Links and pics

Wanted to plug my friend Joel Davis's article:
Better Programmer Art
(or how to fake it as a game artist)

REALLY good tips on game art here for artist's and programmers alike.

Also wanted to mention Alchemy since it is my new favorite drawing program. This program is great for making loose concept sketches as well as abstract doodles as well as good old illustration.
Here are some examples of what I mean from their forum

Modeling done

Haven't unwrapped the UVs yet. Playing around with image based lighting and the skylight in 3dstudio max. Messed around with it in post (photoshop)

Update.

Minor update. The modeling is almost done.

End of term

The steampunk challenge had to take a back seat to finishing out the term and studying for my Max certification. Here is a character I am finishing for a class demo on character modeling. A friend of mine designed / illustrated the character.

Steampunk Myths and Legends Challenge

I have tried entering a few of these contests and never seem to finish. Here's hoping this one will be different.

This is a rough mockup of my steampunk rendition of the "Pygmalion" story.

Not sure if this is the one I want to go with but it might work. I hope to have a few other mockups posted soon.

I am also considering doing these:

steampunk Jimi Hendrix
steampunk Mad Hatter
steampunk John Henry

The following ideas seem to be being done by a lot of people:

lochness monster
trojan horse
medusa
wizard of oz (?)

Autodesk 2009 event notes

Here are the notes for Motionbuilder 2009

Autodesk 2009 Launch Event
Carlsbad CA
Nov 13th Sheraton Hotel
(Autodesk recommends DELL laptops M6400 and M4400)

Motionbuilder 2009
- Improved asset transport through the .fbx file format
- Ragdoll physics can be combined with rigid dynamics (characters falling and breaking walls for example)
New ragdoll -> approximation -> activate collision with rigid body (wall) -> physics solver (gravity)
- Characters can interact with each other through constraints (each character can push/pull the other - double solve)
- Imports cameras via FBX and allows you to setup shots in the story(board) tab. This is great for previz and supports transitions (crossfade etc) between shots.
- Quicktime 7 or greater supports FBX and allows you to jump to different cameras/shots using a hotkey. QT will also show other FBX info such as:
1. FBX file info / stats
2. show skeleton / rig
3. show lights etc etc
Being able to jump to different shots in the QT file quickly is great for previz / camera setup
- Character definition tab allows for creation of “control rig” using Fullbody IK / Human IK.
- Can create new effectors which control rig can “reach” towards (or reach towards the average of multiple effectors)
- Expert mode for relative transform
- FBX plugin exists for XSI but soon full integration will exist
- Motionbuilder interpolation now used in Maya 2009 animation layers

Westwood Designfest This Saturday!

This Saturday, November 15, 2008, from 11am to 4pm, the School of Design, its faculty and its students will be holding their student artshow. Please join us in this event, showcasing artwork from students in Game Art, Graphic Design, Interior Design, C.A.D., Animation, and Visual Communications.

Henna

A WIP which I really need to just finish. The character design / reference is not mine. Not sure quite how to tackle the hair. You can see the proportions are a bit off.

I need to work on my demo

So I made this for a 3d emoticon thread instead.
:rolleyes:

Still no reference

Continuing in the "modeling in the dark" method. That is to say . . . I am modeling completely without reference.
This is dumb and stupid and I don't recommend it to anyone. It is a helluva lot of fun though.

Now he is looking vaguely alien.

I'm gonna go find some character sheets now . . .

:-/

No reference and see what happens?

Last night I got distracted and wanted to see how fast I could make an eye in Silo 2. Next thing I knew I had moved on to the mouth loops and made the cheek.

A few hours later I had this monstrosity. Never did anything but extrude edges, cut edges and merge verts ... and I purposely avoided reference of any kind.

You're never supposed to model without reference but I figure if I can sketch human proportions out of my head on to paper, why not try it in 3d?

Suffice to say, I still suck. Getting better at learning modeling topology is worth the practice though.

The top animated GIF is a head I modeled in an early version of Mudbox. Note that it is just a subdivided cube which I sculpted into a head as I pushed up the subdivision.

The new Mudbox 2009 preview is pretty nuts!!

Too much cool new stuff

Debevec has some amazing new work

http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/RHL/



Gnomon gallery event with work by Meats Meiers in a hologram format. I have been waiting to see the day one could easily and accurately present their work holographically.

http://www.rabbitholes.com/Gallery/art_one.html
http://www.rabbitholes.com/gallery_videos/DivX_3_Versions/FB_SmallInvader.avi

Lastly, if anyone has missed this wii hack, it is revolutionary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H1zrLZwPjQ

Maya shortcut cube

It looks like Westwood is getting Maya 8 terms after I started asking for it. Though I am not exactly holding my breath this time either.

Learned some new shortcuts from my students this week. That was a switch!

Windows OS
ctrl + shift + esc = brings up task manager and highlights process

Photoshop
ctrl + alt + 0 = print size (100% magnification)
ctrl + h = hides rulers and selections

The maya 2008 DVD came with a cardboard CUBE of shortcuts! WTF! guess they are getting creative with study aids.

Took a break from modeling the "android masquerade" project and am trying out modeling my dad's Jaguar XJS. Here is a screenshot of the progress:

This is done in 3d studio Max 2008. Still feeling out the pros and cons of both packages but I am starting to see why Max has always had a better rep for modeling over Maya. I feel with the 2008 iterations this has changed.

Max is heading towards architecture. Maya is heading for games and Houdini is the new standard for VFX. 'nuff said!

Feather shadow

Fixed the feather shadow and mask shader. It should not take almost 45 min to fix some minor shader problems. Blerg.

Rose lapel

3d progress on Android Masquerade

These were created in Maya and these latest renders were examples of "in-line compositing" . . . meaning I rendered and composited the images within Maya's renderlayers options. The metal pic is me playing around with the chrome spec material over-ride. The glowing eyes were me playing around with having an additional render layer which was screened on top of the already multiplied occlusion. These took between 2-3 minutes to render on my Dual P4 Xeon.

Android Masquerade

Here is one of the current projects I am working on.

First the Concept Art:

New Blog

Allthough I have other blogs (Myspace and Livejournal), I realize I don't have a blog dedicated to my artwork. This blog will serve as a continuous update of the work I am doing on my portfolio and just for fun. It may also contain daily sketches and various other updates. I will try and keep the personal stuff to a minimum and just focus on the work.

Enjoy!