Sketchbook: wake

[wake]

[EDIT-- many of the links of the first page are gone but i've replaced most later on in the thread]

Howdy howdy everybody. Been meaning to put my stuff up to public scorn for a while here, and now I'm finally getting around to it. I'm all 2D, at least for now, and of that most of my stuff is divided between photoshop rendering exercises, figure studies, and robotzzz. I won't inundate you with my entire artistic output up to this point, just enough to make you sick and not want to come back :) Though I would totally post some 1st grade crayon drawings if I had copies.

crits always welcome.

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/bot5.jpg
a little love for Marvin, the paranoid android from Hitchhiker's Guide. Rest of the body isn't as clean as the head-- someday I'll fix that.

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/concept4.jpg
1 hour sketch of a faceted alien-ish helm. Pretty happy with this one considering the time involved.

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/bot3.jpg
it's Malevolo, the fortune-telling circus bot!

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/figure3.jpg

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/figure2.jpg
some figure work-- top half are all 5 minute volumetric studies, bottom is a 30 minute value study.

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/object5.jpg
photoshop rendering studies. I'll tell you what materials I vainly tried to render if you ask nicely.

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/SP2.jpg

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/SP3.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/SP1final.jpg
...and last but not least, some self portraits. Manage to look butt ugly and slightly cross-eyed in the second one, and the third one I'm still working on. And no that's not my real facial hair, but a man can dream, can't he?

[bounchfx]

dear god you look stunning in with those beautiful things on your face.

haha, it looks good, and you have a very solid body of stuff so far, I look forward to seeing how you progress.

I'm going to go ahead and assume the latest portrait is the most accurate in terms of likeness as well?

I'm also curious, if you don't mind sharing, how long you spent on each portrait on average?

[wake]

Each one of those portraits is about 3 hours of work (which makes me cringe a bit), and yes the last portrait is both current and the most accurate in terms of likeness. As I mentioned in the earlier post, I'm going to try and really push myself on that last portrait, and give it at least a few more hours of work. Beyond that my DomWar entry sees the rest of my lovin.

[wake]

quick update-- I've been working on the ol' face. I've cleaned it up but am by no means done, because now I look like a bronzed model/mannequin. Need to uglify m'self first.

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/SP1b.jpg

[wake]

aaaaaand a little more love tonight. Some general tweakery and then redid the entire ear. Because ears are hard.

Not quite ready for the uglification and freckles yet.

Oh, and no worries, the mustache is definitely coming back. As it's the icing on the cake, I need to make sure I hit everything else first.

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/SP1c.jpg

[wake]

Ok, finally ready to call it quits. I spent a rather grotesque amount of time on this one (over 10 hrs), but I'm fairly happy with it and I think it's a nice benchmark of my current skill set. Maybe now I'll finally get back to my poor, abandoned Dominance War entry...

Anyway, I'm interested to hear what anyone has to say about this if you're out there.

-wake

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/SP1final.jpg

[wake]

Posting a little more of the backlog while I'm working on other stuff.

These are some of the shots I did for a story about a person rediscovering their imagination. I had about 20 scenes thumbnailed out and went on to render some of them. The concept/story isn't anything to write home about and as a whole it's pretty disjointed, but I was happy with how trippy some of it turned out.

Cheers:

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/SB1.jpg

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/SB2.jpg

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/SB3.jpg

[shotgun]

yo

i like the first version of ur selfp best, i dont think the more refined versions added anything new to it. my suggestion would be to be more thoughtful of your brush strokes initially, so u dont go back and refine them so much.


as for the story, one idea to present progression is a shift in color intensity/hue, contrast, dramatic composition/lighting etc. i think composition is the main thing u should pay attention to here, and in all the other work here. it should be the premier factor leading ur hand and my eyes through each piece...

[wake]

I appreciate the crit and think you're right on both accounts. For the self-portrait, the push to the more refined piece was more a technical exercise to see how far I could go. Laying down a strong foundation is something I still struggle with, which is why my next one I'm doing in oil on panel, and from life instead of photo reference. That way I can't do any cheeky photoshop things and have to focus more brushwork etc.

