German Subway (Munich Marienplatz station)

I liked this reference when I found it because of it contrasting colors and sleek modern feel. This particular station had such vibrant colors and simple shapes that drew me in. I used this as another opportunity to try and let the materials and maps do a lot of the lifting, and it would be good practice to try and balance the colors with the lighting.

The shapes were simple enough in maya. I just kept it all as low poly as possible, but that also allowed me to have more in the vertical to better capture the curve of the walls as well as the light fixtures.

From there I moved right into working on the materials for the walls and floors.

Similar to the old house exterior, I called out values in the substance that would let me modify the scale and amount of tiles in the floor and walls to more accurately match the reference. However, these materials are much much simpler.

After all of that was done, I did a quick test in Unreal to see how everything was coming along.

My initial reaction would be to brighten up the walls a bit, to help take the load off of the lighting. This will require some back and forth, however.

Old house exterior

While I'm finishing up the abandoned interior, I thought I'd post some progress from another set I had started and will be finishing up after. This piece I found is the exterior to an old house.

I wanted to keep the geo fairly simple. This is the initial block. My plan is to let the materials and maps do most of the heavy lifting. 

I started with the painted/weathered ceiling boards to plan out how I would go about doing this. Here are some caps of the results. 

And here is what the substance mapping looks like: 

I wanted something that would give me a lot of freedom while in the engine (in this case Unreal) to be able to adjust any value as needed to make sure I could accurately represent the source material. In this case, all of the sectioned off values in the map have called out values that allow me to adjust everything from the amount of wear and paint to the direction of all of that weathering and extra dirt. It also allows for scaling, however it shouldn't be needed. It is nice to have the option, though.

More in-progress work!

I have a few in-progress pieces that I'm looking to finish up soon! Here's one such example! An abandoned interior that I found really interesting.

For contrast, here's the picture I am working from:

This particular piece has been a lot of fun to work on and has been a good lesson with how to quickly use shapes repeatedly by modeling one or two versions and then quickly modifying them to fill out a scene!

Shoulder cannon progress

Another model I recently started was a sci-fi shoulder mounted cannon based on a design by Leonid Enin. The specific design can be found at this link: http://conceptartworld.com/?p=868

For Leonid's art station: https://www.artstation.com/artist/leonidenin

Also: http://leopardsnow.blogspot.com/
http://leopardsnow.daportfolio.com/

Fantasy Sword

Been diving into individual props lately. One of which was based on a design by Epic-Soldier over on Deviant Art. Definitely go check out her work!

http://epic-soldier.deviantart.com/art/Outfit-weapon-commission-527496511

Abandoned Mill

I started an environment in the little bit of extra time I have. I have been finding a lot of awesome pictures online of old abandoned locations around the world, they fascinate me.

I set a goal of trying to recreate a lot of these places in 3D for modeling, texturing, and lighting practice.

The first project is an old abandoned mill. This is still at the block in stage, but I'm excited to work on this more! The original photo is below. There are some difference due to camera settings and perspective, I want to try and work these out as well

Happy (albeit belated) Holidays!

So over the holidays, I decided to make a very special gift for someone in particular. Quite the fan of BioShock, I decided that perhaps I would create a piece of fan art to help celebrate the holidays as well as preparing for the release of BioShock: Infinite! I'm quite excited for it, anyway. This is just a fun piece that I painted (except for the city backdrop, those details will follow) that I enjoyed doing.

As noted in the last sentence I do need to add that the city background is not my original work. It belongs to Tim Warnock, check out his website: http://www.thenextside.com/index.html it's a great website and he's a great artist!

(This image was taken from the BioShock video game series or from websites created and owned by 2K Games, the copyright of which is held by Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks present in the image are proprietary Take-Two Interactive and its subsidiaries.)

The learning process

It seems to me that part of the learning process is accepting your failures along the way and realizing what you did wrong and how to succeed the next time you try. That statement is not saying that you should throw in the towel or just give up by any means. However, there is still the phrase that you can't polish a turd. If it's bad in the initial stages, then it's best to get the feedback to recognize that early on and start over fresh. With that said, I recently worked on an interior scene for a class. I learned a lot, which is the best thing I could have asked to get from this. It's not what I would have hoped to produce as an end result but since doing this I've improved in technique, methodology, and overall process. Pull out the positives that you can!

