ironic or funny blog title

dennis redman

2012-02-06T22:47:00.000-05:00

wrapped up the zsphere body frame for the tribal project

2012-02-06T03:31:00.002-05:00

here's some inspiration images that i pieced together for the upcoming tribal project in ZBrush...

meatspin

2012-02-01T11:46:00.006-05:00

here's my bug-thing, via zbrush's turntable recording feature. i had to record it like 7 times because i kept screwing it up. not sleeping will do that to you...

all said and done i had a blast working on it. slowly but surely i am getting the hang of zbrush, though simple things like painting the surfaces were completely lost to me, washed away in a sea of menus and odd functions. a chance encounter with a classmate a short while ago provided me with the means to actually add some color, so thank god for that.

hands and faces

2012-01-30T20:28:00.007-05:00

here's a two-fer for today: a ZBrush in-prog of a head i am making as part of my bug dude's base, and an exercise involving hands from the hand brush.

hopefully i can make some good stuff happen by wednesday, when my first assignment is due

is it okay to pass yet?

2012-01-23T16:08:00.004-05:00

today's in-class exercise in ZBrush was making a face sculpt of ian mckellen

since i'm still in the beginner's stages of this crazy application i just stuck with the basic tools, like claybuild, move and basic subtraction. putting in image planes kept crashing the program so i just sorta winged it by looking at separate windows

3D aspirations

2012-01-18T06:26:00.005-05:00

big ups to dieter for pointing me towards the 3D work of Jon Fletcher via a rather awesome youtube video that showcases a re-imagined start screen for the classic Mario franchise, with plenty of subtle witty modern twists strewn about

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHahbKFONF8&feature=player_embedded

if i can come away from my ZBrush class with 1/25 this guys talent i will be super stoked. it's going to be a long climb up, i'm sure... everyone else is coming across as really well adapted, whereas i am getting bogged down by something as rudimentary as the bloody interface.

buuum buuuuuuum BUUUUUUUMMMM! bumbum!

2012-01-18T03:15:00.009-05:00

long story short, i'm going to be crafting movie posters for the first half of my senior studio, and then creating a fake franchise with various marketing elements during the second half. content and quantity is king, and i intend to be prolific. or at least more so than prior semesters

here's my first poster concept sketches for 2001: ASO

above all i want to deviate away from the expected, like the big glowing eye of HAL and the space baby. minimalism is still coursing through my blood so i've got to try and play at that angle as well, albeit only in cases that prove beneficial from such an aesthetic choice

ZBrush roadmap! Or: This will be the only easy part

2012-01-14T03:10:00.002-05:00

bug concepts for my first ZBrush project, which is going to be a crazy learning experience. i've been consuming tutorials left and right and honest to god it still scares the crap out of me. there's so many different places for options to be, i just can't wrap my head around the interface. yikes!

anyways, the bugs i like the most are the dangler dude in the second image and the fat little sluggy hippo guy who has big blades of grass growing out of his dirt back. weird concepts all around, but they should prove to be great fun to make.

Juggernauts

2011-12-15T04:24:00.008-05:00

coming this summer...

done in illustrator for my period costume illustration class. this bad boy took quite a bit of time and effort to complete, unlike most of my forays into the vector domain. a lot of the major design elements were readjusted numerous times and had numerous opinions sculpting them in this way and that, ultimately with great results at the end. i'm pretty proud of this one

here's some alternatives suggested by marinko...

rising to the occasion

2011-11-22T11:26:00.003-05:00

okay, 3rd assignment for my web media class is done

as previously mentioned (probably, i can't remember) it's a 3 page (technically 4, counting the spread as 2 individuals) comic formatted for presentation on the ipad. i had fun creating the character and challenged myself with color selection and composition. all in all a good little romp through familiar territory

the backstory of the comic for those interested:

it's the near future. nanotech and advanced robotics are surging in the world, though those types of advanced technology are more or less entirely relegated to entities with large budgets, namely governments and large corporations. in narita, japan, a junior lab technician working for the research wing of the japanese self defense force is doing his routine inspections of the fuel depot for a world renowned robotics scientist's lab when a freak explosion occurs. discovered ripped in half but barely alive by the robotics scientist, the lab tech begs him to save him using whatever means necessary.

after a long operation and months of rehabilitation, not to mention kowtowing to the bureaucracy of the JSDF to make his project viable for military usage, the scientist unveils to a gathering of parliament members and representatives of both the US and japanese militaries his latest breakthrough: Rising-San! an emblem for japanese patriotism, Rising-San is enhanced with robotic limbs and advanced tactical gear, as well as a secret weapon calling back to the legends of the orient... a dragonesque flamethrower built into him! but in his rush to complete the project under budget, the scientist made a fatal mistake in his design... he put the flame piping in backwards! unaware of his fiery rear end, when given the command to unleash his flame powers Rising-San accidentally scorches to death the gathered group behind him... including the one man who could fix him, the robotics doctor!

labeled a vigilante and looking to atone for his misdeeds, Rising-San now wanders the alleys of japan, looking to right wrongs wherever possible

see? i can go without complaining

2011-11-11T08:53:00.009-05:00

i got my process book from intermediate illustration and design in the mail yesterday, and after seeing it in-hand i figured i could finally categorize it as 'done' and post some of the work.

the book ended up being about 38 pages long and came out quite nicely. it looks like for whatever reason there was some banding issues on the cover, but it's nothing to really gripe about. all in all, despite the HUGE price tag for the little book, it turned out to be an awesome assignment and something that will look great during review. now that we're past the midterm bump, i can say i'm really glad that i signed up for the class.

(and yeah, i see the 3 or 4 spelling mistakes... oops. can't do anything about it now, right?)

hare share

2011-10-12T01:55:00.004-04:00

okay, sooooo.... editorial painting class thus far has the fastest turn around time for assignments. yay, content! this one was a quickie, and pretty experimental in terms of me exploring new brushes and the sort in photoshop. it's also pretty damned minimalist in nature. the gist of it is, it's an editorial piece based upon a short work of fiction that appeared in some publication or another that deals with a man coming to grips with his father's sadness. his dad survived the holocaust, but lost his family and along the way a part of his childhood when on a snowy day he was forced to kill his favorite rabbit in order to ease suspicions from the watchful eye of the nazis. or something. it's kinda weird.

and the sketch/concept:

aaaaaaand! you may remember this from an earlier post, but here's the redone crawfish piece, with added line work and a rearranged composition:

row, butts

2011-10-08T16:22:00.003-04:00

did some fast robots. really kinda aimless, just killing time and stretching out. each were super fast and not too much forethought. just getting back into the swing of silhouettes for my upcoming book project

time to grime

2011-10-05T01:26:00.002-04:00

finished-ish with my Jungle Book project. the pencil rendering took a bit longer than i would have liked, but all in all i am content. and really, that's all that you can ask for sometimes.

i still have some values to push and a few stray elements to patch up in ye olde Photoshoppe, but for now i am donesville. the short version of my technique was: import pencil scan, clean it, mess with the levels, put the layer to multiply, grab some paper texture, mess with the levels, start going nuts with brushes for the wash and gouache effect.

and mess with the levels. can't forget that one.

now on to completing my Odwalla project for Web Media before my 8:00am shift.... yay!

long days... err, nights work

2011-09-28T07:29:00.003-04:00

okay, finished up my editorial painting assignment. whoops, forgot it was due, story of my life, et cetera et cetera. long story short, i cranked it out in a night, though it was easy considering i knew exactly how i wanted it to look. like, exactly. there were a few places i had to compromise, like a lot of the detailing in the trombone and some of the feathery details of the mardi gras mask, but all in all i am content. and it's a color scheme i have never ever used... being basically shit tier in color choice i would be glad to hear some input!

for those that are confused as balls as to what's going on, the editorial piece had to center around an insane rambling news article fluff story that went into horrific detail over crawfish and new orleans/the surrounding swamp areas. i guess people eat these things? they are basically bugs, like most seafood. whoops. anyways, the concept behind my piece was "New Orleans, to go."

and that's about it. now to leave for my 8am work shift...

super ps: it's all Illustrator. yay scaleability!

informashional

2011-09-23T23:10:00.002-04:00

alright, here's some of the process work that went behind my first assignment due this semester: an infographic image for intermediate illustration and design. the basic premise is that we were to construct an informational illustration that pushes beyond mere figures and data and presents an interesting and original approach to the subject matter, which was internet usage. i decided that the best representation of my online time is via video streaming, whether it be from Netflix, HBOGo, or my imac's media server connected with the PS3. there's also an added point of interest in that there's numerous people tied in with the Netflix account, which adds some variety to the whole thing. hopefully it will be seen as kinda kooky and a weird mix of sketchy illustration and clean and efficient web 2.0-esque design with heavy emphasis on contrast and icon usage.

