Mask

A nice little model I did while at Zubian Studios. This was so I could get more acquainted with ZBrush and also learn how to texture and paint on the models. I was actually modeling out the sketch of one of my coworkers, Evan Coad. You can see the original sketch of his here.

I'm pretty proud of it, and I plan on doing more ZBrushing later on.

Enjoy and Critique!

Done entirely in ZBrush 3, with only slight level adjustment in Photoshop CS4

Oooh, Shiny!

(Click if you can't read it)

Wait! Before you go out of your way to vilify me for my depiction of the pokemon world, know that this is actually what I was told to draw for my weekly game analysis class. The two elements this week were:

-Pokemon
-Gore

So, I'm not to blame for my actions. :D

BTW, Meowth has always been my favorite pokemon, mostly cause he's neurotic.

Enjoy and critique plz!

Say Hello to My Little Friend

It finally happened! Fanart! Well, somewhat obscure fanart done because of a homework assignment, but it still technically counts. I guess.

Troll Axe-thrower from Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness

Done in photoshop cs3 with a wacom bamboo tablet.

Enjoy and critique! I still hate drawing the "human" body.

Oh, and here's my source image

Chia Beetle Tank (as named by Dianna)

Yet another project from my game analysis class. This weeks hybrid includes:

Produce
Vehicles
Structure

Enjoy and critique please!

About 2 hours with photoshop and wacom tablet

Worst Show in the Universe

This is supposed to be the comic relief between death defying, or life defying, feats of daring! Or something to that effect.

Another drawing project from my game analysis class. This time around the hybrid components were:

Aliens
The Circus
Disabilities

Enjoy and critique!

Muck a Muck

This week's assignment from Game analysis class!

This week's hybrid is:

- A Weapon
- Hip Hop
- Politics

I tried out a very different style from my usual and I like the results, even if my shaky hands come through in the contour. Enjoy and critique, plz!

Less Than Meets the Eye

Yeah, I know. It's just mean :D

Hybrid drawing for the week. Take a culture of the world and show one of its "symbols" as well as a transformer-ized version of it.

Take one random guess. You'll never get it!

New Experiment

I'd like you all to engage in a little experiment for me.

It was suggested to me that some might be interested in reading what I think about politics and the like. For the most part, I've avoiding posting on this blog for anything other than art. I still want to hold true to that, but I'd like to see how a ranting blog for myself goes.

So, I'm announcing the establishment of my new sub-blog "The Soapbox". The posts on here will largely be me ranting, raving or reasoning about things in my own insane way. You might like what you read, you may hate it, you may wonder what's possessing Ben to try and be writer, and you might find it a good place for debate. Regardless, I'd love for everyone to go and check out the post that's already there called "Recycling and Evidence" and also to leave me some comments on whether you would like to see more of it. Naturally, if you'd rather see it quietly die in a corner, you could say that too. :P

Enjoy! I look forward to your feedback.

The Steam-Powered Gods

A weekly drawing for my Game Analysis class! We're focusing quite a bit on character development, so drawings like this will continue!

Criteria was:
Water Element
Greek Mythology
Machine

Enjoy and critique plz!

Done in Photoshop CS3 with Wacom Bamboo

Cougar Support Character

Part of my Character Design and Development final. A support character for my Ice Goat character.

Currently only in Black and White. I hope to come back to her later and add some color, but I'm somewhat crunched for time on this final, so it will have to wait.

Enjoy and critique!

Elephant Shrimasaurus

Another project from my Character Design and Development class. This hybrid required I create a creature that contained features from the following three categories:

1.Prehistoric Reptile
2.Crustacean or ExoSkeleton
3.Mammal.

The result is this! I didn't color it, as I have a massive project to complete for this same class, but I wanted to shade it so there was more form.

Feel free to make guesses as to what different animals I used, though you get NO points for naming the mammal . Also, I know the man-figure isn't anatomically correct or anything. I slapped him on to create scale.

Enjoy!

Completed in Photoshop CS3 using Wacom Bamboo Tablet.

Goat Completed

I have completed the Goat!

