Colors (nds)

The following images were painted on my Nintendo DS.







Not too long ago I installed Colors! a free digital painting program onto my DS and I have to say it is pretty awesome. It's a bare bones program, no layers, no adjustments, not even undo - so to that affect, it emulates traditional painting a little bit more than Photoshop. You are limited by how small the DS screen is which makes it a little hard to draw, but its really fun sketching with a stylus directly onto a screen. Consider it a $150 dollar cintiq that you can take with you anywhere. I recommend it to everyone interested in digital painting.

These are all really quick sketches. My biggest goal these days is to work on incorporating saturated colors into my work... and these are a little more saturated than I expected them to be but I guess that means they are a success.

If you own a DS, or want to look into this more, checkout this URL: Colors! - Setup Tutorial

Job(s)

I just wanted to let my friends, who may check my blog from time to time, know what I'm up to.

I signed on as a contractor to a start-up game company in Redwood City where I'll be responsible for concept design / modeling / level creation and other assorted photoshop work that will need to be done. I couldn't have imagined that my first job would be something this fun :D I'm really looking forward to being able to continue to increase my drawing/painting ability and get paid for it - and on top of that the game is already looking very cool! The company is working in 'stealth mode' so I'm not able to say much about it, or show work that I do, but from the looks of it it won't be long till I can post/link some fun stuff.

I also have another contract going that will be creating 3D assets for the casual game market (ex; iphones). This one hasn't begun yet but should shortly.

Wow I'm gonna be busy, and it's gonna be a lot of fun!! :D

---- Also, I haven't entirely forgotten about the ogre. I actually rendered out a turn table of him with a composited Ambient Occlusion turn table on top and it looks really great! The only problem is it is 88 megs and I don't know how to shrink it without losing much quality. If I ever figure that out I'll post it.

Progress and Learning

Continuing with the idea of having kittens in the scene, I decided that I wanted to have 3; one looking up to the ogre, one sleeping, and one playing with a butterfly. This update shows the placement and general posing that I'm going for. Things that are missing or unfinished, are the butterfly and the bedding the kitten is on won't be just a block - I'm just not sure what to make it yet.

Now for things that I've learned during this small step. For one, the smooth tool in Modo is amazing. It will average out so many issues that arise from posing meshes, I only wish I had used it more a while ago.

Also with the help of Christian and Mike I figured out how to make my renders look better. This image (above) is an ambient occlusion render with the white range turned way up to minimize the amount of dark values that appear in the scene. The purpose of this is to take this render, and composite it with a color render (below) using the multiply blend mode in Photoshop to really enhance the shadows of your scene. The result is the image at the top of this post. I will update more soon.

WIP movie

A WIP turn-around. The biggest issue with the model when I last posted, was that it was just an ogre-like figure. That is already cliche, so I need to work the scene to make it memorable otherwise it will probably be a wasted slot in my reel. I don't know if my direction is working, so any comments are helpful, but my idea is to add kittens to the scene to show that this big fat ogre is really a softie and that he is protecting them from some outside enemy (which I may need to hint at).



Well this turned out to be really low quality, but I'll leave it up for now. Heres an image as well.

That ground texture sure is hurting up close...

Actually working.

So I did almost nothing today... I reposed him a bit, turned his head slightly, tilted it more. Raised his right arm, straightened it a bit. I then shifted his torso over slightly to get his weight over his right leg more. I think some of it reads better, although the tilt to his head makes him look borderline retarded at certain angles. I really need to get an anatomy crit before moving forward with smaller details :\ What to do, what to do...


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Fewer noticeable changes today... I modeled the teeth/gums/tongue as well as some bandages around his left leg. I also slightly reposed the left arm and gave much better gesture to the hand. I also decided to try rendering with a black background and thought it looked pretty cool.


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Update: Starting to block out the scene and give the guy some of his stuff! I designed the weapon as if the Ogre tore a tree out of the ground and fastened a blade to the end of it. I think it was a cool idea, the execution could probably use some work though. Also added a belt, but the cloth has yet to be sculpted so it looks a bit plain.

Overall it's going well IMO, and I can't wait to actually get to sculpting higher res detail - right now all the muscle detail I can get is dependent on my loops and a reasonably low poly wire frame. I also want to push the gesture a lot more if I can...


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So I've actually been working on stuff lately even though I haven't posted anything. Lately I was doing some contract work for a local game company doing models that will be used as pre-rendered sprites for their game. They are currently in stealth mode so I won't post any of the work, but it was fun and a good experience.

Here is something else I've been working up when I have had the time. This is the ogre from 2 posts down. Mostly he's lookin' cool but his pose and style still need a lot of tweaks (which consequently lead to countless anatomy tweaks).

(his right arm in the last image will have some strange creases, that's a result of posing a model and will be ironed out.)

Let me know what you think! Thanks!

Is this working?

So I created a business card real quick tonight and I'd like to know what people think. Due to me buying the wrong paper tonight at Officemax I won't be printing till tomorrow or so, so if by some odd chance someone sees this before then - let me know if it works! Thanks.

This is best viewed without clicking on it, so you can see the white border (if your browser window has the default white background)

Something new

I feel pretty stuck on that model right now, so instead of spinning my wheels I feel like starting something else. These are just some quick drawings trying to develope a character that I think would be fun to model. He will be posed, unlike all my other models, and I'm thinking something similar to the bottom right drawing, but with a few changes. Maybe I could even have him defending something like a kitten just to add a little comedy and character to the scene.