looking at it now, there's several things i'd like to change and explore and add... i'm wondering what the body's background would look like with faint stripes, or if i could imbed some numbers into the bar graphs in a way that they seamlessly link up in a weird and unique way... i don't know, there's always a trillion more things to do, but maybe it's best to stop now before i overload it with junk and kill its simplicity. right now, i'm just breathing a bit easier now that it's done, and for that i'm grateful.

gin and (odwalla) juice

2011-09-22T18:09:00.002-04:00

more stuff from other classes. this time it's my web media and design class, which currently has us taking up an imaginary illustration job for a given corporation, whereupon we work on creating a landing page for a contest of some sort. we were given write-ups for creative briefs and must follow the parameters closely to satisfy the client. from the 4 available choices, i selected odwalla; they have a weird style about them that is pretty damned far away from what i normally do, so i thought it'd be interesting to tackle. ideas are as follows:

something about upton sinclair i think

2011-09-21T01:03:00.004-04:00

right now i've got quite a few fires raging for school work, with due dates fast approaching (one is even this coming saturday! holy balls) so i figured that i would just do some gradual updates showcasing what exactly it is that i'm juggling. in today's installment, it's a few bits of research and build-up work for a piece centering around the Jungle Book:

basically the finalized composition is a bunch of animals surrounding baby Mowgli, discussing his fate on their council rock that they use for meetings. to help sell the piece i taught myself to draw bears from any angle, without reference. you can just tell when shit's photo ref'd, especially with animals, so that's that. it took a good few runs to really get down the proportions and anatomy and nuances that makes a bear certifiably a bear, but by the time i hit the one on the very right in my all-bear scan i was flying solo. yay! now i just have to repeat that process with a panther, a wolf, and other miscellaneous things. due date's not until the first week of october, so i have time. i'm probably going to complete the piece with a monochromatic wash over pencils and light pen work, and a healthy serving of photoshop. we'll see how it turns out.

even if it kills me

2011-08-14T09:03:00.005-04:00

well oh well, boys and girls, it has been simply forEVER since i've last posted. why, you may ask? i really don't know... i guess that with a retail job and other distractions, my personal art sort of sat mostly stagnant with a few blurbs of creativity bubbling up here and there. pretty shitty, right? i still made sure to create at least something every day, but not much formed into anything of substance. such is summer break, huh?

but now, i'm back... -ish. the kickstarter for me has been a 2 pronged wake-up call: first, school starts back up in less than a bloody month. holy smokes! secondly, evergreen friend of CCS, Hasbro, has once again put forth their internship opportunity within their Nerf division to eligible students, and i thought hey, why not give that a shot. naturally i didn't find out about it until this past wednesday, and it has a monday due date, and i am working 5:00-10:30am shifts at my job which essentially kills my daylight activities as well as any hopes of retaining energy for personal projects, so every blasted hurdle imaginable has shown its ugly face.

honestly, the internship would be nice to earn, but... more than that, i am glad that i saw it for the opportunity that it truly is: a means to get back into the saddle with arting it up like a monster. retail can't break me, dammit! here's some things worth highlighting that i've been putting my grubby fingers all over the past 3 or so days (one of which is just a tweak of a project that i built up this past semester but didn't put too much thought into); enjoy!

concepts, concepts, concepts... one of these days, i'll have the time and interest to do something really grand and robust as a digital piece. but for now... i'm content with re-arting.

all the small things

2011-05-02T08:35:00.002-04:00

rolling along! here's the pencils, inks, and colors for the graphical element of the packaging for one of the characters in my independent study's toy line. the dude is modeled after hong kong police action movies and the beaten-up appeal of wolverine (good combo, if you ask me)

it's kinda rare for me to have these 3 steps together... usually i just ink straight over the pencils, but this time i felt like there would be a few changes along the way and did layered tracing paper. in terms of rendering, the inking is nothing grand by any stretch, but the coloring of the flesh was in my opinion a pretty big leap for me. i felt really good about how it ended up looking, especially with the subtle color blends and reflected lights that will NEVER show up at the size in which this is going to be printed. ah well, such is life

dippin' bots

2011-05-01T01:42:00.001-04:00

here's a small sampling of things to come, as the semester winds down and my output increases...

how long has it been?

2011-04-25T15:28:00.003-04:00

welp, it's the final week of classes. things are happening super fast and there doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day, or days in the week, to get all the things done that i'd like to. SO, right now i'm in super compromise mode with getting things done. it seems like a bad thing at first, delegating what does and doesn't get the full treatment, but ultimately this is beneficial; talk to any professional and they'll tell you it's deadline first, then your own personal sense of artistic satisfaction. no difference here, folks

i've got 2 little ditties to show you here. first off, we have a simple matte painting that i did in photoshop...

nothing too special here. just an underlying mash-up of photos that were retooled and some original painted content

and here we have a vector line illustration of an old robot design that i've had kicking around half cooked for about 2 years, that is now seeing the light of day for my senior studio class...

the plan is to do some quick color rendering on it and some simple background work, then move on to the next assignment without too much effort. efficiency is the name of the game these next few days

more to come as the week unfolds. i'm really looking forward to having some good maya stuff to show off, so be on the lookout for that

be-leaf it

2011-04-17T20:17:00.002-04:00

alright, we're well underway with the final maya assignment of the semester, and it's a big one: make our own 30 second(ish) commercial, using an existing product and a creature of some sort to help in the pitch. my whole thing centers around the Nissan Leaf, an electric super car that i just so happen to have a model of in low poly glory. here's the storyboard lay out for the commercial (see if you can follow along)...

an alien lands, sees the car, prefers it over his saucer, drives off in it, leaves the saucer abandoned with a "for sale" sign along with some alien squiggles. all said and done it should be easy once i finish up the space craft and the alien. key framing is the one thing that i am genuinely comfortable with in maya, so that part should be a breeze

THE HAMMER. YEAH.

2011-04-14T17:36:00.003-04:00

so! i decided to do a 1 hour little side track project in Illustrator and whipped out this vector of General Steel from (the recently and quite unfortunately cancelled) Sym-Bionic Titan. nothing particularly difficult about the whole process, just a bunch of grinding with the pen tool. Tartakovsky's flat work simply screams for vectors, so i guess it's only natural that i did one. anyways, here's some images...

the original image, screen-captured from an episode...

the vectored lines...

and the final, mega wallpapered size version!

soaring high

2011-04-12T00:07:00.002-04:00

okay boys and girls, i completed the side view of the long term jet bot. whew! been a while, huh? it's been a long and winding path, chipping away here and there and finding mass in this thing at random... but ultimately, this was an extremely rewarding little exercise

some extra details...

it's a 300DPI, 17x11" document right now, which means that i have a little bit of play to upscale without distortion or loss of detail in print. i may push to a 19" height, but i'm not sure now. what i do know, however, is that realistically i am only 1/3 of the way done, as i still need to piece together vector lines for the front and back views, plus lines over the side view for a simplified tech manual look. it'll be double sweet when it's done, believe me

retouching

2011-04-08T20:57:00.002-04:00

alright, had my mini critique on the piece, and it needs a good overhaul. i think that in terms of rendering with photoshop i learned a great deal, probably more in this one week of self-study and practice than basically the rest of the bloody semester in a digital-oriented class. there's something painfully wrong with that... wrong and wasteful and symptomatic of a greater underlying problem.

but i digress; i got my critique and some excellent insight, and i will be reapplying it all into an even better piece. and the best part is, i could really track how much faster and more efficiently i was going with the rendering, so this next one should be even faster. i'm feeling good, feeling confident; i don't mind that the piece wasn't a flawless example of what i am capable of. the next one will be a leap past this, and the one after that even greater. i'll be working on thumbs this weekend, and hopefully will gear it up on the digital end by the midweek or earlier.

also! i watched the first episode of Sons of Anarchy on netflix tonight, as a little reward for getting some critically needed stuff done. i gotta say, it was an awesome pilot episode, much better than i thought it would be. call me jaded, but for the last... i dunno, forever or so, i've avoided shows with more blue collar angles about them. i guess it's just a fear of the low brow spectrum of writing and demographic pandering... a mindless show to cool your heels on after a long day of doing god knows what in the midwest, that sort of thing. Sons of Anarchy was nothing of the sort, and actually had an engaging little set up with dynamic characters and an intriguing and transplantable backdrop that felt relatable, yet untold and unexplored. it really has me aching to see more... maybe that craving will serve as a good catalyst to get me motivated on my work, to earn more viewing rewards

last update before completiooooo~n

2011-04-08T01:14:00.003-04:00

this bloody thing gets wider and wider each time i open up photoshop to work on it... anyways, during some downtime in World Lit on wednesday, I had a few flashes of inspiration for the piece and jotted them down all quick-like. in my opinion, these additions give a bit more depth to the story. do you agree?

