I think this boy's cheese has done slid off his cracker

I was doing a lot of boring very noncreative promo stuff at work. Even though I had an interest in architecture as a kid I really don’t like to do schematics and practical industrial design. Having to make changes to an object solely on the fact that some dumb unmonitored child might get stuck, loose and eye, or otherwise injure themselves in a way that might cause reason for a lawsuit, and then they complain that the ride looks stupid, drives me crazy. I’m more of a let Darwin work his magic kind of a guy. Anyway I needed something interesting to do before I went nuttier than an acorn, so I took and hour to do this. I didn’t think anything would come of this break from madness, but turns out it was good enough to post.

I’ll sleep when I’m dead

I find it strange that after a very long day at work I find I can have the most energy. I also find that I can be my most creative late at night while by body relaxes the days problems fade away and my mind is left to imagine and create. Here are some of those late night drawings from the past two days. I tend to draw with very clean lines, a byproduct of thinking I needed a backup plan as an architect if this whole animation thing never worked out. Because of this I was taught that neatness can count for as much as accuracy. I’m not sure if this is totally a bad thing, but I try to loosen up my drawings sometimes because I know that can be just as rewarding. These images are evidence of that fact. I hope I have learned something new today.

john out

The inspiration that is Ridley Scott

So I’ve been watching a lot of aliens recently, the first movie being my all time favorite science fiction/horror movie. Anyway I really love how the alien is always lying in wait for someone, and then slowly unfolds itself. Then proceeds to destroy all who are in it’s path, assuming their name is not Ripley. Also for those unawares a second alien vs. predator is in the works, and I just got over the trauma of the first. Heaven help us.

john

something old, something new, something blue

I am terrible at updates.I have a lot of personal projects in the works and have little to show for it right now, so i dug up an old piece. This head you may remember from an earlier post where I put up the flat shaded model. I actually textured this a long time ago but was not entirely happy with it, I planed to rework it but never did. I think the eyes still need a bit of work. Anyway I decided to post it anyway. The new piece isn't all that new. Red guy here is some photoshop over an old sketch. I think someone stole his waffles, and you know you should always eat a balanced breakfast. I've been reading a lot of Batman lately, and well, Catwoman is hot. This is actually more like a cos-player with more lifelike proportions, as apposed to how she appears in the comics. Jim Lee is the man!

fig. 0107

Just doing a little coloring practice on a sketch from last weekends figure drawing. I like to photoshop in colors which resemble red conte, I'm not sure why.

stupid 23 degree axis

I hope everyone is staying warm as the cold winds blow in.

pillheads

So it's been a while since i updated this thing. I've been very busy lately with work, but i wanted to at least post some sketches. The spacemen are ideas for a character in a game we are working on at work, i kind of liked the short out of shape guy but he was not ultimately chosen. The heads are some practice on the shapes of the cheeks. The last few guys were people on the train, the pill heads came from just trying something wacky.

Halloween

So this second piece (pumpkin patch) did not come out quite as well as I intended so I decided to post the sketches to see where I went wrong. Maybe I need a bunch of bats in the air or something cheesy. The second is because I know some people who hate candy corn, and I can't imagine why. Well anyway i hope everyone has a happy Halloween!

creature 001

I dropped some doodles on the train a couple weeks ago. I switch between reading and drawing on the train depending on how awake I happen to be that particular morning. I am currently finishing The Historian, which is an excellent book, although a little slow in the middle. One thing I always come back to in my drawings is creatures. I was recently at the aquarium where they had a special exhibit on lizards, the focus being the Komodo dragon. It was amazing to see this guy up close. I think I could have easily taken down anyone in the room. Many of the smaller lizards were very interesting too, the reference photos I took have proven to be very valuable. I am also posting this because the doodle was interesting enough for me to take into 3D. This is my first attempt at using Z-Brush. The lower image is what I brought into Z-Brush, and the top is after. For those who don’t know Z-Brush allows artists to sculpt their 3D characters in the way you would sculpt clay. It’s built to support a very high level of detail, and is becoming a very common program in the industry because of its ease of use and artist friendly workflow. Oh and lego star wars 2 Rocks!

I sense something; a presence I've not felt since... 1977

Well I’m happier than a wookie with a comb. The original untouched Star Wars movies were released today (yesterday) along with Lego Star Wars 2. I have yet to open them up, like looking at new fallen snow before you run to play in it, I want to savor this moment. Despite loving special effects, especially what ILM does, I have never been a big fan of Lucas’s changes to the original films. I always liked being able to see the black outline between the live action plates and the stop-motion. All that new CG was missing the texture the rest of the film had. Now I feel complete.

I hope the Lego Batman game coming up next is just as fun to play as these.

I think this is the final colors for mr. guy here. I really need to give him a name. Originally I was thinking yellow with red highlights, but I ended up doing a blue overlay in the shop just for fun, and I came up with what you see above. I think it works better since he is the more reserved of the duo. The smaller one is the crazy one of the bunch so he will get the yellow and red treatment.

why is his head so big?

A little something from over the weekend. This guy came out of some doodles I have done this year. I made a model sheet and created the 3D model over the weekend. I spent 3 and a half hours on the model thus far. I may change a little more of his topology now that I see how the light plays off his body. I found this a good change of pace from the more realistic work I normally do. I came up with a little outline for a short with this and another guy, but I’m not sure if I’ll get to it. Now to do his giant hammer for pounding the daylights out of little happy creatures.


PS: Dib still has a larger head.