The energizer bunny of modeling projects

I spent today finishing up UV's on the rest of his gear and started laying in some color. Everything that is black hasn't been touched. I may have to put this project down for 2 days and focus on some sculptures, so I probably won't update tomorrow.


Well today wasn't as productive as it could have been, but that's ok... here's an updated WIP. The colors on the textures so far are looking pretty flat.. I'll have to touch that up. I also plan to spend about 2 days with hypershade in maya to do the detailed material work.


Still working on this guy, although with Siggraph just around the corner, this will have to be done by next weekend. Anyways, I just felt like posting a WIP because I'm pretty happy with how the concept is evolving.

A quickie

I modeled this in roughly 5 hours, maybe a little less. Its a throw back to an old school Final Fantasy monster that was for some reason memorable... This can be considered a WIP (work in progress) since it isn't refined, but I don't think that was my intention. Although if people like it I could do some nice detailing and texturing.

An art post.

Modeled/painted for Jeff Jackson's current challenge - favorite villain. While I don't really have a favorite villain, I did think the Witch King's concept was really bad ass for ROTK. I'd love to keep working on it but I don't think I have the time.


Added a 3D wip...

Graduation

My lack of posting recently was a result of my last semester at Cogswell demanding every second of every day - but it's finished. On May 10th I graduated (with honors! :D) along side my brother, and it was probably the best day of my life. I'm so thankful that my family was able to be there. Now onto the real world :)

Here are some pics.


Both Christian and I received outstanding student achievement awards - pretty cool huh? :D I'll add more pictures soon, or link to an online photo album.

Some random things.

I was finally able to scan this illustration today that I did a while back. I am happy with how it turned out considering some of the challenges that the background texture presented. I am probably going to enter this into the Cogswell Fusion Awards.

And this is my sculpture midterm... It didn't turn out all that well, but it looks decent from this angle.

I'm not done yet!

Today I realized it was crappy of me to fall short of this commitment since I made it so long ago - I will probably put some class work on the side to get this done soon. I'm going to continue to update this throughout the night, tomorrow night and god knows how long until this is finished (although I don't think it will be appreciated if it's longer than a week).

Just throwing it out there...

Here are some WIP images of my current sculpture project. Unfortunately I had to go with using flash on these pictures, so it makes the details either look cool, crappy, or they disappear entirely - not the ideal choice, but I'll worry about getting better pics when it's done.



So far, so good. I'm ahead of the game as far as where most everyone else is in the class, and thankfully the due date was pushed back to Monday (previously this Wednesday) but I would have planned my time differently had I known that - oh well.

Kwoon... wow,

Ok I'm not going to get in the habbit of posting work that isn't mine, but Cassia showed this to me and my jaw was on the floor the entire time I was watching it.

Amazing music, animation and visual style - definitely worth a watch, or ten.



I've seriously watched this several times a day since I first saw it. I find it to be very inspirational to me. Here is a site for more information on it if anyone is curious.

ILOTM

Stuff.

Going to hold off on describing what the heck I'm doing until I get more images done...

A couple days ago, at a studio not so far away...

So on Friday after a trip to the Asian art museum for a class study, myself, Cassia and Jill were given the chance to go on a tour of ILM (Industrial Light and Magic, they are kind of a big deal) and Lucasarts, since they share the same building now in the Presidio of SF. The tour was given by a friend of Cassia's that works there, so thanks again Cassia and Kamel! Unfortunately we signed an NDA before going in so I can't really say much, but it was really cool to see one of the most famous visual effects houses in the industry. We got really lucky on the tour when we were invited to check out the art department of ILM by a passing supervisor (I think). Time wise this was a very small portion of the tour but REALLY cool. Anyways, heres a pic of us after the tour infront of the Yoda fountain. Thats Jill, Cassia and myself from left to right.

ILM hire me, thanks!

In progress: animal blend self portrait sculpture

So this is my maquette (sp?) so far for this assignment. It's meant to be a blend of myself and a polar bear... It has looked like a rat and meerkat so far, but hopefully it will look like a polar bear in the final version :o The hoodie is something I'm trying out... it isn't really working yet but I was hoping it would fill out the silhouette more and make the neck feel heavier while not changing the neck anatomy radically.

Drawing Salon 2/14

So I spent about 6-7 hours today drawing, which was great! I started working on the sketchbook project and then went to drawing salon tonight. From all the warm-up I was really happy with how almost all my drawings were turning out. Here is one sample but I will try to add a few more (probably some 1's and 2 minute drawings) tomorrow. This is a 5 minute pose.

Redesign on the brothers...

I stumbled upon a new idea last week for the brothers to be dressed up as fast food mascots. I thought it was funny but I had no idea how to make it work. Essentially they are going to be ex cons. The story is still up in the air, although Jeff Jackson liked the idea so much he came up with a full story surrounding these characters. I'll post that when I can...




I like this one so far.. It's a wip, as everything pretty much is right now, and I plan on drawing more face thumbs on it when I dare to actually express something.


This is something I did today at school.. I was playing around with making this character look more like an otter. I may not have succeeded there but it got me to play around with the face a bit more.