yes, yes, i am sure there are a few jokes that could be tossed about quite easily with the poses, but whatevs. it adds variety to the composition, and that's all that matters. now, the only question remaining is whether or not i can finish this up in about 11 hours or so. who knows...

and ever and ever and ever

2011-04-06T22:04:00.003-04:00

more and more work on the moss cat piece. each little bit takes forever and a half but i am liking where it is going. the more and more i press it the more i am learning, which is awesome and what i sorely needed this entire semester. figures that it'd come at the very end...

there is a VERY solid friday deadline on this, so it will be an interesting next couple of days to say the least. so long as i can get the figures, foreground elements, and essential pieces heavily rendered, the rest can be rough, especially considering that i am targeting a print size roughly 15" horizontally across. since it's currently at 600dpi, though, i could probably sharpen up a few things and blow it up to 30" across with no problem... HMMMMMM.

edit:

scaled the moss cat up a bit in size (yay! 600dpi = no quality loss @100%) and added some minute details to the pillar

this is going to take forevah

2011-04-05T23:55:00.002-04:00

piddling along

moss cat

2011-04-04T01:12:00.003-04:00

so i'm working on some of my independent study stuff. god, i've neglected it so much... well, that's going to be changing from this point forward. i only have a precious few weeks to get everything done, and right now i am in priority mode. so!, as we may or may not recall from my previous postings, this independent study thing centers around a made up toy line with monsters and aliens and the sort, plus a Galactic Police officer and his yeti partner. here's one of my presentation pieces, which will help in giving a visual summation of what these characters are all about. stealth! action! fighting monsters! et cetera

i'm thinking about expanding the scene and adding in some hostages or something. alien hostages. dunno how it'll read. test, test, test

i despise coloring stuff, so this is going to be a challenge for me, no doubt. if only it were all metal... gah, i should have suggested a robot toy line... live and learn, i suppose. anyways, as this project unfolds i'll put up screengrabs. it should be wrapped up by thursday, if i can keep my shit together. with that Somerset project out of the way and only 1 assignment remaining in Pen & Ink, i should have enough free time to hit out the requirements in everything. we'll see...

springtime in detroit

2011-03-31T09:48:00.006-04:00

well, i'm done with the senior Somerset project. overall i enjoyed the work, though some of the required logos were, shall i say, agitating from a designer's point of view. it was a bad decision on the part of those overseeing the project not to hand us the required logos until literally the last minute; since these are supposed to be parts of our pieces, you'd think that they'd be there up front and ready such that we can work them into our designs. but no, instead we were left with a mishmash of vectors and (ugh) raster psd files to juggle about and try our best to blend in. me, i decided to just divorce them from the main piece entirely. ultimately it's a design war that i can't win, but at the very least i'll take this one battle

i decided from the get-go that i wasn't going to kill myself over this project and just let it be as lighthearted and fun as i could. i'd say, mission accomplished. i learned a few new things about Illustrator, dusted off some cobwebs, and have a few cool things scattered about that i may revisit and sample in other pieces. the critiques that i got in-class were pretty sound, but ultimately i think that they were drifting off target from what i envisioned as the crux of the piece: simplicity, bare-bones flatness in parts, embellishments in others, and a MASSIVELY simple to interpret message conveyed via color, imagery, and text. is it christian oriented? yes, but only in so far as the majority population will construe it. am i designing it for every creed and subsection of detroit? absolutely not. i want it to appeal heavily to the largest target audience, because that's what designers do

the only major elements of critique that i observed and acted upon were those concerning shape and form; primarily it was conveyed that the egg initially was too oblong and evoked the image of a snake egg more than anything. now it's a bit more blunt and rounded, and i agree 100% that that was the right thing to do. there were other small tweaks here and there, but the calls to change the color went unheeded; yes, it's seasonal, but wow, what a coincidence, this will be critiqued and judged at the exact season that it corresponds to. this isn't accidental on my end. i'm not disavowing any of the words of criticism that were forwarded to me; if i were on the other side looking at this piece, i too would say what was said. but that's only because i would look at it as a piece that maybe one would like to recycle into a portfolio or something like that. in all honesty, i'm fine just letting it go and striking at the saccharin sweet angle, which is not highly represented amongst my fellow participating artists. we'll see how my gambit pans out

edit: spoke too soon. here's the double mega finished version. note the gradient (ooooooh~)

rise from the ashes

2011-03-28T23:13:00.004-04:00

alright, new blog layout. looking good, right? well, it does so long as you are not using google chrome browser on OSX. yikes! just tested it on there and it is a nightmare to say the least. for whatever reason, safari and firefox understand the idea of columns, but chrome just completely up and dies on it. weird considering that this redone version of my site is basically just a slightly modified standard blogger template, and google owns blogger. there's no scratch built voodoo like the last version... dunno what else to say on that one

also, it's a trainwreck with the older posts that were done pre-lightbox. every image is breaking the horizontal limits of the post frame, and i can't be bothered to update damned near 600 archived posts. and frankly, this tinier post layout works 100% better with the lightbox thumbnail system, don't you think?

oh, and finally, look to the right... notice the Follow Me thing? it's finally working again after overhauling the lightbox javascript and css. yay! everything works

edit: my OCD took over and i upped the horizontal size for the main posts. for as far back as i'd like to travel and check, it looks as though my older posts aren't exploding with oversized images

stardust memories (edited)

2011-03-28T02:37:00.006-04:00

okay, done(ish) with the spaceman robot thing. i decided to refrain from rendering the little rider for now, as sleep is deemed pretty danged important to me right now. woo, long day... anyways, since it's a nice piece, and i like where it's going, the rider is definitely going on when i get the time

UPDATE: here's some detail shots, because why not?

and don't forget to check out my in-prog page and sketch concept page for this quick little project

tum tum

2011-03-24T08:47:00.003-04:00

alright, working on my favorite spaceman sketch for Pen & Ink. it has a monday due date, and judging by my rate of progress i should hit that with time to spare. yay! i'm especially happy with the fact that it blends so well with the rest of my robot stuff from senior studio

where it's going:

space is the place, ace

2011-03-20T10:37:00.002-04:00

working on some spaaaaaa~ce men designs. weird stuff all around. this is really letting me stretch my legs a bit with concepts and oddities, which i've not really done in a good long while. yes, i do make some odd stuff here and there (aliens, robots, et cetera), but these latest spacemen ones are... extra special. the first few start out orthodox enough, but then towards the end i feel like i really found my pace

just finkin' is all

2011-03-18T00:38:00.001-04:00

got some stuff done on the Somerset project last night/this morning, but i'm probably only at about 85% done. here's a tidbit of what i've been vectoring...

where it's at

2011-03-16T03:43:00.003-04:00

okay, we're well underway with the illustration senior studio Somerset-sponsored project. finally. i guess. you may remember it from a few weeks ago, where i just posted a random scan or some such thing... well, now i've put in a mind boggling 4 hours of work into this thing. thankfully my plan of going minimalist has been working out just fine, and it has been gathering some positive responses from those who enjoy the cutesy type things. there's 3 spots on the Somerset project for 'winners'; i figure, everyone's doing complex and painterly digital renderings of god knows what, so a little simplistic variety will go a long way in the eyes of the judging party. if i can squeeze out a victory with a minimal amount of work and just really break this down to its core, it'll all be worth it. and if i don't get it, well... oh well. i just want to do my senior studio robots anyways, and this mandatory thing will have only been a minor detour. all the same, i'm starting to have fun with this now...

still working on slogan ideas. mreh. the little bar at the bottom is going to be a directory of sorts, color matched to the egg fragments to list what's being shown of detroit, where it is, et cetera. it'll also house the mandatory logos that they are making us plaster on these things

...it goes on and on my friends

2011-03-11T04:30:00.003-05:00

okay, more content on the bot. this will probably be my last little bit on it for this week, at least; i've got quite a bit more to deal with in other classes, after all. the legs are about 85% done, and the torso is roughly at the same percentage. i've been battling with the foremost jutting of the chest and have decided to let it rest for now and come back to it with new eyes later. still need to tackle the feet and put in an arm for the obstructed view

the song that never ends...

2011-03-08T21:54:00.005-05:00

did some slight revisions and work on the bird robot mecha... thing. the goal is to have the side profile done by tomorrow, and either the front or back lined up and primed for a good work-over by the time classes resume

it may not seem like much of a jump since last time, but this thing is killing my brain with focus. the amount of hours i've put into it would seem just stupid, if you weren't there to see my process. since i'm starting it up in profile, i need to build it up with not only function and utility from its set perspective, but also keep in mind functionality as i mentally rotate it in my head to the front and back. things will need to make sense in the other views, so it's super delicate. thankfully i can work well in mental three-dee so this should turn out pretty boss when i am done

dem legs

2011-02-27T15:45:00.005-05:00

more work on my senior study robot, which i've neglected for a few days. i'm blocking in the last remaining bits of blank area and trying to match general aesthetics to make it one cohesive thingamabob (why didn't safari's word correction attempt to fix 'thingamabob'? weird)

new silhouette

so far:

in the future:

you know what would be awesome? if i could finish this design by the end of the day. we'll see!

