Opticboost

Royal Alien sketch/doodle

2011-10-06T20:57:00.000-04:00

Stream of thought type of doodle. I might revisit this later, redesign the dude and paint the background.

Gorb The Goblin

2011-10-06T20:39:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about goblins, so I drew one :)

Love hurts

2011-05-11T23:00:00.000-04:00

Troll-Dog-Gorilla sculpt WIP

2011-03-11T12:34:00.000-05:00

I don't have the link to the artists website at home, so when I'm next at work I'll get the information

I found the concept above sometime last week and decided that I would hone my Zbrush skillz by attempting to sculpt it!

Until this sclupt, I was only playing around with Zbrush, doing random heads and getting used to the program again. I'm being tutored by co-workers here and there and have learned a lot specifically from my good buddy Mark Khair (check my links section!). I haven't ever attempted to really make something with the program before, so this has been a great experience!

Over the course of sculpting, I've realized that I probably should have started with a basic human rather than a fictional monster in an awkward pose. I've learned a lot by doing it this way though which will help me in my future attempts at sculpting :)

Composing the image above has shown me even more things that are off than what I was already aware of! This is definitely a practice that I plan to do more of in the future.

Anyway, that's the update for now. We'll see how it goes!

Franken-Stone

2011-03-01T00:36:00.001-05:00

I somehow managed to figure out how to render something in Zbrush...although I don't know how to save it (above is just a screencap). Eventually I'll figure it out! For now, we have this! I was playing around with a cube and some brushes and I ended up with a gargoyle-block-face-guy :)

First Zbrush 4 Sculpt

2011-02-26T00:57:00.002-05:00


Made while watching a Pointpusher video More on the way :)

TAIL TOWNS announced & thoughts on crunch time

2011-01-23T01:41:00.002-05:00


http://www.tailtowns.com/ - http://www.tailtownsinsiders.com/

We're on the home stretch! I haven't been able to post new work because I've been in crunch mode at work the last 2 weeks.

On the same subject, I just watched a 3-part documentary on Sly Cooper/Infamous devs Sucker Punch Inc. and in one of the parts they talked about crunch time. Since we're currently crunching, I thought I'd do a little write up about my time spent working extra hours thus far.

What I dislike most is that I'm loosing time with my girlfriend; but at the same time I'm getting more time to do what I love...make games.

Don't get me wrong - I am a believer in the ideal that everyone needs a balance between work and play. There are studios that manage to get by without crunch time (or very little), and there are those that are buried in it for months. My understanding is that the main cause for crunch time is project mis-management, but not just from a management position side. There are also other factors that just get piled up over time and a zillion things that can attribute to crunch time.

The thing that I've taken away from my experience so far (which, by the way, has been pretty minimal compared to other game devs), is that you see much more progress during crunch time, your workflow solidifies greatly both with your team and yourself, and it's such a great feeling to suddenly see a huge piece of the game that didn't exist a week ago be playable. If you deal with it in the right way a bit of crunch time isn't the worst thing in the world. If you end up pulling 70 hour weeks for months on end though...that's gonna crush your spirits.

We have a comparable sized team to that of Sucker Punch Inc. and I felt a resonance with a lot of what they were saying in the documentary, both good and bad. It's only increased my desire to continue to make video games for many years to come. The great people that I get to work with now and in the future, the new things I learn everyday that make me a better artist and person overall, truly make it a dream come true for me.

Over the holiday's I was playing a pseudo-boardgame with my family and one of the questions that I recieved was along the lines of "What would you be doing if you landed your dream job?". As I read the card a smile spread slowly across my face at the sudden realization that I was doing it right now; I was living my childhood dream. With a bit of surprise at hearing the words slip past my lips, I said aloud "I'm already doing it". I'd been so buried in trying to get my career started over the past few years and absorbing the joy that is the game development process that I guess I'd somehow glossed over the fact!

As she says in the documentary "They say that if you do something you love, you'll never work a day in your life".

At the moment, that statement feels true, crunch time and all.

Cheers :)

P.S. I'll be posting some development/study drawings for my D&D character in a couple of days! Be sure to check back!

First 2011 sketches

2011-01-07T00:32:00.003-05:00

Just before the holidays a friend of mine at work was drawing the back muscles to help me understand how to draw them and afterwards he mentioned that I should hold my pencil like you would a piece of conte during life drawing. I (shamefully) haven't done life drawing for a couple of years and generally don't hold my pencils in that fashion.

So, while I was sketching the other day I decided to try and dust off the technique and I ended up with what you see above! I still have to practice rendering in this way but it was a lot of fun!

I'm going to keep doing rendered sketches like these to help me with my understanding and exploration of form, and I think it might also help me with future 3D sculpting in Zbrush and the like.

Happy New year :D

P.S. The above is an attempt at a new way of presenting my sketches, which I've sorely needed for a while. My girlfriend gave me some awesome Photoshop pointers but I've still manged to muck it up. You might notice some darker areas around the sketches which seem to be the result of my crapping masking job and possibly some compression artifacting. I'll try and clean it up when I get some time.

Fighter update with colour

2011-01-03T17:35:00.004-05:00

Took the plunge and decided to attempt some colour on the fighter.

Inspiration for my Fighter/Swordmage character has been really tough. I just can't seem to visualize him in my head!

Schell Sculpt Studies

2011-01-03T14:00:00.001-05:00

I was tipped off to Jordu Schell by a friend last year and was instantly taken by his work. A few days later while I was waiting for Jeanette to get ready, I decided to draw from some of Jordu's sculpts and the above is the result.

I find some of my better drawings come when I'm waiting to go somewhere and I'm just doodling. If I don't know how much time I'll have to spend on a drawing I tend to care less about what the outcome will be and nearly everytime the result is one of my better sketches/ideas. Blasted fits of random inspiration! It's like trying to bottle lighting sometimes ;)

Check out Jordu's work - http://schellstudio.com/gallery/

LUCHADOOOOOR!

2010-12-06T23:09:00.000-05:00

Koooooodo!!

I was out with my Dad on the weekend and we saw the "Mini Muchachos" at a Koodo booth. I was hesitant to get one...but Dad got one for me anyway!

There were 4 poses, most of which were just okay...but then I realized the potential for this particular pose as a business card holder! He comes with a little belt but pfft...forget that!

I did the illustration this evening in about an hour or so, just to see what he'd look like holding something that I created. I gotta say...it's freakin' sweet ;)

...and a little hilarious!

One-of-a-kind Mom & Christmas Dad!

2010-12-05T00:36:00.001-05:00

It was my Mom's birthday last Sunday and Jeanette and I decided to take her to the One-of-a-kind show. My Mom is very "arts and crafty" so we figured it be something fun to do with her :)

We also made a birthday card for her and the image above was on the front. I did the drawing/"inking" (all digitally) and Jeanette did the colours (also digitally).

I'm still not very confident with my digital inking and I tend to forget about line weight here and there. Best example is the line on the top of the hat verses the lines of the bushes in the foreground. Shame on me!

I also did a little illustration for my Dad's christmas card. We gave it to him today, since we might not see him before Christmas. I'm still working on my ability to capture likenesses (especially with women) but it's sure fun trying to get them!

That's all for the moment, but I'm brushing up on my full-body character and anatomy drawing so that I can do my D&D character justice. More on that later!

Cheers!

The Heart of the Forge

2010-11-30T23:06:00.000-05:00

I'm so incredibly stoked about my upcoming D&D campaign! I haven't played a real game since I was 12 or so and I'm playing with a great group of people too!

I've roughed out my character's backstory to help our DM get a feel for the character. His name (currently) is Arclight Anvilsmasher and he's the son of a blacksmith. He grew up learning the ways of smithing, while simultaneously learning how to weild a blade as a fighter. The catch is that his Grandmother filled his head with stories of ancient magic and epic battles, so his dream is to become a Swordmage!

The Heart of the Forge (above) is a sword that my character's father made to honour the family name and profession. Arclight's father wouldn't allow him to weild it, citing that he wasn't yet worthy. Hopefully my character will have it when our campaign begins!

Did I mention that I'm increibly stoked about playing?!

I'll probably start roughing out my character over the next few days and I might document his creation on here.

YAY!

Thems fightin' woids!

2010-11-23T01:47:00.002-05:00

Sarcificed some sleep to doodle tonight. Played around in Manga Studio and ended up with a fighter-type dude. I might take a crack at doing a background another day...

I've only ever attempted to draw my character from D&D once and that was during my first game at which point in time I hadn't really considered art as a career. I might give it another go soon, as I'm supposed to be playing in a campaign soon. I guess I'm more excited about it than I thought :)

Since I haven't played properly for years, I'm not sure what type of character I should play this time. I've been considering a really basic character to start, just so that I don't have to deal with extra stats and other nonsense. However, the image of a Dragonborn Swordmage is pretty badass, but I'm not sure if my DM would let me play one!

