Pearlescence

New doodle, new post. For this one, I used one of my friends as a reference, and you can check out her gallery right here. I had fun playing with colors, and making this feel otherworldly.

Hope you like it!

Speaking of eyes

So I've been working on a character model lately, but I wanted to take some time out and do some 2d again. This quick self portrait was the result.

As usual, I used a photo for reference, and then went crazy with the colors. I am quite content with the end result; I like how it almost feels like an oil painting. Funny how I was talking about focusing on the eyes in my last post. Doesn't get any more obvious than this.

It's all in the eyes

I've been doing a lot of these portraits lately, and I find that what I really strive to copy is the emotion in it. I want to copy the nuances and details that make a photo stand out to me, to the point of wanting to paint it. For me what makes portraits so appealing is the emotion in the eyes, and I find that I have been focusing on them more than any other part of the portrait; trying to capture the soul of the individual.
The reference for this one was taken from google but sadly they didn't link to a photographer or the model.

Hope you like it!

Accidents Happen

Here I was, trying something a bit different for my portraits by using reference and changing it in a very peculiar way, so they wouldn't just be study-copies. Eventually the end result was the first image here.

However, somewhere along the way I started playing with color a little too much, and it evolved into something very different. At first I was hesitant about it because it looked cool, but the expression didn't match the mood of the painting at all, so I tweaked it a bit to make it fit.

I'll have to try that style again with another portrait because it was a lot of fun.

Daniel Radcliffe

I have moved to Seattle! I had been crazy busy this past few weeks getting all this moving stuff sorted out. Finally getting back to the hang of doing art.
So here is Mr Radcliffe. I found a photo with pretty cool lighting, so I decided to copy it to learn from it.

Thanks for looking!

Forest

So here's another silly experiment of mine. I grabbed a photo to use as color reference and then used a grayscale overlay. Then I used those values (the desaturated colors), to paint a completely different subject matter. In the end, I had the B&W version which was all value, and once I took off the grayscale overlay, I ended up with the picture on top with the otherworldly  blue mist.

 It was definitely and interesting experiment worth trying again.

Good old Canadian Kaidan

Kaidan Alenko from the Mass Effect series.
Like the Miranda portrait, I used a reference of his hace model for the painting.

Hope you like everyone's favorite Sentinel!

Bust WIP II

New update on the bust I've been posting on my blog. It was done to the likeness of Chris Hemsworth, the actor who plays Thor in the Avengers movie. It is still a work in progress; I need to address some seams and other issues in the diffuse, and then make a spec map for it. I did want to show the lowpoly model however, so here it is.

Rundown of the specs:
1700 tris
1k diffuse / 1k normal / no spec yet

Chicago

Another speedpaint. This one is based on a photo I took while on a trip to Chicago. My main purpose for this one was getting a better understanding of the fore/middle/background relationship, and how the transition between them works.

Looking at the photo reminded me that Chicago was a pretty cool city. I wouldn't mind visiting again sometime.

"Nobody's Perfect"

Miranda Lawson from the Mass Effect series.
I used a photo of her face model as a reference for this portrait.

Hope it is cool enough for all Miranda fans out there!

Red & Green

I've been watching some tutorial videos recently and I feel like what I'm missing is just doing. Doing art; doing practice sketches, practice paintings, whatever keeps my arm's muscles moving. So there I was, just doodling around, and this happened. It's simple-ish yeah, but it was fun.

This is the 2nd creepy hooded lady I've done now.. They're just so cool looking though.

Bust WIP

Update on the texture of the bust I posted last time. Since then, I retopologized the model bringing it down to about 1k, and laid out UVs.

As I am sure you've noticed this is just the frontal view, and that is because i haven't worked the sides that much yet, but I still wanted to show something.

Male and Bale

As promised, here is an older drawing from a few years ago. A simple pencil portrait based on a photo I found in the internet. Next to it, is portrait of Christian Bale I did earlier today.

 

So two male portraits today. I wonder what I'll be posting next time.

Purple Veil

Yet another 1 hour speed paint. This one was mostly based on a photograph I found, but I changed a few things to give it a different mood. I'm quite pleased with it. Using reference is a very good thing, I should keep that in mind more often.

I thought of adding another old sketch I had to this post, but I think I will leave that for tomorrow's post.
Enjoy!

Doodles

Today I bring some doodles I did while bored. The first is a 1 hour sketch based on a photo of Emma Stone. The second doodle is just a random spur of the moment thing.

Thanks for looking!

New Bust

WIP shot of a simple bust I've been working on. This time, instead of making someone from scratch, I decided to be smart and use reference! Hopefully the likeness is close enough that it is possible to tell who it is with an unfinished texture.

