semicoherent.ramblings.

Delta palette

2012-01-25T06:51:00.000-08:00

The first full-body sketch of Delta Quebec, complete with some color iterations.

Gaudy
Standard space marine palette
Gaudier
A good mixture of gaudy and old school

What I want to accomplish with this is not so much the standard space marine motif, but rather bring in some knightly fashion to a space marine. The specifics of color placement is subject to change, however I think iteration #4 is a pretty close approximation to the final palette I'd like to go with for this character.

Helmet Iterations

2012-01-17T05:47:00.000-08:00

Exhibit Delta Quebec - Whimsical mustachioed space marauder. This is my new pet project for 2012. Don Quixote in space.

Notes:

Doesn't fit exactly what I was going for but I love how the blockiness squeezes onto his head.
Too gladatorial.
Has potential to be interesting with spacing adjustments
The best Quixote-resemblance, although I don't know if I want to be that literal in translation.
Cool MX helmet bro.
Marvin the martian.
Samurai.
No.
I'm going for space marine, not cyborg

I'm proud of these iterations, but there's a few more in me.

viking process

2011-10-03T15:47:00.000-07:00

A little side illustration I've been working on: finished version coming soon.

Mulletsaurus #3

2011-06-15T14:08:00.000-07:00

This time around I tried taking out some unnecessary sharp edges to make him seem less threatening. I also cut down on lineweights and painted over some of the lines in a very messy way to make them blend in with the character a little more. The part I like the most is probable the legs/shorts/shoes in terms of line color. I'm not quite sure where to go here, I'm going to have to stare for a while to figure this one out.

Mulletsaurus #2

2011-06-09T09:39:00.000-07:00

Some pretty basic changes and I think a hell of a lot of good ones. Where to go from here?

The hands and feet are rather neglected, possible shoes? tattered chucks to fit the mullet-redeneck motif.
Along the same lines cutoff jeans and a scrappy mustache might need to go into the next draft.
There's a lot more flow in the pose, though there could be a lot more if I put it into motion, might experiment with some basic action pose to give it more life.
The mullet definitely needs some work, needing more roundedness at the top of the head

If you have any critiques feel free to leave a comment, I'd love to hear what anyone else has to say.

Mulletsaurus #1

2011-06-07T06:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I recieved the newest Creaturebox sketchbook and I decided to break out my old copy of Sketchbook Pro which was rotting away after watching their process DVD. Although I dislike a few things about the software I decided to give it another go, and gave myself an assignment starting with this little guy.

The goal is to do an iteration of this guy every day as a warm-up, and post it to this blog, critiquing it after every post and improving and iterating on the design each time. Here we go:

The pose is very static, lacking energy. One thing that inspires me the most about the Creaturebox guys is that even in a static pose there is a lot of energy in their designs through squashing of shapes. The tail and the arm I did a little bit of that but the body and head are lacking, I suppose the best place to play around with this is the neck area.
Inking, patterns, etc - aside from the little ridges on the tail and the hair there is no repetition anywhere, possibly making the teeth smaller or adding some sort of pattern on the gullet or belly would assist with this, in addition to adding some inferred form.
Rendering - I blame this on SBP, I started trying to paint in that program but the eraser tool is god awful, so after lines on the next iteration I'll be going to straight Photoshop. Also a secondary rim light is needed for this pose, but I got lazy. However, my focus here is lines and shapes, so I really don't want to get too crazy with the colors and rendering, 2 light sources max and very minimal approach.
Eyes- Very boring, assuming this is some sort of reptilian creature (with nipples?) I think some sort of angular ridge above the eyes would help a lot.

Tiny Bang Story stolen art fiasco

2011-05-10T13:49:00.000-07:00

From Sam Nielson and Kevin Keele to Tiny Bang Story. SMH. Click the image to see the transformation.

from the original post: http://artsammich.blogspot.com/2011/05/good-artists-borrow-great-artists-steal.html

Composition Study

2011-02-25T06:41:00.000-08:00

A quick morning study from the Curious Case of Benjamin Button (the best worst movie ever). Done as a compositional study more than anything but it's good to see that all of the structural accuracy studies I've done in the past few months are starting to pay off (though there is still a lot of room to improve).

Vermeer Study

2011-02-03T08:55:00.000-08:00

Detail Study of The Milkmaid - Vermeer

Thanks to http://www.googleartproject.com/ I was able to take a closer look at some pretty awesome paintings in a way that I've never been able to before. This is an hour long study from The Milkmaid of Vermeer, who I had always thought of in a similar realm as Van Eyck - Beautiful but not much beyond the obvious rendering-wise. When I zoomed in to certain areas of the painting I was delighted to see some very impressionistic techniques at use. Who'd've thunk.