AAAAAAAND an edit:

here's where i'm leaving it off for the night:

slightly remodeled silhouette:

the massing:

'murderbot' or 'mandroid'? i can't decide

2011-02-27T01:41:00.003-05:00

here's more of my maya robot

i still need to smooth some faces and add a blinn and some UV mapping, but it's more or less in its final form. probably need to tweak the IK's for a more natural flow of movement but... mreh

laid out

2011-02-25T23:36:00.003-05:00

here's some more stuff for my portfolio class process book. still in-prog, but we have the better part of the remaining semester to get it all done. minor tweaks here and there, and some temporary content tossed in. i might add in some vector screws in the corners of the grey content boxes, but i'm undecided

the thing i've been debating is whether or not to have edge binding (top or side) or middle binding. middle binding would give it more of a manual feel, but it would also necessitate moving content around to avoid gutter trapping. who knows where i'll go with this

robutts

2011-02-24T07:37:00.002-05:00

more robots for senior studio! i really fell in love with the silhouette design of this fellow, so here's my plan: i'm going to do a spec sheet for him and make it look like a tech manual. i figure that it'll help break up the monotony of narrative pieces that i'm doing in the class

here's the first layout:

with some of the modeling on top:

whoops, slight overhaul:

new hotness:

these things are fairly easy to churn out, as i'm just finding abstract shapes in the confines of the silhouette. shouldn't be too brutal of an undertaking to draw him from 4 or 5 different views

put my root down

2011-02-17T03:50:00.001-05:00

okay, this blog post is a two-parter: first up, we've got my concept sketch for the senior illustration project, which centers around the mysterious Somerset Mall and all things... detroitish. i guess. it's weird, and i'm not entirely too interested, but good things usually happen when those two conditions come together. a little bit odd, but whatevs

the project is designed to show a detroit on the precipice of revival, with lots of history and modern industry mixed together with an obviously vanilla mentality in regards to visuals. my initial plan was Robocop related, but of course RC exploded with popularity literally days after i had thought about it. so... now it's all about baby chicks. they're coming out of their eggs, which are adorned with images of what makes detroit great (omitting Robocop, naturally) on the various fragments. on top of the chicks head is a shell fragment that has the visual image of the state of michigan on it. it's lame, but it's also kind of a mandatory thing to do, so that's what i'll produce. oh well

the plan of attack is mostly vector, and simple colors at that. tomorrow (today) we'll be having a status review that Don will be going in and out of, fulfilling his duties as the department head. nobody is expecting a finished piece... just a direction, really. i'll have some color studies and other various tidbits to pin up tomorrow, which should suffice

part deuce (the real meat of this post): these were actually done a whiiii~le ago but i just never got around to scanning them. these are some of the alien/monster/character concepts that i came up with for my action figure independent study centering around the Neo Hong Kong cop, his alien Yetti partner, and various baddies

this first one is the one that started it all... the main good guy, and the main rotten fuck. the good guy is a rather humble (re: ugly) scrapper of a cop from Neo Hong Kong ('neo' is code for future!) who is constantly beaten up, broken, stabbed, shot, and bludgeoned in every way possible, but he still keeps coming. he's part of GalaPol (galactic interpol, basically) and works to execute warrants on some of the worst scum of the galaxy. the baddie to his left is a psychopathic alien who murders by the billions and yet is just too damned fabulous to truly hate. i envisioned him as posing dynamically/comically in every last piece of art he appears in

here's the breakdown of the main dude, with some annotations for clarity (you should be able to decipher most of it)

next we have the first super quick, 30 minute break down of the main guys lumbering partner, a snow yetti from a giant methane snow planet

and right after that was cleared up and given a basic design, it was right back into the fray to make it just that much better. i added some personality, some points of interest, expanded some unique elements, and refined the helmet to a more 1950's retro look

so what's the partner's motivation? why, to clean up the corruption all around him, of course! and thus, we have the yetti pirate mafia goon! his helmet is a bit more menacing and alien, and he's just a bit more raw in the key areas: a thicker beard, eye patche(s), et cetera

next up is sort of a split that exists on a single world that is covered in suuuuper deep gorges, thus making only flying aliens feasible. first, there's these giant, gentle, beautiful bird-like creatures with elegant lines that evoke a more natural and earthly feel. they're kind of like... well, pokemon, i guess. six arms, kind of anime-ish features, the whole nine yards. then, there's the darker, more industrialized bat-like creatures. they have sharp features and a utilitarian feel about them, with obvious throw backs to german SS soldiers

and this last dude is one of my favorites. he's this sort of predatory, cat-like humanoid plant animal with an outfit reminiscent of egyptian motifs. roots make up his whiskers and pulsate like veins across his body, and twist in sharp fashion to create his extremities. yes, there is much potential for this sort of thing in japan. i kind of envisioned these guys being on GalaPol's bad side because they were a religious sect of an ancient alien race that refused to give up religious ceremonies involving living sacrifices while the rest of their world had just started to modernize and expand out into space and the GalaPol federation

basically, this weekend i am looking at producing oodles of thumbnails, value studies and color studies for the action figure project. shouldn't be that bad, as i am super jazzed to take it as far as i can

indumbstrial

2011-02-16T03:51:00.003-05:00

just wrapped up the general template for my portfolio class process book... thing. since my showcased work in the book is going to be robots and whatnot, i went with a more metallic, industrial motif, and there's nothing better than Illustrator and beautiful vectors to do just that

there's six sections in the process book: a table of contents, a creative brief, influences, sketches, refinement of final idea, and the final project itself. i chose to go with a snappy new Web 2.0-esque build up with modern, simplified icons that represent the sections and will be enlarged on their respective pages

it's still early on in the project, so who knows how it'll end up looking in a few weeks... wednesday we'll be having critiques (re: i did this ahead of time. shock!) so everyone's input will definitely help to reshape it slightly

also! there was a message from the gods wrapped inside a piece of candy that i discovered today

seems they have a good sense of humor, considering my schedule...

digimonstrous workload

2011-02-12T18:29:00.003-05:00

chugging along in maya:

i'm slowly but surely getting the hang of the program, but i still get little nags here and there. mreh. the project is to make an alien/whatever and then animate it against a photo or video, depending on what source we get. everybody seemed to be going the organic direction with aliens and monsters, but i just thought a robot with kind of an old school megatron face would be more interesting. we'll see! planning on how to join geometric joints is a pain, though...

greyscale

2011-02-12T04:15:00.001-05:00

another update on the senior studio robot series thing... hopefully now it will make a slight bit more sense. i still need to include about a kajillion other elements to the rough before it starts to look even remotely like how i want it to

suuuuuuper pretentious write-up

2011-02-10T04:51:00.005-05:00

the piece that is currently gaining my attention in senior studio: the kid and the robots. the basic premise is that you are an observer, high above an ocean-situated island, watching a city on the distance come to an end and photographing the action to try and capture that one amazingly iconic image of an epic battle. strife plagues the area and fragments of war are everywhere, such as sandbag defense lines and spent bullet casings. in the open waters, a large armada of ships cruise towards 2 mile-tall battling robots that are wreaking havoc upon a city across the water. billowing plums of smoke stretch miles into the air from afar, from in the water (where less than fortunate ships have met their end), and from the very island you are visiting. your only company is a child, oblivious to the insane dangers around them, fixated only on a boyish fascination with military souvenirs scavenged from the ground. he holds up a spent 20mm shell and admires it

here's my process thus far. it's all been digital, and the composition has changed immensely. at first the idea was to have children playing on a partially submerged military robot, it's arm jutting out of the water but suffering an infestation of barnacles. the familiar theme of the boy presenting a found bullet shell remains consistent

i honestly wouldn't even consider this 5% done. it needs a looooooot of work to resemble something close to complete. i can already foresee where my weekend is going...

lady gogo

2011-02-07T20:02:00.004-05:00

well boys and girls, it was a bit of a surprise but apparently i had an assignment due today in my Pen & Ink class. i say surprise because i, as well as everyone else in the class, thought that this thing was due in a week or so, though that flawed thinking was corrected quite abruptly by a zero-hour, sunday late afternoon email from Keith saying otherwise. so, after gathering some necessary resources and inspiration, not to mention getting myself all situated for a kinda brutal odyssey, i set out at half past midnight with a completion goal of 7:50 am. yay!