Also, good point about the color shifting-- I had considered that in one of the pieces, though I should have taken the time to apply it more consistently throughout. I'll post that when I get home.

Always more room to improve :)

[wake]

Finally getting some more stuff up-- not much, but I've been busy. Have the wonderful opportunity to sit down and chat with Ryan Meinerding tomorrow, possibly going over some of my work with him. For those of you not familiar with him, he's one of the rising stars of Hollywood concepting; he worked on Pathfinder, Ironman, and Gauntlet 7 Sorrows to name a few. It helps that he's a big gamer/comic book guy.

Anyway, here's that color shot I mentioned earlier Shotgun, as well as a quick concept that I did:

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/SB4.jpg

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/concept5.jpg

also, just finished this one before bed:

http://www.nd.edu/~hmonahan/images/Exercises/concept6.jpg

[wake]

More goodies. Well, one to be exact. Been bogged down with other biznaz so I haven't been getting as much drawing done as I would like, but after listening to my roommate extol the beauty and virtues of Yvonne Strahovski for a while (hard not to agree with him there) I couldn't help but drop everything and try a portrait. So yeah, once I finished ogling and started drawing this took a little over an hour from start to finish, no tracing.

The 25 hour super self-portrait extravaganza and the sit-down that I had with Ryan are certainly paying off; my drawing time on portraits has dropped dramatically, even if the quality hasn't really changed. Color still owns my face tho, and probably will for many years to come, but I think I can deal with that... :)

So anyway, the beautiful Yvonne:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/yvonne%20copy.jpg

personally I think it's better in black and white, but then you miss her red lips and cheeks *sigh*

[wake]

Soooooo it's been a while since I last posted. Almost exactly a one year anniversary, hahahah. Unfortunately my old image hosting was through my university, so that's why all of my old posts have lost their images. I'll try and replace the ones that I have and remember, but most will be casualties of war I guess.

Anyway, here's a few recent things I've done. Take a look.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/2dresser.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/5witch.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/11moon.jpg

[bounchfx]

about damn time. looks great! love the rendering on the lady there!

[wake]

[edit] Oh snap, there's an image cap of 16... I'm going to have to split up this next post.

Time for a great big art dump.

Most of the time I'm super picky about what gets posted on polycount, so I need to just post the good, bad and the ugly here to help me keep everything in proper perspective. (I'm not going to post the REAL garbage of course, just the tolerably bad :D)

So yeah, this is all stuff from the last year, mostly personal work but also some stuff for small time games that I worked on that never went anywhere. It should be roughly chronological, the opening stuff dating from about this time last year and the newest stuff from the last month or so.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/down2.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/niko-valuev%20copySM.jpg

These next four are some concepts for those small games I mentioned earlier. And no, I had nothing to do with the name "Chromatactix" thankfully.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NOgdJAaiwtw/S8DrArG7vVI/AAAAAAAAAuk/3GfnbwD3y5g/s1600/9chroma.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/chromatanks.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/chromatanks2.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NOgdJAaiwtw/S8DrAQOWEuI/AAAAAAAAAuc/7FZliTK8G_0/s1600/10kniggit.jpg

Also while I'm on the topic, here's a video of another game I worked on, though this time I was a lot more involved-- I designed the game, did the UI (yeah I know it's rough-- this game was only intended as a proof of concept so I didn't go very far on alot of the assets) and rendered most everything else besides a few of the ships, so even as just a proof of concept I'm pretty happy with it.

