The Cornflake Box

He's Tokyo's "It's Complicated."

2011-11-02T12:47:00.000-07:00

Hero, villain, monster, man in a rubber suit, icon, nuclear age metaphor. Godzilla is awesome. This drawing - not so much.

In Memory: Rainbow Sprinkles

2011-11-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

Dice has made some of the best first-person shooter multiplayer games I have ever played. Nothing has ever topped their Battlefield series for action-packed fun. I die lots, I swear lots, I keep coming back for more! Above is Haggart, the explosives-crazy Texan from Bad Company 1 & 2.

Another Slice?

2011-07-29T22:45:00.001-07:00

It's a little early for Friday.

Now in Nuclear Pink!

2011-07-28T15:38:00.000-07:00

Some ideas on how a super-fungus might destroy us all. Watch out for stiff poses.

Steampunk Kid-Sister

2011-07-27T13:36:00.001-07:00

Young sidekicks are important. They are the swiss-army knives of plot and character devellopment. This one is steam-powered.

Steampunk Hero

2011-07-26T12:00:00.001-07:00

It's like Guitar Hero, but with more coal.

Now with a hat and gas mask. Because sometimes you need a mask for gas.

Cheesecake

2011-07-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

Did some drawing today. This happened.

Conceptuous!

2010-09-15T16:15:00.001-07:00

My laptop died about a month ago and I've yet to recover any data hence the dirge of posts lately. Here are some concepts that I've been doodling for some of our graduates.

This first one is for Rob Smith: He wanted a lean, preadatory monster with jackal-like qualities but a minimum of fur to keep the 3d technical difficulties under control.

The trick for this one was to avoid the myriad of other notable similar monsters out there now. I was trying to dodge Avatar's insect-cat and hairless-dobermans while staying far enough away from Hellboy and World of Warcraft's hellbeasts.

My brother came up with a monster with an inner working jaw and I've read about similar sorts of creatures in a few science fiction novels. I am proud to say these designs boast five jaws!

Knuckle walking is awesome. So are bat ears. Working with former students on a fun project like this is great! And it's only fair that they get the chance to give *me* some revisions for a change...

I wanted the forepaws to be able to grasp and rend while still working for fast quadruped running. The double-thumb knuckle walking thing seemed to give me the best of both worlds.

Joel Daigle wanted a Mass Effecty alien to work with. Things to avoid: Greys, Salarians, Protoss, Tau, Jedi and much more!

Big revision! Give peace a chance! I sure do love those double thumbs...

And more Photoshop.

2010-06-17T23:37:00.000-07:00

More photoshop with various degrees of effort and success. Above: Gregzilla.

I actually kind of like this one.

I re-did the colours on the lineart again. Sort of a hybrid between the last two attempts. Below is a quick digital sketch. You can really taste the need to learn.

Extra:

Killed the saturation on the skin tones and bumped up some of the highlights on the metal (which needs work.) I'm not getting worse.

Learning to Photoshop. Slowly.

2010-06-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

With much help from the internet and friends I am trying my hand at photoshop (again.) I doodled this up today:

And then attempted to clean it up and add some colour digitally:

Hopefully more practice will result in better - uh, results.

Extra:

Took Jim's suggestion and coloured the line-art for a more illustrative look. It was fast but a neat experiment.

Some more careful colour choices and pre-planning would've helped (plus working with un-aliased line art too. Durr.) Practice, practice, practice.

And Yet Even More Zork.

2010-05-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

Here are some more Zork roughs I liked:

I wish I was more confident with drawing characters into my backgrounds - they always feel so sparse and empty. That being said, I suppose having the same characters present whenever you visit a game local can make a static background even more statickier. Or some such.

Perspective is taking a walk. I do like the brick textures here although it's almost a personal cliche of mine.

Tangents are not your friends. I ended up drawing no less than three deserts for this gig. Three! Inspiration for each was drawn (pun!) from the Sahara, The Montana Badlands, and the Arizona Desert.

