Peruvian Long Tail Dragon

Random snakey-dragon creature courtesy of CrispyFishSticks a.k.a Allison Theus. Just for fun since I've been working on a lot of serious models.

I finally caught a CGHub competition before it was too late! This time its an exotic reptile sculpt and texture competition. No high fantasty creatures, just straight up reptiles. It was a hell of a time choosing a scaled beastie but I finally settled on the Andros Rock Iguana. They've got an imposing look with wonderful coloring that was different enough from the Green Iguana that I felt safe picking it. The competition is over mid August, so you'll be seeing updates soon! Inspiration board and first pass below...

On another note, work has got me really enjoying my prop modeling, so why not hit the next step and start working on a full blown enviroment vignette? I've just been waiting for the perfect piece of inspiration and it finally came when I stumbled across Tahra of CGHub. Dang this dude has style! We've got Miyazaki-esque backgrounds full of super vibrant color. He's got this amazing piece dubbed "Penguin Train" that feels so much like an island I lived on as a kid that I couldn't help myself. 

It's perfect for a first enviroment piece. It's small, contained and yet presents a bunch of challenges that I'd never really encounter as a character artist.

3.21.2012

I recently started work as a Junior 3D Artist at the SAIC Army Game Studio. It's a lot of fun and very challenging, particularly since I was hired to the environment team and I'm primarily a character modeler. Lol. I'm learning a lot though, about everything. It helps to have 10 very enthusiastic and nosey artists peering over your shoulder every time you turn on the computer. Most commonly they open up with, What the hell are you doing?! Good stuff.

In the mean time, have an in-progress shot of a character from Allison Theus at Vigil Games. Her website is here http://oblivionunleashed.com/unleashed/index.php and her Tumblr is here http://crispyfishsticks.tumblr.com/. Kinda tempted to turn this into a 3D print as opposed to a game asset. These things have amazing jaws/mouths and I hate to waste them on alpha planes when I can have all their teeth in their needle-like glory with a print!

Speed Sculpts

I've been doing lots of lowpoly stuff. This tends to kill the creative spirit, so here are a few fast and messy creatures for your eyeballs. Each of these guys took between an hour or two.

Modeling from the past Semester

The first few images are a replication of the El Cid statue that stands in front of The Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. It was a touch ambitious but I hadn't ever sculpted a horse, so I went for it. I'll add more complete renders of it later when I have a chance to pull up this monstrosity in Zbrush. I can't possibly begin the sheer amount of time I spent on this bad boy. As a final goes, this was one of the toughest. Thanks Shon. hahaha

These are from my Organic 2 class with Jon. Much less technically demanding but a time sink nonetheless. He had us do lots of random heads to warm up for the midterm. Mr. Weaving here was very interesting and I plan on cleaning him up at some point.

This was my final and also chewed up a ton of time. The turntable alone took ages and ages. Made me late too as I recall. Naturally I didn't realise how many things I could have streamlined/ect ect until it was far too late. Needless to say this guy has a lot more to go through before I'll consider him done.

Creature Design with Terryl Whitlatch

These are roughly in chronological order from my creature design class with Terryl Whitlatch. We had a week for each assignment. I'd say each one of the real animal sheets topped out around 15 hours and the creature designs anywhere between 15 to 20 hours to complete. The dinos were my favorite to both paint and design.

GDC and Updates

Hey guys, massive update due soon once I catch up with all my work. Getting through GDC will help too. Speaking of which, GDC is awesome! It's definitely been an eye opening experience meeting all these industry pros. Even got to meet and talk to the Art Director of the Santa Monica branch of SCEA. Those are the guys who handle the God of War franchise, fyi. We'll see how the rest of it goes!