Baldgirl Process

2011-01-31T03:34:00.000-08:00

Overall this was a pretty mindless study, but it was fun and the first of my 21st year on earth. A basic rundown of the process:

Initial sketch
Triangulation of main structural plumb marks
Tight sketch
Basic values
Establishing values and planes with strokes
Softer edges incorporated, increased values and details
Tightened up a few areas, added red for composition

Reference Via: http://voivodess-stock.deviantart.com/gallery/

How Illustrators Decide

2011-01-07T01:24:00.001-08:00

Anecdotally, as a child in school I never excelled at math, each year the teacher would assign a new set of concepts for me to struggle over, and while learning those concepts I had a hard time with each new concept.

revised painting by Craig Mullins

I would stumble over the concepts throughout the entire latter half of the year, getting by until summer vacation where I would no longer have to worry about math at all. But when I came back I noticed an interesting phenomenon when we began the review chapters. All of these same concepts that I had struggled with the year before were identical in content, but yet somehow I didn't have to struggle nearly as much to score well on tests. I hadn't practiced at all during the summer months, and never really gave it much thought, until now, out of school and pursuing a career in illustration.
While painting I enjoy listening to either talk radio or audiobooks, there is a sort of comfort I get from
hearing speech whilst painting. Currently I am listening to a brilliant book appropriately titled "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer, which describes in a journalistic fashion the role of dopamine receptors and the frontal lobe cortex of our brain in every day life and how it relates to our decisions. The text gets rather scientific for the general population while still remaining perfectly explicable through cleverly tied together anecdotes, and whilst reading I had two specific personal anecdotes that related to these phenomena of brain activity.
Going back to my first anecdote,

Jonah Lehrer on removing yourself

I had a bit of a revelation when watching a lecture by Mr. Lehrer in context to my ability to solve math problems better after a summer vacation. The entire principle of this was my brains need to be detached from the problems for a while, and when I returned to school my issues with arithmetic would be mystically lifted.
Relating this to art however isn't exactly a direct translation- if I stop doing value studies, my grasp of values doesn't increase, in fact it will decline. But when you put it in the context of painting, I have on many occasions given up on an illustration. I don't see where it is going, or just feel downtrodden on my progress, I can't do anything with it, it has a boring premise, or I'm just disinterested in the painting soon after starting. But out of habit I keep this painting stored away and a few months later I will be looking through and see a ton of potential (note: I'm not the only one who does this and actually got the idea from a Craig Mullins interview).
Next the concept of utilizing my studies and applying them when I'm painting. When I study, minutia is everything, and in order to concentrate on the minutia of a concept of illustration, I will hone in on ONLY that concept for the entire study, not completely neglecting, but letting my subconcious take care of the other concepts. For instance, if I am studying value, shapes are taken out of my analytical mind and left to the habit of my subconscious so that I can have an insular look at my understanding(or lack thereof) of value. On the flipside when

"When I'm looking at the screen, I want to forget that I have a hand"

- Android Jones

I am working on a painting, the best executed paintings are the ones where I don't actively have to question my process analytically. This is not necessarily to say that planning doesn't go into the piece, but that once the planning is complete, during execution I am on autopilot, letting my subconscious effectively paint for me.
As Lehrer mentions in his book this subconscious style of decision-making can't be left on it's own merits- it needs to be backed by years of preparation (studying). But when it is evolved, which I don't ever believe it will be fully evolved, only relatively more evolved, I suspect my skills as a painter will increase exponentially in relation to my subconscious abilities.

Boehner Warmup

2010-12-14T05:19:00.001-08:00

~1hr

Hair study

2010-12-07T16:00:00.001-08:00

hair rendering frustrations.... Working out the kinks (no pun), more to come. Note to self: smudge tool is useless.

Playing with shapes/color dodge

2010-11-27T11:19:00.001-08:00

Warming up on a fine Saturday morning

Brrap Brrap

2010-11-17T10:44:00.000-08:00

gettin in the groove again!