I figured that the urge to draw would have lessened after my doodle session, but I'm still pretty invigorated. Tomorrow might be a bit tough to get through if I can't make time to draw!

Warm (and furry) welcome back!

2010-10-10T21:29:00.001-04:00

My cousin recently came back from a European backpacking trip and I did this drawing for her! It went along with a sweater that was expertly wrapped in an autumnal themed freakin' basket by my amazingly creative girlfriend! It was awesome.

I'm slowly gaining confidence with inking digitally and I'm learning how to properly utilize overlapping lines with each new illustration that I do. I'm still making a lot of changes in the inking stage, which I shouldn't be doing really, but is easy because there's no worry about screwing up since I can always just undo or erase something and do it again.

I need to do more in my sketch phase to figure out what the final image is going to look like, which will save me time in the inking phase. For the time being, I'm focusing on my line work and general drawing confidence and glacially working towards maybe doing a black and white comic book.

Fan Expo doodles (mostly)

2010-09-07T00:29:00.004-04:00

Most of these were done on the first day of the con while waiting for people to make their way to the artist alley. Others were done after the convention while flipping through Max haig's sketchbook that I picked up from the alley. Inspiring stuff!

I'm going to be selling books at the FREE Word on the Street show on Sunday September 26th. Tell your friends and come check us out! Did I mention that it's FREE?!?!

P.S. Doodles were done with either a Staedtler triplus marker, ballpoint pen, or prismacolour col-erase black. In case you were wondering!

Line quality experiment, the second

2010-09-01T00:52:00.003-04:00

This is what eventually became of the first line quality experiment. I tried some different brushes in photoshop but ended up settling on Mangastudio's ink tools to get the job done. I could still use some more line variety and better overlaps to describe form.

Enjoy :)

Samurai Sketch

2010-07-19T23:15:00.006-04:00

Dusted off the tablet laptop tonight to try and clear away some cobwebs. Found this under all the dust ;)

Made in Art Rage 2 with the crayon tool.

P.S. I ended up in a freakin' Samurai challenge on Facebook! Here was my counter-strike:

Line Quality Experiment, the first

2010-04-06T23:40:00.003-04:00

Howdy!

I'm going to start experimenting with my line quality and I had this sketch laying around, so I decided to have some fun. I got carried away and added colour and a monster, but there ya go.

Next time I'm going to pay more attention to my lines and do some research before I start, but this was fun to do :)

Oh!!

Check out the site for the Monster Book!! www.davedind.com/imagination

Catch ya on the flip!

IT'S HERE!

2010-02-09T00:28:00.008-05:00

TA-DA!!!!!

Right at this moment I have in my poession 99 copies of my very firstest book ever "It's Just Your Imagination"! The guys at Guerilla Printing (who are awesome) really came through on a topnotch quality print. I'm definately going back for a second printing once I sell the rest of this run!

I don't think I could be happier with how it turned out and I'm excited to hear what people think! One of the most exciting things for me is seeing how the art turned out and deciphering what I need to do differently next time to make it look even better! This has been a great learning experience and I'm looking forward to learning more!

A dedicated website is in the works where you'll be able to preview a couple of page spreads and even download things like wallpapers and avatar images! I might even have some posters and bookmarks that you can buy too!

Stay Tuned!

Monster book nearly done!

2009-09-23T23:11:00.006-04:00

"It's Just Your Imagination!" is drawing ever nearer to completion!

We found a few final touches to add when putting everything together, like this little fellow who goes at the end of the book! Soon it'll be on to the proof process to see how it looks on paper! I'm not looking forward to that part as much because something will have to be adjusted, but it's an unavoidable part of the process so I'm going to embrace it as best I can.

This has been a fantastic learning experience and I'm definately going to use what I've learned to make another book! Hopefully the process will be smoother the second time around ;)

That's all I got for now!

Enjoy!

Late night sketching

2009-09-19T12:27:00.003-04:00

Sketchies! I was up until 2 last night sketching for no particular reason. It was fantastic. I can't recall the last time that I was up that late drawing just because I felt like it. Oh sweet bliss!

I was inspired by this fellow who, oddly enough, I worked with for about a month but never met!

Most of the stuff is reference from the net, save for arrow head guy the two unrendered heads on the far right and Scoob and Shaggy, who were on the cover of a book on my desk the other day.

This week I have a few final illustrations to do for the Monster book before it can finally be called finished, so hopefully I can hunker down and "git 'er done" :D

That's it for now. If you're reading this and can spare a moment, please leave a comment!

Cheers!

P.S. I have to tool around with my scanner to figure out a way to get scanned drawings to look more like their analog counterparts...sorry for the crappy quality!

That dentist fresh feeling!

2009-09-01T22:52:00.006-04:00

Here's a piece that I did for my dentist a couple of months ago. A print is currently hanging on the children's art wall in his office (which is behind use in the picture) that I've always meant to create something for. It only took 2 decades! My dentist is super skilled and one heck of a nice guy and I hope that I managed to capture his essence in this piece :D

I haven't been doing much in the way of personal art recently largely due to having landed a full time art related job a couple of weeks ago. My new daily routine consists of stuffing my brain with lots of new knowledge during the day and letting it rest (I.E. vegging out) during the night. I have some projects that I want to try and get off of the ground and I'd also like to do some finished one-off pieces (or maybe a series) and make them available for purchase as prints. That's the rough plan at least!

It's super fantastic working with lots of other artists and it's inspiring me to want to be more active in art communities and get myself out to more people!

Until next time!

Demons in Hell

2009-07-07T09:11:00.008-04:00

Did this yesterday for kicks. Wanted to do a monster/creature thing and this is what I ended up with. I like having my characters saying something but I don't often follow through with actual text, so I played around with the idea that it could be a comic book about demons in hell who complain about being in hell while doing their day job; torturing people! Maybe one day it will be a comic...

Enjoy :)

Gallery Piece

2009-06-29T22:34:00.004-04:00

This is one of 3 pieces that are going to be entered into a gallery show called 'Square Foot' at the AWOL gallery here in Toronto. I basically jazzed up the 'Hip' image from the last update ;) The colours on this version probably won't be the same as the one for the show, but I like this one for now.

The other two pieces are the front and back cover to my children's book. The only real restriction is that your pieces have to be 12 x 12 inches, hence the 'square foot' show. I will post the back of the monster book cover once the book is competely finished!

Further offerings

2009-06-01T11:07:00.007-04:00

First came the hip, then followed the nerd. My subconscience seeks balance in everything :)

It's Just Your Imagination!

2009-05-26T17:59:00.004-04:00

Ta-Da!!

Just over a month ago I mentioned that I was working on a book project and it's high time that I reveal it! It's called It's Just Your Imagination and is a book about monsters for children aged 3-5. I wrote and illustrated it and it's going to be printed next week :D

Initally there will be a limited print run of 100 copies and then depending on demand might see further printings. I'm going to see about potentially being able to have them available for purchase online, but they have to be printed first!

The image above is the front of the wrap around cover which will hopefully make you curious about where that monster's tounge ends up! There are 11 full page illustrations but for now this is the only taste you get!

I'll post more images from the book in a few weeks :)

Busy Busy Busy

2009-04-19T10:32:00.005-04:00

It's been an interesting few months since my last post. I've been teaching motion capture for video games at Seneca college, working a full-time non-art job (which I'm no longer doing!) and working on a book project! On top of all of that, I'm working towards getting into some freelance illustraion work along with priming for a new 3D demo reel! This should be a busy summer with any luck!

I'm not quite ready to reveal anything about the book just yet, but it's very close to completion at this point. I'll post up artwork from it once it's done.

Other than that, I hope you like this quick punk piece I did this morning. Actually, I did the line work last night and coloured it this morning. Let me know what you think! The weird screaming guy was done a while ago for no real reason. Just think of what would happen if a spider laid eggs in your head! Eww!

Sketching while I work

2009-01-18T20:48:00.020-05:00

Here's a sampling of pages from a notepad that I've been sketching on over the past few weeks at work. It was a seasonal gig before I started a teaching job in January, and I was basically answering customer service calls for people who had defective or damaged toys. Exciting stuff. Even though it isn't an art related job at least I wasn't breaking my back like I was a few months ago.

The good thing about this job (compared to previous jobs) is that I was able to draw during and inbetween calls, which helped me to retain my sanity when very angry people called. I hope you get a kick out of these sketches :D

P.S. One of these pages is not like the other...I was drawing on this great paper that my girlfriend got from work that is just lovely for drawing on. I use it all the time when I'm at home in front of my computer (which hasn't been very often lately).