the project centers around Lady Godiva, as well as some of the elements surrounding her legend. while conducting some research i was surprised that she actually existed... i thought that she was just some moral lesson or some such thing. whatever. horse, naked woman, medieval england, hair covering boobs... gotcha. let's roll.

anyways, the process i used was thumbnail (somehow i struck gold on the first one and didn't bother making more... probably the whole race against the clock thing), loose-ish penciling on a finalized design, then a quick once over with some microns. then it was scan time and closing it off with photoshop. i used a high-res paper texture procured from google image search as the background, to push a storybook feel to the piece. the strategy was two-fold: it gave texture variety, which is surprisingly not done that often amongst us students in the illustration department, and it also created a SUPER easy means of filling space, which means 50% less work for me with multiple gains.

right now i would say that the project is... maybe 85-90% done? i need to push the negative space in the middle ground archway, such that you get what i am going for with the darkness more. it looks half done and amateurish. i'm also going to push more lights in the bricks, spice up a little more detail in the background, and maybe shift some angles and arches for rhythm and variety. then the lighting on Godiva should be pushed a bit more with the purples to help in foreshortening, which isn't at it's most ideal. really nothing more than an hour process, but one that i've got to put deep thought into.

i have some pencil images, but they're captured via camera phone and, as my camera is garbage, inaccessible. someday, somehow...

EDIT: camera phone images added

anyways, all said and done, not bad for 7 hours of work. not a personal best for that timeframe of work, but it did the job.

0010101010

2011-02-03T01:55:00.003-05:00

another week, another set of robot concept sketches in photoshop. i'm really starting to ponder how far i can push this whole concept of robots for senior studio before it starts to become a drag... we'll see. so long as i hit 5 designs, followed by 5 pieces, and have some good concept work and sketches along the way, i'll be set

the idea is to present these robots in different genres, more or less. the first dude with the little cannon on its underside that i posted a few days ago was sort of a callback to early 90's Genesis-era robot designs that were ever so popular in games. in these latest pictures i'm evoking a Patlaboresque, utilitarian feel with the darker bot, and then a more fantastical, organic early-2000's mecha genre bot with the second design. maybe this is splitting hairs? who else but an aficionado of this niche genre could surmise a difference? maybe i should fish around for a different dynamic. it's tough as all hell to do these sorts of things without too much direction shaping my options

dunno about the figure in the front on the second design... kinda Tronish in a lot of ways, but i just wanted to try something different

later on i'll post some of the stuff i've only recently been able to scrap together for my independent study project. it's all about the action figures... but damn if it is hard to get across with my style of work. it's definitely a brand new arena of art and concept for me, and while it's kicking my ass but something fierce, i'm still enjoying the learning experience of it all. you'll see...

cigarette juice

2011-01-24T11:40:00.006-05:00

and with that, another all-nighter comes to a close. i'm dead tired, but ultimately i'm happy that i was able to churn out a pretty decent photoshop illustration in under 7 hours. i took the time to screen cap some of the process along the way, so... yeah. enjoy

and of course when i went to print it the whole blasted thing turned out over-washed in blue and absolutely dreadful, completely obliterating all of the detail that i foolishly put in. i'll have to get it reprinted when reviews roll around in may, but whatever. oh! i also did a display card for the class...

yay!

dir en grey and black and white

2011-01-20T17:35:00.003-05:00

this morning i started cranking out some quick ideation concepts in photoshop for my senior studio class. still working on the robot but the car... thing i am leaving as-is

i didn't really go the Huntsman route with this one... rather, i pulled out an old charcoal technique i honed when dealing with abstract shapes and giving them dimension. it's a hell of a lot faster and not as loose as the Huntsman style, which suits me a bit better

spinnaz gonna spin

2011-01-18T15:04:00.003-05:00

alright, it's official: i'm in for 18 credit hours. 15 studio, 3 libarts, 100 per-cent mayhem. methinks that i'll be a sleepless, mindless mess come may, but then again i probably wouldn't feel like i was getting the most out of my tuition if it were any other way.

here's where i'm at currently with my maya project... thing:

i guess we'll be doing a car? this will be coo-razy

a year, my dear

2011-01-14T00:02:00.004-05:00

so i'm right now trying to get an independent study off the ground. thus far i've gotten Don to sign off on it (as department heads must do), and Dave agreed to take on the role of an instructor for the project. the only things that i need to do are get a syllabus drafted up by Dave, take the whole shebang to the associate dean of the college, have them sign off on the project, and then register for it. tuesday appears to be the cut-off, which gives me some space to get things all situated, but of course it should also be noted that since monday is MLK day i won't really have that day to do any ground work. zero hour stuff right here. if only invented environments hadn't imploded and gotten cancelled... then again, because of that, i was able to rearrange my schedule away from the less than caring advice of Tanecia and have a real chance of graduating come december. yay!

anyways, here's a copy of my proposal, using a newly implemented spoiler tag that i put into this blog (fancy!)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

The nature of this independent study proposal is based upon the desire to expand my own horizons as an illustrator by partaking of a creative project that will be unique and ultimately very rich in a variety of artistic content. As a conceptual artist with a strong passion in character design and a life-long admiration for contemporary action figures, I intend to create in my illustrations a line of toys (up to and likely exceeding 6 separate characters, including distinct accessories) as well as the varying components that comprise a marketable item (e.g. item logo, font, varying graphics, packaging). The desired end result would be a collection of works that, when placed into a portfolio, could garner internship considerations from prominent toy manufacturers.

The curriculum would comprise of the basic steps that one would undertake to create an action figure line, from early concept art to graphics present on packaging materials. In the beginning, conceptual sketches will be generated that will help put forth a direction for the figures to take. In this stage, inspiration charts will be produced to show a clear line of thinking and process. Following this, with the general idea of the direction, mood, story, and general aesthetics of the line determined, characters will be created that provide a noticeable amount of variety as well as accessories. These characters and accessories will then move from a rough conceptual stage to a line art stage, in which a standard 5 view (front, back, side, ¾ front, ¾ back) will be used to show the concept in full. Color choice will then be addressed, with consideration aimed towards keeping a general aesthetic and mood in the line as well as determining who carries colors associated with “heroic” or “villainous” values. After design and color choices are finalized, conceptual renderings of the designs in action will be produced. The technique utilized will mix traditional rendering with computer-aided coloring. These illustrations will then be used in the final step, where packaging (set to measured standards present in contemporary action figures) will be created in a unified fashion for inclusion with all of the figures of the set.

It is my expectation that, should the pieces receive the care, attention and helpful criticism that I have envisioned for them, it will become an eye-catching collection of work for my portfolio that will showcase the versatility of the various skills employed by illustrators.

ground control

2010-12-21T19:08:00.005-05:00

so i'm back in arizona for a few weeks and whatever. blah. school's done, i rocked my classes hard and came away with everything all nice and proper grade-wise. on the flight home i thought it'd be cool to do a perspective thing, so i did this up in my sketchbook

i wanted to get in some visual distortion so i went passed the 60 cone of vision and did some warping on the sides. fun! then it got too dark and i had to stop. next time i'll work in landscape orientation so that i can push the warping even more because it is boss

mummy'd up

2010-12-17T04:09:00.002-05:00

well, things are quickly wrapping up here at CCS. people are packing up around the clock, juggling clothes as well as the last remnants of their assignments as the week draws to an end. all said and done, it's been quite bittersweet; i've made some large strides in some areas, fell back in others, pushed myself out there to know i accomplished something great and yet still come away with a bit of remorse where it counts. i struggled through seemingly horrid odds with some classes and barely did much of anything else in others. faces came and went, connections were made and rekindled, some with more optimistic results than others. work was finished, rushed, left as-is, kicked up a notch, and pushed down a flight of stairs. i had my highs and my lows, learned a bit about humility and humanity, oscillated between feeling like a teen again and then damned near 15 years older than i really am. it was a tour de force to be sure, one that you wouldn't believe could be recovered from in a mere few days of rest and relaxation only to find pangs of hunger sweltering in your belly, wanting and yearning to return to the action

ccs fall 2010 semester, i raise my hat to thee in remembrance

so what did i get out of all of this, these last 15 or so weeks? did i really get my moneys worth (remember kids, before our awesome scholarship and grant funds kick in we're paying about $4k for a 3 credit class) considering my work output and the gains i have made in skill sets?

