Happy Beanoween!!!

beans painted onto pumkins=halloween goodness in pure bean form!

Hello...

Hey everyone who stops by! I must admit that I haven't been doing a lot of painting or sculpting lately...okay no painting or sculpting lately. I've been working like crazy at In Three which has been great fun. I'll post something new soon. Until then I leave this quasi-new painting of none other than everyone's favorite bean taking a moment out of his busy schedule to say hi.

In Three!!!

I'm hired!!! Providing that I make all the cuts through training. So far so good! In Three Inc. uses a proprietary process to give regular 2D movies depth and volume. This could be a wonderful experience for me on so many levels. If I make it through training then I'll have a place working with everyone else on the company's first feature project. Unfortunately we can't divulge what movie that is but...it's a big one.

UPDATE -- Three months after getting hired as a dimensionalist I was promoted to Keyframer which is way more fun and creative.

Jack Skellington's head

In honor of the forth coming corpse bride I decided to sculpt one of my all time favorite movie characters Jack Skellington. A few things are to make note of compared to the head sculpture from last post.

The first and most important is that this is my first painted model. It's a bit sloppy on account of my not knowing how to feather brushes in zbrush. His eyes, mouth and stitches are all painted a proper blue/black color and his face is painted a white. I also picked a shader that I felt provided a pleasing sheen to his 'skin'. This was all done using projection master. Finally I decided to make this fun four pane Andy Warhol format image to present some different views of the model as opposed to the unwieldily smattering of different sized images from the last posting. Additionally this model was done with the Zbrush 2 demo which pixology has finally released.

The flip-side is that I wasn't able to smooth or 'crush' the geometry in his mouth so he's got this weird 'tooth' grin appearance. The other problem is how fuzzy his stitches are and how bumpy his neck is. These are all things I should be able to figure out once I get more experience with Zbrush 2 and can finally afford to buy the full version (and therefore save and uprez models).

DON'T FORGET: Click any image on this blog to enlarge!

First Successful 3D model!

Here is a series of snapshots of a 3D head that I modeled in the Zbrush 1.55 demo! This has by far been one of the most liberating artistic experiences in a while. To finally be able to model something in 3D allows me to translate things the way my imagination has been seeing things for a long time.

Sunrise Canyon

So here's another matte painting. This one is more in the vein of a 'create the entire landscape' as opposed to an extension. This is also too lacking in fine detail to ever be considered a finished matte painting. It exists as something more between a low detail final and a thumbnail/color sketch. My favorite portion is the clouds and the cliffs farthest in the distance. As the cliffs get closer they are too cartoony. I realize that the colors are too garish but I wanted the mountains to be fairly monochrome and since the pink sky sets the palette, purple seemed like my option. The detail was kept low to try and maintain focus on the horizon/sunrise and to avoid an unrealistic hyper detail look (especially since backlit foggy mountains at dawn would look flat and low detail) but somehow it just helps with the purple to look fake. I have to find out how to balance focus with detail.

Matte Painting.

Look at the picture before reading this. Done? Alright, I added all of the snow elements. This photo was of a house in the fall months (or at least on a cloudy day). Overcast days are essential to selling a painting when you're trying to add snow and ice. The same thing goes for pushing the black levels of your image. Additionally I could have held back on so many icecicles. I'm most happy with the snow on the bushes and the snow that blew up through the screens covering the windows (which leaves that kind of sand blasted fringe above the sill).

Old one but good one

Here is a painting I did of Gort, the character from The Day The Earth Stood Still. This was done in Painter Classic for a Physics proffesor. I don't even know if Gort was a commanding presence. He vaporized people with his eye beam and that made him menacing enough for me to hold the world in his palm for the image.

I think this made for a nice off the cuff gift.

Midnight Stalker

This is one of those paintings that just develops by itself your job as the artist is to let it come to being and not fight it. Letting a painting develop means you no longer have control over the subject and often it just ends up focusing on something strange or uninteresting. This one is of the former variety.

Out of this World 1

This sketch is inspired by the videogame "Out of This World" (american title) which came out on SNES and SEGA GENESIS back when I was young, impressionable and in 4th grade. I love/loved this game to no end because of the lonely atmosphere and the 'no escape' storyline. I couldn't help but feel like I was stranded alone on this massively desolate planet with Lester Knight Chaykin. Looking back the game just doesn't have the same bite it once did. I still love the memory and it lives on this way in my imagination.

Mud Puddle

Here's another one from right before moving. In Montana it was pouring down rain during the first months of summer 2005. I became entranced with these mud puddles that would form all over town in unpaved parking lots. This is my attempt at a sketch to try and capture the strange semi-transperent/semi-opaque quality of these puddles. I will do more.

City

I painted this before I moved to the L.A. area. In my mind it's New York. Frankly it's a tiny painting for such a big city but I'm proud of it.

My first still life...

This one is in ArtRage on mac. Ambient design finally ported this 1st class freeware to the mac platform and so I wanted to play Duane Keiser for a day and paint a cookie with these digital oils. It came out so-so. I didn't finish it so I feel like it reads a little flat. The upside is that it will look alright when shrunk.