Desert Tower | Concept Art

I am really enjoying this concept art thing.  I have been able to produce allot of really effective concept art and it has put me in a mode that lets me draw with ease.  I am feeling better about character design and environment design.  I am feeling up to the task.  And, thank goodness, it is going to be a huge task.

I will definitely post some more stuff.  Including character designs and fonts.

But a little news on things to come.  We are picking up an outside app project, and interactive children s book.  I won't be able to say much more, but I wanted everyone know that blog posts may be a little scarce for the coming month.  But again they may not.  I might plan ahead a little bit on my posts to fill the famine.

Concept Art Among Other Things

Again, sorry for the lack of posting.  I have been busy with a few things.

First, Thor Media's new live wallpaper has been delayed for a couple weeks, so I have been working around that.  Also, I have picked up a smaller VFX job.  Just some small tracking and green screen work, which I will post a little later on.

But, in between things I have been able to tidy up the script for our up coming game, and work on some concept art.

I decided to tackle some of the environments first.  There are good reasons to do this from a production stand point, but the main reason why I started painting environments is because I have very little experience in painting imagined environments.  Especially long shots of out door environments.  So, to see where I stand on that skill-wise I did a few paintings of some environments in the game.

And, to give myself a little critique, I have a long way to go.  I think the lighting in the painting with the sunset is good, but it struggles because there really isn't anything special about it.  I know when designing for video games, the worlds are very, very small, compared to the real world.  So to liven up these imaginary worlds, they need to have things exaggerated, things that stand out.  In fact from what I know, it is very similar to character design.

Then the Mountain Slope painting lacks depth.  I was trying to go for a more diffused lighting, but there is obviously much to learn before I can pull it off.  Direct lighting seems to be easier to work with right now.

I did record one of the paintings, I hope you enjoy.  Let me know what you think, or if you might have some good references for me to look at.  There will be allot of learning in the next couple months on the this project.

And speaking of learning.  I just got an awesome new art book.  It's called " The Art of Journey".  It includes a ton of the production art.  From doodles to finished concept art.  And what amazes me is that most of the art was done by one person.  It gives me allot of hope in this project we have just started.  I am thinking about using the book as a model for the kind of process I should go through to produce the art for this game.

Templar Nation | Wrap Up

This post has been waiting in the cellar for a long time to come out.  And I am glad to finally be able to talk about this production.

I have posted about Templar Nation a few times before.  But here is a run down of the project if you don't want to spend the time reading earlier posts.

Around December 2011 Thor Media LLC was approached by Joseph James Films to handle the CG and some camera work for their next movie.  Called Templar Nation.  A film that runs in the same vein as Indiana Jones with a mix of Nation Treasure.

Our company was, and still is, new to producing good CG.  In this case environments.  But we jumped on the ball and started to learn about motion tracking/mach moving and proper green screen practices.  Its funny how these thing work out.

(Unfortunately, because of bad planning, we had too small of a green screen studio to work with.)

Right when we needed the ability to do 3D tracking, Blender had just been making updates in that direction.  Which is something that I am really thankful for, as I have gained quite a liking to the process of match moving.

The film went into full production about mid-January, and finished filming two weeks later.  Jacob, Bryce, and I was responsible for recording information for match moving, and making sure that the green screen and match moving work was done right, on set.  We ran into a slew of problems with this, which I will get into later.

(I got to do some character design!)

Bryce, Jacob, and I were very much involved with post-production, as you might have already guessed.   But due to lack of budget Bryce and I had to stop working on post production work.  This was due to poor pre-production, since most of the design work for CG sets, props, etc., was done in post production.  Reducing the amount of time we could actually work on tracking and compostiting.

But regardless of us being involved with pre-production, Jacob continued on, and a final product will be sold to another studio in the near future.

But before I get into the the great things that came out of the project, I would like to talk about some of the road bumps we had during production.

The first thing I learned was, pre-production is a must.  Not just for getting a script together, finding locations, finding actors, finding sponsors, etc.  But also for CG work.  Something we did not have the time or money for, was a storyboard for the CG scenes.  Storyboards are essential for CG sequences for various reasons.

 First, it will save time in the long run. There is a big difference between going onto a green screen set with a physical picture in your hand of what the shot will look like, and going on set with no idea of what the final shot will look like.  The actors and director will obviously have a better idea of what the characters are interacting with.  Lighting the scene is actually doable because you have an idea of what the final shot will look like.  It is hard to grasp correct lighting when all that you are looking at are green walls.

