The pirate ship

My daughter's favourite spot, the pirate ship in Ladywell Fields.

People about town

One morning up and down the transports, queuing, and doing all that we normally do. Good to have a sketchbook.

Park sketching

It was a glorious day in Greenwich Park last week, and the green slope that unfolds from the Observatory was full of people busy lying down doing nothing. Above them tourists were taking pictures with their mobiles. Not of the people doing nothing but of the breathtaking view. The Park, the Queen's House and the Maritime Museum at the bottom, the Naval College, then the bend of the river, then Docklands and then East London which as everyone knows extends to the end of the world.
I was more interested in the people doing nothing instead, although I had to have a go at sketching the view of course.

After the park experience I proceeded to draw something that I've had in mind to draw for a few years, the entrance to the Queen Mary Building of Trinity College (formerly Naval College, originally Greenwich Hospital, built by Sir Christopher Wren) on the riverside of the building. The entrance leads to a Courtyard that has an exit at the opposite end. A shadow cuts the courtyard diagonally and a small piece of sky can be seen under the arch of the entrance.
Sounds simple, well in my experience it isn't. Maybe because of the classic proportions that if you don't get enough right look bad when you look again at the original, or maybe because drawing one thing into another and another one again into it confused me, but I never thought that such a seemingly simple arrangement of geometric shapes could be so hard to get right. I only managed to do a preparatory study and I really need to go back and give it the time it deserves (regardeless of whether I deserve that time to go back).

Headbanging on the tube

Butt-head lives! I saw him on the tube listening to his iPod as if he was alone in his bedroom.

The Pickmebat

Blow Me Down Again

Blow Me Down

The Sleeper in full colour glory

Garden Poetry Impro

My daughter in the garden, having bread and butter and improvising poetry. Among other things she mentioned the moon, sausages and worms.

Life Drawing

Sketching Killjoy

I thought that I like this guy's attitude, so here are a few sketches.

Killjoy

It's for your own good.

The artist having a coffee after a shower

The artist's golden life, here in self-portrait.
I showed this to my daughter though and asked her, who is this. "A funny face" she answered laughing.

That Action Hero in full

The Action Hero contest at Zbrush Central ended last Friday at midnight Pacific time, that's 8 am on Saturday here on the Greenwich meridian. I submitted my final entry within 30 minutes of deadline, after one of those neverending shifts of work that I recently seem to do rather often.

Anyway, here are two final renders, the first one is my official final entry, it's almost a pure Zbrush render with only a touch of post work in Photoshop, the other is one of the additional renders I've done, that received only a slightly larger amount of Photoshop fiddling.

It's been a priceless learning experience, working for two months alongside a large contingent of seriously talented artists exposes you to a lot of thinking around all aspects of these kind of productions, a constant flow of constructive criticism were kindly given and gratefully received and it's been of great benefit to all those involved.
But it was also exhausting and I won't be doing another one in a hurry, for two months running I literally used all my available time to make progress on this piece.
Time to apply what I've learned and also get some balance in my life as well as my artistic life with some good old drawings.

New year, new challenges

I'm taking part to the Action Hero Competition at Zbrush Central. It started on 19th December and it closes on 13th February.
Participants must come up with an idea of an Action Hero, an initial concept sketch and then develop that with Zbrush. And that's fun! Here's my entry.

There are about 90 competitors in the challenge and there's a lot of exceedingly good stuff going round. Being this a work in progress competition all participants must post regular updates of their work. For me it's a perfect opportunity to finalize my learning of Zbrush by picking up techniques here and there. In exchange I give what I know to whoever want to follow what I'm doing. Group learning at its best.

Be Merry!

Santa's crunch (work in progress thread)

This image above is part one of six daily installments. It's a story that by the end of this week will fit neatly on a page, stay tuned for...


...part two...


...three...


...f-f-four...

Top row!

Since Tuesday night the highly prestigious "top row" of Zbrush Central has a thumbnail image linking to my illustration that I had submitted to that website.
When I saw it my eyes popped.
As a 3d artist I'm just a beginner and I'm humbled by the proximity of phenomenal talents of 3d art as next thumbnail neighbours on the top row of Zbrush Central.

The presence of the link on the top row has meant that in the past two days my entry has been viewed 7,698 times and that about 450 people visited this blog coming from there.
If you're one of them here's my warm Zsalute to you.
This is my blog, be my guest.

Return of the monkey

I've been having fun with my Monkey. I did some work on the muscles and then tried out some of the many ways to add skin details.
A very interesting study actually as I had to figure out how the distribution of the muscles determines how the skin stretches in different ways around the body.

Done better

Here's a better version of my 3d illustration. Yesterday I had to deliver whatever I had ready by deadline time and unfortunately I didn't have all the time I needed to finish it in the way I would have liked to. Not even to check it through actually, all I could do was save it and send it.
Still, I'm quite happy with what I've done and of what I learned doing it.
I will eventually render it in another program other then Zbrush with a proper set of lights and all that, for now here's the same of yesterday with some extra work in Photoshop to bring it towards what I had in mind.

Done!

A race against time today to finish my entry for the CG Arena "Beautiful" challenge.
The email with the entry left my computer only a handful of seconds before the midnight deadline for submissions and as this is my absolute first model in colour I'm very happy.

Tasty

You strike gold when you find something else that your daughter likes to eat. Hurrah for carrots!

Beautiful challenge

I'm taking part to a 3d competition at the CGArena forum. Click here to visit my entry page and see how I do it.

Daddy draws daughter draws daddy

Proof that we see ourselves in everything. My not yet three year old daughter Crystal got hold of my sketchbook and now I'm deluding myself that she drew daddy!

Rocket Ride 3D

About a month ago I saw Vince Musacchia's Rocket Ride sketch and thought that I had to make it into a 3d model. Thanks Vince.

To see it turning click here (animated gif 2.2Mb).

Read all about it!

Book Cover

My wife published a book! I got to do the cover.

Kung Fu Janitor

3djob#1 take2

Here's the final amended version of this group, I hope I get a snow globe.
Click here to see the model spinning like crazy.

3djob#1

My first paid job in 3d! A client sent me this image and asked me to make it into a proper turn around for a snow globe. I would have normally done it with a pencil but hey, it's the 21st century and I had two days to do it. So I decided to surprise my client and gave myself the challenge to do the whole model in just two days. As I did. Two rather long days though but I'm pleased to say that I knew what I was doing at any moment of the job, the timing was realistic and all went pretty smooth which meant that I actually enjoyed myself doing it and I hope it shows.

Here's 7 views of the model (once it opens in a new window it may still look small, click on it to make it bigger).


Click here to see the model spinning like crazy!

Update: I've just received comments (including some of appreciation) and amendments from the client, not too bad, just to make Eeyore less saggy, and some small changes to slant them both towards one specific reference model supplied with the comments.

Second Update: revised version posted here.

Low tech

Technology is fun but life drawing is good old fun. Two poses from this morning short poses session.

The Sleeper (take #2)

Lickerman

The Lickerman! Because we need him.

Thoughtful

fiddlin'

Even more monkeying

Evolving, revolving.

Modern Day Freedom Fighters

David Davis resigns from parliament to fight against the erosion of British civil liberties.
Strange isn't it? I would have made him a proper right-winger.