Updates!

Well I'm happy. I finally had enough art together from Pet Society Vacation to put some up. The page is above.

Otherwise I'm happily, knitting, sewing, drawing, learning how to program in C# and writing Photoshop scripts for my team. Fun stuff! I can't seem to sit still!
I cant wait till next week when I can put the next pictures up for PSV. They are going to be awesome!

Adventure of a Z-Brush Virgin

I think I must have installed Z-Brush over 10 times planning to learn how to use it. I played around with it a bit but never really got to doing any tutorials.

My class's week 2 assignment was all in Zbrush... ouch. I figured I'd just learn as I went along. As usual. Well...
That worked out, kinda. There are still a TON of things I don't understand. Methods I need to learn so that I don't waste time starting over and over again. Heck I am not even sure I am saving my files the right way.
But here is the result. Week 2, 75% accomplished:

Seriously, when I compare this to what I was doing yesterday, as in making dents in a Zsphere, I'd give myself an achievement. I am feeling pretty proud of myself right now :) Although I am certain I will look back on this model in 6 months and go.... oh nooooooo.

I wish I had a way of getting that lion a little flatter. I know the flatten tool, but it's not regular enough for my taste. Oh well. I'll keep looking! :)

3D Class - Modern Game Art Weapons

I started a 3D class this week! I've been wanting to do this for so long and the opportunity finally came along, so I jumped it! 

It's one of the CG society workshops about Modern Game Art Weapons and it covers hard surface modelling and ZBrush. This week was week one of three. We had to make our high poly model of the weapon of our choice between 3 concepts provided. I would have loved to do the gun, but it is the most complex model and I am so busy right now I am modeling at night.

Here is the original version of the concept art:

 

I liked everything except the shape of the blade and the simple hilt that give it an army/boot knife look. It's engravings and mechanism inspired me to modify it's shape a bit:

And here is my high poly version of the knife after about 8-10h of work (I had to redo the blade, the mechanism part where the blade starts was really hard since we are not allowed triangles):

 

Can't wait to get some feedback from the teacher. I have several questions as I have no idea what is going to happen to the mesh in week 2. I did my best to keep it clean despite the gazillion required loops for the hard edges. 

Well we'll see on Monday! I can't wait!

My very first Pet Society Asset!! Weeeee !!

 

I am on a new project these days and it's amazing amounts of fun. I feel like I'm in a creative playground. I haven't been doing much 3D lately because of lack of projects requiring my particular skill set. But it feels like I went from inadequate to a place where my doodles actually make sense! 

The team is awesome and I'm really looking forward to working with these guys! 

For now this is the only asset I can post as it's the only one in game so far, but there will be more to come. In the mean time, enjoy the octoplushie!

June's and May's Art Challenge

This one was done completely by hand in Photoshop and took me 4h in all.
Subject: Minuscule / Tiny

Well I missed April due to a lot of traveling. But here is June's art challenge entry. I discovered something about my own style (I have a style?) while drawing this. I never was able to determine the common factor that all my various drawings share (well the better ones). I was doodling away at this when I suddenly realized what it is! After thinking about it I recall using the same approach for my stone sculptures. I'm super excited about this! Can't wait to try it out on other subjects.
I'd explain it, but it really wouldn't make any sense to anybody I'm afraid. But in a nutshell it's a bit like what you naturally do when you see an elephant in the clouds. :)


Oh and here is May's art challenge that I forgot to post:

 

Subject: A New Beginning

Full vectorial super quick doodle.

Sucking too hard on your Lollipop...

Monthly Art Challenge: March
Theme: "Illustrate a Song"

It's all gray and wet outside. I need something happy! I've been exploring a lot of vector stuff lately so I thought I'd do something a little more complex with it.

Scared Bear...

Did this one for a game pitch that never happened ... poor little thing!

Munnies!!

I am totally into painting/sculpting Munnies at the moment! I love making toys... it's awesome fun and you are really free to explore any style possible. As I always have a hard time sticking to one type of style unless I am paid to do so :P Exploring is so much more FUN!

Right now I am working on a 8inch Munny with sculpted features and a small one that will probably end up being some sort of Cthulu. At least that is the idea I am running with for now.
 

Munny #3

 

Made this one for B. It's a retarded version of our cat, with Insectosaurus eyes from Monsters vs Aliens.  He looks great when he's looking at you from the side! 

It's my first attempt at sculpting onto a Munny (in this case Trikky) and I used Mighty Putty. Yeah, don't use that. I was really a pain and refused to harden evenly so it came out all rough when I tried to sand it. Yikes! 5 coats of white paint helped a bit, but luckily the style allows for a little textural freedom. 

Munny #1 

I did this one (as also Munny #2, who I don,t have a picture of), for a friend.  This was my very first attempt at a custom Munny. :) I had a blast!

 

Armageddon Art!

I realized I never posted the result of the GGJ !! I guess I was too busy sleeping after the crazy 48h of art and animation madness on my behalf. I did sleep at some point... curled up in a ball under my desk like some devoted Japanese employee on the brink of harakiri.

I didn't mind really. It was the quietest place to sleep and nice and warm due to the PCs running near by. Much better than the lounge that was over crowded and smelled like a zoo. :P

Our team was amazing! Everybody worked so hard and accomplished SO MUCH in just 48h (actually only about 42h since the whole event kicked off really late). I was really impressed. Our game ended up a little buggy due to lack of time to play test, but in all it is pretty fun to play! It's based on the Populous 2 armageddon mechanic and on rock-paper-scissors stats for the army.
In phase 1 you tweak your army depending on what kind of units your opponent has... you do this my bashing the cute little rock, paper, scissors bunnies on the head with a mallet which results in a bloody mess and room to breed for the others.
In phase 2 both armies face off and you win if more of your units survive! Paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper... :D

Stuart, James, Tom, Adam, Behrouz and me... happily exhausted geeks! :D

Global Game Jam!

Tonight it begins! Tonight is the start of a 48h challenge! A team of 5 race with other teams to make the most epic, awesome, crazy, fun game one can come up with and put together in 48h.

It's the... 

Global Game Jam

Also for the first time I have something to tweet about so follow Pixel_Fish !!

I have no idea what the theme will be. But I can't wait to find out. I am forcefully keeping myself from formulating any ideas right now so that I have a empty page to start brainstorming on.
I spent the day learning how to make 2D sprites, since I am a 3D artist and have never had the opportunity to do so. So now I am ready!!