Inspiration

2008-12-05T22:46:00.007-05:00

I'm going to try and not flood this blog with as much yappity yap. I'm trying to become more concise, or maybe precise, with what I say when I type.

Anyway, I've been really inspired by my friends over at the League of Creation blog and recently by some videos on youtube by Bobby Chui. I really miss talking with him while subway sketching. I might start going to them again as a way of gaining even more inspiration. Plus, I haven't really done much in the way of life drawing for a while.

Here's an asian guy I painted. Hope you enjoy it :D

P.S. For those of you who have been here before, I felt that the look of the blog needed some updating, hence the wider template and new logo :D

Sketches

2008-12-03T09:54:00.006-05:00

Haven't posted for a while, thought I'd throw up some sketches. I hope you enjoy them :)

More League of Creation stuff...

2008-11-05T12:23:00.004-05:00

Ilmegrath -- Eldest Magium of the Nagrathey Clan

This is my final submission for the inaugrial challenge over at the League of Creation blog. I mentioned a 'Shaman leader' in one of my posts over there and someone chimed in that they wanted to see what he looks like. I wouldn't mind exploring the shaman character more as it's actually pretty fun and interesting. Also, I think I could make it even better by checking out some reference, as this version was just straight out of my noggin'. I'd like to know what people think of him so far! The black and white version went up on the League blog, and the other one was just for kicks.

Be on the lookout for more work soon!

P.S. The red patterned background and paper were not my doing. I nabbed them from a tutorial at PSHERO just 'cause I was too lazy to make my own paper/background. Visit PSHERO!

The Order of the League of Creation

2008-10-30T10:06:00.003-04:00

I've been jonesing for some group blog action and since Line it up! is no longer breathing, I figured I'd start up a new group blog! With that said I present you: The Order of the League of Creation!

It's all about monthly and bi-weekly art challenges, both 2d and 3d, that will hopefully help to motivate and inspire members to be creative! Check out the first post on the blog for a slightly more detailed 'mission statement'. If you know me personally and I haven't contacted you yet about joining (sorry!), or if you are a friend of a friend and would like to join the league, please email me or leave a comment and we'll get you involved! So far we have video game artists, graphic designers, animators, and film artists participating!

In the spirit of fast approaching Samhain '08, the first League topic is Vampires. Above are my first two submissions. I'm going to be posting the work from the League blog here as well, with a slight delay. I'll probably post my submissions here once the current topics have changed on the League blog. We'll see how it goes.

Have a Horrid Halloween, you ghosts and ghouls you!

Brain holder

2008-10-27T17:42:00.003-04:00

I got the notion to draw a skull when I was playing Pirates: Duels on the High Seas on my DS yesterday. The visual styling of the game is really cool, and I was going to attempt to emulate it, but I ended up getting carried away instead. I'm going to have another crack at doing a more cartoony skull soon and try to paint like Ryan Wood, which is no small task.

As a cool/interesting note, this piece was created entirely in photoshop, start to finish. I was inspired to try sketching digitally again after seeing Seamas Gallagher's work again recently, and since I really want to get better at painting digitally, I figured I'd give it another try! It was a lot of fun and I'm definately going to do it more often. All I need now is a bigger, better tablet as my little 4x5 Graphire is starting to cramp my style ;)

Old & New Horizons

2008-10-27T08:21:00.006-04:00

Here's a couple of oldies but goodies that were posted on a group blog sometime last winter. The first was for a post called "Gorillaz" where we had to re-design ourselves in the style of Jamie Hewlett's Gorillaz characters. I really had a lot of fun doing it and was just starting to get into learning how to use Illustrator. The second image was for the topic "winter woes" where we had to illustrate some aspect of winter that we find less than enjoyable. Can you guess what I don't like about winter? ;)

I really enjoyed posting on a group blog and since the one that I was posting on isn't active anymore, I think I might start one of my own! It was great fun seeing how others interperated the same topics and was usually good for a laugh. If anyone reading is interested in participating in a creative illustration blog, please leave a comment!

If you are a returning guest to this blog then you may well know that in the past I've promised to post more work more often and haven't always followed through. Since I have a bunch of stuff scanned that's just waiting to be painted, I'm going to challenge myself to keep posting work regularly. I'm also planning on doing some essay style posts about what I like to call the "Entertainment Art Industry"; I.E. the video game, film, and animation industries combined. Expect my opinions about old and new films and games that have inspired me over the years.

Uh-oh

2008-10-24T09:08:00.003-04:00

I submit this little sketch that I did a while ago (while in line at the super market) as an illustration of my current mental state: blissfully unaware. Actually, it's more like "brain-dead".

I'm having an artistic crisis of confidence. Having been out of school for a while now and having not landed the job that I want yet has started to take it's toll. Fear not though! I am taking steps to stay on track! It's really tough but I have some great help. It's been suggested that I show more of my work more often so that I can get different perspectives on what I'm doing wrong and what I'm doing right. I have never been very comfortable showing work that I feel isn't a good representation of my abilties, which is a bad way to learn. School totally helped me get over that and to realize that not every day is a great drawing day, and not every single drawing that I make is going to be the best one ever. Having not had as much contact with artistic friends since school, I feel like I'm in a bit of a creative void. It's been tough to push myself lately and I'm finding that I've begun to fall back on old and very bad ways of thinking and doing things, like only showing drawings that I think are good. Crappy drawings have their merits too!

Recently when I sit down to draw just for the sake of drawing, I feel kind of guilty. It's like the act of sitting quietly in front of a computer or a piece of paper is counter-productive. Now that finding a job is my "full-time" job any time spent not looking for work is not good. The strangest part about it all is that in order to create new work I need to spend time to create it and get better because I'm still a newb. However, it usually takes more time than I would like because I'm a newb. Since I'm working part-time and looking for work full-time, it's difficult to make the necessary time, and since that time isn't being spent looking for work the idea that I'm doing something bad or falling behind is often at the front of my mind, which doesn't help my confidence.

This is a very weird time for me...stranger than any other I can think of. Even though that's the case, I am not going to stop continuing forward, and I won't let anything stand in my way. Not even me. As bad as things might seem I have a lot to be thankful for and I need to keep that firmly in mind and take advantage of the advantages that I have right now because they might not always be there. I also need to stop second guessing everything I do (like actually submitting this post)!

UPDATE:

Just knocked this out. The line work is by Joe Olson, who works at Avalanche Studios (who is owned by Disney). The line work was posted on the Avalanche art blog and after seeing all the different ways that other people had coloured it, I decided that I wanted to have a go at it as well. Some parts are better than others, but I'm still a newb when it comes to digital painting. I'm going to step away from it for a while and then when I have a fresh perspective of it I'll go ahead and fix up the stuff that needs fixing. I'm definately going to be reworking the background, but for now I'm just glad that the guy isn't floating in a white void.

New website AGAIN

2008-09-18T14:02:00.003-04:00

Holy heck! I think I see cobwebs in the corner! I need to update more :D

So I've gone and finished the demo that I mentioned in the last post, and you, you lucky readers, can check it out RIGHT NOW at www.davedind.com! Can I get a hearty 'booya' from everyone? Ahthankyou. The site is still being worked on by my team of skilled web designers (...okay, my wonderfully talented girlfriend is doing it all...ain't she the best?!) to ensure that it will work with as many browsers as possible and be stable throughout. It will look exactly the same as it does now, but the code will be a neat and tidy behind the scenes.

In other news, I have a bunch of drawings that have been scanned and need to be cleaned up so that they can...be made into a book! I want to paint some of them and I still have to clean them all up, so don't hold your breath just yet. I'll definately be posting about it when it's ready though. The book is more for my own enjoyment, but the idea of other people having a collection of my stuff in their house is really cool. Plus, it's another way to get my name out there! Yay for self-promotion!

OH OH OH! Did you know that Robert Downey Jr. has a CD out?! It's really, really not my thing, but I mean...it's RDJ man! Ha! If nothing else it's good for a laugh, especially if you like RDJ to begin with.

Okay! I gots stuff to do, so I'm off!

The one where Dave asks for help

2008-07-30T21:05:00.004-04:00

Night falls on the first scene of my new demo reel
(click image for larger version)

For the past several weeks I've been working on the beginning of a new demo reel! It will consist of 3-4 environment shots that will be as close to photoreal as I can make them. My goal this time around is to land some kind of environmental or general 3D artist position at either an animation, Special Effects, or video game studio.

