Portfolio Progress

My newest photographed and Photoshopped portfolio images. Comments and critique welcome :) More to come!

P.S.: I know the portrait doesn't look exactly like me. I call it a "realistic caricature".

More Sketchbook Fun

Drew this while watching "The Return of Night of the Living Dead"...hilariously lame 80's zombie movie. I was sitting on the couch in the community room, staring at the Xbox we were using as a DVD player...and was suddenly inspired. Enjoy the colored version of the Xbox Monster! Prismacolor marker & pencil.

Xbox Monster

Just a lil sketch.

Tradigital Final

This is a completely digital painting of one of my characters, Bird, done in Adobe Photoshop. I made brushes to resemble watercolor or gouache painting to shade the portrait, made brushes from photographs to draw the thornbushes in the background, made brushes from old scanned documents to make the fingerprints, smudges and splatters, and scanned an old book for the sketchbook background. So pretty much, I scanned stuff a lot and made lots of brushes. Why go to all the trouble? Because I wanted the painting to look as real as possible, like the whole thing had been painted in my sketchbook. I'm reasonably happy with the result, especially with how the painting curves with the scanned pages into the center fold of the book. Hope you like it!

Sketchbook Pages

Just some scanned pages from my sketchbook. Some explanations: the first image is the original designs for my 3D sea monsters. The zombies one is something all the art kids here are doing...draw a zombie in your own style and include the words F*** ZOMBIES. Profanity really isn't my thing but it was fun to see everyone's different styles. The third image is a sketch I did of a very obviously stoned man dancing at the reggae & rasta concert we went to downtown because I thought it was hilarious, and the fourth image is just a surreal doodle with some super-ocd anatomy. Enjoy :)

Final Posters

The 11x17 posters we're going to get printed all fancy-like.

The final, posed sea monster <3

Final Poe models.

Amen Corner

The promised finned-wonder and the bust of Poe. I've included the reference image for comparison^^ He remains to be shaded (mostly) and the sea monster remains to be posed, but we're on the home stretch. Yay!

My new fish. He's all scary and cool now but his body hasn't been posed yet and I still have to model the membrane of all his fins...I just have the skeleton of them so far. More to follow...including Poe, but I don't know when. I'm very proud of the teeth :D

Bug Thing

I made this fish today. I'm quite happy with it...I think it's cute. It took roughly four hours. For the other three hours of class time today, I worked on constructing an accurate bust of Edgar Allen Poe in 3D in Zbrush. I got the whole face done and the neck and eyes and facial hair and skin shading...but the graphics card and the RAM couldn't handle Mister Poe's crazy hair. Now I can't open it without crashing...but thats a problem for the morning. Here's the reference image I worked from, anyway.

BugZ

Three angles on my first non-human sculpt...don't ask me what it is. Like my human bust, this hasn't been colored much yet, I've just painted in basic materials. Still, I'm reasonably proud of my work on my first day working with Zbrush, and although it was extremely long (nine hours total work time) and frustrating, I did not scream, burst into tears, or go 'Planet of the Apes' on my keyboard. So at least I still have my dignity.

My first sculpt in Zbrush. More shading to follow.

Backstory

Here's the backgrounded, shaded sheet of expressions for Thane. (I didn't really want to deal with horse expressions...)

So, I need a brief backstory for my characters. I guess you do deserve an explanation of how a stuck-up ladies-man and his horse ended up as butlers. Sigh.

Thane was born in England in the late nineteenth century to an aristocratic family. They were very successful in the glass industry, sitting in their drafty ancestral castley-mansion thing while their factories made them money. The family's nearly effortless affluence resulted in young Thane (an Old English name meaning 'noble') being brought up to believe he and his family were better than everyone else, a concept which he took to immediately and with much enthusiasm. As a young man with a generous weekly allowance and no need (or desire whatsoever) to work, Thane spent his days on his hobby of horse-racing and his nights drinking and partying with his equally-snobby friends in the local taverns. He also loved to gamble. One summer night, while very drunk, he made a foolish wager with his friend the wine merchant's son over a card game and lost his prize racehorse, Helios to him. Thane, being a mulishly stubborn and petulant drunk, made a second foolish wager to try to win back both his horse and his pride. No one remembers precisely what the terms of the bet were, or the exact events of that night, but the end result was that both horse and man belonged to the wine merchant the next morning, honor-bound to serve him as butlers until further notice. Predictably, the drudgery of serving dinner and waiting on his [former] friend seriously chafes Thane's ego, and he rebels against it by dressing sloppily and being incredibly attitudinal. Helios, being a racing horse by nature, hates carrying dinner on his back and so copies Thane's atitude.

They'll pour your wine for you, but they won't like it and they sure as hell won't be careful about it.

Expressions

Six facial expressions that (I think) pretty much cover Thane's snobbery.

The Final Thing

Here are my two fully-painted, Photoshop-fiddled-with characters, Thane and Helios (man and horse respectively). Technically I finished the assignment, but I hope to post a sheet of facial expressions for the two of them within the next day or two as well. Enjoy :D

Two Options (But I'm Done Painting!)

So, I could go with sleeves or without. Leaning towards clothed, despite the fabulous muscles. Anyway, heres both.

Critique

WIP image for class critique.

I finished painting the horse. I like it. I am not feeling very eloquent.

So...I had been having a ton of trouble drawing a recognizably human face that retained recognizably horsey characteristics. That is, until I saw Robert Pattinson. This ^^^ is the result. Muahahahaha.

An edit of the direction I was going in, plus a less human idea. I kind of like it.

Doodling

This fine fellow is the product of a face-shape exercise in Character Design class today. He is unrelated to both horses and butlers, but I find him interesting nonetheless. His name (very astutely suggested by my dear father) is Tindergrimm. He is a very rich and very villainous pyrotechnic.

Back to horses, butlers, and various combinations thereof.

Concepts

My first [acceptable] concept is on the left; my teacher (David Bentley) drew the one on the right as an alternative.

Also, I need to name this fella. Hmmm.

Zodiac Assignment

Horse: Horses are cheerful, popular, quick-witted, changeable, earthy, perceptive, talkative, mentally and physically agile, magnetic, intelligent, astute, flexible, and open-minded...but they can also be fickle, arrogant, childish, anxious, rude, gullible, and stubborn.

For this assignment, I need to combine the qualities of a horse (both physical attributes and zodiac personality) with the occupation of a butler.

My visual research of both elements can be seen above.

I want to highlight the popular personality, magnetism and physical strength of the horse by making the butler a deep-chested, hunky, ladies-man type. I intend to bring out the character's arrogance as well, with a cocky grin and a pose in which the character is trying to show off his muscles while performing a butler's task.

Showing off for the ladies??? I think so.