Octo WIP progress

Haven't posted in a few so I thought this would be a good little update to keep things fresh.

This Octopus WIP has been sitting on the back burner for a while, been uber busy with work lately. During some spare time over the past couple of days I added a toss away rig to the tentacles and posed him up a little bit. The tentacles still need tweaking and cleaning up and they are probably about twice as long as I would have preferred them. When things slow down I will finish texturing and posing him.

All Done

Got a little busy. But I submitted in time. Good fun, good practice. I went through and deleted all the progress posts. Kind of redundant I think. You can go HERE to check out all the entry's from the 3dTotal forum, including my entry.

General thumbnails

A few quick little thumbnail sketches to get me started on my model. I probably should do more of these but I am eager to get started as there is only a little less than a week left in the competition. I am leaning towards #1... or 2 or 7. What do you think?

Speed Sculpt

Once again it is time for the Dominance War. They are having a mini challenge this year before the main event. The theme is "War General Portraits" I just found out about it this morning. Tomorrow I plan on working on the concept for my 3D General's portrait.

With this and the epic portion of the Dominance war fast approaching there should be many frequent blog posts to come.

To warm up today I made a speed sculpt using one of the three required base meshes for the competition. This is not the direction I plan on going with the challenge, just a mindless sculpt to get myself ready for it.

Goofy Face

A digital sketch today made for fun. Started from a Bic pen doodle that was in the margin of some paper sitting on my art desk. I'm posting it in an effort to keep things fresh on the blog.

Cowboy Western

Yesterday was a fun day. A good friend of mine is taking a film class through the city and one of his class assignments was to shoot a television show for cable access. He decided that it would be fun to film a cooking program starring my wife (he is a big fan of her baked sweets, as am I) So they came over with all of their video equipment and we spent the day shooting a cooking show. It was a blast!

During the shoot I busted out the pencils and markers and made this art card.

Palin redo

Something old again. I spent a couple hours this evening giving my Sarah Palin portrait a bit of a face lift. I'm feeling some improvement since the original painting of her during the November election. Of course I could do more to it, but the election is long over and it is time to move on to other things. Happy Friday everyone!

What about McCain?

Wasn't sure if I wanted to re-post this, but I made a few minor changes to him after receiving some good critiques on the old one. Mainly I added flesh tones and shading color to the face in an effort to make him less muddy and to add some life to him. I am going to call him finished for now and move on to other things.

Zombie tastic

Okay time to resurrect the incredibly short lived Friday promise. And what better way to do so than with the undead? Pen and Ink zombie art card.

shoes

I was testing some renders from a character that I recently finished modeling and thought that I may as well post something. I will post full renders of the character soon, but for now you can enjoy the shoes.

Octo WIP

So I found some time a little while back to finish modeling the Octopus, (concept by Joe O.). I tossed on some flat shaders to see how he would look with a little color. I am excited that a friend of mine Chris Lawrence has agreed to rig him, I look forward to seeing him come to life. I will of course keep you updated as he progresses.

The Friday Promise

It has come to my attention that I have been severely neglecting my little art blog. I have been very busy making art, just not busy posting it. My promise for the new year is that I will make a post every Friday at the least. In the next couple weeks I should be flooding the blog with the stuff I have been busy working on lately.

Here is a random 20 minute Photoshop doodle I made tonight to take a break from 3D for a little while.

John McCain

I wanted to get this one finished before the election was over. I knocked it out this morning amidst all the other junk I was doing. So it was a little rushed. Now it is time to watch the election results and see who will be crowned the new king of America!

OBAMA PAINT

Well. I thought I should finish this painting up before the election is over. I wanted to get McCain painted as well. I will have to knock John out on Monday. I hope you all approve this message!

OBAMA WIP

Started working out the tones on my Obama Painting. I am hoping to get him all done and painted on Monday so I can get started on McCain.

Octopus WIP

I thought I would post a WIP of a current personal project I am working on in an effort to keep myself posting on my blog. The concept comes from my talented cousin Joe, and it has been a lot of fun to model thus far. Updates to come soon.

SARAH PALIN

Having fun with my political paintings. Not sure which should be up next Obama or McCain. They both have very interesting faces.

Joe Biden

I was sketching during the VEEP debate on Thursday and decided to scan one in and do a little digital painting. Perhaps I will do some more of these political figures. Enjoy.

