BONUS: I Did It?

I told you I'd polish the guy from last time,

and I DID!

Also, two posts in a week? Sink me!

Now I have to go do homework until Kaitlin gets home! She's at a baby shower.

EDIT @ 5:40 PM: I just realized that his big punchy right arm doesn't seem to connect to his body properly. I didn't notice it until now! Also, his head design is kind of silly and I think lost the magic of the original sketch. I may have to revisit this one!

Sketchbook Completed: Independent Study Is Go!

It's true. I've FINALLY got second block classes set up! Independent study is happening! This means I can drop a class Fall semester and still graduate. Won't that be nice? I'm hoping to take some of these sketches to a finished state and build them in ZBrush. If I came out of summer 2016 with 4 or 5 (or 3 or 2 or 1, let's be honest) finished characters that would be aces. Moving on!

Today is Thursday? A week from now my figure drawing class will be over! I've done some nice drawings and will scan those in to show you. I'm posting today because I finished a sketchbook, the last in my 3 pack. My new one has 100 pages compared to the Moleskine's 60 and is significantly bigger (9x12 inches vs 7.5x10). This larger size is what I typically use, but I'm concerned that after having filled 3 smaller ones I'll have a tough time finishing in a month. I had forgotten how massive 9x12 is!

These sketches are the last of the Moleskine. 

In this first one we have the punching guy. Punching is a theme in my work, I think. It's great! I want to work on him a bit more, but we'll see. I seem to have a hard time finishing pieces...

Recently, I was going through some older stuff I had uploaded to this blog (circa 2013). It's terrible! I'm shocked by what I thought was viable upload material. So much of what's on here from that time is basically scribbles. It's nice to see that I've improved, especially when it can be difficult to feel that improvement in my regular day-to-day. 

Back to work!

Summer Is Busy

I have to go to bed, but here's stuff I've sketched on the bus and between figure drawing poses in class. I haven't done 3D for weeks and am still working on getting my second independent study squared away. Glancing at these again, I feel like I missed something. I'll have to go look. There's two weeks left before 2nd block begins. 

Also, I can't stop listening to  Dasein by First Fragment. If you're into deathmetal, give it a listen.

Sketchbook Dregs

We've almost got the summer's second block scheduling woes squared away, which I thought would be nice, but it's turned out to be the least of my worries.

The figure drawing class has been a frightening nightmare. We had an assignment due this week and I spent 8-10 hours struggling to complete it on time. Because of this I had no choice but to get behind on sketchbook. I spent most of my day yesterday and a few hours this morning catching up! It's nice to finally be where I should, but I'm concerned the next assignment will throw a wrench into things again. 

Here's the last of the sketchbook I was talking about last time. This new sketchbook is off to a rough start, which I'm actually okay with because I had a really nice couple weeks. I'll get it back.

When I get a spare second I work on UV's for the 3D guy. It's super slow going since my time is all being funneled into figure drawing, but hopefully now I'm caught up I can spend a little more time getting through this and getting to the fun part (texture painting).

550 Views!? What's the Point?

You guys, everyone hates my portfolio site! At the time of this writing there have only been 550 views. Nauseating! I need to draw/add pictures of sexy ladies or something, yes? No, I only draw deformed men, semi-cute monsters, and truckloads of killin' tools. But I just need cool portfolio stuff to draw in the masses, which is something I'm working on. I actually have 2 things I'd consider portfolio-y in this post. And then there's those coupla weapons from the last few posts. What else, what else. Oh, I'm still waiting for the Summer class to appear online, that should generate some portfolio. After that I'll set up Artstation and get back to Instagram and Twitter. I just feel obligated to manage that stuff and respond and communicate! I respond to EVERY comment on this blog, and I'd have to do the same elsewhere! That's a lot of strain added to my feeble grey matter. I'm sorry, I'm rambling. I have to go to the bathroom. Also- I'm not sure I mentioned this last time, but I did add a link to the portfolio site on the right hand side, under my profile picture (mobile device users- I'm not sure where you can find that if you can't see it. I'll look into it).

Here's a guy I added some polish to. I'm finally pursuing my lifelong goal to finish something I started. You can see how this began life in this sketch.

