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.

Legend of Zelda Redux | Twinrova

My competition piece was Twinrova with a "Tron" twist on the character design.

Well, this is a much more completed version of the digital painting in the competition.  And that is what I get for procrastinating.  But here it is.  Head over to the finals thread and check out the other great entries from other amazing artists.  This, again, was a very humbling experience.

I had a very hard time keeping myself motivated for this painting.  I originally thought that the idea would come together pretty smooth, but I ran into some difficulties.  One difficulty was making sure that the character would be recognizable, based on the original.


I had a hard time designing the outfit in such a way that it would keep well to the original, but also have the simplicity of the costumes in Tron. Not to say that the costumes in Tron are overly simple, but that the two worlds designs are drastically different.  And because of this problem, I don't feel that the original character represents, good enough, in this new design.  I should have spent just a little more time  trying to figure out how to bridge that design gap.

And another difficulty, that was self imposed, was my overall process.  I wanted to work from a line art base, to a more realistic finished product.  I hadn't tried this kind of process for a long time, and I felt very insecure about this painting because of it, until about the last hour of painting.  This seems to be a common technique, and I should keep up with it by switching between value and line.

But as for positives.  I like the composition, pose, color, and depth in the painting.  I tried to simplify the background as much as possible.  Seeing this is a character design competition, I should probably try to bring the viewers focus to the character.


Also, a few things that I haven't really done before.  Trying to simulate refraction with glass in the foreground and other areas of the painting.  Another, being the black hi gloss surface of the face plate.

Overall I am happy with painting, and it seems to show that I am progressing in the areas of composition, anatomy, material rendering, and color theory.  Some progress is better than none, right?

Love'in the Lenovo

Here is a painting (The Runner) and a few sketches I did, all on the tablet.With a total of about 3 hours of work time.  From laying down the initial sketch, painting, touch up, and making this post.  100% Android.



The Lenovo Thinkpad tablet got its ICS update this past week, and it has made drawing that much more enjoyable.  the stylus is much more responsive, and there are some extra perks in Photoshop Touch, as well.  The button on the stylus is the color dropper tool, and you can see the cursor when you hover over the screen.  Which does help with accuracy.

And here are some old folk studies that I sketched out on the Lenovo Thinkpad tablet.

Pistol Whip

(Approx. 4 hours to completions).

Competitions and What Not.

Been a little while since my last post.  Thought I should fill you all in on what has been happenng the last week or so.

First, my brother and I have been very busy finishing up our second app, and, not to brag, its pretty awesome.  I will be posting the graphics I put together for it soon, along with a link to the app, soon.

I am also participating in some of the cghub competitions.  This is the one that I am currently involved with along with a group of my friends from drawnight.  I also encourage anyone else that is reading this blog to head on over to cghub.com and take a look at the prvious competitions, and consider joining in on the fun.

I am really enjoying it because I am trying to take a more thought out approach to creating my character and painting.  And to put it simple, it hasn't been easy.  I am recording most of my work on it, and you will see what I mean.

But for the mean time here is a little teaser at what I have been doing.   Enjoy!

Mage Outfit - Concept Art

I thought I would whip up another video for you all.  This was mainly done in MyPaint, with some touch up work done in the Gimp. I love recording my sessions, and I thought I would record a piece of concept art that certainly breaks away from the usual way I do things.


This one obviously centers more around the outfit, than the character.  My goals where, have a simple color scheme and a strong silhouette.

To bring out the shape, I stuck to a line-art.  Line-art reads easily, when done right, so for a very short piece (1 hour) I needed to make sure, that who ever looked at this piece, could easily understand the form of the clothing.  Another reason for the line-art style is because I haven't done anything serious, in line-art, for a while.

And for the silhouette part of things, I thought that exaggerating one part of the clothing would add what the character needed for a unique silhouette.  Can you imagine someone with this getup walking past you.  The long tail of the skirt flowing just above a stone floor, making a very distinct but soft sound as the material brushes against the floor.  The very sound would become apart of the character wearing this clothing.

Another detail to the silhouette is the cane.  When I knew I was going for a mage, I didn't want the "traditional" staff, that a mage or wizard would have.  So, one of the reasons for the cane was to break away from that tradition.

Again, any comments, critique or questions are welcome!

Desert Flyer

Here is something that I started during draw night yesterday.  I has a little of John Carter of Mars inspiration in it.  Its a pretty good movie for those who are considering to go watch it any time soon.

Here is the Alchemy sketch, yet again.

It took about three hours to produce this painting.

More Templar Nation Stuff

Another busy week at the wheel, and yet at times, it feels like I don't have much to show for it.  But I do!
I thought I would post concept work of some pillar designs for one of the rooms that our hero's encounter.

It has been interesting to dive into divers kinds of architecture.  I have a difficult time drawing sturctures, but this project has really helped me to pull out of that shell a bit.

I actually did this a couple of weeks back, and because I haven't been doing allot of 2D stuff lately, I thought I post these final images along with the Alchemy sketches.  Enjoy!

Murals

Here are some more sketches from the Templar Nation production.  Very far from the actual look we are going for, for the final product.  These sketches where used simple for composition within an archway frame.

The look that we want to go for is more like a medieval tapestry than a modern cartoon.  I am excited to try my hand at some older art styles though.

The Protagonist

Been trying to write a short story lately.  (Writing is much more difficult than I thought.  Thanks Sarah!)  And the final goal for it is to hopefully design a Android based video game.
And, obviously, apart of that process is designing what the characters look like.  And here is a taste of what I have done so far for the protagonist.

Templar Nation

Getting ready for a trip to California!  So, before that happens I thought I would post a concept art piece for a feature film I am a part of.

The film is called Templar Nation, and we went into pre-production about 2 weeks ago.  The production is scheduled to end at the beginning of March next year.  I am really excited for this production because I will have the opportunity to help produce the visual effects for this movie.  (The last 20 minutes of the movie rely heavily on CG.)  It is going to be a hard, but very rewarding learning experience.

As time goes on I will post work for this production as much as I am allowed to do so.  So keep an eye on my posts.

Alchemy is Fun!

Here is an costume Illustrations that I created with Alchemy and Gimp.

I have been watching "Chaos and Evolution's" by David Revoy and have been trying out some the techniques he has for coming up with character designs.  So after watching the tutorial for a program called Alchemy, I decided to have a go at it.

All I have to say is that this little program is amazing.  The way you can just throw down shapes and come up with awesome designs is a blast.  And the program itself is really straight forward and easy to learn.  (I did have some issues getting it to work in Linux though...).

I am planning on using this program for a while to bust out ideas really quick.

If you want to pick up a copy of Alchemy, its free, and its here.   Also, if anyone is interested, I am willing to do a small video of the process I go through, when using Alchemy.

Here are a few brainstorms I did with Alchemy to give you an idea of what can be done.  Each one of these took about 5 minutes, more or less.

Costume Sketch

Haven't been doing allot that I can post lately.  But here is something that I did today in the way of costume design.  Just a quick sketch.