also cut her hair, no more flow-y long hair. Thought of it as a hassle lately, and liked the short'er' cut.

Lastly on the right I got my weird mummy/warrior/skeletor thing. Had some fun with the pose used diagonals in the body/spear and verticals in the draping cloak. I thought it turned out to be rather interesting. Got lazy with the shadows and gave him some glowing eyes, cause only the cool undead have those.

I really enjoyed these mini sketches, a lot less taxing on me than going through a whole process with a single piece. Hopefully I'll do more in the future.

Now to get some sleep...

Psych Notes

In between moments of lecture and notes, I did these up during my psychology class. Check out the colored version of some of these as well, I believe it's the post right after.

I won a contest!

Sadly, not for my art but for reading something correctly. Still a win is a win, anyways I entered a contest for Blizzard Entertainment way back in January, and today I find a box at my doorstep labeled the Shattering Contest, and inside I find a signed copy of the book by the author. First time I've ever won a real sort of contest, definitely a good feeling.

Back to school...

Since I have no real homework yet as my school week drags on I spent a few hours this afternoon painting. In an attempt to get better at breaking away from lines, I started out pure value. Which after mindlessly noodling I ended up with a rather white space suit/armor thing. Kind of like the Nasa get-ups the astronauts wear now...  at least color wise. So an orange helmet later I finished it up. Also below the original a slightly modified version I made for my facebook image.

SUMMER!

My brain's mental escape from Finals about halfway through. Among other things this was the best of the bunch. Just getting something done that wasn't straight up schoolwork was such a great stress reliever. Anyways just threw some lame colors and some BG junk to make it a little nicer maybe... probably not. Somewhere my fundamentals of design teacher is crying I bet.

Fishy People

Comparative Anatomy. Decided I'd make some humanoids. Lots of thinking about stuff.

Clothing was partially inspired by the sleek-ness of wetsuits, but mainly started as an idea from the designs from the game Mass Effect. Watched a few videos about their design process for clothing in their 'future' world. I really attached to this idea of a long overcoat/dress they had with a bold colored stripe running down the middle.

It was pretty striking and felt like that was the direction I wanted to go. The original had them running around in like loincloths. Which because I designed their anatomy, wanted to show it off. In the end though the cloaks were the better option.

Anyways click it to read all the fun facts I made up.

Face Melting Predator

It probably can melt your face off too. This was a tough one, I had finished the rest of my Comparative anatomy designs, and I really wanted to make a predator. I spent pages roughing through design and design. 

Finally I gave up and just picked a set of spider eyes, and fleshed out the head from around it. Funny how the simple solution delivers the design you want. All the other designs suffered from a lack of fierce-ness. None of them immediately screamed 'This thing can and will eat you." This spider/cat gave me that impression days before it was due. Wish I had more time to flesh it out then.

It has no fur, it's like a snake with smooth scales, and as a throwback to a comment from a fellow student to my original ideations it can breathe 'fire'. I looked for all sorts of ways to make it logically happen. Which ended with me picking a similar system to the bombardier beetle, albeit much much more powerful.  

Anyways click it to read all the boring facts.

MASSIVE sea animal transports

The original premise once I got to the 3rd Ideation was a whale who didn't evolve fins.  I really liked that idea and pursued it. We all know whales today have 'finger' bones in their flippers, so what if they didn't have those?

So it needed a tall neck to see above the water, and to breathe air. The largest animals on Earth (like Whales) survive on the smallest of creatures so mine needed to feed like one with baleen. Since the 'head' is above water the mouth would need to evolve down. Which resulted in these massive openings on either side of the base of it's neck which filter food from the water, before the water exits out another opening behind the upper front legs. Making them constant filter feeders.

Per my professor's request I made it a bit fatter than the original painting. (Since they are always eating) Plus as an interesting bit I felt they should serve as transports. So I worked them in as being a sort of cargo barge for my race of humanoids I had made for the same class.

Anyways yeah Comparative Anatomy, fun stuff and the text on the image explains most of everything.

Battlecruiser

It's kind of become a tradition for me to build a crazy star ship since my 1st 3D modeling class. A few of my friends made their own, and of course I had to make mine better. So using the vagueness of my 1st project's criteria I went as all out as I could only using primitive shapes alone. Nothing fancy, and this was the end result.

Gilneas

Here are a couple of shots from my Environment project from Hard Surface and Organic Modeling. It's Gilneas from World of Warcraft. Just loved the design of the city, and had to remake it (As best as I could from memory haha) in Maya. It's not too bad, but after Finals I realized I wasn't making it for a game, and I could of gone more all out on detail since I technically didn't have to worry about poly count.