The first video is from very early on when we only had 1 ship type, the second is pretty close to where we stopped. Also, the ships move kinda wonky because when we capped this video all 4 players were early AIs instead of human players.
Video 1
Video 2


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/hbomb%20copy.jpg

These next two I did for my ill-conceived blog which thankfully no one ever read. (nor ever will.. I'll get around to destroying all evidence of its existence once I finally get a real website up :D) But yeah, I was writing about the Dr. Mercer character as well as how the Elizabeth character doesn't really work in Dead Space, so I did these as visual aids.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/BLOG/isaac%20copy.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/DrMercer%20copyB.jpg


oh, and my header was far more fecal sounding than I meant it to be. Apologies :)

[wake]

Back to more regular stuff. It wasn't until around this last October that some figurative stuff as well as painting techniques started to click for me. These next several are a mix of 1-2 hour studies and some that are more around 5-8 hours.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/laby.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/EMPRESSHEMM10.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/Benecio60.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/furhood260.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/grant120.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/LaRoux%20copyB.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/Ye120.jpg

Here's the full progression for the next piece. All told it took me about 4 hours, working from reference. (Please ignore the cauliflower ear :D)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/hairsticks30.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/hairsticks45.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/hairsticks60.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/hairsticks90.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/hairsticks105.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/hairsticks130.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/hairsticks150.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/art%20dump/hairsticks240.jpg

[wake]

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/femsuit4.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/bigdude.jpg

The rest of this is pretty much from the last 2 months. Later I'll get around to scanning and posting the anatomical studies in pencil I've also been doing recently. Oh, and the Famas WIP sadly was lost to time when my hard-drive went up in flames (note to self, don't name the C: drive 'Icarus'), though I'll get around to starting it up again soon. I need to get back into modeling before I forget everything I've started to learn.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/4russia.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/famasWIP1B.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/famasWIP1.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/famasa.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/vim3.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/whalefreak.jpg

These are from the 40k inspired portraits that I posted about in the P&P thread.. It's another project that needs more attention than its getting

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/officerLOW.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/captainLOW.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/heavyLOW.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/colonelLOW.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/soldiers4.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/sneakyarmor.jpg

[wake]

Here's the Frazetta-ish mutant child of my imagination. I wanted to do this one sans reference, and the best part is how freaking awesome I thought it looked when I was working on it. Then I posted it, the wool was pulled from my eyes and I have yet to cease cringing :'(

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/barbarian6.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/faceinthewall.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/daemoness4.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/royo5.jpg

I owe Makkon for this one as I started it from one of his pieces in the concept thread

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/makkonfinalC.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/makkonredux.jpg

The anatomy was going nowhere on this one so i cut it in half, mirrored it and went for the freaky look. Turned out ok in the end.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/abomination.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/sjet3%20copy.jpg

So there you have it, my life from the last 12 months in paintings. I'm interested to hear from you guys.

[Czar]

Very nice! I saved your 4-hour lady progression images into my inspiration folder.

[wake]

@Czar-- cool, glad I could help out. Just be careful on the ears unlike me :D

Anyway, here's a new one I just did for the concept thread:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/skullbot1.jpg

[wake]

oh, and these of course. I didn't sleep because of this piece, but I think it was well worth it. Also, to explain a bit-- I've found that I have some particular difficulty when working poses where the figure is clothed. I think I've just been working from nude models for so long that I'm just not used to it. So until I get up to snuff on the clothing end, I've just been starting pieces as if they were nude figures and then throwing the clothes on over everything else. It's time intensive, but has been working out alright for me so far.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/mezz6free.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/mezz6full.jpg


Also, I just need to get to a new page on this thread so I don't have to wait 5 minutes for all the pictures to load every time...

[wake]

another one. I was reading about The Fountain this afternoon, which may explain why this piece falls on the more psychedelic side..

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/transcendentilus3B.jpg

[BunnyJen]

Really amazing work wake. I love the "cauliflower ear" lady and the 40k inspired stuff.
Gives me a boost to keep going and improving my work. :)

Out of interest have you studied anywhere for anything games or art related? Or are you self taught?

[wake]

Technically I studied Industrial Design at ND, but I spent an equal if not greater amount of time taking figure drawing and oil painting classes (I was very fortunate to have Maria Tomasula (http://www.forumgallery.com/adetail.php?id=101) as an instructor). ID gave me a good foundation but ultimately wasn't what I wanted to do.

