a couple pirates

Just a couple more sketches I did on the train today.

Just some stuff I sketched today; I kind of like the finished look of the second drawing, kind of surprised myself with how it came out. Don't think the composition really played out like how I wanted. And I'm still wondering why the tower itself is bending.

Just playing with some pose ideas for the big sword guy. The 2nd and 3rd are meant more to be a cycle of his head twitching back and forth like he's just waiting for someone to pick a fight with him.

Just some more stuff for Fanboy Attack! or whatever it'll be called. First up is Big Sword Guy, because he's becoming fun to draw. Apparently SciFi guy isn't as favored much at the moment so I'll be putting a bit more work into redesigning him a little bit (personally I think he looks great). Next is the character who will probably end up being a mid boss or the end boss of the first stage. White guy who thinks he's a Japanese Samurai; he'll probably be introduced flanked by fangirls on each side of him, and will have a standing rivalry with Big Sword Guy that will be brought up in dialogue or something.

After that, two characters from a later stage based around a trip to the RenFaire; and then SciFi Con nerds. From the way brainstorming sessions are going each stage is going to be a descent through various cons and beating the hell out of the people therein. And then maybe a final trip to the mythical land of JAPAN.

FA part 2:

Some more Fanboys Attack! stuff that I did on the train yesterday. Think I'm closer to nailing the style that I'd actually like to use for the characters. I need to hit up Tremayne and his Summon Night artbook for a bit more ideas and maybe some photocopies for reference. I think my favorite poses here are the two on the right side of the Big Sword guy, and the top left corner of the Sci-Fi dude. Haven't really nailed a good machine gunning pose yet.

Bat Family

Working on some ideas for a family of bats, from left to right we have mom, son, dad, baby daughter, and another attempt on the son, maybe he'll be the middle child. Just some shape sketches till I get a better idea of what shapes I want to use.

Train Sketching, pt. 1

Started taking the train, (train) into Burbank for my internship at Nick. Did a bunch of sketching this morning on the way in, and came up with a new beat'em up idea. Something revolving around the idea: Fanboys Attack! So I got a bunch of notes written down and some character sketches. Don't mind the guy on the bottom; he's not one of the character concepts; just a friendly chap from out of town.

Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be Valkyrie Pilots.

So out of the discussion for a flash animated cartoon that would rip on the Japanese Giant Robot genre; I challenged Trey to a blog drawing challenge. The idea was to draw ourselves as Macross characters, specifically Valkyrie/Veritech pilots. Mainly because we think the flight suits (the helmets in particular) are cool.


So I got a very late start on mine, it was supposed to be done yesterday...but that's when I was getting started.


So here's mine; I don't exactly think it looks too much like me; I butchered the eyes; which were really giving me some trouble. I think I stayed pretty loose with it; wish I could have come up with a slightly better composition though. Ended up a bit more centered than I would have liked, and just coming up with a pose that i liked was trouble enough.

This is where I was last night:
And here's the final:

Needed to take a break from 3d this weekend. Did some sketching in the dark on the patio after dinner tonight while just listening to my family talk/chat/bicker-but-not-really that every family does.



Finally getting a chance to play through Shadow of the Colossus, and I love it. I really enjoyed Ico once I gave it the chance it deserved, and Shadow/Wanda is just really...beautiful at times, and Shadow is turning out to be just as enjoyable, and beautiful, art-wise. Might try a hand at designing a Colossus of my own.

I have a thing with treasure chests, I guess. I think they can be fun to draw, so I kind of kicked this out this evening in the hopes of coming up with a prop to design/model for both a 2d and 3d portfolio. Going for something a bit cartoony, kind of WOW-ish in line quality. Maybe I'll actually get a *finished* piece up on this blog before the week is out.

motoslave wip, part 1

Ingame, Rev.1

It's been a long weekend, but I've finally got Priss into Unreal and working. There are still a couple skinning and rigging things that could be tweaked; I want to get a specularity map working on her to make her suit all shiny like, and just a better looking texture in general. But at the moment I'm pretty happy with it. Next will be to get the motorslave bike working as a ridable vehicle, I think. I need a break from Priss for a bit.

whoops.

Now that didn't come out right.

Vacation Sketches

About 2 weeks ago I was up in the bay area to visit family...got a new biggie sketchbook (which promptly started to fall apart...crappy binding). Did a bunch of sketching when I could while trying to be sociable.

Rough Colors

Priss update

Ok. So my computer died...so I have been going through a big hassle to get my files off so I can work on it while it gets repaired. Anyhow here's an update on Priss...have just about finished the UVs and the Normal Softening/hardening to make it a bit smoother in some aspects, make the armor stuff seem like armor and the soft parts seem like soft parts.

Did a few tests with a skeleton but lost that data when I was doing the UV Layout, but it shouldn't take me too much longer to redo it now that I have a better idea of how many influences I'll need per bone.

I'm not so good with Texturing.

Here's a couple textures I've been working on; not for the models I posted before but for some simpler things; a rocket/missile; and a gun. I'm not great with texturing so I figured I'd start working with some simpler things. They're both still in progress, but they need to be dirtied up a bit more, and a little bit more detail added. It's slow going but hopefully as I do more I'll get a bit more efficient.

Been working in 3d a bit this last week or so; trying to get some stuff done that I can throw into Unreal Tournament 2004 just to understand a bit more about working within a game engine's specs, and doing some stuff for a 3d portfolio. I've always wanted to model Priss from Bubblegum Crisis in 3d; it's something I've started and stopped every couple years; this time I think I'm actually close to finishing it. It's around 2500 polys right now; I want to keep her under 3k but I still have to find a way of modeling some underform to connect all the armor pieces together. The left hand isn't done either, just the fingers.


I'm also working on doing the motorcycle version of the Motorslave motorcycle; I'm going to try to do it in a way that the same pieces could be used to make the Motoroid/battlesuit form. And then if it's possible make it transform...but that's a long ways off. Have to get it modeled and working as a motorcycle vehicle first.

Camping sketches, 7-17-06; The exciting Conclusion...

Here's a more refined sketch that I was trying to turn into a background/layout, using 3 depth/value layers: The far mountain range in the far bg, a midrange hill with a lot of trees, and the trees/bushes in the closest foreground layer. I think I might have messed up the values when I scanned it into Photoshop and played with the contrast. I still think the bg is a bit hard to see, I'll have to keep playing with that 3 layer value thing.

The Spider car/tanks came from some discussing involving driving down a freeway in a MadMax-like vehicle shaped as a spider, with jaws in the front that would pull racer kiddies into it's giant metal shredding jaws, whilst spitting fire from the sides, and electricity arcing between the pipes of the massive pipe organ coming out of the back, while the villain played and his ridiculously long trenchcoat blowing in the wind behind him.

Oh, and a robot.

Camping sketches, 7-16-06

Now we're actually getting somewhere. The guy on the right I sketched while watching A Fistful of Dollars (yeah, dvds while camping, not exactly roughing it), it was supposed to be the main bad guy, El Indigo I think his name was. Good movie, but something I'd rather watch at home where I can pay attention instead of swatting mosquitos. The rest I did as just playing around with shapes/proportion variety as some head drawings. Just kind of went off of what I saw John Nevarez do at the EAA seminar he gave back in May.