Batman Arkham Asylum

2010-10-27T01:12:00.000-07:00

So this blog HASN'T had much art in it lately, and I feel bad for that but frankly I haven't been producing that much. Since I've been in New York I've just been taking in as much as I can handle so when I get back I can utilize this all in my creative reservoir as it may be. I think that I have been missing out on a lot of inspiration, and as a lot of much wiser, more developed artists have noted in the past, everything is deritvative. Art, even when creating something completely new, is just mixing ideas, facets, iterations, and whatever other nonsense pops into a head. I've also had a burgeoning interest in game design, so this particular post is going go away from design a little more than most artists may care for, as a forewarning.

Arkham Asylum is hands down the most engaging brawler I've ever played in terms of combat. It does a lot of other things (stealth assassination, silly scarecrow platform levels, and riddler riddles) but the whole time playing this I just wanted to fight dudes. I understand that pacing is something crucial to game design, so that's not possible, but there is a definite level of polish in the fighting mechanics in comparison to say, the Bane boss fight which was recycled at least twice thereafter.

To break down the fighting system, batman has a finite set of procedural attacks, standard to any brawler. The beauty comes in with how these are strung together and animated. You, as batman, hop from enemy to enemy seemlessly hitting, flipping, bodyslamming, baterranging and the like until they are all permanently knocked out (batman doesnt kill people bro). The fighting is based on rhythm, and rewards you for having it, once your animation ends, hitting the next person on time (with a certain upgrade) will double your combo score. In addition to the player input rhythm, there is rhythm in the speed output of the game, that is: in between animations from character to character (which are in slow motion) is placed a juxtaposition of real-time motion which batman is motion-blurred and able to rotate into his devastating animation in a seamless illusion.

Fighting done right in Arkham asylum, well paced, diverse, and satisfying.

The most astonishing part of this is that regardless of such a robust fighting aesthetic, the player is only equipped with one real attack button, but yet the fighting is no less challenging or satisfying than that of a modern 3d fighter. There are 5 passive attack buttons that effectively stun enemies, and the left joystick aims batman at which character to attack next, which I found the more buttons you use, the easier a fight is, and the more of an XP bonus you get, as incentive to utilize those. But with the X-button functionality being so robust, even with a 6-button+joystick input configuration, the output aesthetically and functionally rewards a player so many times over.

This is where my questioning came in, do modern games put too much on a player? Since I am a first person shooter player, I know the value of a 1:1 input to output ratio. That being for every button press or movement, there is an output of equal value, which creates a dexterity-based game. While I think this has great value, and is hands down my favorite type of game to play, in less dexterity based games, say, an over the shoulder exploration, shouldn't the ratio of input to output be amped up to something like 3 or 4 to 1.

Although I wouldn't say Dynasty warriors is 1:1 with the attacks being grandiose in magic and damage, monotony builds so quickly in the fighting especially in comparison to Arkham Asylum

Ultimately it depends on your emphasis, but game designers neglect this too often. Games are meant to be aesthetically pleasing thought provoking challenges. But they are also meant to be fun, and fun is inherently and permanently coupled with satisfaction and reward. I'm not suggesting baby games be made to destroy planets with a button, although I won't exclude the possibility. But depending on your game, your audience, your intent and message, there should be an appropriate justification of reward for your patrons loyalty and servitude to your piece of art.

Kissena Speedpaint

2010-10-15T13:53:00.001-07:00

Starbucks warmup

2010-10-14T11:31:00.003-07:00

from starbucks in queens to your eyeballs

Figure drawing

2010-08-11T22:30:00.000-07:00

Reflective color and saturation

2010-08-07T13:38:00.001-07:00

I drew up a quick diagram to show something my dear friend Dile has explained to me a few times and I for whatever reason struggled to grasp until last night. The diagram is theoretical and an exaggeration, but still can be applied to life:

If "white" light (light containing equal amounts of every wavelength of light) were to hit a red surface (table) all of the other wavelengths of color would be absorbed MINUS red. Therefore the light that is reflected off of surface 1 (table), hits surface 2 (ball) and appears more saturated, due to the previous wavelengths being absorbed in the table.

1hrspeedpaintgo!

2010-08-05T22:52:00.000-07:00

hoor

2010-08-02T17:15:00.001-07:00

Polygal

2010-07-27T14:48:00.001-07:00

Lauren D.

2010-07-26T10:14:00.001-07:00

check'erout!