Still though one of the girls in the class did this amazingly awesome job on the nepal city level from Uncharted 2. It was freaking awesome, she even won I believe it was a scholarship from Sony. Makes me happy to rub that in people's faces when they say that my school doesn't teach the students anything.

Mustang 2

The backside of my Mustang

Mustang

Been working on a lot of 3-D stuff lately at school, and here's my first car I've ever made in 3-D. The Autobot thing is just cause I'm excited about the Transformers coming out. More stuff to come as soon as my Finals are over. Also a huge thanks to my Professor who gave us the awesome file to render these out in HDRI.

Bard Hero

Did this for a friend, who wanted me to draw her Bard character from D&D. Was just meant to be lineart, but I spent way too long getting this done. So I colored it as a bonus for her.

She wanted it based on a well for all intensive purposes an "Irish Barbie Doll" which had this green Victorian-ish dress and a harp. which totally tied in to her whole Bard character. Anyways I kept what I could, added boots that I saw my friend wearing which I thought looked cool, a WoW style chained tome, a longsword, and glow-y eyes cause I totally botched them up haha. Plus since her name begins with 'K' I added embroidery around the corset and shoulder based on the look of the old english 'K' hopefully she notices, if not it's still a nice little embellishment I think.

The little red bird was an afterthought with the drawing, I felt it helped to make you look around the face area, contrasting against all the green.

Anyways that's about all there is to say I believe.(Also kudos if you get the joke in the title of this post.)

Mercenary Gurl

Had this sitting around in my sketchbook for like a month. Figured I should get it uploaded haha. Anyways, it's kind of an amalgamation of all my favorite sci-fi sort of I guess warrior women, or super sci-fi assassins. Mostly pulling from the awesome ghost units (and the super cool ghost Nova) from Starcraft by the folks at Blizzard.

Just threw on everything I could mostly. The thigh holstered pistol, large combat knife, a bandolier around the leg with bullets, tech goggles, and a sort of backpack assembly that also holds a larger, I suppose assault rifle or SMG. All the fun stuff you want a space soldier to have. Plus a skin tight suit, because well... clothing is hard to draw haha

Silhouettes are fun

A few things I did to kill some time before class. Silhouettes are a fun way to make something, out of basically nothing haha.

The End of the Road

Well end of 'the' road technically for Dorothy and the gang. Only way from here on out is a starship to get Dorothy home. At least that was the idea behind it. The question is which portal will take her home? Dun dun dun..... and the plot thickens haha

DE$PERADO

Here's my Web Animation Class Final. Had a lot of fun working on this, I totally amazed myself just by finishing it haha. Big thanks to my buddy Touch Blevins who did all the voice over stuff.

 There's all the backgrounds I did for the animation as well.

More Color Studies

I'm partial to the top one, but sadly my professor says the cherry blossoms gotta go. Oh well, can't really argue with the guy he's better at this than me haha. I'll figure out something to pop in that area in the final painting. Maybe more temple structure or something, to give a better sense of scale of the complex maybe. Decisions, decisions....

Thumbnails

Thumbnails for my second project in my Background & Layout Design class. Took about 30 minutes at most for each of em. It was fun painting them. Not too much to say, they're all rough ideas on my take of The Wizard of Oz. Most are city shots, and my portal/gateway home.

Color Studies and the End Result

The color study/final painting for my background and layout design class. Pretty bummed about the final outcome, file was corrupted and I had to do in a day what I did off and on over the course of 3 days or so. Still, I kind of like it, probably cause I have a thing for waterfalls haha.

Rough Animatic Sequence

Rough animatic I did for my Motion Graphics class, hopefully my final version will be a lot better. Still up in the air about the text, and music though.

Wannabe Matte Painting

Well I spent about 4 hours before class, trying to figure out matte painting. It's not too bad from a distance, but it fails pretty bad when you're up close. Oh well, more practice I suppose haha.

Free Time + Schoolwork + Extra Week = Awesome Overkill

Turns out I had an extra week to finish it, haha. Of course I had to add more robots.

Free Time + Schoolwork = Overkill

I was given a simple task, give a vehicle or something wheels and make it move. I think I'm having too much fun with After Effects.

Concept-y Stuff

Some concept stuff I did for a friend's project he has going. Still nowhere near completely done haha.

Adobe After Effects

Pseudo Company Intro

My first project for my Motion Graphics class. After Effects is really really fun I have to admit, I keep wanting to do more and more with the program. Anyways no real purpose behind the video other than to get used to the program.

Sketchy

Some sketches I did for possible characters to do in flash for my current class. I couldn't really get anything going, mainly cause I knew the character had to be easily animate-able for Flash. The dude with the huge cowboy hat won out as my choice.