i'd say so

i'm genuinely passionate about maya now, which is AMAZING considering my ignorant disdain for the more tech-immersed aspect of art that i sported when i entered the fine arts oh so many years ago. it's given me direction and ambition, which is something that i've been desperately seeking and hungering for. i also learned a great deal about photoshop (still!) as well as illustrator (double still!), which surprised me a lot. i'm still horrid at text-based layouts, but at least now i am functioning disabled in that regard, not just dead in the water. despite that though, fuck in-design. seriously. 3 weeks on that sucker and i learned that it's 6 hours of frustration over a task that you can accomplish in 3 minutes on illustrator

image making had a huge impact on me this semester. brian was an amazing instructor despite his mostly hands-off approach, to the point that he could get you in the right direction without you even realizing that he put you there. granted, i was probably amongst the freer of spirits in the class and tended to surprise him on critique days with stuff that i hadn't even worked on in class, but he still managed to sneak in his tidbits of treasure from his vault of experience that helped me in almost every assignment. the video game project at the end... well, that was a bit of a letdown. i saw so much potential, saw what a solid team with a majority of motivated and capable artists could do given the right combination, and yet... well, 2.5 people can't do it all, it seems. it's a damned shame; i remember the words "flagship project" escaping my mouth once or twice earlier on in the semester when i knew it was approaching, and yet it turned out to be little more than a leaky row boat with one oar. circles of frustration, and people not following up on keeping the holes plugged. it was doomed from the start, but god dammit, at least i got some cool things produced:

if nothing else, i learned exactly the types of people to avoid and never network with again, which is a valuable thing to get right and proper. fuck 'em if they can't spare the time to do stuff in a quality fashion

mama maya

2010-12-08T03:51:00.003-05:00

maya stuff. the idea is to take a kitchen appliance and make it break apart and have robot elements in it, then animate it. so naturally i decided at the last minute to go with more gundamesque boxy limbs. tiny ones, at that. they'll pop out of the toaster's side, with legs coming out the back, and it will shoot some 3d toast out like rockets. yeah

it is A CHAR

2010-12-04T05:32:00.003-05:00

what's that? school? art assignments? a deluge of work piling up at the end of the semester? fuck that. i'm working on another vector for a show that i like: zeta gundam. if you are like me and your interests create a venn diagram of 1980s animation and mecha, you'll probably recognize the character...

le dump du l'image (or something stereotypically french)

2010-11-22T07:16:00.005-05:00

okay, here's where i went with my Illustration and Design project...

mreh. right now i'm at the point where i just want to get these behind me. i'll have to get them printed off tomorrow (i think) so that'll cost me a bit for something i don't even really care about... such is art school life, i suppose

i also have an Image Making photoshop something or another that i whipped together... this morning. huh, how about that?

more detail:

what's that on the Lambo hood?

it's a combo of pumpkin pie with vanilla ice cream in the center that i photoshopped together. yes, i am a culinary genius. i'm glad you all see it that way as well

with this quick little photoshop assignment out of the way, we can now finally progress into the game assignment, which i am super enthused over

reds, purps, and yells

2010-11-15T16:11:00.002-05:00

hey, seen any good episodes of Caprica lately? no? good riddance. they blew it. gabish?

here's my update for my illustration and design typeset portrait mega whatever assignment

i'm converting the highlights to text using masks, which is actually just as damned easy as i thought it would be. how about that? i probably have about 1-3 hours left on it before i'm fully satisfied with the figure, and then i need to move on to the background and deciding if i want to throw in any last minute textures

where it's at

2010-11-10T17:26:00.003-05:00

here's where i am with the illustration and design class project...

the project itself (for those not in the know) is making a portrait out of letter forms, which can be... boring. really boring. lots of potential for some bland pieces all up in's. so instead of jigsaw puzzle fitting fucking letters and numbers together like everyone else seems to be doing, i decided to forge my own path and instead create shapes that can then be used as masks to wrangle in letter forms. all in all it should actually be an incredibly efficient way of doing things. here's the original image that i am working off of, captured quite marvelously by sungkyung and his canon supercamera...

right now it's a crazy looking monstrosity with gaudy and conflicting colors, but it'll be all good in the hood shortly.

feels good, feels bad

2010-11-07T02:02:00.002-05:00

jesus christ, this last week was INSANE. 2x 48+ hour benders, 3 major projects due, rendezvous galore, a trip to chicago, and like a bajillion other little things scattered here and there. lots of harsh times but the fact that i came through with flying colors makes me feel good all around.

here's my east coast vs west coast piece, which i started monday morning at 2am and wrapped up at... 7:30pm? something like that? then it was straight off to critique...

the east coast background is a little too rough for my liking (you can probably guess that that was the last thing i hurriedly worked on before class began) so i'll tweak it a bit for resubmission to my teacher.

2010-11-02T03:58:00.001-04:00

my maya portrait is due today at 7:15 pm, or thereabouts. then i have my image making project on wednesday, an untold something in visual cultures on thursday, and a 7-10 page paper + 10 minute presentation on friday. whoops! busy week ahead.

2010-10-29T15:55:00.001-04:00

this thing is due on tuesday oh no!

2010-10-27T18:27:00.001-04:00

velasquez/lesnar: satisfying. wish i could have seen it live

2010-10-17T20:20:00.001-04:00

more and more and more 3D portrait stuff

portrait workday #2

2010-10-13T01:37:00.001-04:00

6 hours in and i have...

*sigh*

the worst kind

2010-10-08T17:03:00.004-04:00

take a guess as to what my next maya 3D project is going to be...

the teacher used a super nice nikon and captured every wretched detail of my face, so now i got a full glimpse of nosehairs and unibrow trails. great confidence builder...

and here's my P51 plane, at the stage in which i turned it in for grading

pew pew!

2010-10-05T15:09:00.002-04:00

maya project in-prog

i have no idea what i'm even doing. why can't i just draw an object in proper perspective and then the damned computer can make it all 3D'd? this digital age sucks

goji berries

2010-09-29T01:59:00.003-04:00

so apparently Steven Seagal: Lawman season 1 is on netflix instant streaming. well... looks like school is just going to have to wait an additional 273 minutes this week. i guess the dvd boxed set includes a can of Lightning Bolt? and a bonus commentary track by one of the russian prostitutes in his extralegal harem?

for reals

2010-09-27T23:23:00.000-04:00

progress update: i've learned a few korean curse phrases. shibai seki ya!

test, test, 1, 2, 3

2010-09-25T18:29:00.002-04:00

alright, i'm trying out lightbox for displaying my images

black and white and scanned all over

2010-09-20T22:18:00.004-04:00

okay here's the final(ish) linework for my revision of the mugshot project. photoshop washed a lot of the detail out, but there's still some fun stuff you can catch if you look hard enough

i think that tonight i'm going to call it quits early. i've been up roughly 48 hours and i still need to make sure that i have ample time to clear out my maya project by 7:15 pm tomorrow... sleep is urgently needed, as i've started to lose all track of time; today, i was pretty much 30 minutes late to my image making class (the one that has the mugshot project) because of a healthy mix of not realizing the time and being delayed 25 fucking minutes because the shuttle driver had to cart about in the handicap van and work its various mechanisms. the good news is, my teacher was even later than i was, so no harm done. hated the rushed feeling though...

you are now whistling 'the farmer in the dell'

2010-09-19T19:35:00.002-04:00

so it looks like michael k willams (omar) is going to be in that upcoming Boardwalk Empire HBO gangster show with steve buschemi. i gotta say... i'm really hoping that it's a fantastic show, because i am genuinely looking forward to seeing it now. oh, indeed.

CCS'in'

2010-09-19T15:11:00.002-04:00

here's a rough sketch book idea of what i'm kind of working on this weekend with image making

the concept is 'mugshot', where a profile and front view are needed either for yourself (which is the spirit of the assignment) or something that personifies you. i went with kind of a weird scenario where i'm in a futuristic city with crowded streets and i'm mistaken by a robotic police man/bounty hunter/something for a criminal of some sort. in the first panel (this isn't the solid layout, mind you) i'm grabbed by the robot, then i'm interrogated at gunpoint, and then... something. i dunno. i'm still fleshing it out. the mugshot comes into play in the first panel, where in the robot's left hand is a holographic display device that has an illuminated screen with my impostor's police profile on it. this'll be photoshopped in naturally

when you walk through the garden...

