Cover Story

My cover story on Madagascar should be hitting the streets soon...

www.hdri3d.com

Is it always Friday?

I'm hoping next week I can stop by John Brown's studio, check out some of his sculptures. My african female is going through some major revisions. I got some help from John last Wednesday night but of course I'm still way off on the anatomy. Much to learn I suppose.

I'm also working on some more cartoony type caharcters, like my robot guy. I hope to fill a page with them at some point. Maybe create profiles, soemthing dorky like that. My next guy I started in Lightwave. kind of an inflatable Mexican Bandit, tuco like guy. I'd like to model him in LW and then render in Maya/Mental Ray. Anywho...

The wife and dogs and I will be taking a drive to San Diego tomorrow. Just for fun. Expect goofy pictures of the dogs next week maybe.

I'm on disc two of the Neville Page series of Gnomon DVDs. Some of this stuff is starting to sink in. I'm happy doing abstract lighting studies until I get it more under control.

Laters

Robot Guy

This is a little guy I'm developing. Originally created for an upcoming tutorial in HDRI3D. I'm hoping to create more simple, fun characters like him for the new Bloopatone.com. He's inspired by the vinyl toys at kidrobot.com. This rendering came out a little grainy, I'll have to fine tune the Mental Ray settings for future versions.










Sculpture class tonight, looking forward to it!

lighting study

Another photoshop painting study. I hope to get faster at this because I find I get bored quickly and the images don't get quite finished before I want to move on to something else. Maybe I'll work on this one more in the future. I like the basic design:

Bloopatone changes

I'm working on some ideas for a new version of Bloopatone. I'm thinking I should segregate my artwork by style rather than medium. Bloopatone may end up being a site devoted to a certain style of characters and character animation and I may have another site altogether for my concept work. Stuff that I want to post but that is not quite good enough for either may end up on this here blog.

Its been a bad week for sculpting. Rain has kept me off my balcony and the mother-in-law was in town. However I have been studying Bridgman, copying drawings and reading the text. I will try and make it to class this week even though I haven't touched my figure since last time.

I have another photoshop painting I may post soon, just a lighting study. I also have a robot character I made for an HDRI3D tutorial. Looks kinda cool, hopefully I can post that later tonight.

Photoshop sketch

Here is a painting/sketch I've been working on in Photoshop. Fairly abstract, it started as a quick Nick Pugh-style scribble. I hope to so more soon, maybe even model one in Lightwave or Maya.




In other news, I've become addicted to the mental ray fast subsurface scattering shader.

Laters

Thursday Things

The snowflake won't let me go, still tweaking away.

Sculpture class was good last night, its getting there. John pointed out some problems that became immediately obvious after he pointed them out. I wonder If I need to do some studies that just focus on a particlular problem area like the leg or arm. Working for a living seems to constantly get in the way though...

Wednesday Again

The Alienware lives again thanks to the new Quadro FX 500 card. Its purring like a kitten (in an iron lung). OK, I have no idea what that means. Anyways, pictures of my sculpture progress:










I have another sculpture class tonight, we'll see if I've improved much from last week.

Other news:

- I wrote a new tutorial for Highend3d.com on particle expressions in Maya 7

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutorials/dynamics_fx/231.html

- I got to model a robot for work, first time I've ever been paid to build a silly robot, that's a milestone of sorts.

- I've started working on a scene for my next HDRI3D tutorial on Maya and ParticleIllusion.

- I visited Voltage guitars up the street, saw a very pretty 12 string Rickenbacker, man I want that guitar ($1,1100.00). Guess I have to pay off thise credit cards.

here's the guitar model, A rickenbacker 620/12

http://www.rickenbacker.com/model.asp?model=620/12

- I should post the progress of my Photoshop painting. Its not bad.

clay

Sculpture class was cool last night. Got some pointers and some great feedback. It's always amazing when getting a little criticism completely opens up your eyes, you really do see differently. Putting blobs of clay here and there is easy but seeing is really hard.

Wednesday things

My female sculpture is currently melting in my car. I'm hoping to bring the squishy remains by Gnomon tonight for some pointers from John Brown. Meanwhile my snowflake continues to render slowly.

The new Quadro FX card arrived today. Will it cure my AlienWare's ill's? Only time will tell.

snow in LA

Still working on the snowflake animation. Doing the Sunday at YuCo thing.

I ordered a Quadro FX 500 for my ailing alineware, hoping that will keep it going for a little while longer.

Saw Serenity last night, excellent film. I'm glad I'm a Firefly fan, made it all the more wonderful.

I've been pleased with some of my sketches and photoshop experiments as of late. Hpoe to post more soon..Also, I'm about 70% done with my african cowgirl sculpture. I would have posted images but the batteries on the camera are dead. Its always something woth me...