goblin doodles

these goblins... they look so romantic, just like valentines day ads when you're single.

So remember that post where I was making some skyrim/mass effect armor? ya, turns out my hard-surface modeling skills are really terrible, so I'm putting that project on hold while I practice on stuff that's a bit closer to my skill level. My latest project idea was inspired by the great Tyson Murphy (it's basically a rip-off of this). But my goals are a bit more realistic, just one little goblin dude, minimal armor (helmet, loincloth [gotta cover up dem gens], maybe other bits and pieces), and a weapon. Simple, right?

UPDATES:

Proportion exploration

armor + warpaint

just armor

sketching with zspheres

refining the zsphere sketch

the base form sculpt

art tests = job? nope.

Final Composition

Rough Layout

Spaceship Concepts

Spacesuit Concepts

I have no idea how many art tests I'm going to have to do to get a job. Not. Even. The. Foggiest. The brief for this one was pretty good. Here's the assignment that I was given:

"In the time-frame of no more than 8 hours of contiguous work, create the following full-color illustration using the medium of your choice: A whimsical spaceship in the shape of a common household object (such as a teapot), complete with inhabitants, has crash-landed on an alien - yet familiar-looking - world. The characters should be engaged in either exploring the environment or repairing their ship. The Filament Games corporate logo should be prominently displayed on the side of the ship. Submit your rough sketches and concepts as well."

Yup, still looking for work. It's kind of interesting how this assignment was so much like the assignments I would get in Joe Olson's class. LOL FUNNY

what's this? another art test?

Over on the 2d side of things, an art test for a Facebook game studio. These are props designed to be cute and  to fit an Easter theme. My first time really doing vector art, so just more learning and stuff.

Here's another art test

I just noticed that I didn't post this character artist test from a while ago. This one was actually quite difficult because of the restrictions (500 tris, 128 diffuse map, 20 bones), because it was for a mobile game studio. Kinda fun, kinda not. More learning, I guess. This is probably the first time I modeled a character after a real life person.

Art tests are cool

Looking at this environment artist test now, it's actually quite bad, and I did a lot of things that REAL environment artists would NEVER do. But by going through this rather long/arduous process, I learned a LOT. One of those things I learned is that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing when it comes to environment art (Texel Density, ya never really payed much attention to that...). So these models were provided by the game studio, but all the textures are mine.

Anyways, even though I did a bunch of pointless work and didn't get the job, what I took away from the experience was knowledge and... power? (knowledge = power, right?) Art tests are SO COOL

Life Drawing and then some

normal weight is normal

extreme skinny exaggeration is creepy

normal weight is... boring?

+300 lbs chubs is fun!

I'm a little ADD when it comes to Figure Drawing, so when I went up to the U of U with my buddy Hawks for their open figure drawing session, I was kind of disappointed that the whole thing was going to be one long sustained pose. But, I always try to work with what I've got, so I bounced around the room a bit getting different angles. And, with much thanks to Ryan Woodward's drawing classes at BYU, I used some drawing exercises where I played around with adding and taking away weight from the model to focus on drawing anatomy from memory/imagination.

wip Skyrim inspired Mass Effect armor

Looks pretty good to me

I've started on my next big personal project: Skyrim inspired Mass Effect Armor. Pardon the sketchiness of my concept, but I usually try to get my ideas out on paper as fast as possible so I can get to the 3d modeling part that much quicker. I usually have a pretty good picture in my head of what I'm going for, so if I know that I'll be modeling my own concept, the concepting stage doesn't last very long. That isn't saying I'm good at it, just that I do it quickly... So, just finishing up the low-poly modeling on the helmet and chest piece, guess I'll be moving on to the arms and legs now. And here's a couple images to show my references:

Thank you, Google Image Search

And thank you, Mass Effect Wiki

Also, Kolby Jukes, and Jaemus Wurzbach. I WANT TO WORK AT BIOWARE SO BAD!

UPDATES:

EDIT: More updates!

updating my portfolio

So remember the Demutant (demon-mutant, it's a word I made up) from last week? I added some detail to the hi-poly sculpt, retopologized it, laid out the UVs, baked out the normals and ambient occlusion, colorized it, then lit and rendered it. Funny how I only learned about half of this stuff from BYU. ha. I'm pretty impressed with how well the Maya Hardware renderer performed.

I HAZ DROD DARGON

The Year of the Dragon

This started as a really dumb idea, then it turned into an incredibly dumb waste of time. This is what happens when I try to be funny. In case any of you are wondering, Yes I drew and painted this (with consummate v's), and Yes I graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts. I could say I was going for the "style" of an elementary school student, but the truth is I'm a really crappy artist. Not like this guy. Hope you all had a happy Chinese New Year.

The original line work, just in case you wanted to see what I started with

Also, Strongbad email #58 - Trogdor. Old and cheesy, but still very relevant.

some more mudbox doodling

If I ever imagined what a personified Monday might look like

this guy's face would probably come pretty close to it. 

And he's happy to see you!

This here orc/demon/mutant thing was partly a wind-down character exercise from an intense, week-long environment art test that I just submitted to Naughty Dog. And the other part was because I've been really inspired by some amazing artwork in TES: Skyrim. Eventually, I want to use this bust to figure out some retopologizing/baking tools. Expect a colored version in the near(ish) future!

Oh, and just to show where I started from, here's an image of the "basic head" model provided by Mudbox:

mudbox doodle and some New Year's ruminations

fish face!

inspired by Mass Effect (tm)

I was playing some good 'ol Mass Effect 1 over the Christmas holiday, and I've come to realize that my greatest goal in life right now is to get a job at Bioware Edmonton working on the Mass Effect series. Up to this point, I haven't really had any particular studio that I wanted to go to. I used to think that any studio at all would be great. But after going through the process of submitting a couple of art tests to some really cool studios that I didn't really want to work at, I felt like there was something missing...

"But Bioware is one of the most successful video game studios in the world, with several of their titles earning game of the year awards! You'll never get into a studio like that, especially with the skills that you have." I have actually heard these words coming from my own brain, and the fact of the matter is: the truth hurts like a b****tch. This part of my brain is obviously very mean, but honest and quite "realistic". I am not a world-class artist; I'm not even a Provo, Utah-class artist. But even if I'm not that good right now, there's still a possibility that someday I could be, and my negative attitude for the past little bit was not helping me get there. That's what passion is for. And that is the thing that I've been missing.

So if you have yourself a few New Year's resolutions that seem a bit far-fetched, DO NOT give into those negative thoughts! Turn those goals and dreams you have into daily To-do events. Be Relentlessly Positive. That advice is from Day[9], a great Starcraft 2 shout-caster, and also a surprisingly effective life-coach. But anyways, I'll wrap this post up with some lines from the Holstee Manifesto:

This is your life. Do what you love.

Link as a Ninja

This quick little sketch was based off a silly idea I had for Link dressing up as a ninja for Halloween (is this post a week late or what?). I also wanted to try the cool technique for composing illustrations that uses the Fibonacci spiral; I've never really consciously tried it before. Here you can see a rough approximation of what I was going for:

The Legend of Zelda series is arguably the best video game franchise of all time, and Ocarina of Time is probably my favorite game ever. If you've never played a Zelda game, I would HIGHLY recommend it.

Also while I'm on the subject, if you want to see some spectacularly awesome sketches of Link and Ganon, check out this guy's blog: http://dimitriarmand.blogspot.com/2011/11/legend-of-link.html