backwards compatibility

In Progress: Han Solo ZBrush Sculpt

2012-01-07T14:51:00.000-08:00

Trying a likeness sculpt. Of course, I've got to pick one of the most iconic and harder people to do a likeness of. I should know, as a child I tried to paint Indiana Jones on my wall in my room but ultimately gave up when trying to replicate the likeness of Ford and fighting the texture on the wall became too much. Can't say having me paint on my bedroom wall really thrilled my parents.

The thing about Harrison Ford is he has a lot of distinct features; bent nose, crooked mouth, scar on the chin, but also with that he has loads of subtle features that if aren't done correctly his face just looks wrong and people will notice.

I'm pretty close here, figure it was a good time to pause and take a grab a screen shot before I ruin it all by working on it some more.

Iron Man 3D WIP

2011-11-07T02:50:00.000-08:00

Practicing hard surface modeling by making a high poly version of Iron Man.
"Now wait," you're probably saying, "didn't you work on the DS game and have all that cool Iron Man references and junk?"
A while back, yes, I did have some stuff on my work computer, but sadly anything I did have is lost to time and a hard drive crash. Also none of it was legally mine to use regardless.
Nope, this guy is from scratch using reference like everyone else- from the internet. I'm finding the Hot Toys version(s) of Iron Man provide some of the most accurate and easiest reference to get (not trying to shill for them, but all of their toys are impressive and if I had the spare cash I'd gladly pick up 2 or 14)
Time permitting I'll try to finish this guy out.

ZBrush horse WIP

2011-08-06T23:14:00.000-07:00

Horse in ZBrush. Still a work in progress. I've blocked out the most of the key muscles, now it's about refinement and sharping details. Not too sure how I want to handle the hair on the tail and mane.

Captain America: Portraits

2011-08-02T00:37:00.000-07:00

Sadly, I didn't do any portraits for the shipped version Captain America DS. Not to say I didn't do work, just nothing I did made it into the final game. So I'm posting these to show what could of been.

I created this almost complete version of Captain America for the approval process. I based it off the in-game model... only to be informed we now had to do actor likenesses. All part of the job.

So let me slow it down and give you the whole picture: Originally, we did not have actor likeness approval so everything was stylized, and having only that information I made this 3D model. He, as well as the rest of the characters, were going to be facially rigged to give the single frame portraits different expressions:

But after being informed that we now had to match actor likeness I did these pencil roughs for approvals.

Ultimately, it was optioned to use the Wii portraits created by another company.

Captain America: 3D Model 'Madame Hydra'

2011-07-31T23:26:00.000-07:00

Madame Hydra was the only in-game 3D character model and texture I did for Captain America DS. A basic model, I just had to match the texture style that was on the other existing characters as well as her concept art. I would of loved to push it further.

Captain America: Cinema Screen

2011-07-31T12:40:00.000-07:00

The Captain America DS cinema screen in what it was originally supposed to look like. There were supposed to be two other panels to go with this one, but only this got made. This one had to be modified to remove Captain America.

How do you like my 'Big-O' and 'Shadow of the Colossus' mash-up with the giant robot sleeper?

Captain America: Concepts

2011-07-30T22:41:00.000-07:00

Captain America DS.
I was brought in late to the project to make sure it finished. I did some art for it. Good times.

Concepts for the crawlers. I had fun with these:

More Iron Man 2: 3D Models

2011-07-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

Might as well post a couple of model images from Iron Man 2 DS. They're not doing a whole lot sitting on my hard drive. As before, did the models and textures:

Kung Fu Panda 2 DS

2011-07-29T23:59:00.000-07:00

Helped out on the Kung Fu Panda 2 DS title. Did a combat 'arena' with a city background, really nothing too special. Made the geo, textures and lighting... so, everything you see in these shots (except for maybe a few textures). I'm not sure if it got into the final game like this, or if it was modified and changed. I was only on the project for a week and a half and working on another game at the same time. If I had more time I would of added more detail, but then again I think I was already pushing the poly limits in certain camera views. The whole scene (and I do mean everything) was around 3500 polys.

Here you can see what the scene looks like in-game and what it looks like at the polygon level with the textures and vertex lighting removed.
*Secret revealed* the far buildings are nothing more than single poly planes with the textures and vertex lighting doing all the work.