The game stuff is self-taught. I spent some time during undergrad playtesting, and I spent the year after I graduated on rendering and to put together a team of coders. The game clip was our first shot to see if we could do it, and we're now working on a new project, though the coders are building the engine so it'll take a while before I really get involved :/

So yeah, the short answer is a little bit of both :)

[GoodAsNew]

I see some big development In your paintings comparing the first ones to the latest ones. you use both color and value much more comfidently in the latest ones.

Keep working dude. :thumbup:

[wake]

thanks GoodAsNew.

a quick one to get the juices flowing again.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/rathbone3.jpg

[wake]

another

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/sambot.jpg

[Nitewalkr]

sick.....

[wake]

here's a progress shot on a new b&w portrait that I'm working on that goes along with the 4 previous dudes. This one's about 30 minutes in:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/gunner2.jpg

[AlexTooth]

Hey thanks for visiting my sb^^ Cool style! Love the brushwork - i'll be watching :)

[wake]

thanks Alex, and yeah np-- that's what the sketchbook forum is for :D

anyway, this one was a blast to work on, even if it did take all day. I may still screw around with the collar and cigarette, but if I do that's for a later day.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/gunner6%20copy.jpg

[wake]

a doodle.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/cranes.jpg

[wake]

another quickie from the concept tag thread.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/waketag3a2.jpg

[wake]

progress on the next b&w illustration. I'm back to painter now and I think it's working out much better. This one is about an hour in.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/assassin2.jpg

[wake]

aaaaaand this one is done too. Took more like 4 hours, but I think it turned out well and was worth the extra time. I think I still need to adjust my tablet sensitivity a bit for Painter-- some of my brushed go crazy at the slightest pressure.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/assassin4.jpg

[wake]

Mission accomplished.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/eatyourvegetables.jpg

On an informative note, this one took about 2 hours and was started from a great paint by gauss in the concept tag thread. Having a palette already down to work from made it go a lot faster.

And yeah, I think this is my first ever paint that has the potential to cause me nightmares.

[Medestruit]

That's really freaking disturbing, for whatever reason haha. Would be really funny if you have it a cleft chin and then it'd look like a huge set of balls -.-

[wake]

I was cooking the other day, when the phrase "blueberries orbiting tomato" suddenly appeared in my head. So I painted it.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/tomato.jpg

[wake]

Speed paint portrait, both b&w and color versions. The color is nice but I felt it lost something of the original along the way.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/turn1.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/turn2.jpg

[wake]

So I've been toying around with painter, looking at some different brushes, techniques and things, when I stumbled across this. It's basically just quick line illustration that I've worked over with a grainy blender, but the result is pretty strong I think. That's the best part actually-- I've taken a mediocre 10 minute sketch and turned it into something pretty cool :D

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/study1%20copy.jpg

[Medestruit]

It actually almost gives a water feel to it. Kinda funny for something done so quick, but with some more work that fast sketch can turn into something kinda stunning. Certainly provides a great base for further progress.

[wake]

So I'm back from the dead (also known as Wyoming), and after all the critical feedback I got in my other thread on the mohawk girl I decided to do a second pass. Really cleaned things up, smoothed out the brush strokes, and adjusted the pose a little.

So far I'm really happy with the result. In a few days a may come back and tweak it a little more, but I'm basically calling it done.

Cheers:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/gunner6B5.jpg

[wake]

Also, for my own benefit I made a GIF of the progress on this one-- may as well share:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/GIFs/gunner6GIF.gif

[edit] just realized this set is backwards... funny how that turns out.

[lampekap]

hi wake , amazing works
u really know how to get shape into ur drawings, and then refine it really good

[bounchfx]

huge improvement over the original dude. good progress.

[wake]

I'm amazed that it took me this long to get a scanner... But I have one now, so I can start scanning stuff and having even more fun.

A few months back I started working on some detailed anatomy studies of the skull. I haven't worked on them for a while, but digging this stuff out and scanning it makes we want to finish. That and I've been watching some of the Massive Black videos (http://media.massiveblack.com/downloads.html) and realized that I don't have nearly as strong an understanding of anatomy as I need to.

