Iron man digital sketch (reference on left)

Bat Girl Digital Sketch (reference on left)

First round of asset creation for berserk character model

I still want to work on these some more but I thought a small update would do since I haven’t touched this blog in a minute.

Meanwhile at work, I’ve been I’ve been doing a ton of work in Unity, Microsoft Expression design (not illustrator much to my surprise) laying out GUI’s for software and some interesting work in 3DS max modeling strange yet beautiful industrial pieces for some simulation software (can’t say more than that unless I want to lose my neck -and my job hehe).

I will try and rev up to doing even more artwork in my free time but balancing the whole work-life thing is new to me. Not to mention I was contracted on purchasing a home for the last few days (turns out we didn’t want to plunge ourselves into house debt just yet…), so I’ve been busy. None the less I’ll try to keep this updated…need to update my professional site as well. I am still interested in doing some work related more to games but haven’t really found the appropriate part time work just yet…I would need something super flexible and super contract hah. Until next time…

A piece by Mucha and the base reference for my image

Beautiful piece am I right? Many of his are amazing to me. I love the graphical style that also seems rather painterly. Anyway, I decided to try my hand at it using Illustrator to create the line work, and also putting my own twist on it. In a way it’ s a self-portrait. Here’s the basic line work I started with in Illustrator:

Line work for Mucha Piece

And after spending a ridiculous 20 minutes trying to figure out the easiest thing in Illustrator (not sure why I didn’t google it sooner, stubborn I guess), basically the intersect tool, I had an easier time creating this piece. Rather than fool around with gradients and painting in Illustrator I decided to skip up to Photoshop. It took me a while to decide on a color palette, I just went with what felt good. Here’s the supposed final piece:

Final Color Piece

Obviously there are some cheeky touches in here and some distinct differences from the original reference, but I tried to keep true to the composition reference (and to Mucha’s beautiful overall design).

I might fiddle with some other color palletes later, but for now that’s all. Oh yeah, and just for kicks I was listening to this while painting in the finishing touches:

makes for some great mood music.

Practicing vector art in Illustrator (referenced from a Russell Tate tutorial)

And because I like to listen to various things, I happened to be listeningto some music from an old Japanese animated show I used to watch called Inuyasha. I googled one of the cuter characters (a child fox demon) named Shippo and tried my hand at this style as well.

Vector Art practice recreating Rumiko Takahashi's "Shippo"

Like the cheesy text gradient? I’m still working on gradients in Illustrator… lol.  What gives with the different sized Shippo’s? I was checking out edge fidelity from scaling, looks pretty good even small (or blown up) oh the magic of vector art!

I feel my 3Ds Max skills beginning to wane already. I’m going to try and keep up on creating 3D models and environments, but consider this small amounts of training before I start my new job. As far as I can tell I’ll be doing user interface for software applications, more to come on that when I actually start my job.

Pretend that's English up there...

and no I still haven’t finished Spirit tracks (sigh). The new Ace Attorney is pretty good… I’m not sure it compares to the Phoenix Wright original three (not including Apollo Justice), which will always hold a special place in my heart, but I’m only on the first case! So I’ll wait till I’ve solved a few before giving any noticeable judgment…man it would be awesome if PW made an appearance though…

Luthier partially textured

Original wire frame for luthier scene

A luthier is someone who makes or repairs stringed instruments. I found the image reference on a wikipedia entry (don’t ask how I got there I have a weird habit of surfing off on a tangent). I used to play violin for quite a while and I guess I just thought the sound of a quiet workshop sounded fun with all it’s interesting parts. The challenge here is that I want to move the entire scene into the Unreal Tournament III Engine and so lighting is going to be tricky. Lighting tricks I can use in max don’t always translate into UT3 lighting schemes. For instance, I wolud normally use raytracing on the violin bodies that are polished to give it a nice glossy sheen, I’m not entirely sure I have that luxury in UT3 (I don’t, but I can use tricksies!), so I’ll have to use something else and rely on specular maps, etc. I will update soon with some more progress.

To see some of my older work head over to my portfolio website. When I have final pieces done here that’s where I’ll be placing them if I feel they belong there. I think that’s all for now… let’s see how this goes. Oh yeah, I think it’s fairly obvious what comments are for on an art blog.