Sexy Girl With Strange Appliance

OK, here's another quick one. Not exactly portfolio material but fun to do.

silly space suits

I've started experimenting with some alternate drawing techniques, I'm using the Bienfang Graphics 360 translucent marker paper, prismacolor black pencils, and a mechanical eraser. In addition I'm using a big fat Copic Wide marker to quickly sketch out sillhouettes on regular sketch pad paper. I'm tracing the outline of these onto the marker paper and filling in the details. The advantages of this system are

1) the composition tends to be better and less of a struggle since I have a nice sillhouette already worked out.

2) Its fast. I did three sketches in the time it usually takes me to do 1.

3) The sillhouette sparks some interesting ideas since there is an element of mystery to the forms.

The disadvantage is that its a little harder to get dynamic poses or perspective in the drawings, they tend to be orthographic.

Here are a few sketches I did today, not sure why I'm on a silly space suit kick. It also appears that I'm lazy about finishing the shoes. Oh well.








I also started a sculpture portrait. I spent most of the day yesterday on it. I'm taking it to John Brown tomorrow night for some tips. I had worked out a face but I decided it looked bland and a kind of "off" so I took it back to a basic blocked out shape this morning. I'd like to do a portrait of Tom Waits but that might still be beyond my current abilities.

OK, I have to finish this chapter, looks like there may be some freelance work in the future so the good times are over.

Laters

Post T-day Sketches Post

Some sketches done on the plane and back in DC while visiting for T-day. I did many sketches but these are the only ones I liked. These are from photographs:






Also I started working on a Photoshop painting of my dwarf character. here is the progress so far:




We had a great holiday, met the niece! We saw many friends we miss. Great time at the REEF in Adams Morgan! Of course we also missed our dogs. Happy to be back in LA with them. Had some snacks at Swingers, that's a proper homecoming.

I bought my brother's iMac with Final Cut Pro studio on it. Should make my DVD making a little more pro. Sorry Adobe but Premiere is just too wonky when it comes to burning DVDs.

I have to edit my chapters for the Maya7 book, finish my dwarf painting and start a sculpture portrait. I'm thinking of basing a head on Tom Waits.

Laters.

Football strikes again

Freakin's football games preempted the premiere of Snow Wonder (with Mary Tyler Moore as Aunt Lula!) So I missed the debut of my CG snowflake floating to earth on network TV. I hate football.

Vacation baby!

Almost. It's friday night and I still have to go back to work for a few more hours. God I hope it rendered OK! Anyways, here's today's sketch. Looks like a character from a Tom Waits song...



This guy will most likely turn into a Pshop painting or maybe a Zbrush model.

Headed back to DC tomorrow...

Sketch_o_tastic

Some sketches done at work under the light of the monitors while waiting for the friggin' network to reboot. The Carlos Huante DVDs are inspiring me already!








Tomorrow is the last day before vacation!

Prince Freako

The Gnomon Weekend has inspired me to draw more, as well as practice as much aspossible in Pshop. here's a quick freestyle painting I did last night while watching lost. I'm trying to increase my speed as well as my profficiency. Not sure what's wrong with this guy or what he's wearing...





The problem I have is that either I try and draw anatomy accurately, which comes out boring, or I try and draw something interesting which comes out smushy and wrong. I guess I'm trying to use practice to close the gap. Hopefully I can make something accurate and interesting.

My goal now is to try and post a drawing a day, or maybe every other day.

Brutal Day for ma Butt at Gnomon

Day one of the forst Gnomon Live event was cool but hard on my butt. The foldiong chairs were a bit much after 5 hours. Great robot battle performed by Robot Christ afterwards (nearly singed me eyebrows off!).

November 20th "Snow Wonder" premieres on CBS with my "tectonic" snowflake in the opening credits.

Meanwhile I'm trying to put my demo together but I keep getting errors when I want to burn the DVD!

crap.

working for the weekend

Great, now that song is stuck in my head...

Anyways, going to the Gnomon Nerd-O-Rama Workshop this weekend. Should be fun. I'm particularly interested in Meats Mier's lecture as well as Neville Page and Zack Petroch.

I'm working on a quick redux of my demo tape, my sound card is busted so I can't sync up to music.

Meanwhile, at work, can't log on and the network is down.

I submitted my Particle Illusion article last week to HDRI3D. Not sure what I will be doing for the next one.

Funtime Rendertown

I've been palying with render layers in Maya 7 working on developing a look for my toy characters. This experiment shows a little guy rendered out in separate passes and comped in Pshop. I rendered out a layer with simple sub surface scattering and one with Final Gather and sss. There's also an Ambient Occlusion pass thrown in for good measure. I need to fix his mirror shoes in the next veraion, and maybe add some bump to the hat Here are some example renders:








I like the second one the best. The different versions are the smae render rearranged in Pshop with different opactities and stuff.

No subsurface scattering:




Just the SSS:




SSS and FG:




OK, Kamal says the hat still looks CG, gotta work on that...

Novemberween

I unexpectedly got Friday off since the server at work went down. I guess there are snow days in LA after all. I spent the day sculpting. I'm declaring my African Female sculpture done. She's not really done but I feel I've gotten what I needed out f the project. Time to move on, maybe a portrait next. I've added her to the composition section of bloopatone.com. The final sculpture deviated a lot from the original concept. I felt I had to tone down my ambitions in order to focus on a more truthful anatomy. Her hair and jewlery are based loosely on images of the Himba women of Nambia

Here are some additional images of the sculpture:
















If you look at the earlier versions in previous posts you'll notice I removed her clothing and completely redid her chest. Last week I had the opportunity to take the sculpture to John Brown's studio in downtown LA and work next to some of his sculptures. I realized that the biggest problem I'm having is the shape of the rib cage. I need more draft and less rectangular boxieness. So I reworked this sculpture and I could do some more but I feel like I've spent enough time on her and I need to move on.

And now...pictuires of our dogs!



Blue's head has swollen to three times its natural size. Why? Because she's excited to be in Pie Town! (AKA Julian, CA).



Trick or Treat! Blue and Daisy ready for Halloween (yes we took them out like this!)





Daisy as a Cowgirl.

OK, enough fun, I have to finish my next tutorial for HDRI3D. Next weekend I hope to make it to the extravaganza at Gnomon. I have my ticket, jut hope I don't have to work...

Halloweeners

Last night was halloween here in West Hollywood. Zoe and I dressed up our poor dogs (pictures to come) and forced them to march around the neighborhood. Just too damn funny. We also took a walk down to see the street carnival which was massive. A quarter of a million people, most of them in costume! this town takes Halloween very seriously. If Only I had done the robot ball here!

Yesterday morning I took of from work and spent some time over a John brown's studio. It was extremely cool. i got to work on my sculpture and compare my work with his. Very helpful. I'm thinking I may have to redo the chest area on my sculpture. I hope she's fixable but I'll see. I'm eager to move on to a portrait but I really should do my best to finish the sculpture I'm on.