12_11_11

Well things may be restarting soon. I have since graduated and found a job, but I do want to keep producing work so here is me trying to get my hands back into blending. A mountain thingy with a face cave.

Temporary Break

Temporary Hiatus

Unfortunately I am 15 days from graduating. I will be taking a small break till I am done with school and have a job. I will still probably doing art, and recording it, but keeping track of when and posting it is interfering with graduation.

Alex

Day 28

Smoke plumes. This whole plume is one massive shader on a flat plane.

Day 27

Some particle work for my production team. Fancy capture point zone markings.

Day 26

Another painting started, though nothing super interesting.

Day 25

Its a painting. Of a tree.

Day 24

Finished and sent off to the rigger. The tri count was known before hand (and is super high) but it was needed for all the interior detail.

Day 23

The spec map. A good friend and talented artist Chris Rice told me Spec maps should never be black and white. I took it too a new extreme.

Day 22

And a normal map! In the endless debate between the nvidia filter and crazy bump I choose both. I tend to use the filter more, both for its "in photoshop" functionality, and I am more familiar with the per pixel result I can get, though I do use crazy bump for organics.

Day 21

So behind! I am still doing arts though. Here is some diffuse!

Day 20

Unwarping! (I watch to much star trek). Pretty solid pack. Some weird decisions were made on topology and duplicates vs overlapping UVs, but it was mostly to ensure I could create variety when the models are placed in the box.

Day 19

Finished most of the modeling for the supply box. This is the low poly, and I do have a few things to add after I unwrap and place the belt boxes, etc.

Day 18

A break from the painting. Started sketching out the mid poly for a supply box for my production team (my as in participating, not my own). Going to be fully operational (can be opened) as this will be rigged after I finish.

Day 17

Even more painting! Way less this time, played with solid brushes rather than blending, as the artist who did the original painting used solid brush strokes. I would like to get to the point where I can do one of these relatively quickly and be able to communicate art and my ideas easier.

Day 16

More painting. Taking it slowly. Touched up a bunch of small details, started the foreground.

Day 15

This project has turned into something much bigger than I imagined. I keep going back and reworking details. Consider this an official master copy. Probably going to take me at least a few more days to keep working at it.

Day 14

Today was a second part of the painting. More landscape not alot of detail yet.

Day 13

Today marks the start of a multiday process of a mini master copy. I found this painting by Cole, and took a small corner of it. Ideally in 40 minutes or 60 minutes of work i can finish. This was 20 minutes of work, so one day.

Day 12

Day 12 was me making a fast sculpt of some rocks, possibly a stylized one for a path or something. I paid specific attention to the surface of the rocks, primarily for surface texture to be kept smooth but interesting.

Day 11

More internet troubles. The next few days have been delayed but here is day 11. Pretty much me playing around with brushes for 20 minutes. Not art, but important none the less.

Day 10

Internet acting up. Late now, will post yesterdays and todays work tomorrow. But here is day 10. Figured any space army making millions of small ships will make them modular for easy construction and production. Decided I'm going to approach concept from that angle so I made a bunch of small modular ship pieces (cockpit, wings, engines). Here are a few

Day 9

More screwing around for this space game. Lots of discussion as to how different objects interact within unity, rigs, and programming. Looking at individual turrets to be placed on capital and possibly cruiser ships to see what happens. Today was just playing around in maya looking at barrel size (with thoughts of total scale in mind).

Day 8

Today was a very small project (very busy with graduation). Mike needed a proxy for a space station to help with AI targeting so that is what he got. Minor inspiration from old rebel bases in Tie Fighter :D

Again. Remember folks, not a representation of my true skill, just me making sure I touch a variety of subjects and slowly revisit or learn new tricks.

Day 7

Today was a quick shading study. Inspired by this image (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXn8g28qnARCDEuJXFyKIBvgJaZxK8XrONDWj1SYTgBqcw5KoHT9G-QlJVRM0aFZwnUeuDJC38NIjv8_4Duy5zIfIWbkN4lYB6MJKj7r1DUXPKoW-E0jN_8vfkQ6c6hBAkYCLWBd5Ker4/s1600/chiaroscuro_sphere_w_labels.jpg)

I decided I was going to try my hand at a sphere. Took 20 minutes so not a real attempt but still it was fun to get the practice in. I may try some other shapes sometime soon.

Day 6

Today was another concept themed day. My friend and I discussed ship classes for our little unity project, and decided along with fighters, would be cruisers and capital ships. Today I was looking at cruisers. As the game's perspective is top down, silhouette is obviously incredibly important. That not only means making each ship recognizable but making the various (at this point 2 ) factions ships recognizable. During my time working on the Sony Mentorship Program, shape and style became very important in discerning factions. To match that I started with 3 basic shapes. A cube, a pyramid, and a sphere, and took each shape through a trial of stages, developing each one more with another pass. While this is no substitute for thumbnails it was a great way to keep individual shapes recognizable, and to help me and my friend (Mike Horton, a programmer and game designer) decide what stands out, and what is pleasing to the eye.

Day 5

Today was just me playing around with the noise feature in Zbrush. Checking out the different ways you can make noise affect your mesh, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of the alpha options in Zbrush, and what good ones do, and what bad ones do. Final result was me trying to make a weird asteroid thingy, but it turned into me playing with noise.

Day 4

I recently started a small unity project with a friend of mine (Huzzah, new engine, true shader access). Today was just some silhouette studies for some small fighter class ships (space, not sea). Probably a few more of these will come, though not tonight as we are working on mechanics at the moment. It was a nice change from zbrush though. Tomorrow may be some painting. Who knows?

Day 3

Today I worked on learning Zsketch. Inspired by this video http://vimeo.com/15590786 this mesh was made entirely in Zbrush. Worked alot on using clay tubes to get a semi stylized tree bark texture. Turned out looking a bit like a tentacle but I had fun in the process and the learning was there. Also found out there is a blur function for alphas. Might revisit that stone arch sometime soon.

Day 2

Ok so today, I wanted to scare myself, so I just spent an hour researching and looking at the top environment art of this generation. Freaky good. Sooooo I debated and decided that included in the list of digital area's I plan to dabble in, was Zbrush 4.0. This time I brushed up on my Zphere modeling and make a rough attempt at a sandstone arch. Not bad, but not awesome. I will probably revisit this another day to tweak, and learn pro-optimizer so I can officially create an asset in Zbrush, and take it all the way through to a finished low poly without modeling in Max or Maya.

Day 1

Yesterday I started what I hope will be a massive learning and exciting project. Yesterday I worked on a very simple digital painting. It started abstract, but slowly turned into me just practicing blending.