TF2 Crane Base

2010-07-24T11:30:00.001-07:00

Out of control

2010-07-21T12:26:00.001-07:00

[ref]

Morning Warmup

2010-07-19T10:34:00.001-07:00

mawninscrib

2010-07-15T02:28:00.000-07:00

Dick

2010-07-14T04:18:00.001-07:00

Bewbs

2010-07-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

Temperature study

skaatchin

2010-07-04T20:50:00.000-07:00

house

2010-07-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

droidsketch

2010-06-21T23:38:00.001-07:00

Published with Blogger-droid v1.3.5

Cave

2010-03-14T03:14:00.000-07:00

Shapes

2010-03-13T15:51:00.000-08:00

Tusks

2010-03-01T11:59:00.000-08:00

Quick Study

2010-02-21T01:10:00.001-08:00

2010-01-30T06:33:00.000-08:00

Ryan Caricature

2009-12-31T13:13:00.001-08:00

Tractor

2009-12-06T15:51:00.000-08:00

Been working on this for the past few days.. its supposed to be a tractor in a similar art style to TF2, I will be painting over the sketchup model very soon, should be fun.

The pitfalls of color in digital painting

2009-08-11T09:28:00.000-07:00

For every digital painter it is extremely important to remember that Photoshop is like any tool, it may aid you greatly but their may be challenges to overcome. Even though digital art is arguably one of the easiest mediums to master there is one major fundamental downfall to watch out for: the seemingly strange way photoshop mixes colors.

The above image shows the problem and explains it numerically. When working with RGB values Photoshop that are being mixed, it simply averages the values of each channel to calculate the mean of each value per channel. In the above example when green (0.255.0) is mixed with red (255.0.0) it results in a color in the center which is represented numerically as (128.128.0) (255+0=255/2=~128). This makes sense until you realize how additive color works in general. The lower the values, the lower the brightness of each individual channel, and the closer every channel moves towards 0 thus the closer to black it becomes. Therefore the value of 128.128.0 is actually half of the value(in tonal range) compared to it's 'parents.' If you look at 128.128.0 in HSB values, it comes out to be 60.100.50 (50 being brightness, versus its 'parents which maintained brightness at 100).

The solution to this is simple: keep your eyes open and choose your colors wisely. The example shown above is the most extreme example but these types of calculations can pop up with other colors as well. Photoshop is a great program, but remember it IS a program, and it operates on numerical values, which our eyes don't.

Another article to check out regarding this is http://ian-albert.com/graphics/desaturation.php which talks about Photoshop's miscalculation of grays in comparison to how our eyes actually would percieve them.

Long time, No update

2009-06-18T01:56:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately I haven't been updating, which is a shame, I begin again now. New stuff from the past 2 months or so.

2009-01-26T20:18:00.001-08:00

Doodles.

2008-12-14T22:36:00.000-08:00

Some new arting, mostly incoherent sketching but it's all a process right? I've gone back to my normal, more organic subject matter but I'm hoping to be working more out of my comfort zone throughout the week and work on a small storyboard.

Skybox

2008-12-09T20:59:00.000-08:00

Speedpainting, no clue what the actual time it took... But nonetheless.. VOILA

CARS CARS CARS

2008-12-07T22:13:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to reclaim my manhood.. or something. Didn't get much time to paint tonight on account of work/bad weather/me worrying about where my girlfriend went (she fell asleep). I promise I will have something more fruitful tomorrow.

Aardvark Finished

2008-12-06T12:28:00.000-08:00

So I finished the design this morning, spruced it up a little and did some experimenting. The whole piece was just to dip my feet into the realm of autbody design and I learned tons from a lot of really good tutorials. I am going to link these tutorials for my own use and, if anyone roams by here and is interested they can check them out too. As for the piece itself it could have gone through more polish and I should have spent more time on it from the ground up, but I was just trying to establish a process more than anything, which I have and I hope to post auto designs soon!

LINKS to autobody design tutorials:
http://www.carbodydesign.com has a number of fantastic tutorials both digital and traditional
http://www.fengzhudesign.com/tutorials.html feng zhu's tutorials were great for the beginning sketch process and ideation.
http://archive.cardesignnews.com/studio/tutorials/index.php another good set of rendering tutorials

2008-12-05T20:51:00.000-08:00

The third rendition of my racer, I'm thinking of calling it the aardvark, not positive on that though. Adding more polish and detail, I reckon one more solid detail pass is in store for this though!

Racer update

2008-12-05T07:17:00.000-08:00

Extended the cladding to add more diversity in the tone, got a lot of the flats done on the body, added interior silhouette and made a little change to the shape of the wing. I think some good polish may turn this to be presentable.

ID attempt

2008-12-04T20:42:00.000-08:00

Trying to work on some industrial design things, starting with this trike to form a good process, I'll be posting more progress as I go!