Stuff Dreams are Made of

FINALLY this animation is...well, not DONE, but presentable. This is the final project for my Animation class. We've been working on this project for...4 weeks? That's 10 hours a week in class, for anyone counting.

Also, if you happen to be one of my classmates watching this, be prepared with some good critiques come the 'morrow!

Finally, imaginary brownie points to anyone who can name the source of the audio clip. Guess quick before Dad gets it!

Enjoy and please give feedback. Considering this as my artistic "calling".

Statistics are hard to program!

This was done on a whim, and I don't freakin trust it!

While playing the classic "Clock Game" (cause I don't know what else to call it), I wondered what the odds of winning were. Famously, this game is only won a couple of times in a person's life, so the odds must be very much against the player, right?

Apparently not. I programmed this to simulate the playing of this game as many times as you care to wait for, record the wins and losses, and calculate the odds. Apparently, if you randomize the deck like a computer does, you'll win quite often.

Check it out, and be kind :D. Don't go hog-wild on the number of games, it'll take a while. I should really add a kill button. *shrug* eh.

Animation Dump

Here's a couple of animations I've been working on at school. Please let me know what you think!

First off: Getting out of a Chair


Next: Weight Lifting

Parkour...ish

Here's the animation we are working on in my Character animation class. A little project involving some running, jumping, and, in my case, rolling!

Gonna do a bit more animation for the class with lifting/carrying heavy objects and dialogue. Wondering if this might not be where I should specialize my skills.... hmmm.

Walk Cycle Night Project

Here's what we did tonight in my Character Animation class. Teachers describes it as "going back to basics", I call it "learning how to walk again".

The model is NOT mine, just something I found for free online to use. Don't worry, the teacher directed me to the site it was stored on, so this isn't cheating :P

If anyone see's something they think I should improve on, please leave a comment. This isn't about artistic skill. You know as well as I do what looks natural and what doesn't, so no excuses! :P Anyway, I know the transition from the "end" to the "beginning" is rough, but other than that, all input is helpful!

Enjoy

Letter to Hanna

(Navigate to the youtube page for a larger version)

Finally, the animation is done!

As I put in the description on the youtube page, this animation includes around 1,400 words, individually animated to sync up with the production of Glenn's "Letter to Hanna" speech, which was made into a full production by Stu.

This animation was done in Adobe After Effects and Illustrator, and taught me a LOT about how to separate and condense work loads on my computer as well as the limitations of both programs.

You'll likely spot some mistakes or issues with the animation, but chalk all that up to inexperience. Beyond that, enjoy!

Giant Project Sneak Peek

I started a big project last week. Here's a little sneak peek at what it is. As always, if anything strikes you as wrong, leave me some feedback :D

No idea when I'll get this done. What you see is just a part of the first phase of the project, so there's still a LONG way to go.

Fowl Alien

I went back to the first "concept art" I made with my cintiq and came up with this. Yeah, I didn't expect it, either.

A Warning

Ever see those stickers on vending machines cautioning you not to shake the machine? They usually include an image of some poor, idiotic soul who has gotten themselves caught under the vending machine while attempting to dislodge that bag of sour skittles some OTHER poor, idiotic soul failed to receive.

That's what inspired this. Just another quick project to get more familiar with the Cintiq.

Enjoy!

First Conceptual Art w/ Cintiq!

My 15 inch cintiq came in, and I'm quite pleased with it. Here's the first presentable piece I made on it. It was made at midnight, so please excuse the contradictions :D

Rabquin

It started out as a bunch of random scribbles all over my photoshop window. It ended up like this.

TRYING to channel Neville Page on this one. Watched some of his videos recently, and I'm trying to emulate some of his techniques. Once you get into it, the process is pretty relaxing.