So, I'm big on the idea of having my own library one day, and I figured that that would be a good choice to do for the first scene. It was a blast to make and I learned new stuff along the way too! I can't wait to move on to the next scene! Hopefully my library won't be so messy and will have a better view ;)

Everything was done in Maya 8 (rendered with Mental Ray) except for the textures, which were done in Photoshop. I'm not the best when it comes to rendering, but I was really, honestly surprised when I saw how the render turned out! Now I just have to figure out how to make it even better :D

That's where you come in, my happy-go-lucky readers! I would really, really, really, REALLY like to know what you think could be improved or tweaked in the scene! I'm going to be uploading 2 more images soon of the room lit at different times of the day, so you'll be able to see a bit more detail. I would especially appreciate it if you have knowledge of 3D and notice any mistakes that I might have glazed over. If you DO leave constructive criticism, I would like to send you a sketch/doodle on any subject that you'd like as my way of saying thanks for helping me out! Just make sure that I have some way to contact you if you'd like a sketch :) An email adderss is probably best. Extra points for funny topics! I'm a funny guy, so expect a funny image :D

Cheers!

Wink SMASH! Johann...evaporate?!

2008-07-14T20:49:00.004-04:00

When you get a figure in just the right pose, they hold it for hours!
Unlike those puny "human" models...sheesh.

These two pictures were taken on Sunday night after I saw Hellboy II. My girlfriend and I were in Silver Snail after the movie and we were surprised to find that Wink and Johann were the best figures in the current series of Hellboy figures. I really, really hope that they do a second series that is made up of ALL of the cool monsters that are scattered throughout the film. To tell the truth, I wasn't really all that impressed with the Wink character in the film, but his figure is BOSS. The thing is like 8 inches tall! Johann was awesome in the film, and his figure is equally kickass. Just look at that ectoplasm!

I've been working 4 days a week full-time for the past while now, which hasn't left me very much time to work on stuff, hence the currently minimalistic demo mode that my website is in. I am working on a new demo though, and once it's finished the site is going to get a slick overhaul. I've got a really fun and (hopefully) engaging way to present this latest iteration to people. I'm really putting some thought into the presentation, but it's all hush-hush at the moment. I'm taking my time creating this demo so that I can really showcase ALL of my current abilities with Maya, as opposed to my current demo, which is very focused. I wanted to get the current demo out the door and into the hands/minds of people in the industry, so that at least they might remember my name come next time round. Although it was a bit rushed, I learned a lot about modeling from my last demo that I'm applying to my new demo. I'm going to get it right this time around and really show off what I can offer.

Aside from that, I've been really fortunate to have been trained on how to use a motion capture system, and also how to clean up captured data. Cleaning data is actually more fun than it might sound, as it's like a puzzle that changes all the time. And capturing the data is a laugh riot! I can't really say much more than that at the moment, but with any luck there will be developments in the near future.

There is other stuff that I'd like to chat about, but I've already made this post far too wordy. I think I need another blog to fill up with all of the goofy details of my life. At least that way people who just want to see cool art or pictures won't be bothered by all of this text! I'm hoping to get a laptop in the next few months and if that happens, I might end up writing more. We'll see!

Adios and arrivederci!

Video Games Live 2008

2008-02-11T10:49:00.001-05:00

Holy crap! It's been nearly 2 months since my last post?! Yipes. Well, I have a couple of things that I have to post here soon, but first some pictures from the 2008 Video Games Live show!

I mentioned VGL to my girlfriend a couple of weeks before the show, and since my birthday was coming up shortly, she ended up buying 2 tickets for us. It was one of the cooler birthday presents that I can recall. The show itself was great...lots of laughs and familiar songs! It was a treat hearing Tommy Tallarico speak between songs, and possibly funnier than it should have been watching him play guitar. Apparently, he looks like I do when I play Guitar Hero at home.

The three guys in the third picture above are (left to right): Jack Wall, Tommy Tallarico, and Michael Salvatori, one of the composers of the Halo soundtrack. I was most excited to watch Jack Wall conduct, as I'm a big fan of the soundtrack to Myst III: Exile (still have to actually buy the Myst IV soundtrack). During the intermission they displayed a 'loading' screen, which you can see in the last picture above. It was a nice touch.

Anyway, I'll post some art up soon and try to get some video of the VGL show on here too.

P.S. It was my first time at Massey Hall. I'm in love with Massey Hall...Don't tell my girlfriend.

Design Test

2007-12-13T00:19:00.003-05:00

I hope you're all enjoying the higher image-to-chat ratio lately. Want more talk? Even more images? Leave a comment!

I figured I'd post these screens sooner rather than later, since it's been far too long since I've posted any 3D stuff. This was done as an evaluation test for a modeling/texturing job, and I just finished it today. It turned out to be more fun than I thought it would, especially since I haven't done any modeling or texturing for ages. It took me a little while to get back up to speed, but once I got over a couple of little stumbling points it was all aces and apple pie :D

The Thermometer/Clock is at just over 500 polys, has 3 1024x1024 texture maps (colour, specular, and normal), and was done over the course of 2 days in approximately 9-10 hours. I was shooting for 8 hours or less, but ended up spending more time re-familiarizing than I'd hoped.

Wish me luck on getting the gig!

P.S. Didn't get the gig :( Not to worry though, for it's on to the next challenge!

Skate or Die...or paint?

2007-12-05T08:47:00.001-05:00

Welcome to another installment of...Art on the run: The Dave Dind Story! *cheering and hooting*

Thank you...thank you...*bows* On this week's episode, I bust out some pictures of an old skateboard which I decided to redesign while I was in college. Through the use of pencil crayon, I layed out the new design in preparation for final painting. The final step of paint has yet to be applied.

This thing was fun to do. I can't recall exactly what made me sand down this old board at the time, but it was really cool working on something other than paper, canvas, or a tablet. The design was done free-hand on the board itself in light pencil first, and then I jumped into the pencil crayon pass. I finished it to this point in about 2 days; I even brought it into college with me because so I could continue working on it!

I've since bought a 99% blank board that was on sale (there's a small logo on it) and have been planning on sanding it down. I may try a different method this time though, as I have a lot more paint now than I did at the time that I was doing the other board. Also, since I've been with my girlfriend, I've learned a lot about planning things out further than I was used to before. So I'll probably do more sketches this time rather than free-handing straight on the board.

That's all for now, but thanks for tuning in! The story continues in the next exciting episode of...Art on the run; The Dave Dind Story, Part II. (Disclaimer: Not an actual show. Pleaese do not write to management complaining of lack of a real show...but do leave a comment!)

P.S. The board in the pictures is a really crappy one that I got when I was about 15, so please try to ignore the horrible trucks ;)

Rocking out for love

2007-11-16T01:41:00.001-05:00

Is this Chris Cornell or is it me in 10 years?

I wish this drawing had a cooler origin, but I like it so here it is anyway! I was chilling out waiting for some pasta to cook while my mom was watching Ozzy kicking ass at some sort of charity concert on the tele. She kept commenting that Ozzy looked like he was really, really enjoying himself on stage and for some reason I was inspired to attempt to draw a guy rocking out. I had only intended to draw a dude's head, but once I had the head done the drawing just 'screamed' to be added to. A few hours later and here's what I ended up with! I noticed some stuff that could be fixed a little, but I wanted to post it now since it's still fresh. I'll see about colouring it, since I'm trying to learn to paint digitally again. We'll see how things go...

In other news, my girlfriend's tooth has been bugging her lately and today in particular she isn't feeling so hot. Since she's asleep and I'm up I decided that I would do something cool for her and surprise her in the morning with it. But you know what? She rocks so hard that I had to spin this drawing into that cool something!

For the past two years Jeanette, my lovely, lovely girlfriend, has been like a gift from the cosmos. She came out of nowhere, seems to have all the answers that I need, and she just exudes love and kindness like no one I've met before. She's helped me in so many ways that I've lost count, and she continues to push me forward every single day in some way. She's my greatest inspiration and the driving force in my life at the moment. I love her with all my heart and I hope that the universe is planning to help her out with her tooth a.s.a.p so that nothing will stand in the way of her being happy again.

I love you Jeanette!

UPDATE: I still have a lot to learn about painting digitally (or painting traditionally for that matter). I'm not super fond of the background, but it wasn't supposed to be the focus of the whole thing. I still kind of prefer the sketch version...but...Ta-da!

Ewwww!

2007-11-13T12:39:00.001-05:00

I'd like to welcome Teeny the tiny streaking goblin to the blog. Teeny, say hello to everyo...UGH! TEENY! PUT SOME CLOTHES ON! COME ON!

...I did this little guy for another blog called Line It Up, where a bunch of friends from Seneca will be posting art for monthly topics. The topic this month is Halloween, since the blog went up at the end of October. I'm already excited about the next topic! (Shhh...I might even do another one for the halloween post!)

That's all for now!