Doodle December Deficit - December 5th, 6th, and 7th

2009-12-07T13:33:00.000-08:00

Doodle December - December 4th

2009-12-04T09:23:00.000-08:00

Doodle December Deficit - December 1st, 2nd, and 3rd

2009-12-03T07:33:00.000-08:00

Got wood(s)?

2009-06-12T07:51:00.000-07:00

This is the generic forest background for Legends of Zork. I was way more pleased with my rough than with my cleaned-up line-art which was dutifully saved and improved by the tiredless efforts of Chris Oatley.

The rough:

The line-art:

And the finished piece:

I lost some depth on the left side behind the thorns. I should've had another layer of midground trees or bushes to create more interest. Chris more than made up for my lack by desaturating and lightening the colours at distance. I still like how the thorns and bark look.

Dungeons w/o Dragon(s).

2009-05-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

This is another dungeon location that got done up for Zork. It contrasts well with the first one being wide-open as opposed the the maze of implied hallways the first (see two posts below) was.

Here are the rough, line-art, and coloured (by the amazing Chris Oatley - again) versions.

I should've put in more Mario pipes. Oh well, lesson learned.

Utopia Kingdoms

2009-05-09T21:53:00.000-07:00

This is the second of two browser games I was working on with Jim Zubkavich. The design for the village itself took a while as there were technical specifications as well as design requirements that had to be met. The colours were kindly and skillfully done by the talented Saejin Oh.

I did have fun working within the constraints of the project however. My biggest complaints about the piece I could have solved by going back over my initial roughs (which were done seperately for each building) to make them more cohesive style as well as (ow my eyes!) perspective-wise. My isometry (english majors beware) got more than a little out of hand. The issues are readily apparent comparing one building to another.

I also got the opportunity to do some designs for the advisor characters for Utopia Kingdoms. I don't think they really hold their own compared to the awesome work of Julie Faulkner and Will Makra who did the lion's-share of the character design. But it was nice to be allowed to draw something other than backgrounds for a bit! Colours done by Rob Ruffolo.

From top to bottom, left to right:

General, War Hero, Healer, Sage, Archer, Calvaryman, Defender, Merchant, Mystic, Seer, Scout, and Invisible Swordsman.

Dungeons.

2009-05-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

This is by far one of my favorite backgrounds I did for Legends of Zork. The progression from foreground to midground to background works well and there are plenty of paths for the eye to follow and imply further depth. If I could change anything, I'd repeat the torch element a few more times to set scale better, or failing that, the alcove. I'd also have done a better (good) job on those cartoony skulls. Oh, and my stairs are crap too. Grr.I ended up cleaning this one up twice. I went a bit too overboard on line thickness on my first go and cheated the bricks a bit too much. In the interest of showing some final line art (sans colours) voila:

Once again Chris turned a potentially boring palette of browns and greys into the delightfully subtle but exciting scheme below. I LOVE the low key pink and green compliments he worked in. Not to mention his use of lighting to focus on the pathways I mentioned earlier!

This is a Giant Crocodile.

2009-04-13T19:36:00.000-07:00

From Legends of Zork. Big surprise, I'm sure. The rough (above). And the final, coloured by Jim Zubkavich himself:

I like his teeth (although I prefer the rabid-crazy eyes in the rough than the cliche angry eyes!)

G.

2009-04-08T18:49:00.000-07:00

Drawing whole cities scares the hell out of me and it seems to happen to me ALOT. It's not just the idea of all that detail but also striking that crucial balance between far-off scope and up-close intimacy can be difficult or soul crushing depending on the day. Here's one of my latest forays into depicting a city as a whole: Greater Borphee from Legends of Zork.

I wish I had stuck some characters in the foreground to populate things up a bit more. It seems a bit too empty to me now, looking back. And no matter how small it is in the game, I still feel like I should have put way more detail in the buildings than I did. Next time Gadget!
All and all though, this is still one of my favorites from this project. Again, vast amounts of credit to Chris Oatley for his crazy colours.

G.