Something that might be of interest: there wasn't any hardware fog in the scene. The atmospheric effect was created mainly by vertex lighting.

Copyright: Dreamworks

Katana

2011-06-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

Two posts in one day? There must be something wrong with me.
Yet another fast one, done on a lunch break.
Don't you hate it when you're in your underwear and you have to do a sword battle?

Dwarf with revolver

2011-06-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

This started out to be a technique study of a classical artist but quickly turned into something else. Went a little steampunk and gave the dwarf a mechanical hand holding a revolver. Smoking a cigar.
Looks classical to me.

Studies

2011-06-06T10:04:00.000-07:00

Quick motion studies, I like the loose painterly ones I did on the bottom half of the page. Used the 1936 Flash Gordon serial as reference. The star of the feature, Buster Crabbe, is amazing to watch, he's an action comic book character come to life with his poses and movements.

Back to Basics

2011-05-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

I did some quick painting using reference from some sci-fi show, Trek Wars or something. All kidding aside, "Firefly" has some great lighting samples thanks to the show using practical lights in the scene rather than blown out stage lighting.
Spent maybe an hour or so on each of these, I wasn't too focused on likenesses, but they ended up more or less looking like the actors. Why is it when I try to make it look someone it takes me twice as long?

Keeping it loose

2011-04-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

A little fan art. Based this one off of an image from Bard's Tale II for the Apple II:

ZBrush Head

2011-04-04T13:20:00.000-07:00

Wow, long time no update. About time I started posting again. Been keeping up the practice with Zbrush. Did a little head study.

Desoulate Version 3

2010-08-10T09:56:00.000-07:00

Another revisit. So with version 2 I just did a straight paint over of my original piece without adjusting the composition which, sadly, was dry as toast.
This time I decided to bend the composition a little more to make something visually interesting. I think I've gone as far as I want to go with this in the form that it's in; to push it further would require and complete reworking to the point of where it'd be something completely new and I just want to move on.

ArtRage Landscape Study

2010-07-03T02:47:00.000-07:00

Finally broke down and gave ArtRage 3 a try. I'm impressed with what you can do for the price although I wish I had more controls over the brush settings and blending. Decided to go with a landscape study and it came out alright, not too bad for a first time having never used the program before. If I had it to do over again I would of based it on something a little more dramatic, I got bored with doing the work about half way thru.

Desoulate Version 2

2010-06-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

This is a reworking/paintover of an old digital painting I did a while back. I've always wanted to do a different version and see what I could do with it. I spent a couple hours over the weekend doing just that.

B&W Sketches

2010-06-22T03:43:00.000-07:00

Keeping up the practice by doing various line styles.

Sketchy: Demons

2010-06-18T19:50:00.000-07:00

Doing some quick practice pieces. I took single form and played with it a little bit, nothing too dramatic. This was more about style and process rather than composition. Ideally, I'd do the variations at the rough silhouette level but since these are only sketches it's not too important to fully flesh them out (at least for me).

Iron Man 2: 3D Models

2010-05-18T00:57:00.000-07:00

Here's just a small sample of the work I did on the Iron Man 2 DS game.
3D Models:
A few of the models and textures that I did.

Copyright: SEGA, MARVEL

Iron Man 2 DS: Portraits and Icons

2010-05-17T18:37:00.000-07:00

Here's just a small sample of the work I did on the Iron Man 2 DS game.

Portraits:
Some of these may or may not be in the game.

This was how big I wanted to make the portraits with a hint of a background but sadly it was a little too much for the DS to handle.

Icons:
I was just told the dimensions to make these, and had I known how small they were in-game I would have fought to make them bigger. There's only so much you can do with 26x26 pixels.

Copyright: SEGA, MARVEL

Iron Man 2 DS: Concepts

2010-05-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

Here's just a small sample of the work I did on the Iron Man 2 DS game.

Concepts:

Copyright: SEGA, MARVEL

The Princess and the Frog

2010-04-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

Holy Forgetfulness Batman!
I *completely* forgot I did these models, mainly because I was crazy busy last year and ended up helping a lot of projects. Only when I cleaned up my hard drive today did I find the old files that reminded me that I did the work. Looks like I've got the old guy memory kicking in.
The opossum and turtle were done from rough Disney sketches and averaged around 1800-2000 polys each for the Princess and the Frog game.