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Quick Illustration

I haven't posted in the last few days, but it was because I put my dailies on hold to work on something I had floating on my mind.
It's just a fun illustration, inspired by the song When the Day met the Night by Panic! at the Disco.

Hope you like it!

Koimaid

New speed sculpt!
I can't really take that much credit for the concept of this one, since I mostly followed a great tutorial from zbrushcentral. I figured that while the end result may not be truly original, there is much I can learn from the process. Afterwards, I can always go to my own creations.

Hope you like it!

Deer Moose Man

Starting to get better with these sculpts I think. I got some good feedback for this one, so I decided to post it  here. I might work on it more and make it a portfolio piece. I'll keep to my dailies for now though.

This one took about 2 hours.
Thanks for looking! Feel free to leave comments.

Green Alien

Good news! So far I've been able to keep up with the dailies. I think I'll just post the most interesting ones here though.
This one took me about 1 hour to sculpt and about 30 mins to paint. I try to start with just a sphere, and let the model develop from there. I'm slowly starting to get the hang of it.

I decide to also throw in as a bonus a sketch I from when I did a daily drawing challenge sometime ago.

Thanks for looking!

Dailys!

So once again, I don't update in forever, but I did finish the previous project I mentioned, which you can see on my portfolio. On the topic of finishing things, I also just finished college. A somewhat scary but mostly exciting experience. So for now, I figure the best I can do is improve my skill while applying for jobs, and so for that, I plan to do speed sculpts (hopefully) everyday, and I'll be posting them here.

This was today's. Some sort of goat-man satyr. As most of my friends have pointed out, he is very purple. He might have taken 2-3 hours. I'll attempt to make future ones much faster.
As usual, thanks for looking!

Update

It seems I've been slightly awful at keeping this updated for the past few months.
I do have some good news though, we did achieve gold in the game I was mentioning in my previous post, and we have worked on it some more. I'll talk more about that in my next post, in the meantime, here is a sneak peek of project I've been working on.

It is a redo of one of my previous characters, I'll post more as I keep working on it. In the meantime, you can go check out my portfolio that I updated recently.
Thanks for looking!

Alpha

We just hit Alpha this Tuesday. 

We had a really great demo of our game prepared, but the engine kept crashing whenever we tried to open it. Unfortunately, we didn't think of having a video backup, so we had to show it just to the professors in one of the class computers.

I had to take care of the sprint sheet this week. It was an interesting challenge because during crunch, assets were being finished and assigned at a much faster pace than usual.

Finally, here is aquick gondola I made, it is not textured yet though.

Once again, thanks for looking!

Concept Art

As Art Director, I realized I get to do a lot less artwork than I expected, but sometimes I get to do some pretty nice pieces like this one:

This was a mood piece I did to have a better visualization of the underwater lighting and the feel of the game. I used some reference from the inside of St Marks Basilica, since that will be an important location in our game.

Right now were are heading into Alpha, so we are hitting crunch time pretty soon.

Art Bible

With great power comes great responsibility, and for today my responsibility as Art Director was to get started and have a decent draft of the Art Bible for our game. I had started it a few days ago, but I didn't really have any guidelines in mind, so it was rather messy and unorganized. During the weekend I finally found some good references to follow, and I feel it is a lot more solid and organized now, ready to be presented.

Beside that, I've been overlooking the assets our modelers have been producing, and I got a compliment on most of them looking pretty similar in style, and that is just always nice to hear.

For now, there is a concept piece I did, but can still be refined a little bit more before I post it.

Thanks for reading!

Rocks

News: I am now the art director for our game, so I did some rock models to test out texturing style.  They're just really basic assets for set dressing.
Here they have a diffuse, spec, and normal map. Together both rocks are under 600 tris.

I'll post more work as I make it. Thanks for looking!

Art update

Just a quick update to show some of the concept I did last week. I did these two pieces just to give myself a better idea of what the game could possibly look like, and have some sort of visualisation.

Our game takes place in a sunken Venice so I used the Rialto Bridge and Doge's Palace as structural and environmental pieces in this quick concept. 

Thanks for looking!

Studio II

Winter Quarter started just about a week ago, and with it Studio II. The aim for this class is for us as a group of students to go through the development phase of a game and go gold by the end of the term. Yep, that is 12 weeks to make a game.
I already had started brainstorming ideas with a small group of friends, but once classes started and we pitched ideas in class, our idea seemed interesting to a few other students who have now joined us.
In a few words, our idea revolves around controlling an underwater sub, and moving in a side scrolling level made with 3d assets.
As time moves on, I'll keep the blog updated with my contributions (models, textures, concept art, matte painting) to the project, as well as updates on how we are doing.