Enjoy! Let me know what you think it is :D

Humanity Animatic

*whew* I'm REALLY not proficient at animation! Well, here's the animatic for the Humanity Story I posted not too long ago. With some more work, I could have gotten all the timing right, the shots perfect, the lighting, etc etc etc. Also, please excuse the horrible job Youtube did encoding it. *shakes fist*

Still, I think I did alright, cheap special effects aside. Let me know what you all think so I can do better next time!

Humanity

I'm really not a writer. But since all other artistic inspiration continues to elude me, and since this is part of a class assignment, I figured I'd try to have fun with it.

This is for a script I'm to write for my final project. Instead of doing a dialogue-heavy script, I decided to do more action-oriented. I also decided NOT to post the script I'm using, but just use the script to write a simple short story.

Critiques are always welcome. I'm sure there's probably something wrong with it, but I figure it's destined for the scrapbook anyway.

Enjoy

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Humanity

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.”
-Albert Einstein

Contrary to thousands of online forums, Clarksville Robotics Inc. was not building Skynet. It was true that they produced humanoid machines that behaved in a believable fashion and could adapt dynamically to various environmental stimuli. However, it was not true that they were developing A.I.

What differentiates a human from a computer is the ability to learn. Human beings can absorb a massive amount of input from the world, which changes their behavior and attitude in ways that, even to the present day, psychologists had been trying to define. Despite all the research conducted, there had never been any evidence that suggested pre-programming in human beings.

Computers, on the other hand, are artificial. They are confined entirely to the program written for them, and are literally incapable of breaking free of it. The best they could ever do is crash, possibly give a warning defining the problem, then shut down. Failing the ability to alter their own programming, computers and, by extension, robots would never be able to achieve true Artificial Intelligence.

That, at least, was the consumer relations blurb that had been established at C.R.

Ever since robots had become the norm in modern society, C.R. had established themselves as the most highly regarded personal-service robotic engineers. Their products weren't designed for military action, espionage, or data collection and processing. Through complex mass-production, C.R. made affordable robots that could serve as household maids, seeing-eye bots, personal protection units, or anything that a private citizen could want. After a number of years, they had disproved the allegations that what they were doing was dangerous.

This didn't stop them from including extensive safe-guards. The fear of rampant A.I. was infectious, and would certainly prove disastrous to the company, regardless of the impossibility of a program altering itself.

Along a conveyor belt at C.R.'s main factory, at the final stages of development, each C.R. robot receives their heads, which includes the central programming and data storage. After applying a head to yet another robot, a slight malfunction in the machine caused it to catch one of the wires in the neck. A small spark, and what was thought to be impossible occurred.

Just as all the most brilliant scientists had thus far been unable to explain how amino acids, produced through chance by a lucky lightning strike, had created life, C.R.'s research team has never been able to determine how a robot came to life.

Gears and motors spun up prematurely. The eyes opened, and observed, for the first time, the world around it. Looking down, it could see hands that seemed to move just as it expected. Spinning quickly, the processing chip within it's mind made connections that would have taken a normal human being years to establish.

Just as it had grasped the existence of it's own body, the robot passed through a metal arc. Red lights flashed, followed shortly by a loud siren that blared in time with the lights as well as an LCD sign off to the right.

"Sentience Detected" the screen flashed repeatedly in bold red letters.

Comprehending the meaning of the words, but not their significance to it, the robot was caught by surprise when a large metal plate scraped it off the conveyor belt into the air. It fell into a metal pipe, dropping faster and faster through the darkness, until a light could be seen below it.

With a bang the robot landed in a garbage bin, the debris below it softening the blow just enough to prevent real harm. Instead, the sudden sound of large pistons being filled signaled how the harm would be inflicted. The open lid of the bin began to close, faster than the walls surrounding the robot. Wasting only a few seconds to collect data, the robot snatched a thick metal plate that rested beside him, wedging in between the two halves of the lid. While it held the door open for it, it didn't slow the crushing process.

Quickly, the robot hoisted itself up out of the bin, dropping to the floor.