Red Cloak

2010-04-19T12:36:00.001-07:00

Key

2010-03-03T04:14:00.001-08:00

Pulp

2010-02-14T10:20:00.000-08:00

Created a fictional pulp book cover from the 1960's. Tried a few things with varied success which I'll have to experiment further with other pieces. If I was ever to do this full time I'd hire a model because all the guess work and random photo references slowed things down more than I'd like, either that or I'm just going to have to practice more.

More Alchemy

2010-02-10T07:41:00.001-08:00

still messing around.

Alchemy!

2010-02-08T04:58:00.000-08:00

For the 1 person who doesn't know what the program Alchemy is check it out here: http://al.chemy.org/ . It's a vector base program meant for quick concepting, it's a little quirky but a fun tool to play around with. This is just me messing with it, going way beyond it's intended purpose.

Johnny Everyman Concept

2010-02-04T10:11:00.000-08:00

Everybody should have a Johnny Everyman to do the fighting for you. Concept art, only got this piece done before project cancellation:

And the Zbrush Model:

Pardon the Dust

2010-02-04T08:23:00.000-08:00

Yep, it's one of those "it's been a while" posts. This poor neglected blog will be going through some changes and much needed updates. About time, eh?

Mythologies DS: Concepts

2008-12-18T22:12:00.000-08:00

The first thing I did for Mythologies. Myself, and 2 other artists completed all of the concepting. I think the idea was not to take ourselves too seriously. Here are some of my samples.
This Medusa concept was rejected and replaced by a drawing that the art lead did, so this was never colored. But since I was one of the guys that made the character models somehow this is the version that made it into the game…

1st version of the mummy

Cyclops. I was never really happy with the pose and the way the cloth looked. Oh well.

The Fire Giant made it on the back of the box and a few gaming sites.

Mythologies DS: Cinematic!

2008-12-18T20:16:00.000-08:00

We were going to try to do an opening cinema. And I think we all had brain damage for trying. Anyways, that lasted for about a month when we realized the workload was just too much with what we had scheduled and trying to add a cinematic on top of that. I managed to get a few high rez models in the works but sadly wasn’t able to finish them. This model, Hapsetshut, ended up being the most complete. Work done in Zbrush.

Mythologies DS: Portraits

2008-12-17T10:39:00.000-08:00

These were some of the last things to be finished by me. Started the work way late into the project because there was so much else to do before these. I think there was over 20(?) portraits in total.

Anubite portrait used in the title screen. I did some clean up to the original concept piece.

Copyright THQ.

The game nobody played…

2008-12-17T09:48:00.000-08:00

Disney Friends for the Nintendo DS. Think Nintendogs with Disney Characters connected via a central hub. I think it was around 19-20 locations for the four characters and the opening cinema. Everything you see in these background shots I did: from the layout, modeling, texturing, lighting, plus background animation, as well as developing the day and night system and weather maps. Ugh, that’s a mouthful. I think Derek and I did a pretty good job considering how limited we were, way more than other 3D DS titles that the studio has done, plus we had to do it all with a free moving 3D camera.

Opening cut scene:

Stitch:

Pooh:

Guardian Lounge:

Simba:

Copyright Disney.

Thief Stair Climb

2008-04-08T20:41:00.001-07:00

Did an update of sorts because the original bugged me so. Not a character style I'm used to doing but I was trying something new. Now I'm done with this and moving on.

Here's the simplified base image without all the overworked fancy color shading. I almost prefer the character in this form even without the feet.

Concept Sketches

2008-03-09T00:44:00.000-08:00

A mix of some concept sketches. It was for an internal project that was cancelled. Along with the sketches (there were more, these were the ones I liked) I also had to create 3 full 3d models with textures in a 2 week period.

Furby!

2008-03-08T00:34:00.000-08:00

Old Painting. It still remains to be the fastest non-digital thing I've painted and completed: only 15 mins. Done with Acrylics on a piece of cardboard.

Sketches!

2008-02-16T16:24:00.000-08:00

About time to throw up some artwork! Yeah!
It’s been many many years since I’ve had anything on the net so I might as well start with some random sketches done in ’07: