Upon females

A small collection of recent female sketches, taken from reference (thanks to Mjranum for the great stock!).

Finished Lite sheet

Well, I did my best, but blimey, that egyptian mask was plain nasty. Had to resort to colour picking for much of it I'm afraid, there are just too many small colour variations in there.

New Study Sheet - Lite version!

Yes, I know, I'm starting on a new one when I haven't finished the old one, so shoot me! This is the 'lite' version of the study buddy sheet featured earlier, it's a touch more manageable. As before this one was given to me by Adam, so please ignore the er, unique naming of this sheet.



The palette picture here is going to be tricky, especially as I'd like to complete it without cheating and using the eye-dropper. Sadly photoshop seems to be lacking in the colour picking department, why doesn't it feature a colour wheel like Painter? Tsh.

Doodles from life

Wow, it's been a while since I've stuck something new up on here! Had a few days out of the loop with a pretty nasty stomach bug but it's all good now, hopefully. These are just some really fast gesture scribbles done out on the street, capturing a still of a figure in motion is tricky, especially when they're looking at you funny.

DS 'Colours' Doodles

I guess by now most people know about a cool little program for the NDS called 'Colours' which is essentially a bare-bones photoshop/painter to be used on the move. It's taking a bit of getting used to but here are my adventures so far. To see some amazing work produced using Colours have a gander at http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/



These two were done from reference, except for the colour in the second one which was added as an afterthought. I really need to work on my colour stuff.

Quick Action poses

Just a few little pose scribbles, nothing special. Taken from 'District 13' (the french parkour film) and a pose book. I need to do many, many more of these.

Study buddy sheets

Paul Richards over at autodestruct put together these natty study sheets which are great fun to do and hone your 2D skills at the same time (a major bonus), so thanks Paul! The idea is to grab a bunch of interesting pictures and stick them on the left hand side of each column, then thrust the sheet upon an unsuspecting friend who will try to fill the blanks in using the correct technique (Masses, palette etc). I think the faster you do it the better, although for me the palette ones proved very taxing, despite cheating and using the eyedropper (baby steps). Both of these came from Adam (yourlocalhero) and not marth or Ada wong as one might be lead to believe.

Oh, these pics are pretty big too.



Er, this one isnt finished yet, as Im sure you can see. I'll get it done, honest!

Inspired by Android!

I recently watched a great video by Andrew 'Android' Jones of Massive Black studio which went over his workflow and some of the techniques he uses. The following are my attempts to create something in a similar way, purely as an experiment. I wouldnt have the first clue how to actually use these for a concept!

Summer '08 Catchup 3

Some slightly more recent work here. I've been wanting to try doing low-poly stuff for a while now and finally whipped out a model to texture. The hardest bit about doing a low-poly texture is getting all the seams to line up; having just a few pixels mis-aligned can make a texture look crap. I decided to completely side-step this problem by painting most of the texture using the polypoint feature in Zbrush where you paint directly onto the model, when the texture is a bit more complete i'll move back into photoshop for finishing touches.





Previous to doing the above model I had a mess about on a model provided by a kind member of gameartisans.org. These models are known as 'SDK's (skin development kits) and are great for practising on. I take no credit for the model itself, just the textures.

Summer '08 Catchup 2

Another little project which needs finishing here. This is an in-the-works human male base model, which I ended up getting a bit carried away with, hence the somewhat pointless detail. Initially this guy was hella muscled and looked plain daft, really I think he's still a bit chunky. Im also aware that there's a bit of funky anatomy going on here, I used a muscle building chart as reference, smart move huh.



This chap here was made using the above base, still needs a lot of work, especially on the legs.

Summer '08 Catchup 1

So this is some of the work I noodled out during the most recent summer holiday (seems like an age ago). These are all mostly still WIP, who knows when I'll get the time to finish them.

This fellah came about after a little speed modelling session with yourlocalhero (housemate and co-college-er). Initially the challenge was just to create a funky something within an hour, I ended up liking my poly model and threw it into Zbrush.







The topology of the initial poly model was pretty awful so I poured a few hours into re-topologizing this guy which actually worked really well. My workflow is still a bit messy, really I should have done all the detailing first then re-topo'd right at the end, I'll know for next time!



P.S. This one definitely isn't finished, I've hardly touched the high detail stuff yet.

I declare this blog, ACTIVE!

This is all rather exciting really, my first blog has come to life at last. Dont worry, there is artwork forthcoming, I have a bit of a backlog to sort through! Watch this space.