This next brute is from last time. Remember this? I painted him all up and gave him scary teeth. The better to eat you with, my dear.

Then I've got some sketches from my new sketchbook. I was happy about the guy in the upper right because Kaitlin said he looked good. Also, a guy with a ridiculous beard.

#soblessed is a ridiculous and obnoxious hashtag and I don't know why it's here. Also, there's a vampire alien. You can tell from his shiny medal. All vampires worth their salt wear a medallion.

I threw together that guy with the horn from the last image in Blender and painted him up real quick. I got cranky because I couldn't hide my hideous geometry with a nice texture. This was more practice/prep for my next thing than anything else. It's not quite as stylized, which I don't like, but hopefully I'll be able to get closer to my initial sketch next time. I don't know that I'll get around to that 3D guy I've been talking about for the last few posts. I have something else I like more that I want to start on. If I'm going to be dumping time into a model, it will be that one. I'm hoping to have that modeled by the next post.

Then some pen sketches.

I have a final tomorrow and then I'm free.

Free to begin working super duper hard on portfolio stuff.

Zero Views Per Day: Slow Going (ALSO! I LIED)

Hey! Long time no see. It's been since MARCH 20TH 2016! So much has happened since then- Kaitlin had a birthday, I had strep throat, I registered for Summer and Fall classes (the last time ever?!), we finally saw Star Wars (which I liked a lot!), Dark Souls III came out (which I can't afford/play), etc. Life has been busy.

I've been putting this post off for weeks because I promised you that I'd finish painting that character from last time. I actually started but was having a very difficult time getting it to look how I wanted. It could have been I was painting with only the vaguest sense of color scheme. With my rudimentary feel for color, it was certain death. I also need to uv it again before painting, just another step to worry about. I want to complete it, but I was sad that I'd been neglecting my blog for weeks.

A couple weeks ago, I was playing with a custom action in Photoshop that was feebly attempting to be the mirror mode that Photoshop still lacks and I came up with the sword sketch this model was based on. I finally finished painting it today, so here it is! There are a couple spots that could use some polish, so maybe I'll revisit it. The top two views were rendered with perspective present, so I included a third view with no perspective (flat from the side). 978 tris, 1024x1024 diffuse map.

I sketched this sacrificial knife a couple weeks back and banged it out pretty quick in Blender. I spent hours painting it, though. I really like the hand-painted look for textures and have been playing with that as a way to avoid learning more modern ways of generating maps. I'll be getting to that this summer, hopefully. Also, I figured out how to take nice screenshots today, which means the image I snapped of the dagger looks nasty, but since I'm in class I can't make it look nice. Maybe I'll swap it out when I get home (EDIT 4/15/16 - I snapped a new shot and the quality difference was negligible, so I'll just leave this image here).

I've almost finished another sketchbook. I'm on track to do so within a month, which is nice, but it's been a doozy for me. The first half is just atrocious. None of you will ever see any portion of it. I'd been slumping pretty hard until I switched to a black Prismacolor and for some reason I've felt much better while drawing with it. These first two splash pages were done when I'd just changed drawing utensils, so I was still hating my life and everything I drew.

This next one has a cool sword I'd like to model and a character with a flaming head I'd like to model. I'm saving him for a summer project. Also, that really ugly guy in the bottom left!? It's depressing.

After I put the above 2 collages together, I've been on a roll. By the way, when I say that I'm not tooting my own horn, it's more a description of how I feel when I draw. Drawing while slumping is a frustrating thing to do, and with these next ones I just felt really good about everything. On this first one, I really like the monster at the top.

I like the weird antlered creature down on the bottom. If he had legs he'd be grade-A awesome.

I like the guy who's too serious on the right. What's his problem!? He needs to take a chill-pill.

That's all I got! Hopefully next time I've got that character finished, but if not there will be more 3D. I really need to branch out from bladed weapons when it comes to props! Treasure chests, potted plants, braziers, etc.

I just realized I haven't eaten lunch and I ate breakfast at 6:30 am (it's 2:49 pm now). I'm hungry!

