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.

Independent Study Week 4: The Wire

Despite the remaining two weeks of independent study, it really feels like things are happening quickly. I started another character this week. It's coming along, but I'm still embarrassed by how it's looking, so you don't see it yet. Here's progress on the demon guy;

Kaitlin tells me his toes look like Cheetos. I feel like compared to the rest of him, his legs are lacking something. I can't decide if I want to do shoes or armor on his thighs. That will probably be decided this week, in addition to building him a war hammer. I also aim to have the other character in a presentable state.

I got together with some art friends yesterday and it was a really good time. We had great discussions about work and drawing and it really got me pumped. I drew some stuff in my sketchbook I didn't hate. Is the slump coming to an end? I certainly hope so.

Here's a thing I'd like to finish. Behold the Psychic King, a giant alien entity from beyond the edge of space hell-bent on enslaving humanity. We find our hero at the apex of his rocket jump, the climax of this duel: When he presses a button, his blade's turbine spools up and the boosterblade carves in twain all matter unfortunate enough to stand in its way. Wind whistling through his ears, he knows there's only chance to strike the vulnerable brain of his foe before losing his mind to the crushing mental influence of the King. He prays his timing is correct and pulls the trigger.

This next one is an edit by me. I drew it with a pen in my sketchbook as seen above, but I moved the jumper for the sake of the design. I'll probably go with this instead.

The rest of my sketchbook from yesterday:

There you go. I'm gonna do some cool stuff this week! Wish me luck.

Slowly.

Hello! I'm starting summer school tomorrow! I think. I need 19 credits to graduate this December and I've ever so carefully built a schedule that meets that demand. Unfortunately, one of these essential classes didn't carry, so I'm 3 credits short. The art department isn't offering anything I can take, the much anticipated Zbrush/portfolio building class has a time conflict with figure drawing, and I appear to be locked out from digital media's upper division. I'm going in tomorrow to knock heads together and make them fix it. I'll be quite put out if I have to stay an extra semester to take a single class. Oh me oh my.

I was talking to my friend Samuel and he suggested I post what I had so far from my current 3D project. It should look familiar to those who saw what I posted last time...

This is a 1 hour study from a girl I found on Mel Milton's Pinterest page.

Sketchbook has felt weak to me the last couple weeks, but here's some scribbles I didn't loathe:

Hoping to have the rest of my seams drawn up and uv's mapped on the 3D guy next time I post. It would be ideal to have textures in, too, but I'm not gonna get too greedy!

Have a nice week. 

Oh, I haven't mentioned my goals for this summer yet. 

...Because I don't have any yet!

Interlude: Realization

Here's the last of my current sketchbook, going to start a new one today. Hoping to also draft out a prop and start modeling a character. Maybe I'm an idiot for never realizing this, but it's not just painting that can benefit from working large to small, general to detailed. I think this approach works well when modeling in 3D, too. I've been looking at past posts searching for a character I want to model and invariably there's a complication that would make it difficult to build. I think I'm getting stressed by the micro level before really looking at and approaching the macro. All complicated shapes started life as basic primitives and there's no need to bite off more than you can chew! So while I still intend to finish the character I started a couple posts ago (I started re-UV-mapping it yesterday, actually) I want to start another one (probably the "SLEEVE" guy from the first picture here) and a non-swordy prop.

Two posts from me in a week? I'm hoping I can continue to do this! Also, these images are pretty large. Is anybody having issues with that?

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!

MORE

Today is March 8th. I'm wondering when I'll actually get around to finishing this post.

Hmm.

March 20th, 2016.

I finished a sketchbook over the weekend and decided to post what I have. I'm trying to paint a  character in Blender but it's been an insane week. I got him all UV'd, I just have to finish the dang thing. But since I'm starting a new sketchbook I thought I'd post the completed character (FOR REALS) with my next collection of sketch pages. I will not post again until that point!

Also, Blender just updated from 2.76 to 2.77 and reset all my preferences. I don't like that.

Don't Get Your Hopes Up (But Works in Progress)

Hey! I'm here posting again this week. I, uh, don't really have anything finished, but I'm planning on finishing at least one of these things. I'm posting to become accountable. I don't know if it will work, but it's worth a shot. 

I've been super busy lately. I'm working on a couple projects with friends and I'm also trying to work on personal stuff, too. I should probably direct my energy into those particular assignments (and perhaps homework even before that) but I'm not!

Also, I went back through some posts and they're full of typos. I'll probably go through and fix those or something sometime in the future. Hmm.

Here's some sketchbook stuff from the last couple days. Really it was just from Thursday, I won't lie to you.

This guy started from a hideous sketch (which I can't seem to find, maybe I'll go dig through the billion emails in my trash, hold on. Ah. Found it.) I've included the sketch beneath. Anyway, last post I included that one guy's head? It just flowed out in like half an hour. I thought it would be simple so I just picked a sketch I was feeling good about and started going to town on it. This is what I have so far, but I'm hating it, honestly. I get so clunky and stiff and lose the magic when I try and polish stuff up. I think this might have potential but it's going to take some serious willpower to try and figure out how to be loose and fun and hip and cool and still polish this off. This really doesn't feel like me right now. I think the bit that exemplifies this the most is the elbow of his right arm (our left). In the original, it's more stylized and pointy and fun. I seem to have lost that. I tend to drift too far towards "Serious and realistic" when trying to finish. Gotta find a workflow that allows me to avoid that.

I thing I doodled out a couple nights ago. I want to add some grunge and damage and stuff before I call it done. Also, it doesn't appear to have any weapons on it currently, which many (i.e. me) would view as inappropriate.

This is a screenshot from something I've finally picked back up. Sheesh! Remember this post? This guy sat on my desktop for awhile before being filed away in the appropriate location on my hard drive. But I  need a model for my rigging class so I thought I'd power through. This is the model after being ZRemeshed in Zbrush. I brought it into Maya because I was going to retopologize with the Quad Draw tool, but I may try something in Blender, instead. I think then I'll take that back into Zbrush and do a high detail pass and then I'll bake out a few maps or something. I think that's how it works, anyway. I've done parts of this process at different times using different tutorials, but I still feel like I'm a bit unclear on appropriate workflow. Also, before I remeshed this it was 1.6 million points and Maya had to think for like 15 seconds each time I clicked. It was really scary and I though it would crash and ruin my life (it didn't).

Okay, next time I post I have to have progress on at least one of these!

R.I.P blog? LOL.

No, I'll do it. I'll be back.

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!

Much Better!

Hi! I'm really tired. It's 10:25 here. Kaitlin went to a concert with her sister and since I finished  (sort of) my homework, I've just been doing some art things. Here's a 3D thing I've just been noodling with. I should have snapped another view, his arms are really impressive. Maybe you'll get to see them later.

The guy on the left with the sword was a personal victory for the week. He just turned out really well, and I love his hands.

Here are those faces we drew last week:

I posted the guy on the left on Instagram this week, but the central character? I pumped a lot of time into him. Unfortunately, there was already a previous scribble on the page (the guy on the right) so I didn't have space to do him justice. Digital magic will allow me to remedy this, so I want to take this sketch to a finished state. We'll see. Sheesh.

Just some guys. The guy on the right's coat and pose was referenced from a TOMORROW KINGS photo I saw. Let me go find it...

...

...

Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Maybe it was on Pinterest? There's no way I'll be able to track down the source image. Sorry.

I like a character's hand in the next one. I circled it so you'd see. It turned out so dern well.

Apparently I didn't really have anything else to say. I'm just glad I got some good drawings in. School is exhausting, I'm tired, and I'm going to bed. Have a great week.