Halloween is the best time of year

2007-11-02T11:12:00.001-04:00

The E-Card (click to enlarge and see it animate!)

The finished cards, ready for printing

Sketches!

I love the atmosphere in October. All of the trees are dying and seem to be on fire with their display of reds, yellows, and oranges; the air takes on a decayed yet refreshing scent of change; and all the little boils and ghouls come out to terrorize the place! Dispite not being a big horror fan in general, I love halloween and all things horrible and ghoulish, which is why I decided that starting next year I'm going to begin celebrating halloween come October 1st. I've been disappointed with my halloween experience for the last several years, and I really want to make halloween something fun to celebrate again. It struck me this year that most people don't put up decorations until at least half-way through October, and most only do it a week or so before the 31st! Since I love all things fall/halloween, I've decided to create a new holiday: OCTOBERWEEN! An entire month of halloween! Yay!

On to the halloween cards!

Every year I get a really cool hand-made card from some of my family in England, be it for Christmas, halloween, or Easter. When I recieved my halloween card this year I decided to send them back an equally cool, hand-made card. I mean, I'm supposed to be an artist and all! So, I purposed the idea to my girlfriend and she jumped on board with some really awesome ideas. We ended up going with a playing card set instead of the usual folded card that you find at Hallmark (shudder - I really dislike store bought cards, but that's a story for another time), to spice things up a bit. We figured it would be cool to mess around with the face cards in a deck, and put a halloween spin on them! So what you see above is the end result. I did the Joker and the Jack, as well as the little suit graphics, and Jeanette did the King and Queen along with the bicycle card style backing. The project turned out better than I expected and I can't wait for our next project.

Stay tuned for sneak peeks at our next project: christmas cards!

Lates!

P.S. This is mainly for my own notes, but I want to say that I've just changed authorship of this blog over to my other gmail account. Nothing should appear to change on the front end, but in case something screws up, it's probably because of the change.

Bees and Bears

2007-10-04T12:05:00.000-04:00

Character Model sheets for final 2D Animation project

Our very last animation project in 2D animation was finished-keys-only. This meant that we didn't have to do a million in-between drawings but had to have very nice keys. Since by then I knew that I wasn't going to be a traditional animator, I was looking forward to this assignment because it allowed me more freedom to create the characters and put more effort into the keys, which was the one aspect of actually animating that I enjoyed. I was happy with the end result and had fun with the project. It was nice to have a final bit of inspiration/invigoration after less fulfilling animation projects. I might even scan in the frames and make a .gif animation so that you can see what it looked like in motion!

I stumbled on the images above on my external hard drive and figured that they might as well see the light of day instead of just sitting in the dark of my backup drive.

Au revoir!

Cocka-doodle-doo!

2007-10-01T09:10:00.000-04:00

Rooster circa 2006-2007

This painting was done for my friend's mom. Sometime during summer of 2006 she surprised me with some art supplies that she'd picked up from a mega-sale. She didn't ask for anything in return save for maybe a small painting. I started it that same summer but wasn't able to complete it because I had to focus on my final year at college. At any rate, I finished it up the other day and gave it to her for her birthday. She liked it :) In fact, she wants another piece to go with this one. Since I'm currently in job-seeking/stomach-mending mode, I should have some spare time to actually finish it soon. The one above was only 8x10 inches, and I plan on doing the second one at the same size. So it shouldn't take forever.

I'd love to hear some comments from any painters out there. I really want to improve my painting ability, so any advice would be greatly appreciated!

P.S. The image above is a scan of the painting, so it's a bit crappier looking than it does in person.

Read a mother*&$%ing book

2007-09-14T16:57:00.000-04:00

Is this the future of my children's reading experience? Will they never know the love of a good old smelly print-based book? Screw-em'! E-books rule!

Long story short, I'm into E-Books. That's right; the man with the shelves buckling under the weight of his book collection scours the net for e-books. Free-books that is.

Sometime last week I stumbled into a forum chat titled "What are you reading?" and came away from it with a list of about 10 new, very interesting sounding books. Amoungst the list of books was one called Accelerando, which I found out is available to download as an e-book. Since the book sounded cool, I decided to check it out. A week later and I've stumbled into a wealth of copyright expired e-books! I tell ya, I'm in freakin' heaven.

There are even two still-living authors that have made some of their work available for free. And they are:

Peter Watts
Charles Stross (Accelerando Author)

Today I happened upon the daddy of all e-book sites, that I've found so far anyway, and it's called "Project Gutenberg", where there are over 20 000 copyright expired books! It's AMAZING.

All I need now is some kind of Palm Pilot or something similarly small and pocketable so I can take these new books with me wherever I go! Yay!

...I can't help but feel though that all of this is evil and will somehow spin out of control the way technology usually does in almost all of my favorite sci-fi books...I'm probably just reading too much Hard SF.

If anyone knows of a site that contains really good Hard SF or just general Sci-fi e-books, please let me know! I'm on the hunt :D

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In other news, I've changed my website around some since my last post, so if you're in the mood, head on over there. I even made a favicon today. I'm overwhelmed with emotion *sniffle*

Okay! I'm out again for now! Lates!

P.S. I might be moving my blog over to my host soon, but I'm not sure if I actually will or not. I have to do some research first. Check back soon!

Brand New Website

2007-08-13T18:43:00.000-04:00

I went and did it: I've got myself a REAL fancy-shmancy website! Of course I couldn't have done it without my wonderful girlfriend, who spent hours creating the code that would actually make it exist at all! Check it out here, or follow the link to the right in the future.

I'll still be posting work to this blog, since my official site is more of a portfolio for now, but check the new site often as I might add work there that doesn't end up here.

If you do drop by the new site, please drop me a line (in a comment here or email me) and let me know what you think! I'm going to be adding to and improving it over the next while, so all critiques are welcome.

I hope everyone's having a great summer!

Catch ya later!

Dave Guest stars on the Simpsons!

2007-07-12T22:13:00.001-04:00

The fellow above is supposedly what I look like as a simpsons character. It's missing some stuff, but it was the closest I could get from the choices on the Simpsons movie site. I only wish I had a badass 3-eyed fish shirt in real life! Turn yourself into a Simpsons character!

I have some odd doodles that I can post up here, but I have to scan them first. I hadn't really thought that far ahead with this post :D

I'll see what I can do, especially since I didn't post anything after John Nevarez linked me off of his blog! Vas und honour! Thanks Monsiour Nevarez!

Bye-bye for now!

Franklin Booth

2007-05-07T22:53:00.000-04:00

My Tribute to Franklin Booth

Well...I'm finally done with Animation at Seneca! It's been really tough at times, but I mangaged to make it through. I've learned a lot about art, animation, myself, and people in general over the past few years. My final "year" was 3D Game Design, which meant that almost all of my time was spent in front of a computer staring at either Maya or Unreal Editor 2 (yay both!). However, that left little time for me to sit down and draw like I used to in 2D. Since I'm done and (sort of) have time to myself, I managed to sit still for about an hour or so with my girlfriend out in the backyard and do some drawing. She was painting and I wanted to try to be like Franklin Booth, an American illustrator that I found out about on the Lines and Colours blog a while ago. His work was all done in pen, and he has been praised with the ability to "paint" with a pen. I happened on a book of his at The Beguiling, a great comic shop here in Toronto, last week. Check him out, you won't be sorry!

Instead of sitting around waiting for companies to call me with a job offer so I can work on a game, I decided that since I'd already been part of a Mod, why not do another one! I've rallied together some of my classmates and we should have a project set within the next 2 weeks with any luck. I really can't wait to get back into production!

Speaking of mods, we've been having some issues with creating the UMOD installer, but it should be totally finished by next week. We'll have a site up shortly after that, which I'll link to here, so that you can check it out for yourself! Huzzah!

Catch you later!

Demo Reel

2007-04-28T12:29:00.000-04:00

Abstract 3.0

2007-01-29T16:21:00.000-05:00

Abstraction

2007-01-28T20:41:00.000-05:00

The past week has been fairly traumatic brain-cell wise. We've just started the wheels rolling on a major project at school, and by Friday I was out of it. I took some time off to chill on Saturday, and then today's been about trying to get stuff done for the project...

To help cool down the mush in my skull, I did a couple of digital abstracts in Open Canvas 1.1. I was on the BlueSky Challenge Blog the other day and one of the challenges was to do an abstract. I guess the idea stuck in my brain. Although I've also been reading Life with Pablo, which is about the ten years that Francoise Gilot spent with Pablo Picaso. So old Pab has been in my brain lately too.

These were pretty fun to do, so I might do some more soon if I can. I took a lot of inspiration from Andrew (Andriod) Jones for the first one. It also followed a theme that I've enjoyed doing in the past; sharp circles.
The second one was inspired by a the colour of a picture I took a while ago. Also had a bit of Andriod in there as well with the 'buildings'.

