Slick!

Yo what up?! So I went into Computer Animation Studio with some marker drawings I did of instruments and stuff. My last comp was mostly Photoshop editing but Randolf suggested I create some of my assets by hand. I tried to draw some real awesome cymbals, guitars and drums...damn it was tough! I almost painted them with gouache or watercolors but I felt the sudden urge to use markers. I was testing the colors out on a separate piece of paper so I could find the right combination. I still used Photoshop to simplify and sharpen the colors after I did a hi-res scan but it looks dope now! Then I went and downloaded like 20 different cool fonts to test out. Randolf gave me a lot of good advice and showed me a couple cool techniques. Some weren't working out so well, but a few of the others are god damn gold for this style. I need to add some music and mess with the motions some more but it is on the way. Much better than the first piece.
*EDIT: I uploaded a more recent version that has a short sound clip of EVH rocking out and I extended the length a little bit and also added a fade.

Life Drawing Workshop July 24 2010

I forgot my charcoal and my newsprint so I just grabbed a few markers and went for it in my sketchbook. It was medium pose day and at first I was using really light colors but I wasn't fast enough to do any shadowing so I switched over to black and red for a bit. When we started doing 5 and 10 minute poses, I was combining lights and darks to create soft shadows but they were feeling sketchy. Once we were settled into the tens, I was gesturing with my light yellow, green and purple then using black or red to bring in the contrast. In some of the scans, the light colors are really tough to see but they still look pretty dope.

OH! ONE, OH! OH ONE!

"Come on sucker, lick my battery." I was working on this motion graphics kind of piece as a potential demo reel intro. But after showing Randolf and some other students, it feels like I need to start from scratch and steer a bit into another direction. I was using photographs from Google then taking them into Photoshop and editing them into some usable PNGs. Randolf suggested I should draw the assets myself and create a strong logo and a good final key frame before I start messing with my comp and its motions. Guitar Hero came up as a possible reference because of their entertaining and goofy 2D intros. Maybe I will use Flash or ToonBoom...

ONE DOUBLE OH

Here is a flyer I made about Last Friday. Living Dead Tattoo gave me some to hand out, but I felt that the design was confusing and unclear.

Rex Kwon Do!

Yo. I was re-visiting my final from Randolf's Intermediate 3D Animation class. I taught myself how to transfer animations from one rig to another by using this script called dkAnim. It took me a bit to figure out what the hell was going on, but luckily I found some good websites to help me out. So once I fixed that polygon problem, I started to think about the final render for my demo reel. I changed my settings to HD720 but then I was wondering all types of shit. Is it better to use Maya Software, Maya Hardware or Mental Ray for this type of piece? What types of lights and shadows do I use? Raytracing is usually better, but I had to figure out which variables to tweak to get the desired effect. I refreshed my brain on the 3 point lighting system and I went for it.

This is what I came up with. Some of the shadows are still pretty hard and I am wondering if I should attempt to put him into some type of environment. I know I will probably be making more animation changes and will have to render it again anyway, but it looks like you end up re-rendering lots of projects if you give a shit about it. I haven't shown my reel to enough people but I also feel like it doesn't tell them what I have learned in the past few months. Once it better represents the direction I am going in, I will have to start bothering every teacher and student I can. So give me some crits!

Digital Rendering Action

Yo! So I downloaded the hi-res versions of a couple of my favorite concept pieces from Diablo 3 and I tried to figure out the secret of their super awesomeness.

What I learned is that these artists seem to start with simple brush strokes, then they utilize focal point and color to the max. They zoom in and detail faces and muscles like nobody's business and then they leave the subordinate objects as bad ass silhouettes.

I was trying to eyeball the colors, just to get my practice on. So some of it is a bit off, I kept getting frustrated trying to match the dark blue and brownish colors, the fancy highlights and the mixes on the monk's clothing. I worked on the goat for about 45 minutes to an hour and the monk for about 20-30. I imagine they probably work from prior sketches, scans or silhouettes then they throw down some colors and render it up for a good 3-8 hours, if not more. These dudes are pro and I hope I can one day be good enough to join their ranks if I wanted. I am still searching for the names of the artists who did these specific pieces, let me know if you stumble on the answer.

Inspiration

I got all excited/depressed by looking at the Diablo 3 Concept Art and I decided to do some digital sketches out of my head to see how I compare. Wow...I suck dude! I need to do more master copies and just studies of systems and such. I found myself applying life drawing guidelines to my backgrounds. Thinking of gesture, form, value and details. Then I took too long on that weird perspective one and after that I started to get burnt out so I did some silhouettes. There are a few I really like and I definitely want to expand on them. Maybe I will do that later tonight.

Life Drawing Workshop July 17th 2010

Yeah! About four more hours of drawing mileage in front of a model! Woo! I should be between 160-200 now. I used some conte at first, then some primo charcoals later in the session. Most of these are two minutes, a couple of fives, and the longest ones were tens.

Watercolor Action!

Yo. I was drawing from an old issue of Modern Drummer and I added some watercolor action a few hours later. I tried to do something a little different this time...so I used a Micron Brush Pen to bring the black again after it was dulled and blurred a bit by some of the water. I usually color areas very loosely so I'm making an effort to be more accurate with my brush strokes. I need to get myself another dope brush for that stuff again since I accidentally ruined my last one...Doh!

Media

Here is a bunch of stuff I did over my break. I got lazy and I should have posted each page right after finishing it so I would be more willing to discuss what went into them...but whatever.

*Edit: Alright I have to write something. So the bottom one here I attempted to paint a portrait of Charlie Murphy but it ended up looking like Dede from Friday. Then I attempted to paint a picture of Zach Hill holding a garbage bag of drumsticks. That was harder than I thought it would be! As you can probably tell by it's unfinished state. But I don't like working too long when I'm painting stuff like that unless I'm still into it after I started the idea. Which wasn't the case I suppose...

So above that there is a page of some Avatar: The Last Airbender studies mixed in with some doo-doo sketches from my head. All done with markers and ink.

Next there are some more reference-less sketches of some girls and skulls and stuff. I tried to do some weird marker blending on that page.

Above that, I was studying this gun catalog called Cheaper Than Dirt and writing some of their fancy descriptions. It made me think of inventories or stores from R.P.G.s and stuff.

Then there is an acrylic painting of my dog, Homie. He has a weird shaped head and it is hard to capture those forms from the front.

Above that, a couple of marker sketches I did while I was at Last Friday in June.

Then there is an ink/watercolor "Master Sloppy" of Leonardo's David. Yeah I know, big head mode...

Finally we have lots of Scott Pilgrim inspired comic characters and dialogue bubbles, some quick graff sketches and water color portraits using random magazines as reference. Phew! See? I knew there was a lot to say about this post...