A drawing project from School. The prof told us to combine a mammal, element, and deity together to make a character. So I made an Ice Goatblighter. Goat, Ice, and the deity Soulblighter from the old Myth series. (look it up)

The coloring took several days for me, (being the noob I am) and I slapped on a really simple and poor background to give it some extra depth and space. I'll probably try to do something actually GOOD with that, but it'll do for now.

Anyway, enjoy and critique please!

Irate Lamb

So I got a twitter account and tweeted a day or so ago that I was drawing an irate lamb. SO...here it is!



This is a combination of three things. A mammal (duh), an element, and some kind of deity. The element might not be what you think it is. I'm apparently not that good at drawing them yet. The deity as well may not be what you expect. If you can name it, I'll say something like "congratulations, you guessed it!" or something. Go ahead and give it a shot!

I'll get around to posting a link to mah twitter so you can all follow me.

New Chopin WIP

Finally, a new edition of my infamous chopin video. With my new computer, I now have the processing power to tackle this thing. Unfortunately, it's still a ton of work and rendering time. This one is obviously still incomplete. It's not even the kind of quality I intend to have at the end of production.

The lighting is still a little blotchy, though I deliberately did that to keep render time down. That, and I think my crystals are off on their timing during the second half. If you see anything else that's off, let me know!

Longman WIP

Here's a little something I finally got around to doing today.



Done entirely in photoshop using a Bamboo Wacom tablet. Sketching and 'shading' presented here. I intend to go back and get some color in there, make it a presentable piece, but I thought to post it on a couple of sites, including this one, to see what people thought. Anything that irks you or you think could or should be changed or improved, let me know so I can make it better! Thankies to all and enjoy.

Life Drawing Dump!

Hey everyone! Thanks for being patient as I fix my post issues. I can now present all of my life drawing pieces in a much more convenient way. To start off, here are all the clothed pieces. I HOPE these don't overtly offend anyone :P Please excuse the stitched scans. I had large drawings and a small scanner to work with.

These were all done with participants from the class, but also many from my professor.

Decent Posture

Cold Shoulder

Aging Process (I think I made her look older than she actually is)

Recline at the Office

Fathead (Her head came out fat...not an insult, I swear!)

Laying on the Ceiling


And now the part we've all been waiting for! The nude models. I've broken these up into the separate models, male and female, and, as was requested by my poll, they are links rather than full images. So, if you are offended by nudity of any kind:
A) Don't click these links
and
B) Don't subsequently complain to me about offensive content :P

These are done largely in charcoal sticks, though some are charcoal pencils. The male model came first and all images are in chronological order, so you can see how I improve. I appreciate all input and criticism!

Male Model:

Pouting
Invisible Chair
Support Yourself
Enough Already
Uncomfortable Chair
Chillaxing Out
Sleeping on the Job

Female Model:

Ironically Bashful
Deep Pondering
Elbow Pillow
Not Listening
Reconnection
Cloud Watching
Everything but the Prada

Catchin up

Hey all! Holy cow, it's been over a month since my last post. Well, I have a very good reason for my slacking off. Actually, I have two good reasons.

First, I have produced pretty much ZILCH since my last post. I've been so caught up in reason number two that I haven't had time to really do anything worth posting about. That's the truth, and you can take that to the bank, though they'd probably just hand you a giant loan just for walking in as dictated by the fed.

Anyway, I digress.

Secondly, I've been facing an occupation change for the last month. A few friends of mine from college recently founded a design company called Zubian Studios. So far, they're trying their best to get on their feet by doing various design jobs, logos, tshirts, anything that will bring in money for the company. I've been prospectively hired to head their iPhone game department. Very exciting for me, obviously. I can make simple games that go on the cool iTouch and iPhone, and then post them on iTunes for all the world to see and buy. This is a VERY big step in the direction I want to go.

Obviously, the fact that it's a new company is a little worrisome. They've decided that actual wages won't be paid until about September, so I've been holding onto my current full-time job while also going to class 5 nights a week and devoting all my other spare time to Zubian. No joke, it's been MAD hectic. It's been fun and exciting for the most part, but still sleep depriving.