2010-09-13T17:45:00.003-04:00

chances are, if you are indeed a 'faith gentleman', you've already perused this excellent david simon interview, and tickled your chin with an expressive motion of your index finger as you poured over his social thoughts and musings on the world of The Wire. i thought that i had posted it a while ago, but as it turns out i was just keeping it to myself and being all badass. whoops.

natural inclinations

2010-09-11T01:19:00.003-04:00

i've had to buy stuff recently, and as many of you are well aware i hate parting with my savings, particularly in instances where the items purchased are what i deem 'wastes.' case in point: an overly priced 400 page paperback design history book. even at used prices i can't believe how bloody expensive the thing was. it's a sad state of affairs when the cost alone makes you hope that the teacher assigns enough reading to justify the purchase. under normal circumstances i would have looked into the seedy underbelly of book downloads, but the teacher expects a hard copy in front of you and assigns points accordingly, so... yeah.

then i got a messenger bag, which seems to be a losing battle no matter what brand or style you end up choosing. i hate backpacks, and will be facing snow/rain/hellish mixture of the two in a few short weeks, so i needed something to protect my paper and electronic investments with. thus, i ended up buying something that will make me feel like a 13 year old whenever i pry open the apparently industry-standard velcro enclosures. velcro? jesus, it might as well have come with a High School Musical 2 thermos.

i know, i know... it's not like me to complain, especially over minute things like this.

postkemon

2010-09-06T01:44:00.002-04:00

basically i've played pokemon blue for about 4 hours today. not having my computer to fuck around with photoshop is detrimental to my time management... in between sessions of pocket monster battles, i went down to a gathering of students and got some free ice cream and ran into numerous familiar faces, which afforded me some pretty good conversations. tomorrow they are holding a barbecue at the main campus at... 3, i think? i'll go there and then see some more people that i know. then i think my first class is on tuesday morning... i'll have to look into that.

DMC

2010-09-04T23:04:00.002-04:00

so i'm back in detroit. i am longing for my imac. hopefully i can get it on friday, though with the start of the shipping process being tuesday at the earliest i have my doubts, with standard insured UPS ground. monday will be fine... but it will be a looooong week in waiting.

in the meantime i've got quite a few things to attend to, like grabbing random things here and there to make the room fully livable. otherwise, everything is set up nicely... the new roomie is fantastic, and is the same age as me, which is a definite plus. i'm genuinely looking forward to the coming semester...

bah, i say!

2010-09-01T14:51:00.003-04:00

i just watched the apple live stream, and i'm just floored... what an intolerable garbage factory apple has become outside of the realm of the brushed aluminum. the new Apple TV is a disaster, and once again apple proves its true intentions of deliberate incremental upgrades to pad its future sales by plopping an anemic camera with a supposed 1.3mp (but in actual mathematic terms, closer to .92mp) capture into the iPod Touch. they've had, what... a full year to do right to the itouch in terms of a camera, since it was revealed that the previous generation even had an open area for where the camera was supposed to go?

and going back to the apple tv... here's an interesting comparison:

Apple TV
Price: $99
Resolution: 720P
Includes: Netflix, YouTube

Support Video Formats: M4V, MP4, MOV

Supported Audio Codecs: HE-AAC (V1), AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV; Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound pass-through

Built in Wi-Fi N

WD TV HD Live Plus
Price: $109
Resolution 1080P
Includes: Netflix, YouTube, Flickr, Pandora

Supported Video Formats: AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9

Supported Audio Codecs: MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS

Wi-Fi only available through extra purchase.

yeah... add to that the fact that the apple tv doesn't have a functioning USB port (the mini one on the back is for service and support only) for hooking up storage of ANY variety and relies strictly on streams (and only through apple means, such as itunes or an idevice) and now i'm really rooting for this product to just be smote off of the market by such obviously better competition. bah.

process with a vampire

2010-09-01T02:40:00.002-04:00

still pounding away on the art job. the subject is 'vampire energy,' or electronic devices that stay on all the time even when you think you power them down. monitors, for example. it initially started as just a monitor needing creation, but then after a while it came back that a dracula figure would be needed, to help with the final vertical orientation of the banner that it will be printed on.

the initial pencil...

first few steps...

little bit more work...

stopped for the night. not done, but this is what it'll roughly look like paired with the monitor

i still need to do the dracula body line work, ground the monitor in his hand by shadow, and maybe do some other embellishments like having a power cord snaking around drac's arm. i dunno. the one thing i do know for sure is, i want to finish this assignment before i hit up detroit. damned thing has been hovering over my head for far too long now...

bits and pieces

2010-08-27T04:18:00.002-04:00

so i'm having my wisdom teeth (2 of the buggers) yanked out in about 6.5 hours. i got a clean bill of dental health otherwise when i was at the dentists office, but apparently these fuckers have got to go and soon. from what i gather, the way they came in is pretty much the best way to get them, if you are so unfortunate: top row only, came in without shifting the other teeth at all, and non-impacted. what sucks is that this is basically going to kill my final weekend here in arizona, which is probably the last thing i had wanted. whatever.

they said that i could keep the teeth if i were so inclined to do so... i figure, i'll see enough busted out teeth as it stands when i crush my competition in the the Buff Off, so why bother? whoops.

passing

2010-08-25T04:36:00.002-04:00

so apparently satoshi kon died just the other day of pancreatic cancer. this is obviously a pretty heavy loss, especially considering that i just recently admitted that his works are a positive in my mind and constitute a hearty sliver of a continuously shrinking pie chart of quality minds in the anime industry. here's to hoping that oshii will pick up the slack now and stop obsessing with the notion of making increasingly worse films to sabotage his own career.

technoconsumption

2010-08-23T20:34:00.002-04:00

i bought this thing for the PS3 today. seemed like an okay deal for what it offers: 802.11n wireless connectivity that sony bullshitted us all out of when it released its anemic little console. as soon as i get this hooked up and running (hopefully before friday, if newegg and UPS/DHL/whoever can keep their promises), i should be able to run strict 802.11n-only broadcasts on the wireless router, the benefit of which should be more reliable, faster broadcasting over a much bigger space. if there's no perceived boost in any of those arenas, back it goes... i'll take a hit on restocking fees but it would be worth it to explore my options.

a half gestated and spur of the moment consideration of anime

2010-08-21T00:57:00.002-04:00

i think i'm done watching new anime. it all seems so... barren and devoid of everything i used to enjoy about the medium. there's a perpetual hype machine on 4chan heralding the arrival of the next big thing every single blasted new season, but for the last 4 years it's mostly been nothing but strike outs and would-be homers that drift into foul territory. i'm looking at my burned archives, pondering over what was truly worthwhile, even for the cost of the DVD-R media upon which it was preserved... and few and far between are the shows presenting a value in my mind equal to $0.50, or whatever the individual discs cost.

even the evergreen favorite gundam series are growing increasingly unsatisfying, oscillating violently between moments of sheer genius and the absolute depths of tripe and rehash; Gundam UC was supposed to be an epoch revival, calling back to the days of old when the repeated formula defied the logic of math and presented new and exciting outcomes at every turn... instead it's another healthy sized serving of androgynous characters, fairy tale absolutism, and an aimlessness in pacing and direction that would make the biblical hebrews of days long since passed wonder who the blind person was that was leading that march. maybe that time has long since gone where the formula worked, and i'm longing for something that culture and progress and time has swiftly trotted past; i'm a silent fan in a world of color talkies, perhaps.

and i suppose that gundam sums up rather nicely the gradual shape and condition of fan that i've been forced to mold into. i'm no longer looking forward to the next installment... i'm dreading it. the degraded condition of anime and the general unapproachable nature of the industry has fed into my natural hater mentality, and now i'm at the point where i consider viewing a new show as just as much a deplorable idea as cramming into a theater full of assholes just to watch the latest christopher nolan "too deep for you" flick and pretending to be impressed.

i mean, i tried... i fully and honestly, without restraint, tried. i grabbed some shows that were up my alley and some that were recognizable side streets... hell, even some that were from the wrong side of town that i felt could maybe shake up my preconceptions and cast a new light on things. each was a disappointment that eclipsed the last, and it only made me long ever deeper for my easier to accept outlook of 3 years ago towards these things. something tells me that with Fullmetal Alchemist wrapped up, a satisfying ending logged, and a bare minimum chance of seeing a repeat performance, maybe it's time that i duck out. it's a kids game, after all... i never wanted to admit that sort of thing, but it's an inescapable aspect of the medium. i'm sure that the occasional kon, anno, and oshii flick will challenge that black and white outlook, but by and large, and as a viewer primarily interested in series, i'm about ready to cash in and look elsewhere.

international affairs

2010-08-18T19:29:00.003-04:00

i guess my twitter feed thing on the side is broken? oh well

i checked my email this morning and the housing people at CCS just switched my room from the 10th floor to the 8th, where i was this past semester. i'm in room 869... for now. who knows how long that will hold out. i'm hoping that it's on the cool kids side of the building but i'm not too sure. honestly i don't really care what floor i end up on so long as i get an okay view.

my future roommate (so long as they don't switch me around again) is a korean dude, which i was definitely hoping for. i know there's a few party folk and loud fucks that hang out in that building so i'm glad that, in all likelihood, my roommate will be somewhat quiet and focused. maybe. that's banking on stereotypes, but at least it's something worth praying for. so long as it's not a Trent or Hunter or Colt or Scout, i'm fine with the prospective roomie. problem though: his listed phone number is like, martian or some shit. how can i get into contact with this guy? they really should have listed an email address or something, so that i could find out what i should bring that he lacks without being charged $57.98 for a 2 minute phone call. at the very least i've got a vacuum and a trash can waiting for me back in storage, so that's taken care of. i wonder if he would be okay with smuggling jason into the dorm...

