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.

Progress on the Cutie

Progress on the work in progress. I hope to have him armed for the next update, and maybe textured. That would be excellent!

I did a one-hour study from this collection of photographs. I wish I had the line work, because I felt it was much more spot on, but apparently I closed the document without saving, so this is all you get.

Finally, I have some sketchbook stuff I didn't hate from this week. I've noticed that I have to slog through about an hour of warmup nonsense before I start doing stuff I like. I need to make the time to squeeze in more sketchbook, since I'm not going to finish this one by tomorrow. I'm not even halfway there!

Until next time.

Dark Times: Slump City

It's been a busy couple weeks. I scanned probably 8 sketchbook pages for upload, but when I opened everything up to prepare them, they were't really good enough to put here. I'm just under halfway through my current sketchbook. I won't finish by the 18th (or 17th, I can't remember when I hit the month mark). So far, it's a bit of an embarrassment in there! I've been slumping pretty seriously in that department. I really want to push myself out of this soon.

In other news, independent study is going fine. Today marks the beginning of the 3rd week. The first week I spent working on a previously mentioned project for a client. Last week I finished the basic sculpt for my first character. This week I want to do a detail pass and extrude clothes and armor. It would be ideal to finish this guy so I could do a couple more, but this is going slower than I anticipated. Hopefully things pick up! Expect more of this guy soon, as well as stuff from the figure drawing class from first block.

Oh, as a sidenote, I'm using a great tutorial from Kurt Papstein's Gumroad. Check him out here. He's great!

THE END: Debriefing (SUMMER '15 #16)

Before I talk about my summer goals, I want to talk about this!

I've been doing these studies from film stills lately. James Gurney posted about this one place and I've been taking cool pics from there to work on painting and lighting. Anyway, I try to keep it to an hour or less. Just trying to see big shapes and color and how they wrap around forms and other nerdy junk like that.

Here's one I did yesterday:

You can see that I got into little details on his lapels and basically got distracted and wasted time instead of blocking in important things. I also didn't get stuff like his face in there.

Here's one (from the same movie as the first, actually) I did tonight:

Yesterday I was expressing my complete failure to paint well to Kaitlin and what I was going to do differently. Basically prioritize shapes, pay attention, and try not to noodle around with tiny initially inconsequential details. I tried and look! It's way better. Next time I'd really like to nail the actor's face more better. But yeah, that's a thing.

School starts Monday. Bleh. I just have 2 years left! Or so they tell me. 

School makes me cranky, don't talk to me about it right now!

How did my goals go this summer? Way better than last year.

Copying and pasting my goals from the briefing post:

1. Finish the two remaining sketchbooks [from Spring 2015 semester], (one per month tentative): 

Did that. Whatever!

2. Finish 3 (or more) pieces (color/painted): 

I think maybe yes? Let's see... This one, this one (even though his legs are dumb and I want to fix them), and this one. You even have some other options, if you hate the ones I picked.

3. Render 3 Characters, one per month:

I think that this was a close one. I'm not totally proud of what I made, but I did end up with 3 characters: This one, this one, this one.

4. Make some props in 3D (Chair, table, sword):

This one was hilariously vague. It says "Some" props, which I did. I made a coupla swords. You can see them here and here. I'm still working on the second sword. It's actually changed quite a bit to fit better into Dota. Now I'm just trying to figure out maps and texture painting. And Valve has all these mask things that use all the channels and whatever. Urgh. I'll get it.

5. Be a good husband:

I just asked Kaitlin and she said, "Yes! You were a good husband. You win."

6. Make sure it doesn't say "Student" anywhere online:

Done! Go ahead and check anywhere you want. LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever.

7. Try to incorporate more environmental aspects into work (architecture, plants, etc):

There were a couple instances of this, but I'm comfortable saying that I totally failed at this one. I'll keep trying.

8. No more B+W posts UNLESS there's also somefink [sic] colored:

I blew it a couple times here, but I really make a good effort to work on my colors now.

9. Use reference for everything and stop drawing out of your mind.

I tried. I'm getting better! Remember all the faces I've been painting!?

