The End: Moving On (Thank You!)

Well... I think we're nearing the end of this blog's usefulness. With my final semester looming and real life after that, I really need to start getting my art out there in ways that people can find me. I'll continue on Tumblr (which I've begun posting on!), and probably Instagram (EDIT 1/26/2025: Just checked in on this and it leads to someone who is not me. I had an account but deleted it a few years back and someone claimed what I was using as my tag. So yeah, I'm not going to link to my Instagram account here anymore since it no longer exists! Thank you, love you!). If you have no interest following me to another platform, I completely understand- Thank you for being here while I've struggled and pushed to improve. 

Here's a final pose and render on the character I've been working on. I'm still trying to figure out materials and textures, and I'd like to do a more exciting pose, but that will come soon!

Some materials and pre-pose.

This next was a progress shot on the character's hammer.

This is one of the things I'm working on next. He's a big punching punchmonster.

So there you go. Thank you for everything, and hope to see you soon.

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.

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.

A Few Things

Hi! It's been awhile, hasn't it? Finals are over, I passed all my classes (unless some horrible post-semester grading algorithm rears its head and destroys me), and I have a couple weeks to work on projects. 

You'll remember that last time I mentioned that updates here would be happening as I finished work in order to force myself to get stuff done. I can't say that I've necessarily used my time the most effectively since my last post (I'm currently playing about an hour of videogames per day on average, which is too much right now), but I've gotten some things to a state I'm calling "Done!"

Also, I'm working on another semi-secret thing that I hope to share with you next time. It blossomed out of a school assignment. That's odd in itself, as most of you know, since I despise school and have a hard time jumping through hoops and being a student. But that's just about ready to be seen. Keep an eye out for that.

Here's what I've done:

This is kind of my finished version of the guy from last time. Below that, an earlier draft can be seen for further comparison.

This next one is nice because of the speed it happened. I scribbled it out and then sat down and painted it in a couple hours. Most of the time when I try to finish stuff I hit walls. Maybe I just really liked the sketch (which I included below for reference). Kaitlin asked me what the deal was with his hand, and I guess I didn't flesh it out too much. He has a thumb, but the rest of his hand is just for clobbering.

And I've been putting some of my sketchbook stuff together when I've had free time. This is in chronological order, with newest at the bottom.

So there ya go. It was a bitter longer than I would have liked to go between updates, but I think I have some cool stuff here. I've got a couple 3D projects to finish, the aforementioned semi-secret thingy, and a sketch to polish that might be biting off more than I can comfortably chew. I certainly have my work cut out for me as I work towards the next post. See you then!

TAG MAYHEM (Apologies)

So, I accidentally removed my "Armoire" tag (which, some of you might remember, was my [misguided] attempt at creating a humerous, non-generic "Armor" tag) completely from my blog. I had meant to replace it with an "Armor" tag, but I failed. So we're starting from square one in that department, until I find the willpower within myself to go back through 551 blog posts and fix tags. So it was like 2 steps forward, 551 steps backward. I blew it. Those of you who search using the tags (i.e. only myself) are surely overwhelmed with grief. Sorry!

I did the initial sketch for this first one last week, and have been fiddling with it since then. I think I'd like to add textures or other cool details or something. Also, his right thumb (OUR LEFT). It's kinda funky. I'll keep tinkering.

I also found my blue pencil:

 

Lastly, here's the progress on my character. Slowly but surely, I suppose. Still no ears. I've done 2 or 3 different sets of feet but I can't get them to look right. I'm hoping to get the boots locked in this week and get a consistent level of detail across the whole thing. I'll post my concept sketch below. It's really nothing special, I don't know why I'm so interested in bringing this particular scribble to life. Also, the beard is wrong and the belt is too fat and the pecs are not flat enough. Hrrm. Sometimes things don't really make sense in 2D space.

That's all for me, have a nice week!

PRACTICE (SUMMER '15 #10)

Being too comfortable makes me uncomfortable.

I have to push myself more, do harder things.

A study from tonight and other junk. The 3D will happen, I'm just trying to drink from a firehouse and it's uncomfortable.

I'm rambling because I should be asleep now.

I saw Between the Buried and Me last night (this morning, technically? I have to go to bed, but Animals as Leaders and The Contortionist were there, too. I'm getting too old for late night concerts at 20 billion dB) and I'm exhausted.

Oh, I found the reference image for that top one from here, will probably do more tomorrow. But maybe I won't show you.

Figure Drawing Dump (SUMMER '15 #7)

There are a lot of pictures here! Sorry to slower browsers. I'm still working steadily on my pig (learned about fibermesh yesterday!), and will hopefully have something to show soon. It's rough and amateur, but I guess it's my first lengthy Zbrush project and I've learned a lot.

This was the final for my class.

This one makes me mad. I had an awesome drawing going, and then when it came time to render it and dump in lights, I struggled and didn't like what happened. I really have a hard time with the whole rendering thing