Double Fanucci Face-Cards

2009-04-07T19:38:00.001-07:00

Jim posted the suits for the Double Fanucci cards over at his awesome blog of awesome so I figured I'd show one of the face cards we put together.
This happy fellow is Death and this is his card. Looking back, I wish I had come up with some clever unifying look to all the cards but I'm still happy with how they turned out.

More tomorrow!

And Even More Zork!

2009-04-06T01:45:00.000-07:00

Here is my rough for the generic sea and coastal regions of Zork. I had originally toyed with the idea of some more elaborate rock formations a la Bay of Fundy but thought being 'generic' should avoid that somewhat. I also remembered in Dungeon that areas of coast and cliffside took up large explorable regions and I wanted to show the coast as a length of area to explore and not just one cove.
The emperilled seagull was my reminder to players that this was a dangerous, if silly place. I placed him way over on the left with the composition forcing our eye to him. Furthermore the tentacles point right at him saying 'You better hope this bird fills whatever I am up or you're next!' Something the good folks at Jolt Online thought I should elaborate on more.

So the seagull got a little friend: A drunken bottle-wielding crab. Along with the skull of the last person who thought maybe asking what the fastest way to Port Foozle might be, sufficient levels of danger had been reached.

Once again, shout-outs to Chris Oatley for painting my lines up so pretty and making everything come together so nicely.

More to come,

G.

More Legends of Zork!

2009-04-03T08:40:00.000-07:00

This is the rough for the remote and dangerous Gray Mountains. Several times when I was creating locations I failed to realize that I was painting the colourist Chris Oatley into a corner. I mean ice, snow, and clouds? When I looked at my final line art I wondered what could be done to save the piece from a field of blue tinted white. Well Chris consistantly blew me away with his subtle tones of bold colour choices. (I know that sounds like an oxymoron but trust me, it's not!)

The note I got often got on my location roughs was to add a dose of zaniness and danger to keep up with Jim Zubkavich's awesome monsters. I had already finished the line art for the background when the revision for this particular location was sent to me so I tableted in the Abominable Snowman below with my tiny Wacom Intuos (I swear to God I'm getting a Cintiq 21X this year...)

Fortunately for this be-cerealed hack, Jim was crazy busy juggling all the work he had on the go so I was able to draw some monsters of my own! The Abominable Snowman above was liked well enough to get drawn up as a creature in his own right: Enter ASM Ver 2.0!

Again, I am too digitally incompetant to colour these on my own so give the credit here to Jim Zubkavich for how nice he made this look. Thanks Jim!

G.

Legends of Zork!

2009-04-02T18:07:00.000-07:00

Yay! Legends of Zork, a light-hearted, casual web-browser role playing game came out this week! Therefore I can dust off this journal to post the drawings I've been working on for the past few months.

LoZ is based on the text based pc game Zork (aka Dungeon) of the 1980's. I remember playing Zork at my dad's work when I was a kid so the project had a wonderful nostalgic aspect to it. Coupled with the opportunity to work with many talented artists like Jim Zubkavich, Indigo Kelleigh, Will Makra, and Julie Faulkner; it was a freelancing dream come true.

I was principly hired to do the area location artwork and ended up doing over twenty drawings for the various locales players would get to visit as they played the game. Later in the project I was given the opportunity to contribute to the roster of monsters which were tons of fun to draw!

I've decided to post some of my roughs as well as the finished coloured artwork. I must point out I DID NOT COLOUR ANY OF THESE. They were coloured by the very talented Chris Oatley who made my work look a zillion times better than it had any right to be. ALL HAIL CHRIS OATLEY! Many humble thanks for your amazing palette choices and putting up with my weak-ass line work.

The desert was the first location that I tackled in trying to get my head wrapped around the project. It had to be generic enough to not look like a specific location but still let players know they were in a wacky adventure game fraught with danger.

I will be posting more of my art here as days go by to make up for my bloggish absenteeism.

G.