So there you have it. Another summer gone. I tried so hard. Maybe I'll try putting a little portfolioid together? Hmm. I hope school gives me a chance to draw tons and paint tons and model tons of cool 3D junk. Wish me luck! I'll keep you all posted with posts post-haste!

School Starts on Monday? (SUMMER '15 #15)

Sorry... It seems like everything I need to do has been jammed into the last few days. Paying for school, fixing the car, whatever, etc. I've been struggling with some 3D stuff (that infernal sword!!!) and just drawing and doing digital studies and whatever.

I booted up Dota 2 for the first time to see what it was like, as I want to make assets for it. I also watched some footage from The International. Umm. What else? 

Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to start modeling a character tomorrow or something. I just want to blah.

Blah.

Oh yeah. Due to some cool stuff happening we were able to get me a smartphone again (I haven't had a smartphone since late 2012!) so I jumped on the Instagram bandwagon. You can follow me here: @zachheckert.

I've just been posting lots of bus doodles there.

Well, not lots. 

You're still my first love, blog friends. And we also got that missing follower back! Back up to 30!

:( (SUMMER '15 #14)

Ever since my last post, I've been slumpin' like a maniac! I don't know what's up, but everything I do is feeling a bit weak to me. My drawings feel really clunky and generic and "Bad-Habitty." I really need to work more from reference and try to do more studies of stuff. I still want to finish my sword, but it's been pushed to the back burner for a sec.

This is a dumb thing I started yesterday. I'm really trying to get down a good Zbrush workflow, and it's slow going (although I did successfully get a low poly model into Maya and get a texture map and normal map from the high poly onto it. It looked like butt, but it's a start. I would have posted it here but I can't find it. My desktop is super messy right now). The socks were my wife's idea. I wanted to give him shorts, but she said only socks would be better. I think she's right.

This next one was a study done from one of Aris' pieces. I thought I would try mixing stuff by doing a monster instead of a portrait. As a lighting exercise it's nice, but as far as enforcing basic drawing principles is concerned, I found it lacking. Since it's a monster (and thereby not as familiar as a human face) it's much easier to justify bad measurement taking and general sloppiness. It wasn't a waste, but I feel like I have so much to learn from the human figure that maybe I won't do this as much.

Yeah, with all this hubbub about The International 2015 going on right now maybe it really is time to finish up my Dota sword.

Okay, back to work!

Face (SUMMER '15 #13)

The guy with the fists? I think he's getting painted next.

Sickly! (SUMMER '15 #12)

Hey! For those who don't live here and look at every post a million times (everyone who's not me, in other words) I've done a lot of posts lately. You should scroll down and have a look!

Well, I followed through! I kinda sorta finished a thingy. Or at least brought it to a more finished state. Observe (cloak pattern by Kaitlin):

A girl from reference I found somewhere. The internet. This was hard! I spent probably two hours on her mouth and eyes. I don't want to talk about it! Time to move on!

Couple things- All these studies I've been doing of people's faces have nasty, sickly quality to them. I know I should be putting warms in the cools or cools in the warms or using complementary colors and junk but still the mystery evades me. I'm working on it!

And the other thing is that I lost a precious, precious follower! What a fiend they were! I went from 30 to 29. I don't know how the Google+ followers factor into this. Thanks for stopping by, though. Okaybye

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.

Cranquee (SUMMER '15 #9)

Well, uh...

Well.

I'm feeling a bit burned out. I haven't done Zbrush for a couple days because I jumped gung-ho into modeling my sword from a few days ago... I ran into a problem because midway through, I realized that the version of Maya I'm running is the student version and I'm not supposed to make anything commercial with it. So I have to learn Blender now. I really just need to add some edge loops to the dang thing so when I move it to Zbrush and subdivide it up to ten bazillion polygons it maintains the sharpness along the blade, but apparently Blender has a completely different interface and control system (I read somewhere that anybody who thinks Blender is "Maya for Free" is setting themselves up to be disappointed). I will learn it. I must. But that sets things back and confuses things. I haven't posted for a while, so I'll just post what I have for you today (It took me half an hour to figure out how to properly render out what I've uploaded here). There's nothing in color, unfortunately, but I hope I can make that up to you with a post full of love, instead.

The story behind the text at the top of this one is as follows.