For reference, each one of these skulls is about an inch and a half tall. The first one makes me laugh as it shows I haven't worked with pencil in a while-- it took about three studies before I start to clean it up.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/skull1.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/skull2.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/skull3.jpg

[wake]

Scanning these together made me think about Hexen...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/GIFs/skullsanim.gif

what a beautiful game.

[Szark]

Scanning these together made me think about Hexen...

what a beautiful game.

Hear, hear! I replay it at least once a year!

Nice work, man. :)

[DarkStar]

outstanding Work!!! Great turn around, fit perfectly!

[wake]

For some reason I got all nostalgic about Ultima VI, Space Hulk and other games of that era, so I decided to have a little fun with super low-res painting. These are really quick studies, no more than 20 minutes each, done in photoshop at a height of about 400 pixels. Loads of fun on this one.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/knights.gif

[lampekap]

I love the scribbly style, reminds me of good old paint
r u into pixelart by any chance? Id love to see some of those fully finnished with a interesting colour pallette and pixel art stuf like dithering

[wake]

@Medestruit-- thanks man, I'm toying around with what to render in that style.

@lampekap-- it took some work, but I'm happier with it the 2nd time around. As for pixel art, I've dabbled but haven't really done any finished work. It's such a reductive process it's a bit intimidating, but at some point I'll definitely dive in.

@bounchfx-- word. thanks.

@Szark-- hehehe, Hexen was probably more important to me than Doom. I've put a lot of hours into that game, all well worth it :)

@DarkStar-- yeah I was pleasantly surprised on that one. Looks like I may actually be learning something with all this drawing...

Anyway, here's more fun. Messing around with just 2 tones this time.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/quadtric.gif

[wake]

Here's a progress shot on a new piece. Zero reference on this one so I'm interested to see how well I can pull through and finish. I'm pretty happy with the structure-- obviously it still needs work but the foundation is there.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/chancellor2.jpg

[lampekap]

interesting new piece , but for some reason his right eye (the eye on the left) looks strange to me. Is he gooin be in some kind of spacesuit? the piece on his neck makes me think htat

[wake]

I think this is about as far as I'm going to get on this one without reference. It's a good benchmark for what I can conjure up on the face, so I'll definitely be looking back at this one for comparison's sake.

I did try to do a color version, but it was a complete trainwreck-- If I'm going to paint in color it has to be right from the start.

It's back to basics for me though. If you need to find me, I'll be poring over Bridgeman and Loomis :)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/chancellor4.jpg

[wake]

Did some quick doodles to illustrate a concept over on a thread in P&P. Yes it is meant to be in the ME universe. I need to do more of these as it's definitely a weak spot in my range, but it was fun so that shouldn't be a problem.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/coneptfemchar4.jpg

[wake]

aaaaaand back!

Other projects and things have meant that I haven't had as much time for paints and posting as I would've liked, but things should be better now for a while. I also have some websites and things I'll be posting up here once I finish them up, but in the mean time, here are some ~30 minute speed paints. Tryin to do at least one of these every day in addition to working on everything else.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/male1b.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/male2c.jpg

[wake]

hourish... little longer probably.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/female1b.jpg

[wake]

~45 minutes, listening to Amon Tobin:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/female2b.jpg

[wake]

fun on the concept tag thread.

~25 minutes

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/erikpaintover2.jpg

[wake]

I took a few hours on this anatomy study-- the minutiae of the back have always given me problems, as well as butts, hence the pose here. To help this I need to spend more time on musculature charts as well, though those can get tedious.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with it, and overall this has been a relatively productive day.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/femanat2.JPG

[bounchfx]

great study man, that came out really nice

[wake]

thanks bounchfx-- i'm finally at a point where i can see the body as a whole rather than do a study that's just a collection of parts, if that makes sense. That last one's not perfect, but it's at a level where i don't mind other people seeing it :D many of my studies are secreted away in secret places where they'll never be seen.