Comments are welcome as always!

Lates!

Kicking off the New Year

2007-01-01T15:07:00.000-05:00

This post is mainly for my Dad (who is a Drummer/musician), but everyone else will probably enjoy this video too. So Dad, IF you manage to access my blog again, I hope that you get a kick (buh dum bum) out of this video!

More art coming soon!!

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a Happy New Year!

Destroy YouTube

2006-12-02T01:54:00.000-05:00

Please excuse the fact that this is only 3 seconds long. I'll upload a longer version in another post.

So...I manage to get a decent looking render out of Maya, works fine. It's an .avi compressed with DviX. No problems.

I want to shove YouTube. Like...push it. You know, playground styles. I've tried a bunch of times to upload the clip you see above. Apparently, this one was a total fluke, since I tried to upload the same file with more keys. Didn't take. I even had a crack at uploading a simple turntable test of the hand model I did. And that's totally buggered. I don't get it.

If anyone reading this has had similar issues with uploading to YouTube, and has found a solution, please leave me a comment. I'd love to be able to show some of the animation that I've done so far, as well as being able to showcase my models better by including video with images. Bleh. I want to get this sorted so I can show people stuff!

Anywho, I won't go into any details about the character at the moment, since I plan on uploading some renders soon. There are a few little texturing things that I didn't manage to sneak in on time for the project hand in, so I'm still going to be doing some minor tweaks here and there. Expect more in another post...

It's late and I'm pissed off with YouTube, so I'm probably going to go to bed now.

Night all

P.S. Why can't you loop a YouTube video? Sheesh.

Pocoyo!

2006-11-29T20:53:00.000-05:00

Hey hey!

Wanna drop a quick line about a show that I've just this very day been made aware of! It's possibly the best pre-school show on the tele, although I don't watch pre-school shows...or television...but this gets my vote!

The show is wonderfully animated and the character designs are simple, clear, and utterly effective! Please, please, please pass on the word about this wonderful series to everyone you know!

Check out the Official Site and Official Blog for a few full episodes and some great behind-the-scenes material!

Unluckily enough for me, I stopped watching the tele a couple of years ago, and so I don't know how many channels air Pocoyo at the moment. I know that YTV airs it here in Canada, but beyond that you'd have to look for yourself. It has been sold in over 100 countries around the world though, so wherever you live, there's a great big chance that you can watch it on tv tomorrow!

You CAN find a fair number of Pocoyo episodes on YouTube, but If you can watch it on tele where you live, that'd probably help the creators out a bit more :D

Off you go then!

P.S. Pato and Pocoyo are my favorite characters ;)

GI Joe...mel script!

2006-11-26T20:27:00.000-05:00

*GI_Joe Mel script used for Global Illumination/Ambient Occlusion

Back from the grave!

This past week has been a trifle strange. I've had a cyst on the back of my right wrist for years and it's almost never caused me any trouble. At the start of this week I noticed that my wrist was a bit sore after spending time on the computer, and then the next day it was worse, and the next worse still. I had to take Wednesday off to see my doctor. I have to get it removed now, but that'll take plastic surgery, which is going to take a while to set up. Today has been a great day though, since I can really only feel any pain when I turn my wrist to an extreme angle. Otherwise I'm nearly back to normal pace for typing and mouse movements. I was expecting weeks and weeks of agony, but here's hoping that that was the worst of it for now.

On to the images! They're from a work in progress. Our assignment is to model a weapon and 3 game assets/props. I'm also working on a character model that's currently in the texturing stage. I'll have images of him in a seperate post once I'm done (hopefully this week). I'm planning on modeling a seperate weapon of my own design to go along with my character. I'll probably do that over the christmas break. For now he's going to get this model so he can at least shoot at stuff :) Oh, and sorry about the lack of cooler images. The Uzi model is pretty low poly, coming in at 418 Tris. Our limit is 1500 Tris, so I could still up the poly count to make it a bit smoother in certain areas. Still, I'm glad that I accomplished this in so few polys. Also, it only took about 2 hours or so to do from start to finish today, which is awesome because it would've taken me a couple more hours to model a few weeks ago! Yay for learning!

So once I texture this sucker I'll throw up some more pictures. Oh, and I'll toss in a wireframe shaded pass too so you can see how I modeled it :D

Until next time!

Andreas Deja on German Talkshow

2006-11-14T11:22:00.000-05:00

Wowza!

I found this over at Cartoon Brew; a hilarious interview with Andreas Deja, the great Disney animator! The kicker is that it's entirely in German (which is also the hilarious part). But! Andreas does a characature of the host on the spot and shows a couple of scar drawings too! Check it out!

Also, the friggin' stage moves around! How cool is that?!

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Hopefully in the next few days I'm going to upload some doodles as well as some new stuff from Maya. I'm having some trouble getting my animation onto YouTube properly, so any delay will be mainly technical.

Take care and enjoy the video!

P.S. This post is totally for you Mitch :D

Addendum:

Simpsons Movie Trailer

The Del Carmens

2006-11-04T19:45:00.000-05:00

Howdy dowdy folks!

No art today. I know I know, all 2 of you YEARN for my scribbles. Alas, I'm in more of an inspiration-seeking mood today.

So, because I can't seem to settle down and actually do work, I decided to take some time and do what used to occupy a great deal of my time; searching for art on the net.

One of my first stops became the last, and I've spent a good deal of time roving around familiar territory. That territory happens to belong to one Ronnie Del Carmen of the Del Carmen animation artist trio.

Ronnie's Blog is overflowing with inspiration, in both visual and literary form. I highly recommend checking it out. With any luck, one day I'll be as kind and truthful a guy as he is, and maybe even as great an artist!

Here's a quick link to his blog: Ronnie Del Carmen Blog

Also check out his younger brother Louie's blog Random Annomalies

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a site or blog for Rick Del Carmen, so if you know of one, please leave a comment!

That's all for now!

When two become one...

2006-10-24T22:18:00.000-04:00

*Please note: The lighting in these images isn't final*
*Also note: I didn't create the model/geometry*

Looking back, the Spice Girls songs were at least catchy, and they were easy on the eyes, and here we are many years later and they're still having an effect! Take my blog post title for instance, which in relation to the contents of the post itself is both totally clear and completely cryptic too! No points will be awared if you do figure it out...apologies.

Anywho, here's another Rendering class (I'm no longer calling it Texturing|Lighting|Rendering class, takes too long) assignment. We were given the geometry (the grey room, top) and were told that we had to texture the whole thing and light it for both night and day. There are a few minor things that I have to ask the instructor about, and I want to light it better, maybe find a different camera angle too, but it's basically done. It isn't a terribly hard assignment, but it's pretty time consuming what with having to find textures for everything and then have to spend the time inputing them all. It was a fun assignment though since we weren't told which textures to use. I tried to replicate small parts of my actual room through some of the textures. Maybe another day I'll post up a couple of shots of my room.

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On another school work related note, I had a pretty crappy day; I didn't get anything done and somehow managed to screw up my nearly completed rigging assignment to the point where I have to totally redo the damn thing. I couldn't even start modeling, even though I have 3 modeling assignments (of which two have already been started) to choose from, all of which are fun. Something is wrong with my brain, and I think the current size of our workload might just having something to do with it. Can you say overwhelmed?

Night all!

UV texturing adventures

2006-10-17T23:57:00.000-04:00

Hey hey!

Here's a quick look at my first foray into UV texturing (with some rushed lighting)! We were given a few car models to choose from and had to UV map one of them. The models themselves were crappy, which made it harder to unwrap. Also, the fact that it was the first thing that I'd ever unwrapped didn't help matters much.

All in all though it was a good experience. The next model I unwrap won't be nearly as overwhelming as it would've been had I not started off with this crazy model, I'm sure.

I've included the UV map and the textured UV map for those of you interested in more than just eye candy. If I can help anyone learn more about drawing, painting, or any aspect of 3D that I learn as I go, then that'll make my day :)

The model itself belongs to its respective owner, not me. In no way did I have anything to do with it's creation. Thought I'd mention that just in case ;)

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For the moment, I'm working on a couple of my own models which I'll post some process for once I get farther along on them. Oh, and once I figure out how to upload video to my blog I'll toss up my first animation assignment!

Until then...lates!

Hands on with Maya

2006-10-14T00:18:00.000-04:00

Snap Crackle Pop! It's been a bloody long while since I last posted! Above, you'll find the visual version of the reason why :D

I believe I posted about starting school again in September in an earlier post, and that did happen. I was planning on posting images of my work as I was learning/creating stuff. It hasn't been quite as cut and dry as all that though.