Andrew Ryan

I've been crazy busy with work lately and have had very little time for personal projects. Here is a model of Andrew Ryan from Bioshock that I am working on. Had a little time today to sculpt on him. I will keep you updated on his progress.

Potato Nose

Made this a couple of weeks ago. Thought I would toss it up for kicks. Marker and color pencil on the handy baseball size smooth Bristol paper.

Angry Mullet

CAMPFIRE FAIRY

My wife and I packed up the camping gear and headed for the mountains this past weekend with the idea of beating the heat.

Of course on our way there we had a tire blow out on the free-way and didn't end up getting to the campsite until all the good spots had already been taken. We did find a spot to camp off the beaten bath, only it was not well shaded and the heat ended up beating us.

In between hiking with the dogs, and swatting flies and mosquitoes I was able to do some drawing in my sketchbook, as well as this little art card while I was there.

Another Bobert?

Marker and Color Pencil. Another Sunday school doodle.

FIFTY NIFTY

A recent commission for a nice couple in Portland who were looking for an interesting way to say happy birthday to their daughter in law.

When I met with them to discuss the project I happened to bring along some of my illustrations to show them. I then had to assure them that their drawing would not be "weird" or "scary."

Crabtooth

Small format. Ink and Color Pencil.

Progress on the old man

Been wicked busy working on my demo reel for the upcoming graduation. Here is the current progress on my old man model. I faked some particles effects with some alphas and some cylinders. It looks like a little whirl wind when it is animated. Still need to do a little more work on his textures and spec maps and then I think she will be ready to render.

Old man Low-poly

Thought I would update some of the progress on the old plant shaman I am working on. Was able to get some of the leaf alphas working today, and some of the base textures. Still a lot of texture work to go on this. I am happy with the way it is rolling along

Tonight I plan on setting up a basic rig for posing so I can get a couple of render tests done tomorrow as well as more work on the texture maps and unifying the color scheme. With his staff weapon he should end up around 6k tris when complete.

Blobby

An ink and color pencil card I just finished doodling.

The old man

Been working on the old man lately. I've got the low-poly mesh all done along with the normal mapping. Did some tests with painting the diffuse in zbrush and baking them in maya today, and figured out my method for doing so. I am pretty excited to finally see this fellow all finished. Here is a quick zbrush render of the few minutes I was able to spend on his head this evening.

Funky Bird

I decided that it might be fun to post more stuff from my sketch books. Happily I just filled another sketch book during the lecture of my American Politics class this morning. Here is what ended up on the last page. I also decided to break out the red colored pencils today!

CRUNCHY

Alright here is another small format artwork. Ink and color pencil. His name is Crunchy.

Plant head

Hello to anybody who might be visiting! Once again it has been a while since I have posted. I've been really busy working on 3d projects, my website, and homework for my non art related classes in preparation for my graduation in June (rapidly approaching!)
I thought I would post an art card I made this morning. I have been drawing a lot of people with plants growing out of them lately. My mind must still be a little bit stuck in the game that I helped make for my senior project. It involved plant zombies. He is colored with ink and prisma color markers and pencils.

John Lennon Revisited

I recently came back to a project that I began in my advanced modeling class. No, it is not Harry Plopper! It's Mr John Yoko Lennon. I added the lonely hearts club uniform and worked on his hair a bit. More detail and textures are on the way.

balloons

Thought I should post something today. These are a couple of models I am working for a student short 3d animation called balloons. I am posting the concept work as well which was drawn by Ryan Stark, another student here at the Art Institute.

Old Man WIP

Been quite busy lately. This is something I have been working on a little bit for the dominancewar. He will eventually be an old warrior type shaman dude. Today I had a little time to work on his head. I plan on adding the clothing, and ornamentations later. I dig zbrush.

Finished Skulls

I'm very satisfied with the way this turned out. I think it might be the best lowpoly model I have made to date. When I get back from GDC I think I will make a little rotation video of it.

Skull WIP

Haven't posted in a little bit so I thought I would post my progress on this weeks assignment in my low poly modeling class. I was hesitant at first but I am enjoying using 3ds Max a lot more than I thought I would. Though I still like Maya better.

I decided to practice some techniques I want to use for the Dominance War. So I started with a zsphere in zbrush to model my high poly skull and then brought it in 3ds to retop and bake the normals and AO. Here is the result so far. Now I need to continue texturing and add a little grime. Should be finished in the morning. The skull is 492 tris.