Another good reason for doing a CG storyboard is that it can help the artist or designer image what should be in the shot.  For example.  The artist is thinking about adding a balcony to the side of a CG building in a outdoor party scene.  If the artist doesn't know what the shots are, how can he/she know if they will need to design and create a balcony for the building.  If you are going to have a balcony in the back ground, should certain details be added to it, like a group of people having a conversation on the balcony.

My point is, is without a storyboard there will be no way to consider certain details that cannot be thought of during shooting.  It saves time, money, and headaches for all those involved.

This really was the one thing that made the production very difficult for most of those involved.  And because of it, this has become one of my requirements before becoming heavily involved in a large production again.

As you have probably already seen, we worked on everything from full CG environments to props.  So overall it was a great learning process that provided some things that we can show off.

Now there are a whole bunch of things I could continue rambling on about this production, but I won't.  I am willing to answer any questions you many have, in the comments.

To close this whole thing up in my mind, I would like to thank Bryce and Jacob with all of their help on the CG end of things.  And besides listening to me complain allot, Jacob did the bulk of composting, while Bryce helped me with allot of the design work on the 3D environments.

Without their help we wouldn't have been able to get out what we did.

We hope, if the movie sells, they will want Thor Media to do another pass on the CG.  Because of budget and time, there were allot of sacrifices made to quality.  And it would be great for our portfolio, to go through and polish what we have.  I'm crossing my fingers.

Some Recent Successes

Like usual, I give my apologies for not posting for a while.  But there are good reasons for that.

Thor Media has been working hard to get one of our apps advertised.  Since we are a new and small company, and very much lacking in experience, we have been going through some tough learning processes.  Lots of discussions, arguments, tweaking, frustration, and success.

I posted about our new Solar Power Live Wallpaper a few weeks ago, and since then we have been working on a new live wallpaper, starting production on a new game, and figuring out how to advertise our apps.  We are just starting to see some success, and we are pulling in revenue with Solar Power Live Wallpaper.  We are thankful for everyone's support and the good reviews, it all goes along way for your benefit, and ours.

We started developing apps around May, and it is just starting to bare fruit. Glad to see that all the hard work isn't going to waste.

But, about that new live wallpaper that we are working on.  Here are a few screenshots of what we have so far.  (Sorry no video yet).



Bryce was able to program a random vine generator.  Add a few assets that look like water color, and then some color control, and you have developed a very interesting to watch, and a visually appealing live wallpaper.

We are really excited about this one because there is nothing like it on the market right now.  Stay tuned for more details on that.

That game I mentioned.  I did so just to get you excited.  I won't post any details this time around, but when we finish up the script, and I start churning out some concept art, I will post more about it then.  This project has been our main goal since we started developing apps and I will make sure to keep you all well informed.

A final note.  I am participating in another CGHub.com competition.  The theme is Zelda Redux.  I already have a decent idea and some sketches put together.  I am also planning on recording my process for this painting as well and posting that.

Solar Power Live Wallpaper

Here it is, as promised.  Solar Power live wallpaper.  This is the most recent app from Thor Media LLC.  And I have to say, it really is awesome.

Anyone who is into astronomy or sci-fi is going to love this.

Basically, it is a star that you have complete control of.  You can fly around it, change the colors, tap and unleash a few flares to destroy the surrounding populated planets, add some orbiting asteroides, etc...  

We have a big update that is going to improve changing the settings, and make it so it never goes over 40mb of ram.  It is really cool and I hope you will take the time to enjoy it, if you have an Android device.

And like usual, I would like to give thanks to our programmer, Bryce Thorup.  He is very talented, and without him, we would be no where with this stuff.  I would also like to thank Eric, kathleen, Lance, Jacob, and julie.  For there input and any additional work that they put in.  All of their great input helped create this, fun, visual masterpiece to our Android devices.

My involvement inclued, modeling, texturing, animation, camera placement (composition), functionality design, and overall art director.  The programs that I used to create assets were Blender and the Gimp.  This one has been a while in the making, but it was well worth it.

What Have I Been Doing In Blender Lately?

Blender is still in my main pipeline, and it is doing good.

This last week I have been doing a commercial for one of Thor Media's new apps.  Solar Power, which was released last week.  I suggest that you go pick up a copy, it's awesome.  I will be doing a post about it soon enough, if you wish to wait for some details on it.

Here are a few screens of the composite.  Guaranteed to make your brain overload.


Lots O' Fun.

As you see in the picture, the compositing is a little... Involved.  And I have to say, for this kind of work, Blender is capable, but not the most efficient.  A program, like Adobe After Effects would be more ideal for this kind of situation.  But, it seems that every time I use the compositor in Blender.  I learn something new.  So I stick with it, on most of my projects.