work work work

2010-08-18T03:14:00.005-04:00

i'm working on a site layout for jerry now that he is on his own doing the lawyer thing. am i even getting paid for this? i'm pretty sure i am. dunno how much people usually charge for these sorts of things, but whatevs. give this thing some crits based on layout mostly (keeping in mind that the little grey man is just a place holder while i wait for a real photo of jerry), though i'm interested in whether or not the color choice works. mind you, the most that i got for color preference was (and i swear) "neutral" so you can imagine the range in which i was working with. sometimes i really hate assignments that are too open ended because it leads me to believe that indecisiveness exists on the other end...

i've still got a little bit left to clear for dorm costs (god damned super meal plan...) so hopefully the payout for this assignment will put me over the top

abe

2010-08-14T06:57:00.000-04:00

all's that i'm saying is, there are worse ways to spend $5

it was dumb anyways

2010-08-10T02:46:00.003-04:00

the project that never was...

thankfully i only spent a few hours on it, and didn't go through the trouble of curvature/perspective corrections or multi-lighting, though seeing as how i've let my photoshop skills somewhat rot over the past few months it did become frustrating at times. whatever. i got reef'd on this one

the greatest truth

2010-08-09T17:10:00.002-04:00

the secret to silva's success (cough) at ufc 117:

with that sort of training, sonnen was lucky that silva didn't explode his head with his animal spirit. it's official: seagal is every champions x-factor for victory. too bad silva didn't get to pull off the babeality that seagal taught him: getting choked out and crapping his pants

umbrella fellini chan

2010-08-08T02:54:00.002-04:00

talk about the latest UFC event follows- don't read if you can't stand fight spoilers

so... it looks like guida might not be that dead-end of a fighter for gomi to advance through after all. this was his 3rd or 4th victory in a row, and from the reports i read (however juiced they may be to make the UFC look good) guida seemed to have a competent grasp on things. he might prove to be a good challenge for gomi; fucker is HARD to knock out, and with gomi likely not knowing all the in's and out's of cage fighting for the sake of stage advantage, he could see a substantial part of his game mitigated. honestly... i wouldn't mind seeing that bout now, especially if gomi gets the serious aid in training from the american side that he could have so desperately used in previous fights.

as for silva... on the one hand i like seeing squawk-boxes like sonnen put down, but i was under the assumption that it would have been more definitive, rather than a 5th round "fucking FINALLY" move on what is generally known as sonnen's weakest point (submission defense). i'm not sure about the judge's scoring, but from what is written (and again, putting the UFC hype machine through its proper filters) it seems like sonnen could have given silva his own dancing medicine and kept distance to secure a decision victory. i think that he had under 2 minutes left before the 5th round ended when his ass was tapped... where did his strategy go? i can just imagine that bald headed meatfuck dana white plodding over to sonnen's corner in between rounds and goading him on... "what about your promise to put a hole through his head?" "think of the glory if you can clear him out without the judges?" pure fantasy, of course, but i'm sure that very thing was running through sonnen's mind and that of his corner as well.

i also like how, as soon as the dos santos fight wraps up, there's talk about who he'd fight between velasquez and lesner after their october bout. uh, let's see... neither? because once velasquez clears lesner, we can expect the rematch in under 5 months. whoops!

docking around

2010-08-07T20:39:00.002-04:00

i just ordered a HDD docking station with USB and eSATA off of newegg... though i'll be god damned if apple ever releases something faster than firewire800. hopefully, since it's 2.5" and 3.5" capable, it'll keep relevance and usefulness for at least a few years. it should go nice with the 1 terabyte drive i received a few weeks ago, assuming that the drive isn't DOA (since i lack the enclosure, i've not been able to test it out). hopefully this will be one of the last purchases that i'll have to make, as my school bills are coming in and it's not looking too pretty...

i am going to become a hoarder

2010-08-04T17:30:00.003-04:00

so right now i am amazed at how much free shit there is on the internet. you can get a free box of Hot Tamales, 10% off of computer accessories at amazon (which, with free shipping, pushes apple's magic mouse down to below $60), not to mention
free 1 year Amazon Prime service for anyone with a valid school email, and a free beer glass from newcastle. as far as i know, you can even get as many glasses as your black heart craves. i don't see a limit in the fine print, but what i do see is that no purchase or anything beyond the price of a stamp is required because we are living in the paradise known as arizona. free is awesome

mk II

2010-08-03T06:23:00.001-04:00

okay, i decided what my next vector project will be

dunno what i'm going to do with the background... stuff like that is always a pain in the ass to try and replicate with vector lines and fills. maybe a solid color? i dunno

shot across the bawwwww

2010-07-30T07:27:00.002-04:00

looks like dir en grey's touring schedule doesn't include arizona this go-'round. whoops! and here i was really getting into quite a few of uroboros' tracks and would have loved to have heard them live... ah well, with DeG not coming it looks like the deftones remain the best live performers ever to perform in arizona

consolation prize

2010-07-29T00:06:00.003-04:00

here's the thing

it wasn't an accident that i destroyed chris so soundly during last week's impromptu Marvel Versus Capcom 2 session. i've matured as a game fighter, choosing when i would implement my jump-in combos and when i would keep things grounded and spam in some of my assist help. it was only natural that that would happen, considering that my aptitude for essentially anything i put my mind to is limitless, and it was simply inevitable that the Colossus of Lin would topple under such masterful handling. by now i'm sure chris has purchased it for his PS3 and knocked down days, maybe even months, worth of practice to try and regain his lost ground; this is something that we all foresaw happening

but with MVC2, from this point forward the results will always be the same

return to the digital domain

2010-07-23T21:16:00.002-04:00

just got back into surprisingly humid phoenix. first opportunity i had i cranked out a team of spider-man, charlie, and amingo on marvel versus capcom 2. the ps3 controller definitely feels better than that blasted xbox 360 abomination, so i'm sure that in no time i'll be cranking out the skills and once again putting chris in his place. and by that, i mean second place.

this is a pretty long postscript, actually

2010-07-20T04:32:00.004-04:00

ps i watched the first episode of that Cat Shit One show. it was actually... watchable. nothing really humorous by any stretch, aside from the surreal concept of anthropomorphizing various animal species, giving them weapons, and inserting them into armed conflicts that somewhat resemble, however vaguely and loosely, some current hostile hotspots... no, it more banks on impressing gun otaku (which is actually a big thing in japan, despite not having a single favorable gun law towards the citizenship, nor a formal army) with its borderline obsession with details in gun handling and covert tactics, as well as a hearty nod towards the always powerful cute-loving crowd.

the CG was surprisingly top-notch, which, understandably, was not at all what i was expecting; even japan's most over-hyped, mega-budget video game productions have weak showings in joint detail and hand motion, metal gear very much so included. i even look back at the wildly expensive to produce Gundam igLoo series and shake my head at the poor offerings that that abysmal wad of ass and fail produced for its anxious audience. revealed during the credits roll, CSO apparently pulled everything together nicely and elevated well above its japanese CG brethren by means of motion capture technology, as well as a clearer view of what they want to accomplish, without the unbridled (and prone to failure) ambition that kojima dives head first into.

so yeah, it seems worth the watch for some of you... if your entertainment venn diagram includes japanime, gun fetishizing, and CoD:MW2, that is.

sudden departures

2010-07-19T17:48:00.002-04:00

so apparently i am going to vegas on tuesday. i'll likely be there until probably thursday night or friday. guess that this is as good a chance as any to crank out a ton of sketchbook pages, huh?

warning: MMA bullshit

2010-07-19T03:57:00.003-04:00

so, wait... Velasquez/Lesner title bout is a Go come october? am i understanding this correctly? and does this mean that like 3 months after cain takes the belt there will be a faber/brown-esque immediate follow-up fight between lesner and velasquez to usher away all speculation?

this sucks... now i really am finding myself rooting for sonnen to put away silva, because st pierre has been alluding to the fact that no silva means no more emphasis to keep on fighting... and i kind of want to see the UFC fall flat on its face when their Big 3 are no longer propping almost the entire stable up and housing undeniably C grade fighters under the mantle of the world's finest. then again if the flair leaves the current UFC, they have an entire stock of shining stars in the WEC to absorb the weight classes of; i can't think of a worse nightmare than having Dana White, blowhard extraordinaire, wash away the current laissez faire attitude Zuffa displays towards that side of the property and put it into the fold with grudge matches and hype hype HYPE galore. ugh. good thing that that will never happen...