Major Change: Complete! Also, Why the Slant?

Hi! This post is so long in coming because I got wrapped up in making a sword:

 I just snapped a screenshot because I deleted the camera and didn't have time how to figure out how to light it and render it properly. Modeled in Blender, 512 diffuse, painted in Photoshop. I don't know the rest of the information (polycount, etc). I don't even know where to look to find it, but I guess it could be solved with a quick Googling. Maybe next prop. Probably more bladed weapons until I'm more familiar with Blender.

So yeah, in the end I did change my major on Tuesday. I'll be getting a bachelor's in science with an emphasis in arts and visual communications and an associate's in associated sciences. I think. It's a huge mouthful and I'm still unclear. I'll graduate this Fall, but I'm being cautiously optimistic until it's over and done with. I was planning a pretty grueling Summer of training but I guess I have to take classes now. Hopefully, they too will gruel me.

Here's some recent sketchbook stuff. 

I've noticed I seem to be slanting the same angle every time. I think I have some excellent bad habits that enable me to lock angles into the same spot every time. I need to break this. Everything is slanting the same direction. And in this first sketch, one of the bald guys and the bottom-left person-monster appear to even have the same collar on their coat. Freaky!

This is a character turnaround  I hope to model in 3D sometime down the line. It's kind of stupid, based on a doodle I did in my notebook during a call at work.

26/5000: Birthday Boy

Today I am 26 years old. It feels weird to type that. The title of this post has a 5000 in it because that's the goal I'm setting for myself. Years, you see. I figure I'll have gotten fairly good at art and played through all the games in my Steam library by then. Probably not all because some are not games I'd actually play, but I'd like to play a lot of 'em. Hopefully Kaitlin decides to live to be 5000 with me or I'll be lonely and sad. She is the best wife.

Here's some sketchbook stuff from the last couple days:

(I'm really pumped about the guy with the sword above his head in this next one. I think it's so freakin' cool! I want to do more on it)

I promised you an update on one of the pictures I posted last time. I'm terrified to work on the muscle knife guy (and I'm gonna be honest, I might not come back to it!), but here's an update on that ship (I love a chance to use the "Vehicular Mayhem tag):

I tried something a little different with this one and added a rusty texture I found on Google. I don't know who did it, so if that's your rust, let me know and I'll credit you!

Being 26 isn't that different from being 25. I wonder when I get older?

I AM ALIVE: Mild Confession

Here's what happened.

Kaitlin and I make goals for the new year and I take them ridiculously seriously. I come up with a strict and insane plan for what I want and set a couple goals to do that. I can't do more than 3 or 4 simple goals because my minimalist mind is immediately overwhelmed and I roll and weep in a puddle of tears, but I try to make those few goals goodins.

The moment Steam told me that Dragon's Dogma was available for pre-purchase on PC back in November, I bought it and anxiously awaited mid-January for its release. Videogames and I have a tumultuous history and for the last few years I've been extremely cautious with them so I can focus on art and more important things, but it's a game I knew a lot about and was keenly interested in experiencing.

I made an exception and put "Play Dragon's Dogma" on my list of goals for 2016 so I wouldn't feel guilty for gluttonously gorging my brains out on it. Kaitlin sagely pointed out that such a goal probably wouldn't stretch me too much and might actually be counter-productive, but allowed me to leave it on my list.

Dragon's Dogma came out and I've played a bit too much since then.

I realized over the weekend that I had wasted some serious time on something pretty trivial. With technology there to support us in everything we do, it's fascinating that we insist on using it to be lazy blobs. I haven't finished the game and I'd really like to, so I'll allow myself to play for a couple hours on Saturday mornings while Kaitlin sleeps in, since taking a break every once in awhile is important. But that's all.

It's interesting to see how a few weeks without strenuous exercise of my art muscles makes me cranky and unhappy. The moral of the story? Do more art? I don't know.

Here's a lunch doodle:

Then some recent sketchbook stuff.

Credit: I did a study on this by Sergio Toppi on this top one.

Credit: Evan Richards (sometimes NSFW) for his study of the cinematography of Birdman, which looks cool but I've never seen.

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.