It's taken the past 5 weeks to basically wrap my brain around Maya. My creations up to this point have been very basic, and even some of those have been a real mind bender.

But forget all of that.

Now I have stuff to show and I'm going to start posting process images and final renders, although I'm crap at rendering at this point, but they'll get better with time.

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Right then! I'll start things off with a model of my dainty digits that I did this past week. Once I figure out how to render out a wireframe/wireframe on shaded model I'll post those up so that you can really see how crappy I am at modeling. I would rather have posted those along with or instead of these renders, but I just whipped these up quick to have something to fill the void!

I would've posted stuff earlier, but I couldn't access my blog for a while due to my own very silly error. Bleh.

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Okay, I'm off to sleep for now. I have more stuff to post, so I'll try and get things posted while or right after I do them.

Until next time!

Alienos

2006-09-02T10:18:00.000-04:00

Free at last!

I've finished working for the summer! Yay! This means more time to draw and, now with school starting again, time to learn 3D! I'm terribly excited about this semester/year. The thought of learning a bunch of new software, being able to put together a wicked demo reel, AND work on a game mod is very exciting, but getting it all to work together is going to be hard.

My goal for this semester is to learn as much as I can and to make my demo reel strong enough to land me in a studio within at least 2 to 3 months after graduating, if not before then.

I'm sure that there will be some downtime with regards to post frequency on here once school starts, but with luck and some real time managament skill I hope to turn this blog into a showcase for my work over the next 8 months, as well as passing on as much as I can about what I learn along the way.

So to anyone that reads this blog that I don't know, please forgive me if I'm not able to update as often as I'd like to. I'll try my best to update often!

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The two drawings above are simple doodles that I did about a week and a half ago before going to bed. The second one started out as scribles, just letting lines flow and then seeing what showed up. The first guy was an attempt to do a full body drawing, since I don't do nearly enough of them. I have to get my ass into extra life drawing this semester!

My next post might not be until after I start school (which is Wednesday), but if I do any cool drawings before then, I'll try and post them up :D

Lates!

Sitting in the dark

2006-08-26T10:57:00.000-04:00

I know where I'm going to be on October 20th...do you?

Verticals

2006-08-20T21:02:00.000-04:00

Howdy all,

I wasn't able to get up to much drawing this week. Work leaves little time for the things that I want to do, and barely allows time for things that I need to do. With that said, above are a few drawings from my new recycled sketchbook that I started this week!

The first are two evil-types. I prefer the guy on the bottom, since I could see him being used as more of a main character for something. The guy on the top looks too much like an everyday mafia brute to be of much further interest. But that's just me :)

The second drawing below those two was done while I was waiting for a meeting to happen at work. I felt like designing a robot, which then became the "construct -O- bot". Maybe one day we'll have robots that can do all of the hard, physical work for us puny humans. Imagine the potential bedlam when they start asking for wages and freedom! Oy vey!
Since I didn't have much time to kill before the meeting, I wasn't terribly concerned with his design per se. He was meant to be very basic, simple shapes, primarily based on comforting round shapes. I figure it'll help people accept him more once the first batch are built.

The final image is from about 2 weeks or so ago. I'd taken to drawing on loose 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper, which I keep strewn on my desk, and doodled this guy out one day. He was a straight, one-shot with a marker/pen. I felt like drawing something in one go, and he was the result.

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That's all for now, as I should be getting to bed. I shall post again shortly, hopefully with more art this time and some new thoughts about drawing!

Until then.

Tob Rari

2006-08-14T19:40:00.000-04:00

I'm very, very happy to announce that an incredibly good friend of mine has started a blog!

Visit...

ROB TARI'S BLOG!

UPDATE: I've added Rob and more to my links!

Game Career Guide

2006-08-13T10:11:00.000-04:00

Click the image to buy the digital version or read more about the issue

Any aspiring game developers reading this should grab this Special Issue of Game Developer magazine. Heck, you should be spending $8 every month for Game Developer anyway!

Go Go Go!

The Living Dead

2006-08-12T20:35:00.001-04:00

ZOMBIES!

New sketchy stuff from last night. My girlfriend and I met up with my very good friend Bobert Tappert (A.K.A. Rob Tari, who's blog I'll be linking to as soon as it's online) at a pub in Woodbridge called The Moose and Firkin. After a photo tour of Italy, Rob and I started drawing funny stuff on the back of a paper placemat.

The first two were done on opposite sides of the same page at the same time, and as such were upside-down; so they've been separated. First one is my side, the second Rob's.

The third image is from my recycled brown paper sketchbook (which is only two pages away from being full. Yay!).

After we did the portraits of each other (in the first two images) we were trying to think of something else to draw and so I suggested that we draw each other as zombies! Rob has far greater line confidence than I do, and is always better at getting an idea across on the page, so his drawing feels very "zombie-ish" whereas mine is rather stiff and lacking that real zombie quality.

We each spent probably less then 5 minutes on the zombie portraits though, so it's cool to look back and analyze how they (more accurately mine) could be fixed up.

My drawing of Rob (first image) is pretty cool, and was done really quickly. I like the solidity of it, even though I was going for a quick, almost caricature version of him. You can see what he look like in the last image above. Let me know if you think it looks like him :)

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Gonna talk about my buddy Rob for a bit.

Rob has a style of drawing all his own, which shines through in every drawing he does. The thing that I really enjoy about Rob's work is that he is never hesitant to put a line down, even if he's drawing something that he isn't familar with. It's a quality that I admire and need to work on in my own drawings.

Rob draws most things his way. If he draws two people next to each other he'll draw them in the same style that he usually draws people. It's the only thing that irks me about his drawings, and it's something that I've seen a lot of artists do.

Every artist draws differently, that's a given. But I choose to believe that the mark of a skilled artist is someone who can draw in many different styles. Each subject drawn is approached differently, individually, addressed based on the needs of that particular object and drawing.

It's something that I personally want to be able to do; to take my skills anywhere in the world, in any field of art, and always be free to make a living being creative.

The past two years I've spent at Seneca learning animation I've seen lots of people draw the same thing differently. I've seen exact representations of objects or people, totally life-like, but I can pick out the students who drew each drawing.

I think it's extremely valuable to try and push yourself artistically, and to comb all facets of art from our pre-historic ancestors, to the current-day retro 50's style revival. Each and every experience, each piece of new knowledge we gain, brings us closer to becoming the very best artists that we can become in our time on his rock.

And so to any all artists reading, why not try something new today? If you usually draw with straight lines, try using only curved ones instead. Stray from that comfortable path you've tread to this point.

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To back up all the hot air that I just released, I'm going to do exactly what I suggested others do and try a new technique for a week or so. Straight lines and hard angles here I come!

Hasta la vista!

Bioshocked

2006-08-01T20:51:00.000-04:00

Really quick post today.

Did this guy during lunch at work. I started by scribbling on the page for a few seconds and then caught a glimpse of something that looked like a squat human. I put him in a suit 'cause I was reading about Bioshock last night in PC Gamer and the images of the Big Daddy character kinda got stuck in my brain ;) I can't wait to play Bioshock! System Shock 2 is in my top 5 favorite games of all time and Bioshock is the spiritual successor to it! Now if only I could be working on the damned thing...

That's all for now.

Over and out.

ANGER

2006-07-31T21:45:00.000-04:00

A quick one for tonight.

I actually did this last night after I sifted through the Story Boredom blog and saved a bunch of Walleye's posts. I really enjoy his drawing style and his sense of humor that he's able to get across with it.

Check out the Story Boredom blog for some of Walleye's work, along with art from a collection of great story artists! I only wish that Walleye had a site with some more work. Alas, his personal page hasn't been available for ages :(

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So, about the above image:

It was done from one of the small comic strips that Walleye does about himself and his feelings Doubt, Confidence, Anger etc. portrayed as actual characters. They're hilarious strips, and I wish there were more. Anyways, this was done really quickly from a particular strip that my girlfriend really likes. I kinda did it for her on the spot, but also for me 'cause it was fun! I like how it turned out, but if you dig through the Story Boredom blog and find the strip, mine isn't spot on.

I love how Walleye has managed to nail the physicality of the various feelings through his use of shape and weight. Confidence is all round and bouncy; Doubt is big and heavy; and Anger is sharp and quick. Perfect! And to top it all off each of the characters are simple to draw!

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Okay, that's all for me for now. I'll see if I can scan something in tomorrow and post it before I go to sleep. I'd like to do the image quality post I mentioned in the last post this weekend, so keep your eyes peeled!

Until next time!

Especially for...

2006-07-30T20:13:00.001-04:00

...my blog!

I did these guys after spending some time surfing through some wicked artist blogs. Eventually I'll get around to creating links to them all (I gots lots) but for now here's a bit of my stuff!