CB in 3D

I think I’m done with this model. If I decide to animate it I may make changes if it’s necessary to help with deformations in the skin. There are two examples of cool and warm lighting schemes. The warm one looks nice and soft but the cool tones reflect the movie more. It’s interesting to see how much lighting can change the look of your model. I think this is why it can be so hard to texture. You need to keep in mind that the character will be moving through different environments with different lighting setups, and in each one the overall feel of the character needs to show through. The close-up was done to show some of the smaller detail in the texture. I wanted this model to hold up even when viewed up close. Most of the textures were pulled from photos of actual clothing I own that matched the textures in the movie. I made sure to scale them up in order to make the model look small, like a puppet. Well hopefully I captured the complexity and fantastic design that made these characters so fun to watch in the movies.

I also have been trying to get more comfortable with ZBrush. I can see a lot of potential in this program; I just need to get more comfortable with the tools. It’s defiantly faster and more fun than doing displacements in Photoshop. Most of the tools can’t be used alone but in conjunction with each other they can work wonders on a low poly mesh. I might post some of these trials if they don’t look too wretched.

This also excites me! http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/index.html?dlink=nightmare
No it’s not that kind of 3D. It’s still stop motion they just went and extracted layers, foreground, mid, and background, and you get those nifty 3D glasses to wear.

Inspirational con + long plane ride = update

The Comic-Con was unbelievable! I highly recommend it if you have the means to get there. The place was packed full of all the artist’s who’s work I have filling bookshelves. I was able to meet some amazing people which included, Yoshitaka Amano, Cheeks, Cam de Leon, and Stephen Silver to name a few. There is nothing that recharges the creative batteries like being in a mile long convention hall full of amazing artists. This dragon was partly inspired by an artist who I had never heard of, Ciruelo Cabral, and I ended up buying one of his prints. http://www.dac-editions.com/ The little guy in the drawing is learning to fly. Now I have a large pile of artists business cards who’s work I need to check out, so until next time.

Have you seen me?

I have a few final details left before I can post the fully textured version of this head, plus once I finish Victors hair I will have him up. I have modeled this same person before in college and I look back on it now and can’t believe how inexperienced I was then. This head is a test to see where I am at, and to serve as a benchmark to help me grow. I hope to look back on this and see how far I’ve come. I leave for the San Diego Comic-Con in the morning, I can’t wait to see and talk to artists who have inspired me. Time to try and get some sleep for tomorrow I enter the land of the nerd. See http://storyboredom.blogspot.com/ (July 06 posts) for more info on con nerds.

Tracker

It’s been a while, hopefully this will make up for it. This is an old drawing of a character I created. It’s a lizard race and this is a guard/tracker. After a conversation with K, she thought there was something wrong about his clothing. It made me realize even though my original design was nice it was also totally impractical for the fast movement this creature looks like it can do. A long skirt would get quickly caught up in his legs and on forest debris. So I revised it and made the second shorter version. I think I still like the longer one. I think he might be a city guard or something where he would dress nicer and more colorfully, as opposed to someone who was a rogue. He would just have to run home and change before going on any long distance treks. I would like to hear other people’s opinion on his outfit. The main purpose of this was to practice with my wacom tablet. Even though I sketched this on paper I “inked” and colored it all with the tablet. It’s also to help with my coloring skilz. I almost never color things, opting to just render them in pencil. This has caused me to be severely behind in where I think I should be in coloring. It’s one thing to bounce light around on a black and white image and quite another to do it with color.

building mileage

Some sketches from over the weekend. Coat guy was done for fun at work, the girl is from a live model, and the guy on the bench was done in a park by my place. Not much to report.

Vincent... i mean Victor

I’ve buckled down a little more recently, and the Victor model seems to be ready for texturing. I think the hair will be a displacement but I’m not sure yet. That way I won’t have to model it all. I think since work has been slow I’ve had more energy to work on personal projects. I had a discussion with Luc about how I might be able to animate the soccer shoe below, similar to this spot http://www.theembassyvfx.com/asics_movie.html . It went along the lines of a thief beating up an old lady and taking her purse but all you saw were their shoes, a ski hat, purse and a babushka. I think this is going on the backburner for the time being, although I would like to do some short simple spots that poke fun at what’s already out there.

Note: anyone can leave a comment as anonymous, but if you put your name at the bottom of the post I will know who to thank latter.

level annoyance

I think this is as done as this model is going to get. I could tweak this for days but the changes are so minute at this point. The image looks great on my large monitor but when I copied it over to my ancient one all the blacks were super dark and all the detail was lost. Leave a comment if it seems too dark, I would like to know how people are viewing the art here. P.S. I wish I was going to E3.

also starring Bean

Struck with some inspiration. Sometimes you just need to know when to stop what your doing, pull out your sketch book, and start doodling. This character just spilled out of me. There was no rough drawing, every line just worked as I put it down and I didn’t have to use the eraser once. I’m not sure what dormant part of my brain this guy was lurking in. All I know is if I ever have to go there I’m bringing a gun. Maybe it has something to do with the recent release of “Lady and the Tramp” although I still have yet to see the new re-mastered version. I’m not too sure about his hair. I think less might have been more in that area, but I wanted to post it just as it came out. The little bean dude came out before the dog, that should have been a warning.

you shouldn’t be throwing anyone with your bad back

I need to post more. Work’s been really crazy, stupid clients with their stupid brains taking forever to get back to us. This was a quick sketch I did while waiting late at night for client feedback. Also got some new sculpting supplies for my day’o’birth, so look forward to some of that plastalina goodness. P.S. Leon (the professional) kicks ass.