NDA WIP

2008-10-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

AKA nothing to show here for now. But this will be a place holder for a batch of roughs I'm doing for an illustration gig. Excuse me as I continue to non-disclose.

Thanks for tuning in, loyal fans.

Edit: Ye gads, spelling.

Armor WIP

2008-10-15T21:16:00.000-07:00

Restarted the armor again and I'm having much better luck with it this time. It's not yet bevelled enough to stand up to ZBrush subdivision mayhem yet but I brought it in to see how it would hold up.

The transpose tools in Zbrush sure are finicky - just trying to move and scale all the different elements into place almost tore every mesh. Mind, the armor models haven't been cleaned up yet in Maya so there's probably a few hidded faces and unmerged vertices at play.

Still lots to do.

More Space Marine...

2008-10-05T18:01:00.001-07:00

STILL working on this one. Managed to get my subdivision levels back so I'll be able to export this guy back into Maya. Turns out I had my UV's turned off in ZBrush which meant I couldn't get my poly count back down to a mere few thousand.

Played with using alphas to get some skin texture on the face. They were mostly provided by the kind posters at ZBrush Central. Unfortunately I think I've messed him up even more - my attempts to fix his forehead have resulted in a doughey appearance and the more I look at his cheekbones and eyes the more I want to start all over again.

Having problems with the eyes AGAIN. I want to get the topology working well enough that I can rig him to blink and maybe move the brow a bit. As is, it's still not working to my satisfaction. Hopefully I can get the results I want by editing his current topology a bit - just taking out a few edge-loops would help. Then I can take the low poly base mesh and make a few blend shapes.

Crashed Maya four times while trying to fix the faces on the shoulder pad so no armor update this week.

Man, I can't wait to get this done so I can do something else!

Progress

2008-09-30T19:07:00.000-07:00

I finished a successful retopology on my model this weekend. As a result I reduced my poly count by a third without any loss of detail! I was quite pleased!

I am still having some difficulty building the armor in Maya but am making progress on that front too.

As you can see, it's still very much in the basic shape stages of construction. I've started to bevel edges in Maya to retain the right angles and am having a time of trying to keep the topology recognizable in Zbrush. I'm looking forward to getting elements finished with a view to getting textures applied. Lots more trial and error ahead.

The eyes are my WIP Gnomonology tutorial ones I've been building with the retinal bulge cut off so the iris will show for the sculp and placement. I'm about half-way done texturing them now. When that's done I'll get to figure out how to do a milky-white dead eye for the (not shown!) scarred side of Cloten's face.

I never thought I'd be taking so long on this project although I'm pleased with what it's been teaching me. Hopefully I can take this forward on the next one and do something even better.

Eyes and more Cloten

2008-09-25T23:28:00.000-07:00

I've spent most of my spare time this week making my way through Gnomon's eye tutorial and several more blundering attempts at getting that bust finished.

Here's my first attempt at using Photoshopping to create a texture for a model. All of Gnomon's tutorials have been extremely helpful. Because of them, my small brain is beginning to feebly understand this 3D malarky. Eventually, I want to turn a couple of these eyeballs into eyes for Clothen (which means I guess I'll be trying to texture him to boot...) At least that's how I can justify not getting much more work done on the bust itself this week.

I've tried to model pieces of the armor in Zbrush as well as importing subtools that I've modelled in Maya. I haven't gotten anything to work to my satisfaction yet - I can't make a straight line in Zbrush to save my life and anything I build in Maya promptly collapses in on itself when I bring it into Zbrush. The shoulderpads pictured above are the only luck I've had with an imported tool. They're just place-holding for now, however.

Didn't get around to scarring up Cloten tonight and it's just as well. I think I failed to get the cheekbones and orbits right on the eyes. Damn, the more I look at him the more I can't stand to look at him. Well, he can only improve from here. Better luck next time.

For next time I'm gonna try and get the head retopo'ed (again) sucessfully (for the first time) and make me some nifty nurbs tubes and hoses to gussy the armor and back of the head with. Hopefully with a retopo'ed head I'll be able to keep the poly count down and get the detail up.