This one is actually kind of a mess.  Simply because I don't have it optimized for the sequence editor.  This isn't a big issue, it just makes it a little messy, and a bit harder to do small adjustments.  But everything from keying the green screen to color correction is done is a single run, which is a huge plus for Blender.  Not having to jump between a bunch of separate programs is a blessing, in that there is only one interface and set of controls needed to be learned.


I will probably do another post show it separated out into different scenes and optimized for the sequence editor.  And, of course, I will post the final commercial when it is finished.

Lucky Paper Lantern | Live Wallpaper

Another wonderful app by Thor Media LLC.  Lucky Paper Lantern.

Again, I would like to thank Bryce, Eric, Kathleen, Julie and Jacob, for all of their input in making this a visually and functionally fantastic live wallpaper.  Make sure to check this one out.

There is a free version of Lucky Paper Lantern you can download here.  But I suggest you go for the full version here.  Not only is it worth the $0.99 we are asking, but you are supporting what we are doing.

Here is the current description:

""
Get your own, 3D, lucky paper lantern for the background of your Android device! This app is for anyone who likes anything about Japan, Korea, Singapore or China. Or if you like to show off how beautiful your phone is with wonderfully designed paper lanterns. Watch as your lantern swings back and forth, gently, in the wind.

Choose your design, color, and message to create a unique oriental feel for your Android devices background. With many options, including:

• 6 different paper lantern designs (More coming soon).
• 20 different Chinese character combinations. With the option to have it change randomly whenever you return to your home screen. (More choices coming soon).
• Choose any color lantern you want. Also, the option to have the lantern change colors randomly, every time you return to your home screen.
• Several different backgrounds with Asia oriented settings. (Old Japanese Village street, Bamboo Forest). Including other abstract backgrounds. (More choices coming soon)
• Adjust the way the background scrolls with your homescreen. Let it take its time to rotate around the lamp or have it match the speed of your normal home screen swipes. It also has a lock option.

Updates Coming Soon-

More animal lantern designs! (Zodiac animals and pandas!)More choices for what is written on the lampLight flicker optionAccelerometer control - Let the tilt of your phone determine the movement of the lamp.Dust particlesAdd a moth.

""

So, pick up your lantern.  A green lantern, or a more traditional red lantern, perhaps.

Are goal, is to make visually and functionally outstanding apps for the Android Platform.  We will not release anything unless we know it stands out.  So, we thank those who have already supported us in our endeavor, and encourage those who haven't had to check out our great stuff, to do so.  You won't regret it.

Thank You!

A small note on how I was involved and what I produced.  I was considered the Art Director on this project.  I came up with the original concept, and did the designing, will input from the above mentioned people.  I was the modeler, texturer, and previsualizer.

All of the models and texture mapping was done in Blender.  Texturing was done in Gimp.  I also did a previs video for this wallpaper.  Check it out!

Commercial | Empowered Life Solutions | Logo and Bumper

This one has been one a while in the making.  And I am very happy to post about it.

Thor Media was approached by Josh Lee.  Someone who we have done work for before.  Specifically some CG work for a short film based on the book "Alliance" by Gerald Lund (I posted about it here).  And Josh asked if we could put together a logo and a bumper for Empowered Life Solutions LLC.

It was slow going, because of different scheduling difficulties.  But, so far, this has been one of the best work situations I have been in.  And learned allot on how to deal with timing and other issues that may arise with a client.

Here are some of the process sketches and other ideas that we played with. Also a shot of website with the new logo.

The Lack Thereof | Things are coming

Some of you might be thinking, that Will has passed away.  Or, how dare He leave us in the dark on what is happening in his world.  Well, there probably isn't anyone out there who thinks that, but I do feel bad, some days, for not consistently posting.


Things are happening though, and that is a good sign for me.  I got another commercial to post, two more Android apps by Thor Media, and some art as well.  Also, as I have mentioned before, I still want to do some videos for the Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet.  And focus on Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop touch with an artist/illustrator's perspective.  I truly am in love with the device.  It has made such a good digital sketchbook.

Also, on that note, I am planning on writing about some of the pros and cons to having a portable digitizer as a sketch book, instead of a normal sketchbook and pen/pencil.  As, I can't find much about the subject on Google.

And one more topic I would like to cover in the near future is my current operating system that I use for the bulk of my work.  Kubuntu.  I have bee using it for a few months now, and have a good grasp on what I like and don't like about it.


Then, I have one more surprise up my sleeve, that should make things feel better.  For me and for you.

Thank you all for stopping by and taking interest in what I have to say.  Just knowing that there are people that take interest in my stuff makes all the difference.  Its encouraging, and I hope that I can return the favor.