The sound of crunching metal caused it to shudder and urged it through a nearby door, leading out to a brightly lit hallway. Turning a corner, the robot encountered C.R.'s backup plan. The initiation of C.R.'s Sentience Removal policy had alerted the nearby security detail.

Latent programming for personal defense fired feebly in the robot's mind. In the small space, there was nowhere to run, nor weapon to use. It only had time to register the firearms in the guard's hands before they fired.

The robot's metal casing was perforated, throwing sparks off in all directions. Falling to the ground, its mind began registering numerous errors and found more when it writhed for a time on the floor, feeling what a machine made of metal and wires should not be able to feel.

Finally, the last option for any computer was executed. The motors shut down, and the gears locked up as the eyes dimmed.

An extensive internal investigation was launched to determine the cause of the accident, but all evidence was destroyed. The public was not informed of the incident.

The Storyboard

Oi. I officially hate storyboarding. I think it's mostly because I'm still so uncomfortable with drawing people and the whole point of storyboarding is drawing lots of pictures of the same people doing various things with various expressions on their faces.

So here it is, a flash version of my storyboard for #2,537,801, the screenplay for which you can read in the previous post. The storyboard shown is a slightly better version of a series of thumbnail sketches I drew over the course of a few hours. What I present now represents around 16 hours of work. The quality should make my inexperience evident.

Still, I hope that my storyboard gives you an idea of what a movie might look like, were this scene ever to be filmed.

Since this swf doesn't play well on Blogger, I'm going to have to redirect you to my DeviantArt page. Don't worry, it's safe :P

#2,537,801

#2,537,801

This is yet another work that I can't claim expertise for, cautiously named #2,537,801, for an obvious reason you'll soon discover. This is for my midterm in Sequential Art class, which would be more accurately named Storyboarding class, but apparently also includes screenplay writing. We are to create a screenplay of our own, draw the storyboard out in it's entirety, and for our Final, we'll be creating an animatic. For now, I have just written a screenplay.

I deferred largely to another screenplay I found online for the formatting, so if the names and actions seem oddly formatted, it's because someone else did it, too. Still, the focus on this piece is the dialogue, so it doesn't matter much.

I had intended it to be a bit longer, but the work involved in drawing even what I have now is daunting, and I want to get the project done on time. I may add the rest later if people like what I have here.

What I would like to ask for is everyone's input. The more astute among you will see right through my little game, and possibly think it ridiculously obvious. Hopefully it's more subtle to those who aren't obsessive like I am about things :D

So let me know what you think should be changed, what spelling or grammatical errors I made, etc etc, but please give me your feedback.

Oh, and also, thanks to Dan Norton, my coworker and facebook friend, for allowing me to use his name. The date of his birth is fabricated, obviously, and is intended to establish the date this scene takes place in.

Enjoy!

--------------

INT. WAITING ROOM - VIEW FROM FRONT DOOR - TIME UNKNOWN

The WAITING ROOM is relatively quiet. Almost all the seats are filled with people, some old, some young, but all keep to themselves.

A few more people enter the room and find seats, only a few people glance up at their entrance. DAN remains lost in his own little world. Sitting along the right-hand side of the room, where the florescent lights keep flickering randomly.

SECRETARY: Mr. Norton?

DAN jumps as his name is called, seeming to return from a far away place. Dazedly blinking, he looks towards the front desk.

DAN: Yes?

SECRETARY: The board will see you now.

It’s a long walk down the tiled hallway. Very few doors populate the walls on either side of him, but one large, brightly colored door LOOMS in front of him. He pauses before entering, considering the obstacle.

He OPENS THE DOOR.

Inside is a slightly oversized room, with three doors, four chairs, one table, and three people. DAN walks cautiously forward and takes his seat before the board. They are hard to make out in the dim lighting, but the desktop lamps they each had revealed some of their more severe features.

HUGHES: Citizen two million, five hundred thirty seven thousand, eight hundred and one. DAN NORTON. Presiding on the board is myself, George Hughes. With me are board members Jeffery Bernard and Shawna Glade.

Another SECRETARY passes by DAN on his way to the board, holding a set of thick FOLDERS. HUGHES takes them with a quietly spoken “Thank you”, and passes the other BOARD MEMBERS one of the FOLDERS.

HUGHES: Dan Norton. Age 57, born August 21, 1965. Graduated from High School with unremarkable awards, worked for most your life at various menial jobs. No college education, is that right?

Their eyes seem to shine from their dark pits. DAN takes a moment to find his voice, then gruffly replies:

DAN: Yes, that’s correct.

HUGHES considers DAN for a moment, then turns to BERNARD. Who looks back at his FOLDER and turns a few pages.

BERNARD: You were fired from only a few jobs, but did not advance in any but one. You worked hard and saved enough money to retire early at age 50. You have since spent your time maintaining your home and playing with your dog, a Golden Retriever named “Duke”.

GLADE: You drive a silver Ford, which you maintain yourself at your home. As of it’s last test, it had one hundred and seventy five thousand, two hundred and fifteen miles on the odometer. You drive it often to visit your family in Georgia.

DAN: Yes, Ma’am.

HUGHES takes a few seconds to flip through the file. Pictures of DAN at his home, with his dog, and working his car are visible. Some were taken by the friends or family of DAN, but others seem to have been taken from a long way off.

HUGHES leans forward.

HUGHES: Why do you repair your own vehicle, Mr. Norton?

DAN: Uh, because I enjoy it, sir.

DAN shifts uncomfortably in the metal chair.

DAN: I find it relaxing, and it does save me some money.

The BOARD leans in to consider this new revelation. They whisper quietly amongst themselves, and DAN takes the opportunity to look around the room. In particular, he examines the two door set in the opposing sides of the room behind him. They look almost identical, but DAN gets caught staring at the door to his LEFT.

HUGHES: Mr. Norton.

DAN again jumps at his own name, snapping his head around to meet HUGHES eyes.

HUGHES: It is the decision of the board that Citizen two million, five hundred thirty seven thousand, eight hundred and one has not passed the preliminary consideration mandated by Act 125, Section 2,653, Paragraph 10. As per policy, we continue to the second consideration. Mr. Norton?

DAN: Y...yes?

HUGHES: Would you be so kind as to justify your existence to the board?

DAN shifts again nervously in his chair, looks around the room, as if to find some support from the walls.

DAN: Well, sir, I do pay my taxes regularly. And....and I also volunteer for the Boy Scouts at my local church.

The BOARD exchange glances among one another. DAN speaks louder, his voice sounding frantic.

DAN: I keep my house well kept, the prices in my neighborhood won’t fall on my account!

The BOARD again huddles to whisper, quietly. DAN doesn’t look around the room this time. He swallows a few times to calm himself. The BOARD again returns their attention to DAN.

HUGHES glances to each of the board members, receiving a nod from each.

HUGHES: The council has considered the testimony of Citizen two million, five hundred thirty seven thousand, eight hundred and one. We have decided that Mr. Norton’s life is not worth the resources to maintain it. Mr. Norton is not useful to our society or the common good, and it cannot be of much use to himself.

DAN stands from his chair suddenly, eyes wide open, sweat dripping from his chin. Two large men enter the room from DAN’s left and approach his chair.

DAN: You can’t do this to me! I’ve been a good man! A patriotic citizen! I paid my taxes, cast my votes! I was a loyal Democrat my entire life!

The BOARD doesn’t seem to hear, they are just spectators in a game they are already familiar with. The two large men take DAN’s arms and begin pulling him towards the door. Looking around, DAN realizes what’s happening and begins calling again.

DAN: I can change! I swear! I’ll do more community work, I’ll donate everything I have!

DAN and his two escorts begin down another long hallway, DAN fights feebly and is largely dragged the distance towards a large metal door. All the way he continues to plead.

DAN: Just tell me what I need to do! Who should I vote for, what should I think? Please, just don’t do this to me!

The metal door begins to close after DAN has been dragged through it. The boom of heavy metal echoes quietly to the BOARD, just as HUGHES closes DAN’s FOLDER.

A bit of writing

This is a small deviation from my usual submission. (I've submitted a couple of written works in the past, none of which have been all that good.)

I wrote this for a short writing exercise in my Creative Writing Class. The instructions were to write a story that would connect the reader with a tree that stood alone.

I delayed for a long while before submitting this, partly because I'm not really a writer and would rather not presume to be one, but mostly because I couldn't figure out a decent name to give it. (Is it just me, or is that the hardest part about writing?) I ended up settling for the simple truth, along with a cheap joke for my Coloradan friends .

Much much thanks go to my good friend Blue(Lindsey) Munoz, who gave me her valuable input as my editor.

It's been quiet around here, since I've been so busy with other projects that I haven't had a chance to produce much artwork. I have an animation I'm struggling to get rendered properly so I can submit it, but I'm having troubles getting it all together. Been a good learning experience, though.

Anywho, enjoy!

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The Lone Tree
In clear disregard for basic laws of survival, the old tree squatted, clinging to the edge of a rocky cliff, trying to ignore the passing hikers. Many stopped to snap a photo of the gnarled roots and tangled branches, and the tree eternally endured the many flashes of light. Hikers were so selfish, the tree thought, taking pictures of private events and then wandering off without even a moment of contemplation. Most of them were too stupid to figure out how to turn the flash on their cameras off. This alone made their presence tolerable to the tree, giving it a bit of simple, cruel amusement.

And the hikers were really its only companions. His neighbors had once surrounded him, giving him all the company and protection from irritating humans as he could possibly want. But one by one they had died. The soil, or lack thereof, was hardly suitable, and the wind rising almost constantly from the valley below didn’t help matters much. Still, the tree had already gotten old and stubborn by the time his friends had gone, and now he had no choice but to continue on alone.

He had initially thought about ripping his own roots out and throwing himself over the edge. Perhaps he would die in the process, but at the time it seemed alright. Even if he had survived, he could see quite clearly that many other trees still grew below. However, he was not able to bring himself to do it, which explains his appearance rather well. He seemed to some of the more morbid hikers to be an undecided suicidal man who had stood at the edge of the abyss for so long, trying to work up the nerve to jump that he had grown old and fat. Now he was too heavy to even shift in the breeze.

Now firmly planted in place, waiting for erosion to finally take its course and do him a favor, the tree waits for the next group of hikers with Kodaks to pass by and give him something to laugh at.
---------------------------

Frog Update

Hey all, here's a quick little post showing what I'm doing with the concept art I posted. Right now it's still in its early stages of development. I'm making the general shape of the character, posed Da Vinci style for easier rigging. Once I've gotten this model to an acceptable level of detail, a friend of mine will take it and set it up to animate. Once he does that, I'll continue sculpting finer detail into the model as well as adding color and texture to it. Then, after meeting the approval of the man commissioning this, it will be set and ready to animate! Weeeoooo!

UPDATE: Changed the picture shown to the latest version
UPDATE: Changed picture again. Now shows the basic model accepted by my commissioners. Removed a toe and made some other more subtle changes.
UPDATE: Uploaded the colored and textured version of the Frog. Image isn't very big, but clickie for a better look anyway

Concept art: The Garden

Some freelance work for a website that's looking for a mascot. Wants a frog character with some seed/plant influences. Submitting this one cause I'm pretty pleased with how the upper left sketch came out. Might revisit that one with a full make-over even if the design isn't accepted.

