Today, I was really missing drawing, and saddened by the fact that I haven't done any personal work in a long time. So, I decided to take a break from Maya for a minute (or few... hours) to do a piece just for my own personal enjoyment..
Now, I don't claim to be a great vis devver or illustrator, and it takes me a long time to get a piece that I actually like, so to even attempt this was quite an experience for me. I started with a few thumbnails and then rested on a scene that I get stuck in my head sometimes. It's not an altogether original image, but it was really more an experiment in technique. I found an artist who I really like in the book I bought at wondercon last weekend (Zotho Lhun) and decided to try out his style... which, of course I failed at miserably, but I feel like I found a good middle ground between his style and my own, which pleases me :)
This is in no way complete, and if I feel like it's working out well enough, I may even hazard my way through a color pass.
So, I present to you the first pass of my little illustration (which has yet to be officially named)
I am wholly open to crit, and would love to get your opinions/suggestions!
(the first image is of two of my thumbs, the first which I continued, and the second which I may eventually play with (depending on time).





hmm... I also just realized that I rather like it cropped in a vertical format too... it might even be better this way. At least, it manages to balance the piece a bit more :)

Well, I think it's time to get some well-earned sleep. Tomorrow, it's all maya all day!

So, it has been a while since I last posted with any new work.. so, you may be asking if I have in fact done any work over the past few months? The quick answer: yes. The long answer: yes, but most of it is incomplete and unfit to "put out there".
Speaking of "out there", for my 129A class, we (the advanced students) are participating in Dominance War which is an online gaming competition. Unlike in the past where they've had only one main challenge, they have decided this year to introduce shorter mini-challenges. We were required to do the first which was due to be submitted by the end of monday.
The challenge was to take one of three pre-made poly meshes to work with, and create a character: a War General. The only real guidelines were that we could not change the maya mesh to break the silhouette and the character had to read as being a war general. The first rule wasn't so bad, it was making the guy look like a high ranking official that was the real challenge. I'm not sure I was successful in this, but I am somewhat happy with the results. I'm finally getting the hang of z-brush! Finally.
and so, I will present to you here, two versions of my war general. The first being the completed submission piece (which had to be rendered in maya on the original low-poly mesh) and the second is rendered straight from z-brush (3mill polys) with color map only.
Enjoy!

BFA + DaVinci

So, for the past few months I've been working hard on BFA assignments as well as trying to keep up with Dave's class... This last assignment was based on the Decameron and was meant to portray a world founded on DaVinci's inventions that it struck by a horrible plague. My assignment as a modeler was to create two DaVinci inspired machines (that would need to be animated) and a Falcon. The falcon was created almost completely from photo reference, the airship was designed by Anthony, and the telescope was based on one of DaVinci's inventions used to raise columns (in this case raising the telescope).
I still feel like I have a long ways to go if I wanted to really perfect these models, but these are the renders that I submitted for our final submission today. SO, I present to you, the results of the DaVinci assignment :)

Airship (design by Anthony Ashton)





Falcon


Telescope



that's all for now... I'll hopefully get around to posting some of my work from earlier this year, but for now, I'm done with this project and on to the next!

So, eventually I will post up some of my sketchbook pages from this summer... eventually..
for now, I'm once again having issues with transferring files from my laptop to this computer (which must be done, because I cannot post to blogger through my laptop for some strange reason).
SO! All I have to give to you is the scans of some 'commissioned' work... I use the word commission lightly because they were really just gifts ^_^
I did some doggy portraits - two of them were for my uncles for their two Havanese puppies(unfortunately I only have the scan of one of those). I also opted to try one out in color using my own pup, Buddy, as practice.
So, for your viewing pleasure, Jaspar and Buddy!





that's all for now folks!

a whole semester of stuff!

Hello all, long time no post.
I know, I know, it has been more than a month since school let out, so why on earth haven't I posted anything? well, let's just say that I've been having some technical problems lately and the free wireless I'm using on my laptop isn't nearly good enough to allow for heavy image loading... so, finally, I have transferred everything onto the home computer and shall post them now!

firstly, I shall post my school assignments, let's just keep in mind that they still need a bit of tweaking here and there (especially the more recent ones)
we shall go from oldest to newest, I suppose.
the first assignment of the year was to create a kitchen environment based on a few short stories by Gary Soto...
voila!



the second assignment was to design a treehouse for the pre-teen boys from the same Soto stories... I'm still working on this one because I do see a lot more possibilities for changing and improving it.. but, for now, this is what my final submission looked like..
ideations

and final renders



The third assignment was based around the short story "The Drowned Giant"
now, at first, I really wasn't terribly inspired by this story... but, of course, as soon as I'd finished the assignment, I started to generate some far more interesting ideas that I may or may not follow up on... I'm not really pleased with how these turned out, but I do feel that if I took some more time on this assignment, I could really make some progress..


the final assigment was our character designs and an environment based on our characters... The character design project was about the biggest struggle I had this semester and so I'm not prepared to post it up here...
but I do have the environment, which was of the Donut Shop that my character would frequent. Again, I'm not too proud of this, but, at least I got the pat on the back and insistence from Courtney that I was improving lots... I still have a loooooong way to go though..
Donutz!


that is all for now.. I'll be back to post again within the week with what I've been doing recently (which isn't as much as I'd like...)
but, yes! posting will continue!

this is a third attempt to post something here... my computer doesn't seem to like uploading images, so it's been a struggle just to get that far.. I'm hoping that, being at school where the internet isn't quite as shifty, I might actually have success this time!

anyways, this is a piece I did on Saturday.. Kelly, Ashley, and myself all met up at school to brush up on our photoshop skills (cuz Courtney keeps reminding our class that we suck at it)...
so, I did this portrait of Ashley while she simultaneously sketched me


sweet success! so, I'm not quite sure if my photoshop skills have improved at all, but I'm not horribly disappointed by how this turned out either...
man oh man do I have a lot of work to do for tomorrow... so much, I'm not even sure that an all-nighter would take care of it all... we shall see. Once again, I'm having trouble with Barron's class... mainly just the fact that I'm indecisive and don't know what I'm doing for our next project... which is due tomorrow evening... I don't know why I have such troubles with open-ended assigments... I guess I just prefer having guidelines...