Davy

Well I had started another space soldier character in zBrush about a week and a half ago. It's not done yet, but I was working at school on it Friday and zBrush or the computer wouldn't let me get very far without crashing every few minutes for whatever reason. So to blow off my frustration I decided to sketch him out instead. I needed to fine tune the final look of his boots, gauntlets, and gloves anyways. Funny how none of that came to fruition when I got as far as I did with this. I'd like to work more on it, and I might in the future. It seems decent enough to stick in the back of my portfolio or website somewhere when I get those ready. Not really sure about the pose, it was just how the original sketch ended up, and I wasn't really thinking about it when I started. Also his name is Davy, one of my friends decided that was what he should be called, and from that point on it was so.

I even managed to work on this in a way that kind of looks like a tutorial, so I figured it couldn't hurt to upload that. So here's the process behind Davy:

1 - Rough Sketch

2 - Block-In Lights and Shadows

Did this in a new layer under the sketch.

3 - Refining

The longest part. Just defining each part better, adding finer details

4 - Atmosphere

Rendered out some easy clouds with Photoshop and stuck 'em over Davy. Erased the area over his arm to make atmospheric perspective more apparent. Easy to remember as well, darker = closer and further away = lighter (actually by lighter I mean closer to the background color ex. the sky)

5 - Fancy Lights

This is just me trying to get more bang out of this, I already had highlights but I felt like he needed some more. Just went around with the soft brush and painted in the lights. Then went back with the brush at around 10% opacity and built up the glowing aura around each light. It was the same process for the highlights I intensified on his visor and shoulder.

Here's a little GIF of the whole process above, enjoy. 

Hope this helps somebody out there.

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.

Double Feature

Two posts in one night, back to back! I'm on some kind of a roll. Anyways I kinda wandered into a daily paint group on FB. Thirty minutes, no photos, pure painting, random topics everyday. It's pretty fun considering how hectic I felt under the gun. I'm just more impressed with how far I got in that time. Nice to see that I can still kind of paint.

PACIFIC RIM

First of all let me say, Pacific Rim was the greatest movie of all time and Grown-Ups 2 should of never of beaten it. Anyways, while waiting for a guest speaker to show up at our school, I tried to sketch out Cherno Alpha from memory (This was before the movie came out) I kinda had the right idea, the nuclear smokestack was far too narrow though. So sad that it *SPOILERS* dies so quick, it was favorite Jaeger.

The second image is a scan of what was to be my entry into IGN's Design Your Own Jaeger contest, but I missed the deadline. My fault for trying to get this done on the last day of submission haha, I wished I got it finished. My theme was tall and narrow with like some sort of bladed armor. It would fight normally of course but it's armor let the Kaiju maim itself as the fight wore on. (Which I though was a great idea after seeing the movie.) I will congratulate the winner of the contest though, his submission looked pretty cool.

Espacio Pistolero

I think this was a quick sketch during one of the many burnouts I suffered while working on our Production Studio short First Contact. Again it was Marie but no face mask this time around. I think I was trying to figure out how her face would actually fit inside of the helmet. Much to my dismay when I tried it in 3d, they didn't line up haha.

Doing these little sketches every now and then between all the hard work all most of my team was doing was probably the only reason most of us didn't lose it. Probably that and lots of angry car rides home...

I'll be sure to post a link to the short when we fine tune it some more, which should be soon hopefully.

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.

Death Notes

Had this badboy lurking around in my notes for awhile, totally forgot about him. Did this way back when I did Death's zBrush sculpt. All the notes are from the same class as well. I kinda zoned out for a bit and about 20 minutes later it was break time and this was done. Kinda sad about the closure of the Vigil Games as well, the Darksiders series just oozed style just needed some more substance and it would of been great. Kinda sad I'll never get to see Fury and Strife get their own games now.

Deep Blue Sky

This was a fun little gem I forgot I did way back. When I worked on our class project in Animation Studio we threw around the idea of a mock movie poster, which we never got around to. During break however I did this up in my sketchbook paying homage to Star Wars: A New Hope. It's also super small only a few inches big in my book, looking at it again I kinda want to make a proper version of this.

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!

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.

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.

Superheroes!

Well once again I've somehow become art director on another Flash Animation based class. My story pitch sadly lost by one vote, and I wasn't able to do my sequel I've been itching to do for Desperado since I invented that character. Instead we're diving into some serious dramatic territory with a superhero story.

The story is fairly cliché and I couldn't really stray from conventional hero types. So I got down a quick and very sketchy generic hero body type, and tinkered with it. So here are the three I did, a sort of Commando Samurai Jack, Deadpool-ish masked hero, and finally a hero who's inspiration I can't even recall anymore. I want to say a hero or villain that had bird-like overtones in the costume.

Anyways the other guys in our group that actually were assigned to design the hero/villain came up with plenty of fun designs of which we more or less got our characters finalized. Hopefully our team which is much larger than it was for Deep Blue Sky, will really pull this off well. Guess I'll see what happens in about 9 weeks.

Also my heart goes out for the victims of the TDKR shooting in Aurora, Colorado. That kind of stuff just pisses me off, six and nine year olds there to enjoy a movie gunned down by a nut case. It's just not right.

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.

Another Mercenary Girl

Wasn't doing too much Tuesday afternoon, lately I'm usually in our school's Cintiq lab doing something in photoshop on Tuesdays. However being week 10 of 11 at my school most of them had been confiscated for rendering out 3D stuff for assorted projects. So I cracked out my sketchbook and started to draw. Ended up doing up another version of my space/sci-fi mercenary girl I keep redrawing occasionally. Went for something simpler I think than I did previously.

Had to fix her right leg in photoshop after I scanned it in, it looked completely wrong haha. Foreshortening is a tricky thing, the big secret though is that you don't draw anything larger than normal. Which is what most people think you have to do. It's all about using the wrapping/contours of your lines to give the appearance of overlap between things like the upper/lower leg. Once you get that down it's not as terrifying as you initially think it is.

Life Drawin'

Finally got a chance to drop by my school's Life Drawing Club on Thursday last week. Here's the best one or rather the best two of the night.

Space Gurl

Just felt like experimenting. Had no real concept at the initial sketch, I had thought it would be another D3 Monk sketch. Yet, I ended up taking the space route with this. Still not sure if I like it or not haha. Not much to say, but I do like the helmet I made. I'll probably use it somewhere else down the line.

Of things to come...

Figured I should post one more thing. This isn't the whole image, but a preview of something I'm working on. It should be pretty epic by the time I finish. I think it covers all the basics when creating an epic looking poster. Can't wait till I finish it, I'd post all my progress right now but I have a habit of not finishing something when I do that haha.

Character Reforging

Well I did this a couple weeks ago. Looking over some work up in the halls on campus, saw some guy's character up on the wall and wanted to do my own version of it.

The end result is my version above, a bit more simple than his but I think it gets down to all that was necessary in his design.

Anyways, I think this is the fastest I've gotten a thousand views so far. Past 4k already, I must be getting popular or something haha. Once again, thank you to all you anonymous visitors. I know you're out there.