Sketches

Today I worked on designing a stylized character. Props to my coworker for the paper texture, which I use all the time, and also to Hadi Tabasi, my inspiration for this small project. I think you can tell which one I like the most, although the one on the end is nice at 3/4 view, I couldn't get a profile I was happy with.

Photoshop, as usual. For those who care, I used 3 adjustment layers to add form on top of the line work - 2 curves to darken and 1 curve to lighten. I used 2 custom brushes, one that looks like marker on watercolor paper for the sketching, and one that looks like an oil brush for the tonal work.

I will be modeling the head in the near future using ZBrush and Maya.

My Sweet, Sweet Car

So, I had another vivid dream last night. It was kind of weird, but I wanted to record it anyways... I guess it's just because I remember most of it now, so why not?

The coolest thing about the dream is the car I had. I'm not a car guy, but this car was pretty cool. It looked almost exactly like this GTO. It was sitting in my garage, only the doors, hood, trunk and body panels were laying on a work bench. I was packing the car with as many of my belongings as I could, getting ready for a long relocation and life on the run from something, the police perhaps? I'd place bags or throw shoes into spaces in the car, and when it was full I would put the body panel back on. Not like using secret cargo holds, the panels were off to make for easier access throwing stuff inside.

I was living with roommates, and they didn't know what was really going on. I had flashes of memories of what happened earlier, I think the night before. I was driving in the snow, swerved around a corner and hit a guy, and I told everyone he died. Even though I don't drink, I was a little tipsy at the time this happened. Supposedly I was off the hook for some reason, but the real sequence of events was quite different from the story I told, and that was why I was getting out of town.

In another feature-film-like sequence of shots, I came swerving around a corner as I told in the story. However, the man I said I hit, looked at me with wide eyes as I came toward him. I knew him to be the man I was sent to kill. I slid to a stop, fishtailing the back end in the snow. Running out of the car, I tackled the guy as he tried to escape, sat on his chest and put my hands on his face until he stopped moving.

That was why I was getting out of Dodge. It was just a matter of time before the investigation by the police would lead them knocking down my door...

Then I woke up and poured some Kix for a confused Miles and whiny Anna (what happened to the Rainbow Cereal??). A little sprinkled sugar on top solved both problems.

I hope my dream doesn't disturb anyone, but I would love to hear some interpretations.

Some more DS Sketches

The b/w sketches were done at the mall today while the kids were running around in the play area. It was really crowded...

I need to paint more on my DS!

Figure Drawing Demo by Nathan Fowkes

I have a lot of art blogs in my reader. I love to see what people are doing, and be inspired by talented artists. Nathan Fowkes is a recent add, and I am in constant amazement of his prowess. He has two blogs, one for landscape sketches and another for more figure drawing. I just wanted to share this demo with all you artists out there, because Nathan inspires me with every post.

Good Eats

When we got married, my wife informed me that she didn't know how to cook. Of course, I loved her anyway and told her it didn't matter.

But it did.

Growing up, my mother cooked all the time. She baked Christmas treats until she realized she was gaining weight from mid-production sampling. She made strange Chinese food and green bean casseroles with crushed cracker topping. She baked red bean cookies and meatloaf. I am sad that she doesn't cook as much anymore, now that all the kids have left the house, but I will always have fond memories of the food we enjoyed there.

I used to sneak my Dad's cranberry juice after he had his kidney stones.

I also used to stuff my mouth full of food I didn't want to eat, excuse myself to the bathroom (with a full mouth), spit out the food in some toilet paper and flush it down. Yeah, I'm not proud of it, but it is what it is.

Despite all the complaining my siblings and I did, I secretly enjoyed her cold Ginger Chicken and Sunday Macaroni Soup.

Here are some of my other favorite things my Mom made, in no particular order:

- Pasta Carbonara (learned authentically from an Italian woman), which we called "Bacon and Egg Pasta"
- Zhong zi
- Soy Sauce Eggs
- Beef Tongue (just kidding - that was gross. Like french kissing a cow)
- Early morning hot breakfast waiting in the heated oven (I can't believe she got up at 5am to make breakfast!)
- Roast beef on rye
- Almond Jello
- Chinese Tapioca
- Turkey stuff with sticky rice and cooked with Chinese spices
- Lobuo soup
- Paperstick (inside joke)
- Bao zi

My wife's cooking now has tremendously grown since we were first married. We now know how to boil eggs, and some other pretty cool stuff too! If you don't believe me, just go here and check out the cool food she makes for us to enjoy.

Even as I type, she is making Molasses Spice Cookies (aka Gingersnaps). They are to DIE for.

Calling all Geeks!

Ok, so I'm not really going to be writing an Ode here. In fact, I'm so lazy that I'm not even going to Google "Ode", because I really don't know what an Ode exactly is. I am, however, going to describe to you how old my computer is. I have had this machine for over 3 years now, and it was an old workstation from a previous employer that I purchased. At the time, it was pretty spiffy and not a horrible machine. In fact, it's still a pretty decent machine. However, I am trying to work more on hi-resolution digital sculpting, and for that I will need some beefier hardware.

I've created a wishlist on Newegg for my Dream Machine. Q6600 Quad Core processor, 4gb DDR3 RAM to start with, and a nice overclocking motherboard with dual graphics card compatibility. Does this sound greedy? I don't really care. I need power! And I need it to last for awhile, even though Intel is on the cusp of a new age.

To fund my dreams, I am trying to get some freelance gigs. I've done a few logo designs for family and friends, but I'm really looking for more lucrative projects. So, if you know anyone who needs a high-end concept painting or 3d Model/texture, please send them my way! My portfolio (outdated as it may be) is here.

Also, if you have comments on my selection of computer parts, please recommend something to me! Believe me, I wish I could afford a high-end Mac (with dual boot for WinXP of course!) and those lovely screens. I think the Samsungs I have my eye on should be ok... I am so sick of only having one 19" CRT at home. Seriously, how can you live with just one screen? It's so much nicer when you have the real estate for reference photos, multiple applications, and sweet wallpapers.

Here are some links for some of the things on my wishlist:

ASUS Rampage Extreme LGA 775 Intel X48 ATX Intel Motherboard
or
XFX MBN790IUL9 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI DDR3 ATX Intel Motherboard

XCLIO Windtunnel Fully Black Finish 1.0 mm SECC Chassis ATX Full Tower Computer Case
or
Antec P182 Gun Metal Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

POWERCOLOR AX4870 512MD5-H Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card
or
BFG Tech BFGE88512GTOC2E GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

ZBrush 3.1 : The Adventures of Captain ZApplink and PSBoy!

I got to work on my Beast of Burden for the first time in ages. I used the ZAppLink plugin on ZBrush 3.1 and Photoshop CS2 to start painting the texture for this bad boy. ZAppLink allows you to take a projection of a 3D model from ZBrush and paint on it in your program of choice. It then projects what you paint back onto your model, using whatever UVs it has already. Generally a pretty nifty tool, because you don't have to worry about seams along UV edges. And who wants to paint in anything but Photoshop and Painter?

I'm pretty happy with the progress so far. One of the things I wanted to challenge myself with was making this texture fully hand-painted, or in other words, not using photographs to overlay or add detail. To do this, I made a few new Photoshop brushes, which you could download from my website if my FTP server were working... For those few of you interested, email me and I'll send it to you personally. I also used a pretty standard soft and hard circular brush. Shown below are the images I used for my brushes, so if you're adventurous you can play around with the custom brush settings in Photoshop and get something unique. See if you can tell where I used each brush in the texture!