Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas all!

In spirit of the season I worked on a Christmas'y painting. Originally intended for Jeff Jackson's challenge for this month, until I actually read the challenge and realized it was specificically for Santa! Ho ho ho whoops. This ones for you though, Rudolph!

My finals:

Here are the products of my laziness.

First up - the illustration final. To get this into digital form I had to do 2 scans, which were both a bit bright, but close enough - much better than a camera was giving me. This isn't 100% done. I still would like to tighten up the horizon line and a few things here and there, but I also feel like I should move on. Ultimately I am happy with it, and it looks much better in person than on the computer :o

Next, my first reel. Ahhhh the first reel, the one you never wish to show any employer, but ultimately have to make it as a starting block to build from.

And lastly, my model. It seems I need a better computer to actually zbrush real high res stuff, go figure.

Another semester down, one to go!

Thank god that semester ended, now I can work on other projects in my "free time" until the next one begins again. I plan on posting my first reel, my illustration final and a render of the model I was working on in the next few days. However, until I can get a good picture taken of my painting I will hold off making that post. Until then, I'm gonna post some stuff here as I get cranking again on the sketchbook project.

Disclaimer: My laptops screen sucks, so I'm really not sure at all how dark this is going to look on other monitors haha.

Anyways, I'm always 0n the hunt for a new way of painting in photoshop. This process began with just drawing with black and white, no opacity. Once I got a scribble that looked cool I turned on opacity with pen pressure and started adding in value to render the form. Then once I got a few that I liked, I stuck em in a line up - added a multiply layer gradient and painted on top of it to bring out the highlights a little bit more.

I'm a bit unsure as to the usefulness of stuff like this. It seems more costume design than character design, but maybe that too is useful.

And more! This is one of the simpler approaches to concept design. I'm just painting black for a silhouette and then adding in some negative space to define the idea a little bit further. The middle guy is a revisit of an idea I posted a while ago.

More more more more!

Ok I realize some of that is really ambiguous, but it's fun to draw ^_^ Now heres an attempt to make use of that approach...

Today was pretty unproductive after getting a wisdom tooth removed :\ Here is another page. I somewhat like the character in the center although I'm not sure who he is. The sketch in the top right came out cool though, and sparked an idea for the 4th sibling which was the one I had never been able to figure out. The idea is the master/slave deal where this little girl would ride on the shoulder of a large robot. I'm thinking she could be super animated and expressive to contrast with a lifeless robot that might resemble a large hulking zombie.