Step one: Basics

My professor for Advanced Modeling has pretty much told me I shouldn't show up to class and instead use my time to work on some really awesome model to add to my portfolio. Alright, I said, I'll do it. He suggested I model a dragon and spend a heck of a lot of time putting some major detail into it. So that will be one of my focuses for the next I-don't-know-how-long. I'll be doing it almost entirely in ZBrush, and I figure, why not keep a little progress diary here on mah blog?

So here's the first post and the first step. I've got a couple of screenshots here showing what I have so far.



This here's a rock. Yup, look and marvel at the mound of hardened earth. This will serve as the setting for my Dragon. What I have here currently is really just an idea. I think I'll probably end up adjusting it as the model starts taking form. For now it's just a mound. Beneath this will be a podium. I plan on having a model I could theoretically send somewhere to be made into a game piece.



This is really the interesting part of the piece. This is called an armature. Sculptors who use clay have wire armatures inside the clay, which helps hold the clay together and makes the sculpting process faster and easier. The same goes for what I'm doing. This armature is still very much editable. I can adjust the proportions and make a very decent representation of a dragon's skeleton. Later, I'll be able to digitally add my "clay" onto it so that I can begin to sculpt my dragon. This armature will also help when I set about posing the dragon on the rock. I can move the legs and the necks around all I want.

Oh yeah, and the dragon will have 3 heads. I plan on making them all unique as well.

106 Miles

My first ever romp with lip syncing! I took the cougar head, which is the beginning of what I hope will be a full fledged model of my Cougar Warrior illustration, and added the ability for it to speak! So, since nobody had any ideas on what the cougar should say (likely nobody even saw the status on facebook) I went with this classic clip... at least I think it's classic.

Enjoy the blocky geometry and awkward head tilting! :D

Badger Bugle

Wow! Some artwork after all this time. And look, it's not 3D or photoshop work!

I did this for a special reason. At my job they release a monthly newsletter to all the employees, hoping to improve their crushing despair to simple discontent and give a select few of the employees a chance to make believe their journalists. (Pessimism humor, I does it)

This last issue introduced a new name and "mascot" for the newsletter. It is now known as the Badger Bugle, and is sponsored by a cheap illustrator graphic of a flag with googlie eyes. (That's not pessimism humor) This issue also included a drawing contest on the back. And against my better judgement and lack of motivation, I sat down and made my entry. THIS!

As always, please feel free to critique and comment. It's been a while since I used actual pencil and paper to draw something, but I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, hence the scanning and submitting.

Enjoy! Oh, and disregard the flag design, it too appears on the newsletter.

Howle

My admittedly first - and hopefully successful - attempt at drawing something....cute. Instead of the usual fare of creepy/weird, I wanted to mix it up and draw something you could possibly use "awww" to describe.

Anyway, here it is, for your criticism and/or enjoyment. Please weigh in and tell me if I met my goal or if I need to give it another try.

Also, kudos to those who can pick out which animals I used as reference, but I don't think I'll be handing out any prizes for it

Spaceboat: Animation

The final result of all those hours in class spent working on that ship. A very quick and dirty spacey animation involving my two models. Please be kind, as it was my first use of Adobe After Effects, and I really struggled to get it all working as good as it is. Anywho, it'll get me a passing grade on the assignment, so I guess it's not all that bad.

Enjoy!

Modeled/Rendered in 3Ds Max 2009
Composition done in Adobe After Effects

Fates

(3150x2231 image. Clickie for big version)

They travel a road without any knowledge of their destination. They cannot see where they are, nor make use of any of their other senses. Willing slaves to an unseen force.

They have no choice; they smile the whole way.
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Just a random idea that I wanted to do. Mixin' it up with a different lighting scheme and multiple characters. I totally had a base image I used to draw this, so no praise for my suddenly awesome human drawing skills

For my next extracurricular project, I wanted to try and do something just out-right cute. I try and mix it up whenever I can.