(2 versions, the first one is lower res, but includes smaller edge details that the high res cropped out)

Low

High

New year, new goals!

Well it seems I still have yet to break my bad habit of not updating frequently. However, it's a new year! So here's to hoping for that frequency to increase! I think I'll start off with a throw back to an animation background I did for an animation project class last year. The animation was a traditional 2D project that ran for 30 seconds. Looking back there are plenty of improvements that could have been made, but hey that's all part of the learning process, right?

Back to it.

Well, it's been quite awhile. The last several months have been crazy busy and I haven't posted in what seems like forever. No better time than the present to update! With that, here's a concept I did for a desert scene. It took about 2-3 hours. I tried applying some things I had observed and learned from other artists, just gotta keep practicing!

Old Piece

This is actually an older study (from about a year ago) that I wanted to do after I found this awesome picture online:

http://www.thoughtsonbluesandreds.com/2011/11/hashtag-hits-twitter-tuesdays-on-friday.html

It's not finished, and I hate to upload it unfinished, but maybe I can use this as motivation to work on it a bit more. As for right now I'm working on some original pieces, though. Hopefully they'll turn out well. Here's hoping!

Environment Study Annapurna

Another environment study and another mountain. This was a study I did a few days ago before working on other personal projects, I'm planning on switching up subject matters for my studies soon. Diversify!

Photo Source: http://beautifulplacestovisit.com/mountains/annapurna-nepal/

Environment Study K2

This was a quick environment study (the mountain is K2) I did before working on some other personal work I had to do. I got caught up in some detail work, so it ended up being an hour worth of work. Slower than I would have liked, but with practice comes growth! Onward!

Photo Source: http://world-visits.blogspot.com/2012/02/k2-wallpaper-second-highest-mountain-in.html

Busy busy busy

I've been neglecting this art blog lately... I really need to get better at this, but school has been nonstop and crazy. Maybe if I just make a habit of this... In any case, here's an older piece I did that I forgot to upload!

Also in case anyone is interested, here's the concept for the painting. You'll notice there are elements that were not included. This was due to a time crunch, but I'd like to revisit this or at least make a new one. We'll see what happens.

Shilo & Sam

My first attempt at a comic. What will this foray result in? Success? Failure? Who knows... In any case, this is Shilo & Sam. Inspired by the art direction from Calvin and Hobbes, it is about twin boys who constantly use their imaginations. Except they tend to use them at inappropriate times and in inappropriate locations.

Haven't posted in awhile, eh?

It's true. Oh well. Here's a rough concept for a character for a 3D character class. It's the first time I'll be doing humans in 3D... So... We'll see how it goes... And yes, it looks like me. I thought it would be easier, hopefully it'll work out. I should add that the assignment was to make a character based off of a AAA title done in the art style of the game.

Cityscape

This is a small cropped portion of a larger cityscape piece I am working on for a class. More work will probably be done with it later, but for now...

For lack of a better title: "11/9/11"

I really need to get better at this whole "frequent blogging" thing... Well, no better time to try and start than today. This is an assignment from my ART300 class. Essentially about perspective and environments. This is how I turned it in, but I still plan on working on it. I want to add more to it.

I'll be adding more assignments from this class later. It actually was part of the assignment to incorporate pictures of objects we found to use as textures. I decided to use some server towers from work in conjunction with some other images from around town. In any case, that is why those are laying in there.

Excavator Model

I haven't updated this in awhile. Since summer to be exact. So I thought I'd take the time to do that now. I've just started using 3DS Max and I've had no prior experience using it. Whatsoever. At all. Well, I think you get the point! This was my excavator model for our on-going project.

Edit: If you look closely, you'll notice little "plug" type objects on some of the joints. This is the version without the cabling that I want to add between some points on the arms. Hopefully I'll have time soon to add those. We shall see...

Self Portrait

A self portrait from my CG201 class.