Special Anniversary Post: 3rd Year - Portfolio Site Is Live!

Whoa, it's hard to think that this blog has been part of my life for 3 years now. It's gone through several changes in that time, most notably the amount of posts per day/week/month. I can only hope the slightly different approach to posting has led to an increase in quality overall. Since I haven't posted in awhile, I'll treat this as a normal blog post and then proceed with the standard yearly review. 

First and foremost, I have to tell you the secret I've been whispering about for the last few posts. I decided to stop stalling and launch my portfolio site. I've been working on this for several months and will be switching the current images for more appropriate finished compositions as they happen, but I think it's time to stop messing around and let it go live! Click here to visit zachheckert.com.

Some of these are older pieces that will be getting some attention since I've learned some things since they were started. Those will be swapped out as they're improved upon. I have other works in progress that I'm trying to finish up. I've had kind of a rough start on doing artwork this year, despite my new year's resolutions. There should also be an increase in 3D work soon, too. I'll still post here, but I'll try to collect the best stuff I have over there.

I'm too lazy to go back and see if I talked about it last post, but my aunt and uncle gave me a card to Utrecht for Christmas. I bought some fancy Polychromos pencils (y'know, I'm thinking I talked about this last post after all, but just humor me) and a Moleskine notebook. They make some good drawings, but a downside I've found is that since it's not spiral-bound, it's difficult to scan stuff. I draw all over the page and am constantly getting into the spine, making that part horrible to scan. I really like the materials it's made of, but it's a bit too soon to tell if it will fall apart before I finish it like the cheap ones I normally draw on. Here's a handful of stuff from the first half or so.

This first one? There's a guy with that big gun that says C-42. I'm modeling that in 3D at the moment!
And the guy on the bottom with luscious hair is wayyyy stupid. What was I thinking and shame on me.

What the heck, this guy's stupid arm. It's even labeled "My stupid arm." What was I thinking and shame on me. Also, the guy on the furthest right only got into this image because I liked his hand.

My anatomy is disastrous. I've basically not been working from reference at all. It shows! The guy on the bottom left (who was also posted to Instagram) has noodle arms, and the guy above him has the opposite of noodle arms (big meaty meat arms). I don't know how it works. What was I thinking?! Shame on me!

I have no current issues with this one, except for the space scooter is facing to the right which I find irksome for some reason. I may become upset by these characters later.

That does it for recent stuff. Here's the year in review, with stats from last year in parentheses:

Total posts: 556 (510)

Total page views: 32,510 (24295)

Total comments: 1414 (1225)

Total followers: 30 (30) [Like last year, there's some weird numbers involved here. Google+ says I have 63 followers, but I don't think those people see or follow regularly.]

Total coolness improvement: 0%

JANUARY

I picked this because the faces looked good. They mostly even resembled the reference I was using, which I felt was a big step forward. Nice!

FEBRUARY

This one was competing against a sketchier sketch of the standard monster fare typically found on the blog. I picked this for diversity, to show that I'm capable of doing something more naturalistic. I also felt it showed growth over other faces I've attempted in the past.

MARCH

I like the guy in the upper right. His face and hair are what earned this image the right to be shown here. The guy with 3 eyes is cool too, I guess. His body doesn't really make any sense, but if you don't look down that far you'll be a-okay.

APRIL

I think that the armore is the reason I chose this one. I like it. I also like the fish chainsaw sword.

MAY

I chose this one because it was sorta-kinda-finished, even though some stuff needs work. That's fine. It's actually on a pile of stuff I need to improve.

JUNE

This was another contested spot. I chose this because I really like the drawing. I feel like this character could go somewhere. His design is simple, but I'm into it!

JULY

This was the final for my figure drawing class last summer. I put this one in to show, once again, that I'm capable of doing something outside of monsters blowing each other into gibs.

AUGUST

This was a study from a film still. I like it because I only spent an hour and it was a definite improvement over the preceding study I did. I have fond memories of this one, even if it's not totally representative of the source material.

SEPTEMBER

This one turned out pretty cool in general (in my opinion), but I like the guy with the ridiculously long arm and the sword and beard. His body is kind of funky but I feel like the musculature is believable-ish. I felt it showed progress over other stuff.

OCTOBER

Some 3D. I like this mostly because of the arms, though perhaps not the hands. That might be the only reason I like it, actually. This one goes on the growing pile of  "Tune up and get it onto the portfolio site" stuff.

NOVEMBER

The hands on these characters were good. That's why this is here.

DECEMBER


This one was picked because I like that I did it in an afternoon. It gives me hope that I can get stuff finished quickly. I'm hoping it means that there will be more, despite the relatively slow pace of January.

So there you have it. Another year, another dollar(s). I won't lie, this has been kind of a frustrating month. I've felt a bit slumpy and have lacked motivation. I've got some plans for how to reverse this, though, so you should hopefully be seeing nice junk soon. Thanks for coming to my blog and looking at the stuff I draw. Even though I only know a couple of you, it's cool that you can all come and visit. Hopefully all this posting is helping you in some way, too.

 To improvement. 2016 will be a good'n.

See you next time.

School Has Begun, Small Update, &c.

Hi, everyone! I'm a busy boy! School started, I've been sick and not going to class, and work has been fine. Christmas was great, and, uh, I can't remember the things I was going to mention. Oh yeah, here's something I learned Monday. There were hiccups in my school schedule and I'll be graduating with my bachelor's degree in Gaming and Animation in Spring 2018, a year later than I planned. That will mean that it took just shy of 8 years to get a bachelor's degree. I think that whole four year thing is a bit of a myth, unless you just bang your head against whatever you knew you wanted to be when you grew up when you were 17 years old and do 18 credits a semester.

Anyway, it is what it is! I'll try to be positive and make the most of it. Peradventure I may be an artistic power house prior to my graduation. Anyway, school is probably okay. I'm not sure since I've been sick and missed two classes because I was desperately trying to recover. I spoke with teacher (he mysteriously taught both classes I was absent from) and he just said to read the syllabus (which I diligently tried to do today but the classes don't apparently exist online yet). That's all, no more school talk in this post UNLESS YOU REMIND ME PLEASE DON'T

So! Some exiting stuff this post! Here are some sketches. These are from yesterday and today and maybe Monday, I can't quite recall through my feverish haze. Maybe they're from last month. And the two leftmost characters seem too similar. Whatever

And my current project! It's a demon I've built in 3D, based loosely on an idiotic little doodle I found completely hilarious at the time and knew, "I must model this!" but in reality it was kind of a weak reference. It's UV'd and ready to be painted! I'll probably get to work on during my breaks tomorrow. And if you think this is dumb, I included an earlier attempt I did last month for laughs (with facial geometry straight out of the late 90's) beneath. I may be posting less, as per this manifesto, but I've been working, honest!

Something else- My aunt and uncle gave me a gift card to Utrecht and I bought some really nice pencils (better than Prismacolor? Maybe. My pal Rod gave me one before and I used it until was a tiny nub) and a Moleskine sketchbook. Moleskine is all the rage, but when I can get as many pages for a third of price I'm hesitant. But I've always wanted 

Last thing- that secret thing I've been whispering about will be unleashed upon you all on the 28th of this month, which is this blog's 3rd anniversary. It's basically ready (I haven't worked on it much since my last mention of it) but I'm lollygagging around. 28th is the day, come heck or high water.