Not much to put down for today, just progress on a new mugshot for my 40k style thread. This one's about an hourish in; the mouth and chin are still a hot mess, but that'll have to wait for tomorrow.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/john2.jpg

[wake]

I WILL finish that lantern-gentleman at some point, but for now, SKULLS! (WIP)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/skully1.jpg

I'm actually pretty pissed about this-- not the drawing, but the fact that i was recording the whole time so that i could go back and review my workflow. Of course CanStudio would create a 2 gig file that for some reason is unreadable / unopenable. It's not enough to screw up the recording, but it also has to take a 2 gig sized dump on my desktop. *sigh*

[wake]

recordings work now :D

took waaaay too long to get all that shit setup and working properly, but I have now.

Here's the first 45 minutes of a 3/4s study, 2nd half to come:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/skull3quarter2.jpg

[wake]

a little more than 45 minutes on this :D

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/skull3quarter4.JPG

[wake]

I realized that I hadn't tried my hand at a self-portrait in a while, so here's my latest go. I think it's recognizably me, but now that I've had some time to look at it there's definitely some small things that should be changed-- may give it another pass when I'm not quite so tired.

Also, lately I've started recording my painting sessions to review and help refine my technique, so I think I'll start posting those for your perusal as well (should have the links up tomorrow-- again the tired thing :) )

And redpanda, wherever you are, I don't know how you do it with pencils and charcoal. I spent some time today trying this same exercise using traditional media and it was a train wreck. S'pose that means I need to practice working with them more :D -- Painter IX makes me lazy when I can infinitely erase and paint over.

Anyway, here's the image (~3 hours i think), and I should have the timelapse videos up tomorrow.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/2011march2.jpg

[wake]

Havin a little trouble with those videos-- I swear I will get them posted...

In the mean time, here's a WIP; it started as just a 30 minute paintover from the concept tag thread but now it's becoming something much, much bigger. The self-portrait illustration turned out to be good practice for this next one.

~4 hours in

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/p3.jpg

[wake]

ok-- here are those videos finally. Next step will be to get some video editing software that's actually useful...

part 1

part 2

[bounchfx]

love it! really excellent stuff lately man. and I like the idea of you recording while doing arts.. do it more often.. ;)

[wake]

So this started as a small piece based in the Concept Tag thread over in p&p, but I liked it enough to keep working on it and adding more, until it become the glorious train-wreck that it is now.

Technically speaking, it's a pretty bad piece-- composition, readability, color, flow-- none of these are what they should be, yet working on this piece made a lot of things click for me. I'm finally loosening up more, and more importantly I'm getting more comfortable with inventing form instead of working from direct reference.

Now if I can only get an entire painting to look as good as that armor plate covering the thigh...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/urbanconflict.jpg

[wake]

I think I went too dark on this one but had fun working with the lights. It really just comes down to the fact that I need to work more on full scene pieces.

AHA! Sorry about this, got it all fixed.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/urbconf2.jpg

[bounchfx]

Fix the image! :(

[Cooljay]

This is coming along nicely wake. Good work, and keep it up.

[CandyStripes05]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/2dresser.jpg


wow man... just wow - deff my fav piece iv seen in a loooooong time

guess i got myself a new artist to keep an eye on :thumbup:

[wake]

thanks candystripes, that means a lot.

Right now I'm working on a piece that takes a lot of nods from ashley wood's work. After some suggestions i may go back in and repaint the bot to give the piece a more dynamic angle instead of the stiff side profile. For some reason I'm always attracted to those kind of angles though, like a moth to flame...

anyway--

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/irontake2.jpg

[smilbeard]

wow cool stuff you got here man, awesome portraitures. :)

[wake]

thanks smilbeard, gotta keep on truckin

here's the next iteration:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/ironS12.jpg

[wake]

finally back at my apartment and done with the slew of weddings that have been going on the last several weeks. Anyway, the faux comic cover is still in the works but I needed a break from it so i popped this one out. I think the animal incorporation is something i'll keep working with on later pieces.

it's been a long time since i've been back to this thread-- while I'm still going to do b&w high contrast portraits in the future, it'll be easier to keep this thread up to date with some more range. Right now I'm playing around with styles for massive armor sets, trying something more organic or animal. I love the concept of animal totems, so i'll keep incorporating that idea into these large armor pieces.