Oh, such plans.

ZBrushin'

2008-09-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

I'm still working away on my latest Zbrush sculpture - the bust of Cloten the Space Marine. He's been through multiple revisions, five retopos (one successful, four not) and quite a bit of learning.

Here's where I left off on Wednesday night. Despite my notes, I remember feeling pretty happy with where things were going. But then I remember being pleased with the stuff I posted last time too. I am fickle.

Here's where I'm leaving off Friday night. I am having huge problems with the eyes at the moment. The importance of good topology on a 3D model becomes clear as I approach a ludicrously high poly count but am still getting jaggies on the eyelids. That's not aliasing - that's incompetence.

Every night I've been carving in the scars and other asymetrical features as a bit of a reward for myself. Generally I'm using brush symetry when I work so things like the scars, the broken nose, and service-studs shouldn't really be sculpted until everything else is finished. It's fun to play though and a fun way to end the day. That wasn't supposed to rhyme.

Man, I've sunk those (place-holder) eyes in there! I'm pleased with how the ears turned out. The side and back of the head are big and blank for now. I'd like to get a vein in there or maybe some implant plugs and tubes. I've already made a couple (failed) attempts to build some armor so I can pose him up as per the concept art shot by Chris Gossett. I think for now I'm going to do an eye tutorial so I can get some 'real' eyeballs in Cloten's head and then make another attempt at editing my topography so I can socket them properly (read: not crappily.) I'm curious to subtool-in a Zsphere to build the armor out of instead of trying in Maya again. Hmm...

Busted - WIP

2008-09-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

Decided to work on a bust based on Chirs Gossett's concept art for a scrapped Warhammer 40K movie.

I built a stupid simple mesh in Maya and roughed out the features in Zbrush.

Another victim of the napalm facial...

Now I'm re-doing the topography (badly - look at all the triangles!) so I can go back and sculpt some more in Zbrush. Hopefully I'll have something nice to show for it in the next few days.
Addenum:

Okay, I'm going to bed now but I'm pleased enough with my progress this evening to post some more WIP shots:

The ears still need lots of work.

I want to get him back 'on-model' - nose, jaw, brow etc. have strayed from the original drawing.

Me vs. 3D

2008-09-10T07:38:00.000-07:00

In the last few months I've been thrown into the deep end of the pool, sans-floaties, to teach some 3D animation classes. I have no idea what I'm doing. Don't get me wrong; I understand animation well enough to teach - I've been doing so for years now. But until now it's been in the older, more elegant world of classical animation. Hell, I don't even know Flash. So in a vain effort to teach an old dog new tricks, I've endeavoured to learn some Maya and Zbrush.

So far, it's been mostly tutorials along with some messing around. I've yet to have anything of my own really to show for it. I've made some really badly topographied Zbrush busts that look like they belong in a burn ward. I've tried animating a bit with some downloadable rigs and have develloped the unnatural ability to turn any character inside-out in less than six keys.

Slow and steady. Ideally, I'd like to get my own character modelled, textured, and rigged so I can animate him doing stuff. As always, learning is finding new and exciting ways of doing things wrong until I accidentally do something right.

'Bad Day'

2008-09-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

I call this one 'Bad Day.' It's an old-ish drawing that I cleaned-up, scanned rather crappily, and attempted to colour with Photoshop. I'd never coloured anything digitally before and I think it shows rather painfully. My old friend Jim offered up some critz and revised it for me:

See? Much better. Jim toned-down the could-this-be-anymore-green shutters, upped the contrast overall, and neutral'ed out the colours some. And all in ten-minutes, the bastard.

He sent me some great tutorials he wrote about setting-up and colouring an image:

http://zubkavich.livejournal.com/200403.html
http://zubkavich.livejournal.com/200677.html
http://zubkavich.livejournal.com/201192.html

I sent him the line-art and he cooked this up overnight - just a quick job but it shows-off Jim's mad PS skillz. I particularly like the alpha he used to get that water-stained paper look.