Heya! This Is What My Dad Looks Like.

Hey, people! What? You think this monster is what my dad looks like?

Nah, that's just an update of the character I posted last week.

My dad used to have a handlebar mustache. He looks like the guy in the bottom right. His arms may or not look like that. As a sidenote, Kaitlin and I were going through some old photos this week and we saw these guys in a parade with bells on their pants. I thought to myself, "What if there was a warrior who was so tough that he wore bells to announce his arrival- he has no fear of anyone, so why hide?" You can kind of see the bells around the character's waist, but I evidently forgot to flesh them out more. (Also, that weird fake Iron Man in the bottom left. That's pretty freakish)

The guy with the long arms? His arms really are FAR TOO LONG. But it's endearing in a freaky way, isn't it? Also, if you can't read what the wizard in the bottom left is saying, he's saying "Magic is a very magical thing. Very nice."

Yeah I'm outta here. BUT FIRST: A cool thing happened this week. The game "Towerclimb" by Davioware finally release! I was overjoyed to find a cd key in my inbox. They successfully completed the game! I purchased a beta key way back in 2012. I played for 43 minutes today, and want to play more, but school is far too busy. So I'm going to leave it up to all of you to go check it out and pick up a copy. If you like brutally difficult procedurally-generated roguelike-esque platformers with permadeath (a la Spelunky, Vagante, or Catacomb Kids [Vagante and Catacomb Kids are still in development, just a heads up]), give it a shot. It's wicked hard, and super intense! I basically need you to play it in my honor since I have way too much going on. 

Okay, I'm outta here. Have a great week, everyone!

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.

SLOW

You guys, school is cramping my style.

I'm trying to figure out ways to work on pushing paintings and 3D while maintaining my heavy school load. We haven't even really started doing any actual animation in my drawing class- The class that's killing me is a design basics for digital media class. It's not particularly hard, but teacher assigns a lot of work and I'm having a hard time trying to make the assignments work for me (i.e. so they are more in line with my stuff and what I want to do). I'll keep working on that. This week I've been working on making my smartphone into a tool for time management. I don't play games or do the Facebook thing on it, so it's already a good tool, but I'm trying to get organized so I can do the things I need to do.

I don't have a lot this week, but I got together with some friends yesterday and drew some people at Costco. Why aren't those drawings in here? I must have forgotten to scan them. Maybe you'll see them later.

P.S. - It might be updates once a week until I figure out a way to effectively do everything that needs to be done. So that's kinda the plan.

School...

School has been too busy. 

Since school began I haven't had time to do any art. I've just been filling sketchbooks while in class. I guess that's not entirely true. I've found time for a single 1-hour study.

...But that's all!

I woke up at 6:30 this morning and did homework til about an hour ago. Then I cobbled together as much of the stuff I don't hate that I can and am sharing it with you.

It's kind of depressing, but I hope it will be worth my while someday.

I'm terrified that since I'm not flexing my 3D muscles at all (I'm busy doing things like drawing primitives in Illustrator), I'll forget everything I learned over the summer. What a waste! Urgh! I hope school gets to teaching me cool stuff sometime soon so I don't feel guilty for forsaking the important art stuff I was doing.

Here's the single study I've been able to do. She looks quite sickly. I'm pretty sure it's because of that nauseating background color getting into everything.

This next one has a cool thing. That monster on the left was done from this reference monster on Pascal's Pinterest. Just like the last post, I've been trying to spend some time there cuz he's got some really cool stuff. I know my monster is nothing like the photo, but that's cuz I made it better ;)

As an aside, that "EAT MEAT WHALES" note has been on my mind a lot. When I think of big monsters like Godzilla I ask myself what the heck a monster like that would eat!? Something that size would need a lot of calories to take a step, let alone destroy everything. My solution? They eat whales like candy. Whales are big and full of meat.

 Okay, gotta go. I hope my updates don't become this infrequent. I hope I get time to do 3D. Someone give me a Timeturner so I can do some freakin' 3D!!!

Hello! 29,998 Views!

It's not quite 30,000 [Update: Soon after this post, we did actually pass 30,000 views- Ed], but I was too impatient to wait! I had to do a post.

Today is Tuesday. I've been to all my new classes. I have an animation class that will be fun. The rest will be... School.

Here are some things I did.

I wasn't going to post this (it's last night's 1 hour study) but Kaitlin saw it and said, "Is that Jake Gyllenhaal?" I was flattered she knew who it was!

I have a break between my first class and work today. I did some studies from Pascal's Pinterest stuff. He posts such cool junk!

I did these yesterday.

I DID THIS TODAY. Why is it important? It's because of the foot. Look at the awesome foot. Our right, his left (I drew an arrow so you could find it easily, but it's kinda aimed right in the middle)! It's just one of my favorite feet. And look at the cute little mushrooms!

Lastly, there's this song (Hail from the Past) from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. In my opinion, it was a mediocre game. It was fun, but mediocre. But the desert song? I haven't played it since I was 16, but this song is CONSTANTLY going through my head! I know I'm sidetracked now, so it won't hurt if keep talking. Alucard's running animation in Symphony of the Night is one of my all time favs. Jonathan's running animation is pretty weak in comparison. I can't find one for you to see, sorry. But anyway, my only real recollection of Portrait of Ruin is Jonathan's running animation syncing up to that desert song. Anyway, my whole point with this dumb story is that I go running multiple times a week to keep from going insane and sometimes when I go running I sing that song in my head in time to my running. It's pretty stupid. 

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 V. 2.0 (SUMMER '15 #11)

Hello! Let me just preface this by saying that for once in my life I'm keeping my word to you guys: I'm actually taking a sketch and working on it. It's the guy with the big sword from my last post. Hee hee! I'm not going to show you what I have yet, but I'm tinkering with it between studies. 3D? I'm still working on my classes. This week I've learned more hard surface modeling stuff. I was blown away when I found out I could paint curve brushes to specific aspects of geometry, such as borders and polygroups. I took the sword to a near-finished level of completion but failed to keep the lowest subdivision level, spending hours worth of effort to try and finish the darn thing. A plus is that I've learned more about 3D workflow and what not to do. Also more about generating maps and stuff. So I'm learning a ton, I just don't have tons to show (yet). Here's some stuff from the last couple days I didn't despise:

Up first: Some girl. I found her by Googling "Female head reference."

Next, a Rocketman. He reminds me of this guy from this post back in 2013. Man, I was terrible(r) back then!

Then a random face.

I'll be back, have a nice Friday!

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!

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