Anyway, here it is-- crits welcome as always

[img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/doodle2clr.jpg

[wake]

wip on the next one--

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/rhino3.jpg

[Daven]

haha, i can't tell if it's a rhino with a human head on its armor or the other way around. Regardless, these last two are really great.

As far as design goes, the shark armor is a bit confusing given all of the different design lines. You go from these nice sloping arcs up top and then once you move downward you've got these crazy, swirling wave lines and then straight pipes in the back. It makes for an interesting combination I'm just not sure how well they'll work together in the long run.

I'd definitely love to see more of this stuff though. Very cool vibe.

[wake]

@suburbbum-- some good points, and thanks. I think the idea with these animal pieces is to combine organic styling with heavy mechanical bits, and then overlay that tattooing and other specifically ornamental elements, like the masks in the back (though i didn't really render those ones out). My thoughts on these suits is that like medieval plate armor there's always going to be a certain bespoke quality; multiple people might possess rhino suits, but each suit would be unique just as each animal would be, and on top of that the wearer would adorn the 'skin' of the suit in various tattoos, sigils, and wards. I'm going to try and render these ideas out more thoroughly in this next piece.

Speaking of which:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/rhino6.jpg

[isso09]

Nice work dude, keep going! One thing I'd suggest for learning form is buying one cast - it could be of anything (hand, eye, nose, w/e). Set it up in the corner of your room with one light source and have no one touch it. Make sure there is a minimal amount of bounce light on it. Study that for 3 hours every night for 2 weeks. Put every pixel of value exactly where it needs to be to make the light correct. (Refer to the bargue book to see how that's done) Make sure you look at it from the exact same spot every time by marking the edges of your cast on the wall with tape. Good luck!

[ebagg]

Very inspiring stuff man, subscribed!

[wake]

@isso09-- yeah I should spend more time eating my vegetables and doing proper still lives, I'll start posting them when I finish this last slew of wips.
@ebagg-- cheers!

next iteration on the Rhino suit; time spent more on changing the details a little and just cleaning up/refining. One more round and it should be ready for the tattoos and color, so stay tuned :D

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/rhino7.jpg

[wake]

I'm still workin on the rhino-- I'll be posting more of it later-- in the mean time here's an early walking animation for a character in an iOS game I'm working on. It's been a while since I've done any 2d animation so it's taking a bit to get back in the swing of things, but boy is this fun.

For now the hip rotation is only in on the first half of the animation (you can see how the belt-loops only cycle for part of it) but i'll be fixing all that and cleaning the whole thing up. Otherwise, c&c always welcome.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/GIFs/fatmananim1testset.gif

[wake]

almost ready to color. Also i need to stop changing the design right in the middle of rendering... this is why things take too long.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/rhino10B.JPG

[gibson543]

that detailing on the head is sexy great work so far

[wake]

thanks gibson. I'm out of town this weekend but have more progress to post when I get back-- I'm nearly finished with the value study, all i have left is to finish the far foot and it's ready for color. I'm actually getting a bit excited about this one :D

[Timmywithag]

Nice work. very inspiring as wall. thanks for sharing.

[wake]

Thanks Tim. Here at last is the finished b&w render-- now I can finally take the time to put down the color, so we'll see how it goes.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/rhinoBW.jpg

[wake]

So my old university profs invited me to give a talk on digital rendering and my experiences since college to the current students, and the tradition for the sort of thing is for the speaker to design their own poster. I went through about 6 different ideas and finally settled on doing an amalgam of a few of my favorite portraits. I actually got the idea from the Truman Show, a movie that I very much enjoyed. There's text obviously, but I've removed it as it would just get in the way here.