Kaitlin and I were sitting in church and her young niece Amelia was sitting with us. Kaitlin is very supportive of my artistic endeavors (you'll notice she's basically the only human who comments on these posts) but doesn't quite understand my fascination with monsters and chaos and gibs. She asked Amelia, "Are those scary monsters?" to which Amelia gave the hilarious reply "I think he's just a really good artist!" So there you have it. I get to keep drawing hideous aberrations in church.

And my sword so far. 

Finally, the Pig (SUMMER '15 #8)

I've spent like the last 2 and half weeks on this blasted pig! It's terribly amateur, but I learned a lot. My current lessons are on mesh creation techniques and then it's on to hard surface modeling. I think one thing that was ultra valuable from this pig course was learning about maps. I figured out about low and high poly models and how you bake visual information from the high poly down to the low poly using normal maps, displacement maps, etc to maintain detail. I always tried to draw or paint detail in manually with my brain, which is basically impossible! So with this knowledge I'm now armed to take my sword to the next level. That's my report on 3D so far.

I drew this at the bus stop. The monster was waiting for the bus, too.

I've been doodling on this guy between lessons. I think I may try to paint and finish him up as I go. We'll see.

[SECRET 7/22/15 UPDATE: I changed the gradient and cleaned some stuff up. It was too sloppy! Back to the future I go!]

Okay, I'm out. Til next time!

"Buttth of July?" What on Earth (SUMMER '15 #6)

I took the title from one of the images here, where I'd labeled the date as something that's not even real, exactly.

Hi! Sorry about the lack of posts. I finished a sketchbook, and am working on my 3D stuff! A lot of it is kinda boring but necessary stuff about  the interface, etc. I'm hoping that things pick up here, because...

I didn't buy a new sketchbook.

That means I don't have anything to draw on except loose sheets of printer paper! I'm doing this because I always get distracted by sketching new sketches and I don't finish anything! So yeah.

I tried to polish a thing I showed y'all last time (you can click here if you're too lazy to scroll to the preceding post[also, I like the sword arm in the original sketch more, hmm. Might try to fix]). I fulfilled on of my summer goals by trying to use reference for some of the drapery and the shinies on his armor:

Obviously, it's not super colored or rendered and some of the areas are a bit hot, but it's something, right? I took a sketch and pushed it a bit further. I'm also concerned his bottom half is way too boring and junk. My wife made the pattern for his drapery, by the way.

I've also modified my goals slightly. I want to build some assets for games RIGHT NOW (portfolio, etc) so I think I'm going to build some weapons or sets for DOTA. While I don't know that my 3D is strong enough to do all that that entails right now, I sketched out a prop and painted it (I want to start putting it together this week):

The sketch:

Here's the last bits of my sketchbook:

I did these next three clowns on printer paper during church today (I was listening, I swear). Yes, my congregation looks like this.

This guy has a cool pump-action shotgun:

So there. Sorry for the lack of updates. The nature of the 3D stuff I'm doing right now means I'm learning a lot of essential skills, but I haven't quite figure out how to apply those in a way I can show you. I do have a pig I'm putting together as I go, maybe you'll get to see it soon.

Okay, it's time for bed! I'd love to post again soon. Have a good week, everyone.

It's Wednesday, and I'm Posting (SUMMER '15 #5)

You can trust me [Sometimes- Ed.]!

I told you'd I'd be back sometime this week, and here I am!

I finally got to start my 3D work! Here's my first thing, it's atrocious! But such is life. 

Next, a sagely warrior with a sword.

A hooded guy, a spider-face guy, and a wounded guy.

This guy is getting ready for combat.

Then some other random scrubs.

Perry told me to go draw legs and feet, so that's what I'm going to do now. Off to draw from reference! Just like I promised in my summer goals. Farewell, YALL

P.S. As always, I'm still phailing to phinish any phreaking work. And apparently, "Phreaking" is a word. Here's a link to Wikipedia. You're welcome. I'll try to finish something and stuff, whatever, etc.

Resolution (SUMMER '15 #4)

Okay. Class is done, I have no more excuses! This week I finally get to start my 3D class and paint the billion sketches I have lying around and start finishing my summer goals.

This week my buddy Thomas posted some more stuff he did based on old sketches of mine and they're really cool! You can see them here and here.