I was hesitant about jumping ship for a while and going to a job I had no guarantee would last a year. However, ASF has begun changing their production process pretty significantly, and it will definitely make my position there completely superfluous. I mean, would you pay a full-time wage to someone who walks in and then is done 2 hours later? I don't think so. That's mostly solidified my decision to jump to Zubian in the near future. As in, within the next couple of months.

That's my two reasons, and I hope you are all quite placated so as not to spam my comment fields with hateful messages. Though, admittedly, I'm sure if I continue to be so long winded, you won't even get that far. :D



So I'll cut to actual art. I have here one of the products of my Life Drawing Class. No, it's not a nude model, though they might be, but you can only see their heads. We spent the last couple of weeks practicing heads. I have a few others that I don't feel is worth posting here, but these, I think, were my best. The two on the right came before the other 4, so you can see a change in shading technique that I've come to like. Please give me any criticism you have and let me know which head you like da best, though I think I know what everyone's answer is going to be. :)

In other art news, the polls have closed, and my viewers have weighed in. Once I have some pieces that I want to post that involve nude models, I will upload them to a separate site and just give you a hyperlink with large, annoying warnings about the content. Hopefully everyone will be nice and happy with that.

I'll have some more stuff to post later on, so thanks for checking in!

Gillard WIP

Hey everyone! I haven't been making very much lately, have I? Well, my best excuse is that most of the things I've been working on recently haven't been worth posting. All a lot of technical stuff, experimental crap and things that just aren't easily posted and wouldn't be too terribly interesting to anyone, including me.

BUT, I have this work-in-progress (WIP) that I'm actually quite proud of. I'm still trying to figure out how to color him, but once I do I'll be sure to post the final result. As for now, enjoy and tell me what you think :)

P.S. Clickie for big image!

Ourobourus

Here are a couple of things for this post. The first is a really old vid my friend Dan and I made back in High School. I found it in my archives and realized that I had never posted it here (or maybe I'm just losing my memory with old age). It's just a silly project with shaky camera movement (I'm the cameraman) and a lot of fun with video running in reverse. Maybe you like RHCP, or maybe you like watching Dan steal food from me while saying it's for the video we're making. And if that doesn't hook you, Hardy makes an appearance, too, so that should be all you need to know!



Also, I begin a new term at school in a couple of weeks, and one of the classes is Life Drawing. I've asked the question before, but now that the class is imminent, I thought I'd post a poll asking for opinions. Since the class will no doubt include nude models, I want to know how everyone feels about having the sketches I come up with posted. Take a look at the options, vote, and leave comments if ya likes.

Enjoy!

Filler Post

I keep this blog for the sole expressed purpose of presenting my artwork to my family. I have accounts on DeviantArt and ArtBistro, on the other hand, to present my artwork to the world (aka, whoever finds it). Usually I refrain from posting anything unless I have an actual product to present, but since the blog has been dead for a while, I thought it best to keep it active by posting a little bit about my projects and perhaps some of the procedures that I go through to make them.

Currently I have a couple of projects going that either haven't been completed yet or are pieces I don't consider high enough quality to be posted. I've created a strange pangolin creature thing that wears a gasmask and walks anthropomorphically, possibly wearing a suit later on in the future. It's not too bad for my first real attempt at a completely organic creature, but for right now it's not ready to be unveiled. I've also been asked by a friend at school to help him on an animation project as a prop/environment modeler. Once that kicks off and I get some stuff made, I might also be able to present the objects I make and hopefully the end animation.

On my own time, I want to return to a couple of projects I have let gather dust for a while. The first is my Chopin video, which only just began before I got distracted. The biggest hurdle on that animation is finding the right actions, lights, or animations to use for any given part of the song. It's hard to put together some kind of interesting show that accurately fits the music and remains interesting throughout the length of the video. Couple that with some pretty processor-intensive rendering options, and making a simple 3 minute animation becomes quite a task. I have a couple of ideas for the animation, like setting the whole thing on the top of my Observatory tower, but if anyone else has ideas for what can be done with it, please leave a comment.