The second image (taken from the one above it) was a bit of a test to see if I could improve the quality of my drawings for web posting with Photoshop. A new scanner would probably help too. I think I'm going to address this issue in a future post with examples from other blogs...hold on to your panties, it'll be wild!

Anywho, a large part of the reason for these guys was too see if I could up the quality of quick sketches. I'm not very good at inking/taking work to higher levels, but that's the other reason for this little excercise! I also wanted to show some love to the people that have visited! Please come again!

I'm really only happy with the guy on the top left (guy in the second picture). I like the size/shape relationship that I found with his features. I was looking to keep the shape of his head fairly simple, while focusing more on how the facial features would fit within his head. I usually end up running out of space within a head shape, and that's something that I want to improve.

The rest of the guys are okay, but for the most part there are little things that bug me with each of them. The guy on the top right is twisted where I wasn't planning on him being twisted (his features, hair, and shoulder position are all over the place compared to each other). The guy below him feels amaturish; lacking in form and interesting variation in shape. His features and hairline seem to perhaps flow too much into one another, making for an overall muddled face. The last guy on the bottom left is totally lacking in attention to detail. I didn't really go into the fat on his neck, and it appears more like he's got some medical condition rather than just being overweight. Oh, and his mouth isn't in the right position compared to the angle that he's facing.

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I hope that you readers can take something away from this post, and if you did, please post a comment and let me know! The gates are wide open for criticism too, so don't hold back!

Thanks for taking the time to visit! Let me know what you think of the blog so far! Also, if there's something in particular that you'd like to see here, be it themed drawings, addressing a particular aspect of drawing, or anything else, leave a comment! Comments also help me to know who's been visiting, which helps with...uh...it helps with knowing...shucks, it helps my self-esteem!

Lates!

TMNT vs. MH

2006-07-22T09:16:00.000-04:00

So here's the deal:

For the past two weeks I've been working full-time at a new job that's going to last until the end of the summer. So with that said, I won't be able to post art as frequently as I would like, but I'll still be posting links to cool artists and stuff when I get a chance.

That's right lads and ladies; the image above is for the new ANIMATED Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie! Click on the image to watch the trailer! It looks to be all hand animated too! Unlike Monster House (which I saw yesterday)...

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So Monster House. Beautiful visuals + crappy animation/lip sync = 3 1/2 or 4 out of 5. It's a shame that a film that caricatures life in such a cool, Tim Burtonesque style has to rely so heavily on motion capture. If Monster House had been hand animated, it would EASILY have been a 5 out of 5. The story is greatl, the voice acting (kids no less!) was really good, and it's just a beautiful film. Ridiculus rendering, texturing and a lighting.

Alas, time = money.

Oh oh! This should have been released for Halloween!

Lastly, check out Chris Appelhans' site Froghatstudios! Click on the spooky house above to see some BITCHIN' concept work for MH!

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P.S. The links to The Amazing Screw on Head and TMNT came courtesy of Derrick of Animation House in Peterborough! Check out the blog @ http://alphanuiota.blogspot.com/ for hilarious pictures (of which I'm in a couple!)

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Adab adab adab ah dats all folks!

Amazing Screw On Head!

2006-07-17T22:23:00.000-04:00

Hey folks,

Go here: http://video.scifi.com/player.html?dlid=24379

...to watch the pilot episode of The Amazing Screw On Head animated series!!

Then:

Go here: www.scifi.com/amazingscrewonhead

...and take the survey (9 questions, don't have to submit an email address or anything)

BOOYAH!!

Hugh Jass and a skull

2006-07-07T11:14:00.000-04:00

Back with a couple more elephants.

I like these for the most part, except that I was oversimplifying or not paying enough attention to the legs. After this trip to the zoo, I've found that I enjoy drawing elephant heads. They're so large that it makes it easy to catch a lot of the details from far away.

The third page was done during a life drawing class last semester (I think). Our teacher was showing us slides of skull illustrations from a book that I can't recall, and explaining the importance of really understanding the proportions, as well as structure, of the skull. I believe we had a skull test that day, and he didn't feel that most of the class was up to snuff for it, so he basically SHOVED the information in through our eyes and ears.

If I'm lucky enough, I'll be able to keep in contact with and continue to learn from Werner Zimmerman for a long time to come. He's really one of the best teachers that I've ever had, and I can usually hear him repeating lessons in my head when I try to pass knowledge on to other people. He's a great guy, and does great work! I'll try and find some examples of his stuff and link to it here.

Boo.

Ya.

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I don't know what I'll be posting next, so we'll all just have to wait and see. Although at the moment I'm pretty sure that I'm the only person reading this :D

Rhi-know what you're thinking, and yes, that is a bad joke

2006-07-07T01:35:00.000-04:00

Attack of the Rhinos!

Back again with a few more drawings from the same zoo visit as the last two posts. These are all from the MASSIVE sketchbook that I mentioned before. I use it for the zoo because it not only allows me to draw larger and from the shoulder, but it also acts like a portable table that I can set up on my knees! Great for eating on :D

The first page shows how I was trying to see through the beast and visualize how it would fit over a basic shape. I went a step further by trying to give form to said shape, as you can see in the drawing at the centre of the page, but I wasn't entirely successful. Dead on rear and side views were the norm for most of the time with the Rhino, hence the same poses over and over.

The second page was the last drawing of the Rhino that I did that day. It had given up and lay down, so we moved on the the Elephant after one final drawing. With these, I was keeping in mind what I had learned so far and was trying to understand their proportions. The problem I have with these two drawings is their simplicity and the lack of any form of rendering.

The third page goes more into my attempts to figure out the skeletal structure and how it effects what we actually see on the outside. It's a bit of a task with all "armour" seeming to cover the fleshy, telling parts.

The last page has an observational note that I thought would help me with remembering their proportions, as well as a major esthetic of the Rhino that I hadn't noticed before. I also had a flash of insight that you can see with the drawing in the lower left corner. I had been simplifying the legs into a cylinder, and with this drawing I noticed that there is a nice curve in the higher portion of the visible area of their "arms".

Whichever city or country you may live in, try and find a zoo that has Rhinos in it. They're loads of fun to draw, and they don't tend to move around nearly as quickly as other large animals you'll find at the zoo. Plus, they're great for exciting the imagintion when you need to come up with an exotic, prehistoric character!

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I'd like to mention that I reduced the size of these images to a more reasonable one as opposed to the massive images of the first two posts. Sorry about the mega images! I'll probably go back and scale them down later on.

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More Elephants and couple of skull drawings on the way tomorrow!

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I've started adding links to friend's blogs, but it's going to take more than one sitting. So if I don't have you listed yet, you will be very soon!

Dear, Elephants...Er, I mean "deer"

2006-07-03T14:11:00.000-04:00

These two were from the same zoo visit that I mentioned in my last post.

In these, I was trying to explain a method for seeing and drawing animal necks as simple shapes first, to my girlfriend. She had mentioned having trouble drawing Gazelle necks, since they're so flexible and often twist in odd directions, so I offered my thoughts.

In answering most questions she had that day, as well as my own, I kept trying to think of the similarities between human and animal anatomy, to give a sense of familiarity to these odd creatures. I was explaining how human and animal necks are basically the same; that they originate from a spot on the body that doesn't change and that they have a basic form to them, and that the actual shape of the neck can be varied as needed through caricature. You can see what I mean in the first drawing above with the big tough guy and skinnier guy below him.

On the second page, there's a bit more neck explaination as well as a few Gazelle studies I did once they had run off out of sight. Using my observations of elephants and rhinos earlier in the day, I was trying to figure out what the differences were between the leg joints of various 4-legged animals. As a side note, I should mention that we were both flipping through The Art of Animal Drawing by Ken Hultgren during the day. It's a pretty good book to have and it managed to help answer most of our questions.

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The drawings I've posted so far have been from a 9X6, vertically opening sketchbook that I keep with me all the time. I have a few other pages from a MASSIVE sketchbook that I was using at the zoo too, but I'll have to take pictures of those pages since they're too big to scan. For now, here's two more elephant drawings:

The first post

2006-07-03T12:00:00.000-04:00

Hey folks!

I hope to make this blog as informative as I possibly can by posting drawings and other works and commenting on how well I feel they were executed, or what could be done to improve them. I welcome every and all comments about any of the work that I post!

I've been heavily influenced by the way other blogs have done things over the past year, and it's going to show in my own blog. If you have a blog of your own, let me know! I might not have seen it ;)

So with all that said, here's a couple of elephant studies/sketches from a recent Zoo Trip that I took with my girlfriend (I'll try to scan and post some of her work if I can sneak it away from her!). I'll post more in another post with comments on each! Here ya go!