As for me? I had to finish my sketchbook for figure drawing and take care of finals. As soon as they're graded and returned to me, I'll upload some of my figure studies and other junk. I don't have any painted or finished work this week, BUT THAT SHOULD CHANGE!

Here's what I've done since I saw you last.

Taking Thomas' idea, I redid an image I drew awhile ago. The first image on the blog! You can see the original here for comparison.

All that techno looking stuff around his mouth was inspired by the suits in Starship Troopers, by Heinlein. The book talks about how the soldiers have a huge array of buttons and switches in their helmet they activate by shrugging their facial features and moving their tongue and stuff, probably because their big meaty combat suit hands were holding tons of weapons.

Next I've got a collection of dudes. 

Next, some swordsmen. The guy on  the left has optical cameras on his suit. They constantly have lasers coming out to aid in target acquisition. When one of the beams is tripped by a foreign object, the suit relays information into the wearer's HUD and nervous systems and he can react instantly, slicing at the point as provided by mathematical algorithm. There are corresponding optical devices on the back. This way, he can't be caught by surprised from behind, and can just chop when his suit tells him. The guy on the right has a similar thing in his shoulder pads.

A Pyromancer.

Here's a warrior guy. I'm really excited about this one, and am adding to the list of things I MUST paint ASAP.

I'm pleased with this one, because it looks kinda Hanna-esque. This is another one I'm excited to color because it's pretty simple looking overall.

This is another wizard guy with a flamberge and a few, poorly detailed knives around his waist.

The rest of these are kinda whatever.

So yeah. No colored or finished work this time. I'm doing poorly on that goal! BUT- School is over, I have free time again, and I'm almost done with the 2nd sketchbook. So all is not lost! Look for me sometime this week, I should have something nice to show you. 

Enjoy what's left of your weekend!

Why Bother? (SUMMER '15 #3)

Firstly- I made some changes to how the blog looks, and implemented an infinite scroll function. I've had some issues and so I made any link open in a new tab. It's horrendous web design but I'm still trying to work out how to keep the scroll without breaking stuff. If you have any problems or hate it or love it please let me know!

So, because I gave you those more finished pieces the last couple updates, I became terribly behind on my homework for class. I didn't really realize how much work the class was til I drew it all out and realized I was doomed if I maintained the pace I was working. All I do after work is draw for Figure Drawing til I go to bed. I'm going to make it, but barely. Class ends on the 26th, and after that I should have more colored stuff. In the meantime you just get the sketchbook stuff I do in transit and sitting waiting for class to start. 

I have every intention to demolish my goals (I have a folder full of sketches waiting to be painted and my 55 hour 3D Zbrush/Maya course waiting be initalized), but this class is far more difficult than anticipated. On the plus side, I am getting close to finishing my second sketchbook goal. Nice!

I like the guy on the upper right of this. He's like the Ghost of the Soviet Union or something.

The thing that bothers me about the guy in the bottom right is that his magic, broken sword couldn't possibly fit in the sheath.  Hrrm.

This lady! I've been seeing her on the bus more and more frequently. She lives at an old folks home several bus stops away. Anyway, When I drew this sketch she was just chatting like crazy at the bus driver. Midway through the trip she swapped her plain glasses for ones with star rims. Right before she wheeled off, she said, "See ya tomorrow, darlin!" to the bus driver. I like riding the bus. I like how much personality and story is crammed into one space. So many interesting people.

When I was drawing the guy in the upper right Kaitlin was like, "He looks like a science teacher!" I said, "Science? More like DIE-ence!" He'd be a rad villain. In case there are any questions, the guy in the bottom right has a giant scythe as a weapon. We're looking at his back (he's looking away from us).

The elvish warrior guy on the right falls squarely into the "Want to finish this but don't have time" folder. Also, the guy in the bottom right is a perfect example of why I should use reference. The drapery is simply embarrassing.

Again, bottom left? Drapery? It's like I'm not even trying. Terrible. But I think the idea is cool, stupid cloth notwithstanding.

This guy has a long sword. That is all.

So yes... I'm having a hard time keeping up with my goals, but that should change in two weeks when my class ends. Until then, I'll keep drawing when I can! And next time I should also have some figure drawings to show you.