The other project is my Russian Roullete flash game. I posted the working "maze" generator while I was still working on it, but I got stuck trying to give the player the ability to manipulate the dimensions of the maze, and ultimately got distracted like I usually do. I want to return to it, but I haven't yet decided how I want to attack the project. I've got a pretty functional maze generator already, but I'm not sure if I want to worry about how the player manipulates the options or how the bullet you will eventually shoot will find a way to move through a maze that is randomly generated. The biggest issue with the latter is that I have to be able to give the code within the game a way to keep track of how the maze is put together. I can make a bullet and tell it to move, but I have to give it a way to know where the walls are and how to react to them. The process should be as simple and intuitive as possible and apply to every situation regardless of how the generator creates the maze. I believe that if I can get the core features of the game in place, I can then worry about how the game looks and how the player can manipulate the experience.

Well, those are the things I'm working on, along with my Algebra and Humanities class at school. Things remain busy, so I apologize for the decrease in activity on the blog. I should have some good stuff to show soon.

Also, since I'm breaking the norm of the blog already, I'd like to refer some of you to a couple of the works I've found and really liked. These are on DeviantArt, so if you have something against the site, don't clickie!

Thunder Factory
Best Homework Excuse Ever

Also, my friend has decided to put together a little internet comic about Left 4 Dead. If you've played the game, or just like funny little comics about games, I think you'll enjoy this. I've been throwing lots of ideas at her, so I can sorta take some credit for the content *evil laugh*

(possible language warning!)
L4D Tales: How not to survive the zombie apocalypse

Homemade wall-mine:

An instructional pamphlet designed to show you how to create your own solution to the "pesky guard" or other bipedal nuisances.

For my modeling midterm, I was to create a hand-held object, so I decided to model a tape gun! Then I got the idea that I should also model a grenade, and this entire idea was the natural progression of things. The two models are created and done for the midterm, but this pamphlet was just my own self-indulgence. :D

Enjoy! Clickie for bigger image.

Flythrough and Stamp

Hey all, just a couple small things to show today. First off, I tested my new computer by rendering my old flythrough animation again with all the nifty bells and whistles. Global illumination, distance blurring, actual MATERIALS on everything. Before, it would have taken my computer a night and a day to render this. My new computer pulled it off in an hour and a half. Not too shabby!



The only other thing is a new stamp that I and probably only one other person will get. Check out the new stamp to the right, and enjoy!

Zbrush and Commish

Hello again! I've got a couple of quick pieces to present today. First off, I've been messing around with Zbrush again, and I came up with this. I'm finally starting to get the hang of the controls and the interface, but I've still got a long way to go before I can call my self competent. Even so, I made this "Clay Ghandi", as I call it. He sorta reminds me of him. The composition would have been more interesting had I been able to get the stupid thing to export a displacement map. Maybe I did something wrong.

Anywho enjoy that.



And the other piece is Dianna's request of an Aquarius stamp! I've posted it in my stamp list to the side. If you would like a copy, I can get it to you. :)

Neeko

For the past couple of months I've been participating in a club at school called the GDO. The purpose of the group is to get together, spend some time playing games, watching movies, and working on production projects to build our portfolios and work on our skills. So far we've been working on a project called Neeko. (or Eeco or something, nobody's really committed to any one name)

I've been working on this model for the student film for the last week. I was given some concept art and now that I've pretty much got the model done, I've passed it on to another team member for rigging and animation. As this project moves along, I'll post what I make, but not what others make. This is, after all, a blog for MY work! (I'm not egocentric, I swear!)

Perhaps when the final product is complete I'll post a link or post the movie, but for the time being, I'd rather not post anyone's work but my own.

Enjoy!

Original Sketch: RobotBug

P.S. Clickie for ze BIG view

Chef Sammich

Here's something a bit more light-hearted to offset the blood and gore in my last post. Naturally, I'll be taxing the rich among you to pay for this offset so that all the illegal immigrants can enjoy broadband internet wherever they live.

Don't be racist, dude. That's just so square, man.