I'm interested to see what you guys think:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/NDtalkPoster1C.jpg

[CandyStripes05]

definitely one of my favorite pieces that you have made

[disanski]

Well done man. Why not record the talk and show it to us too? :) I would be super glad to know more of what is in that head of yours :) ( i know this probably would not be so easy).

[wake]

Thanks guys-- if it's manageable I'll record it, hadn't thought of that. In the mean time I'm off to go backpacking, so I'll be off grid for two weeks. Don't go anywhere :D

[wake]

I'll still be a ghost (at least for a while) but now that I'm finally in asset production instead of doing things like meetings and paperwork I'll start having things worth posting.

The project's too early on in development to talk about details or get it's own thread-- all I'll say is that it's a 16x16 tile coop combat game. Really fun to make assets for this.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/GIFs/KnightRedHorizontal1BIG.gif

[frell]

where do you get your reference pictures for faces?

[Sayanora]

where do you get your reference pictures for faces?

The Internet.

Cool stuff wake

[wake]

hahahah Sayanora is right, but to share a dirty little secret http://www.thesartorialist.com/ is probably my most productive source of human reference.

@Sayanora-- cheers man

[wake]

little man runs with purpose

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/GIFs/forwardrun2.gif


It's a good thing I really enjoy doing these animations because it gets a bit arduous once you start adding in all the modular assets i've got planned. In addition to this plate armor there will be at least 2 other character armors, each requiring 32 frames of running animation and about another 48 frames worth of combat animations, as well as the weapons themselves of which I've done 5 so far.

[wake]

4 months huh? Didn't realize it'd been that long...

Anyway, here's a new one I'm working on-- I'm trying to get a little more sophisticated with the angles I illustrate as well as see what I can do without reference, like with this piece.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/soldierbear.jpg

[Sako]

Great stuff, Wake!

[MrMicrosan]

very much like the faces of your characters:)

[wake]

More low res animations

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/GIFs/tobyChurn1.gif
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/GIFs/toby1.gif

[wake]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/GIFs/tobyIntro.gif

[wake]

finished off that 2d project... fun, but the only thing worth showing are those animations (of which I've got two more here)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/GIFs/tobydoestheCarlton.gif
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/GIFs/TobyLightning.gif

In the mean time, here's a teaser for a huge piece that i'm about to finish-- full figure at 8000x3000, tomorrow and sunday should be all i need to really punch in the last bits of detail and post this bastard.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/game%20stuff/SJteaser.jpg

[wake]

wip still

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/game%20stuff/SJhead.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1765296/images/game%20stuff/SJlogoearly2.jpg

[RedRogueXIII]

Awesome sprites!

Neat Cosmo-Knight guy, although I think maybe some stronger lighting / contrast in values could help it pop out more.

[wake]

http://www.stellarjockeys.com/blog/fig09-11-12-hugh-1.jpg

speedpaint of Sajuuk from Homeworld2 -- what a lovely ship.

derp derp. I'm still alive. Started a company to make video games june 2011, now have 2 programmers working with me. I'm blogging about it at www.stellarjockeys.com if you care to pop by.

So yeah, figured I'd pop back by to see how everyone is doin.

[bounchfx]

oh, so you ARE alive? bout time dude!

that picture is HUGE! looks great, I really dig the latest speed paint too. I need to try my hand at tech stuff sometime, I love mech's and Hawken has been fun.

Congrats on the company! I look forward to seeing whatever you guys come up with!

[wake]

cheers bounch, great to hear from you again.

As our game involves giant walking weapons platforms I've had to dig into mechanical-fun-times as opposed to my usual dude and lady faces. If i get around to it I'll start posting more of the stuff from the website over on this page-- right now i'm playing around with different styles for the pilot portraits. This is my favorite go at it so far, but we'll see where the spirit takes me.

http://www.stellarjockeys.com/blog/fig08-25-12-hugh-1.jpg

[wake]

some new stuff on the site, namely an animatic test i'd run a few weeks back:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/RXWOYnXVT2s