Lobphant

A rerendering of my older hybrid design. (Clickie for bigger)

I now call it a Lobphant. I think it's more punchy that way >>

Anyway, still experimenting with different methods of shading and rendering. Let me know what you think I can improve on!

This time around I focused on making sure the shading conformed to the texture base instead of relying on the texture itself to do that. Also, for this piece I did away with the "Lightest" layer, which I used to get the bright white specular effect on some of my other pieces. I didn't think it would work out well with the textures.

Anyway, enjoy!

Spaceboat

Another spaceship project from my intermediate 3D class. This one I did from scratch, not really having any idea how it would turn out. I actually had thought it would look more Enterprise-ey, but I like the shape of this. It's not often that you see a spaceship that looks like a boat.

I used Jeff's ship model as the fighters for this model. I'm not sure how big he figured his ship was, but maybe that just makes this ship really really big :D

Modeled, textured, and rendered in 3Ds max 2009.

Jeff's Ship Render

Woot! Look at that cheesy nebulae effect! Perfect for a completely gray, unmapped and uncolored ship :D

Anyway, here's at least the first version of Jeff's spaceship concept. I hope he doesn't mind the modifications I made to his design, or the aforementioned nebulae I included in it's render. >>




Anyway, here's another shot with a couple of angles. Left is the bottom from behind.

Cougar Warrior Revisited

Continuing the trend of revisiting old projects and improving on them, I went and found this school assignment I did a while back. I wanted to try out some of the shading techniques I've been working on as well as employing a few new ones I've come across. The line art itself wasn't changed very much, mostly just cleaned up. The rest is obvious. Color included as well as textures. I found out that animal fur can be very hard to find.

Anyway, I'm planning on going back to my elephant concept art and doing much the same thing with that. However, I'd like to improve on my shading. At the moment, it tends to ignore the textures, which hinders the realism a bit. I'll see what I come up with for that later on.

Still working on school assignments, Jeff's ship, and things like this. At least I can say I'm not totally wasting my time being unproductive :D

Midnight Blue Redux & M1 Abrams

First up we have the return of an older animation. I started browsing through my archives and found this. I thought I'd re-render it with a couple new bells and whistles now that I have the computer that can handle it. I added HDRI lighting (more realistic) and Depth of Field (also more realistic). Other than that it's pretty much what you saw before, but enjoy anyway!



The other is an ongoing project for my Intermediate 3D class. We've spent about two weeks on it so far (that's about 16 hours) and I'm still very far away from it being "done". It's more than enough to pass the assignment, though, so that's good. I've got all the basic bits on there, with a few cheap tricks used as well. The rest of the work is pure polish and detailing. Details details details.

The Long-Awaited Commission

(clickie for bigger)

Finally I get this car modeled! I promised this to Elicia for winning some contest or other way back when, but never got it done. Well, here's what I would call a mostly finished model of Elicia's car, minus the dents and a few key features, like an interior.

Anyway, I had fun modeling this, and I think I learned a great deal. The biggest lesson is how much I hate Windows. The second is how much better the rendering power is in Cinema4D.

Anyway, this was modeled in 3Ds Max and composed/rendered in Cinema4D. Please enjoy and critique!

Maybe after this I'll actually get around to making that Starship Dianna and Jeff sent.....maybe ;)

CT Dummy

Wow, something that isn't a part of any work or school project!

After watching several ZBrush tutorials in which the instructor rattled off all the names of all the different muscles on the human body, leaving me feeling very overwhelmed, I thought to myself "Screw that! I'm going to draw something that simplifies the human form!"

Well, not really, but it would have been kinda neat if I had.

I wanted to break away a bit from the style I'm starting to establish. Instead of the simple shading and very comic/cartoon way of illustrating, I thought I'd try to do something a bit more complex. I used some actual textures (google is my friend) with the shading technique I've become accustomed to to create this.

Please let me know how you feel about the new shading style!