Theme and variations

It's 2:45 am and I'm on my 50th playblast...

Some more variations on the Ju Ju Queen painting. Getting closer....

test versions of the painting

I spent most of the day on ideas that didn't work out for this painting. In the end I followed some advice given to me by Herr Puddnhead - he actually took the time to create variations of my paintings fo me - very cool! I shrunk the size of the image, and made a quick sloppy test to help me figure out where to take the painting from here. This version certainly is spooky. While the glowing eyes are a bt cliche, they are less boring than the photoshoppy green eyes I had before.

Zbrush practice

I've been working on a scene created and rendered mostly in Zbrush, learning how to use layers and figure out some of the various interface tools etc. Not sure where to go from here but so far I have thos wacky tank:

Painted Ju Ju Queen

Here is the painted version of the Ju ju queen so far, much more needs to be done but I'm happy with her so far. The painting has been fairly easy since I had a good drawing to start with.

The Ju Ju Queen

OK, I think I have to recognize that I'm developing an obsession with voodoo inspired characters. probably a hex, or maybe some ju ju? Here's the finished Ju Ju Queen sketch which I will now turn into a digital painting. I added her to my sketchbook leaving just one last unoriginal sketch that I need to replace (the rembrandt copy).




gotta fix that ear though....

sketch update

Here's a quick update on my crazy mean clolwn chick drawing...

yeeeaaahg

Wow, a different facial expression! Trying to get out of glumvillle with this version. This is my first attempt at a facial expression. i have to fix some of the weirdness in the back of her head. no refernce on this, not bragging, that's actually my excuse. All in the name of practice anyways...

hey, at least she doesn't look like a bored cheerleader like the last one! Actually I kind of like her.

OK, so here is my first attempt at a digital Painting done in Painter 9. I did this folllowing the advice of Herr Puddnhead. Although its not perfect I think its not bad for a first attempt. It gives me confidence to keep trying. My only major complaint is that the face kind of flattens out. i may go back and fix it.




I added him to the cg section of my site as well knocking off an older image I really hated (yaay!) eventually when I like all six images I will start adding more. On top of all this I am working on a doodle in Zbrush which is a lot of fun. Using the techniques Meats Mier demonstartes in his Zbrush for Illustration DVD. I also only have a few more DVDs to watch before I'm caught up on all the ones I bought,

I have some ideas on how I may go and fix my dwarf character, the mouth and nose are the two big problems. I may change the hat completely too. I will give this a try after I've had some time away from him

project complete!...for now

OK, so I've taken my dwarf character as far as I want to go for now. Here he is in the pool hall with no heat. Final image created with Zbrush. Maya. Photoshop, and a little lightwave (the space heaters).



a link to a larger size version.

I think this image toook way too long and most of the time was wasted on getting Maya to just render it the way I wanted to. A lot of the detail was lost too and I think that struggling with rendering starts to hamper my creativity. Maya is awesome for modeling and animation but even with Mental Ray I find its a pain to get results quickly when working on just a single frame composition. So my plan is to start doing more of the rendering directly in Zbrush and really get good and fast at using it for my primary application. Zbrush was always meant for this anyways and it seems like character design has taken over as my primary interest. I think I will create base models in maya and Lightwave and then see wahat I can do with them in Zbrush. I'm still not a huge fan of zSpheres (althoguh the Dwarf's sneakers were made from Zspheres with some maya tweaking) but I can porbably be converted.

Another thing, I need to start puuting real dynamic expressions on these characters! they all look kinda glum. Overall I'm pleased with how the dwarf came out. I was trying to create a photographic look in the final scene, like something from lenswork magazine, it kinda came out looking more like an old photograph than I wanted but I'm ok with that.

I ditched the last sketch I was working on after i almost wore a hole in the page with an eraser, just wasn't clicking. So I started a new one. A fabulous babe as a voodoo priestess? I don't know where I come up with these things...



She might be my next 3D character project, maybe something really photoreal. As for my bone warrior dude, I'm working on turning him into a digital painting a la Puddnhead. His head looks awesome but the rest of the body still looks kinda lame. I'll post it later or give up...

This spring I'm taking Neville Page's Character Workflow class and hopefully Scott Spencer;s Zbrush class at Gnomon.

BoneStorm!

I finished/abandoned my mean Mr. Bone warrior guy and added him to my sketchbook. I might try painting him just for practice.

I also started another sketch of some wacky space chick with a similar hairstyle as the bone warrior guy, not they are related but I like the haystack hair. here she is so far:




I'm a little more excited about this sketch and will try not to ruin it so I can turn it into a painting.

Laters....

swingin' new year

Well, Zoe and I officially celebrated our first year in LA today with a trip to out favorite spot: Swingers! Veggie burgers and chocolate milkshakes!




As I've said before, much has happened in the past year. It has been a lot of fun. Today was Oscar day and not a mile from the apartment there were five helicopters three planes and a blimp. causing a constant drone all afternoon. Oddly enough a tree or something was removed allowing us to finally get a view of the Hollywood sign from our apartment. OK, I'm starting to sound like Jackie Harvey.

Back to the art thing...

The Dwarf has finally been assembled although it was a lot of work. my machine crashed everytime I tried to render the poor guy in one go, mostly becasue pf the texture size. I tried reducing the textures but it wan't helping much and when it did work a lot of the detail was lost. So I put each part of the guy on a seperate render layer and reassembled the peices in Photoshop. This left a black fringe around some parts but I'm ok with that for now. I intend to finish him up in photoshop anyways a la Aaron Sims character design methods. well, here he is:






and here again is thr original concept sketch, of course I got rid of the tail for the 3D version:




So now I'm working on creating a scene/environment for my guy set up to look like a portrait you might see in a magazine like Lenswork. Its taken a while to put this guy together since I've only had time to work on him on the weekends, the rest of my time has been DNA this and Ribosome that. So far I'm pleased and I hope to make more interesting characters in the future.

Speaking of interesting characters, here's a not very interesting character but a decent sketch. My concept dude has evolved a little. Obviously I've changed a few things. Its been a nice excercise but I'm not jumping up and down about this design. I may turn him into a digital painting, not quite sure. He reminds me of something StrongBad might draw:




That's all for now. Happy anniversery Los Angeles/West Hollywood!

hello sketchitty

I had a good time at the Gnomon life drawing calss last night, walked a way with my first decent sketch in a while. I've upoladed it to the sketchbook section of my website and replaced a drawing down from a photo:

http://www.bloopatone.com/sketchbook/sketchbook7.html

Yes, I know, yet another naked old lady for my sketchbook. I have no idea why these are the drawings that come out the best, and frankly, I'm afraid to ask.

I've been watching the Puddnhead Gnomon DVDS and they have inspired me to do my own monstery concept sketch. This guy appears to be some kind of vampire native dude. i also have a thing for natives I guess. oy. Anyways, not done yet but I will continue. Eventually I hope to bring him into Painter and use some of the Puddnhead techniques on him. heh. puddnhead.




I will probably change the position of the body.

laters...