Scary stuff

Egyptian General

I don't know what an Egyptian General looks like but if I would design their uniforms it would look something like this.
With best wishes to all Egyptians.

Olives

Culture Vultures

People at an exhibition at the South Bank, it was cold, I had a cognac, nice.

I was lost...

...but now I'm found.

Change of diet

Orson Welles Sketchbook

There's a BBC4 Orson Welles season on and among films there is a fabulous series of talks and drawings by the man himself entitled Orson Welles' Sketchbook. You can catch it on BBC iPlayer for a few days (link).

Merry

The secret ingredient

Slim Pickens update

An update on the model of Slim Pickens, I retopologized it all using 3d Coat in order to have a facial geometry that can be deformed into more Slim Pickens expressions and an animatable geometry all over the body. Now I started texturing him, I've done the head so far, no hair yet, but they will come.

A couple of sketches

Some faces (and one back) from a planning committee. From top left Paschoud, Smith, the back of Milton, Sharp, Miller and Bentley.



Inside the 136 bus from Catford to Forest Hill.



Old lady studying the news at cafe.



People.

Slim Pickens

For the past two days I've been working on a model of Slim Pickens - one of my favourite cowboys. Of corse I had to look at Dr Stragelove about a thousand times but hey, it's a great film, it doesn't hurt to watch it another time. Which is what I'll do tonight as by chance not far from me there's a mobile solar powered cinema showing guess what? Yes, Dr Strangelove.
It's part of Climate Camp, the environmentalist event that is taking my neck of the wood by storm.
I meant to go and check it out, I haven't done it yet because I was busy, also, I have to confess, I have reservations on the movement, but sure enough, if it wasn't for them I wouldn't have known that I shouldn't buy my energy from EON.

The Pickmebat in Colour

The discovery

There's one in your fridge too.

Victoria to Bellingham

I just finished this piece of political agitation that I produced in record time for a campaigning action of the local Libdems asking Transport for London to bring forward the forecast Victoria to Bellingham train route, a very important improvement to South East London's public transport network that's been scrapped with very specious reason, hence the flying pigs.

More about it here and here.

The complete Pickmebat

I finally finished the Pickmebat for the CGCoach Creatures and Critters contest (link), as ever it finished with a bang, with one of those long days and night's work. I managed to submit the final artwork with only 26 minutes left for the deadline, that was 7:34 am here in London.



The submission comprised 3 distinct required items, one final render (above), one page with a quick step by step to include the original concept (the mess below) and one turntable movie to be uploaded on Youtube and embedded on the contest's thread.






As ever I wish I had had more time to make some things better, never mind, I'm happy with the result, even above what I expected to produce when I started. Nevertheless I'll do some more work on it now, a few hours will make me completely satisfied and then bring the model in Modo to do a proper render especially since the membranes are the perfect stuff of subsurface scattering, something I really want to learn to master.

Sam

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...