Anywho, this is the final animation for my final for my flash animation class. Animation. Final. I took 2 and a half hours to get this put together, though I did come up with the idea last week, so not ALL of the work was done that quickly. Be kind with the quality, since I did it so fast, and enjoy!

Note: if you want to see it again, you'll have to reload the page. It's set to stop playing at the end.

SOS!

Here's one little piece I threw together along with it's own stamp version.



There are two possibilities for why this one popped into my head and got done so quickly:
1. I'm in dire need of a vacation (which I am)
2. I've been listening to WAY too much talk radio

Probably a combination of the two. Anyway. Enjoy

And apologies to Elicia and Dianna for not having their commissions done. I have a perfectly legitimate reason for not having Elicia's car, AKA it's really HARD, but Dianna's shouldn't be taking this long. My only defense is that I'm in the "finals" period at school and haven't had much time or motivation to do any extra-curricular work. BUT it won't take me too long.

Boto Zbrush

Hey all, finally have something to show. First off, I've got my latest project from photoshop class. And secondly, I have something from a program I got just yesterday and am very excited about.

Here's the first:


For this project we were told to find a fairy tale of some kind and create a photoshop image illustrating the tale or a scene from that tale. After searching around for something good, I asked my friend if she knew any fairy tales and the best she could do was refer me to a Brazilian legend about Boto. These Boto are actually a kind of dolphin that were said to live in the rivers of Brazil in this legend and at night they transform into men and go clubbing trying to seduce women. I found the concept so amusing that I had to go with it. The result is my Boto Bond piece above. Enjoy and critique please!

Second:


This is the first experimental product of my fooling around with a program I've known about for a while but just barely got excited about. Zbrush is used by so many professional studios that it makes my artistic mouth drool. I attended a 5+ hour demonstration at a high school half an hour from here at the behest of one of my friends from school, and I have to say it was totally, totally worth it. Two artists from ID Software and one freelancer currently working on Iron Man 2 came to show us a few things about the program. (ID gamers might be glad to know that Doom 4 is in production)

After watching these guys work with this program I knew I had to get my hands on it. It's more of a digital clay sculpting program than it is a 3D modeling program as I understand it, and it's just fun. I got it at it's whopping 40 meg size and started messing around with it. It's quite a lot of fun, even though I don't know what I'm doing and using a tablet is still weird to me. I intend to keep learning this program and creating some fun models for my own amusement and eventually actually paying for the program. (whistles)

As always, enjoy and critique!

FLASH! (ah-ah)....

...and some other things

I've got a couple of flash pieces to present today. Then I have a photoshop piece! Let's get started:

The first flash item was our first major project for my flash class. It's a frame-by-frame animation of...well, a guy hitting a baseball. Bonus points to whoever can see one of the big mistakes I made! Whoever wins gets.....something. Maybe a request?



The second piece is a flash game I'm trying to get developed. It's a simple "maze" generator right now, but I hope to get it into a fully functional game with all the bells and whistles. Options, decent graphics, and hopefully a little fun. For now, enjoy the mastery of what only I understand! (/snobby joke)




Finally, I worked on a rock band poster for the band "The Raygunomics". The lead singer of the local cover band is an alumni of Westwood, so he commissioned my class to whip up some gig posters for his group. Mine will be used for the gig described down in Colorado Springs. It might be used as posters or just web content, I'm not sure. Either way, it makes for a nice portfolio piece. Everyone please enjoy and critique!

Mood by Color: The Old Sawmill

This was basically the last project we did in my Color Theory class. I had to wait over the christmas break for them to be graded before I could scan them in and post. But here they are! I'm very proud of them.


(click for larger version)

The assignment was to pick a nice little scene, trace it TWICE, then color the two pictures so that each portrayed a particular mood. Twas an exercise in color use and mood control. Obviously, you know which pic is what mood......right?

Anyway, enjoy!

Warning: Violence

I've been working to get some kind of product to show lately. None of my projects are holding much interest to me of late, so I don't have much to show. But I did do a simple photoshop project with a slightly violent theme.

I call this "My Projects Hate Me."


And I want to know your opinion on something. Would you consider this "Po-Mo"?