Personal site goes live today!

My personal website finally got up and running this morning. So far only my reel is there, but I have the site built (just have to update the content).

Should be all up and running this weekend!

I'll still update this blog, but my best stuff will go to my site probably.

www.keepthepenmoving.com

Finally done with my reel!

The last turnaround is finishing up rendering as I type this. Then all I gotta do is throw all of these clips together and cross my fingers! :O

I can't believe it's really done. I actually played TWO Xbox games today!

Hopefully I will get my "real" website online soon and put my reel on that, I don't know if I can post it here.

Yay!

Dinged up

I spent quite a while dialing in that plate mail texture and denting and dinging everything in Zbrush. Each piece of armor now has 2 image maps (one normal and one ambient occlusion) and an additional 6 procedural textures, for a total of 8 textures each piece, and some even more than that.

I'm pretty happy with the look now. It's not perfect, but short of doing my texturing in Maya I don't know how much closer I'm going to get.

Here is a close up of the armor. (Guess I should give those leather straps some attention...)

Revisiting Joan's armor...

I've spent a few hours playing with procedurals, trying to dial in this armor. I'm getting close to where I want it now. Adding an image to the background definitely helped the effect. Now if only I could figure out how to keep it from rendering in the background...

Comments welcome of course.

Lit scene

Here is the candle in the scene. Still tweaking the lighting a bit between crashes (this scene is killing this PC).

Update: Here is the completed scene as of now.

A candle

This will go in front of the statue.

Stand for statue

Did this in Zbrush today. I didn't want the statue to be floating.

"done"

Well I could add tiny details forever but in the interest of time I had better call this one finished, at least for now.

Time to button things up and slap this reel together finally!

Just about done...

Only a few final touches left now (like the texture for the flag).

Yay!

new render

Armor is coming along.

Joan

I'm doing a model of Joan of Arc based loosely on this painting. I spent a good amount of time yesterday working on a chain mail texture and I'm pretty happy with the results! Here's a render of my progress.


Lastly here is a close-up of the texture, per request.


Thanks for viewing!

Two steps forward, one step back

Been having computer issues lately that is really hampering my progress.

Nevertheless, here's a "final" render of the devil statue. This render is a low(er) poly model with a high resolution (2K) normal map applied. I'm gonna make a stand for it and stick it next to the pinball table to jazz up the environment a bit.

Still working

I probably shouldn't have spent this long working on this one model, but it's almost done. Here is the last work in progress shot before it will be.

So close to being finished! Why is the last 5% of the work taking so long?

3rd model coming along...

This guy's coming along but I wish I were done by now.

I can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel and the anticipation of finishing my game reel is making me impatient!

Drone 2 Update

Well I'm calling the modeling about done on this guy so I'm moving ahead with the 3rd and final drone, which I will probably sculpt too. All of these guys will be getting a texture (which I will use to make his cape ragged around the edges - transparency alpha map) but I'll do that all at once.

2nd game character coming along...

This guy is more than half way done now. He'll be finished tomorrow and then it's onto the last one.

From high poly to low poly...

I'm currently working on some low(er) poly game models to show that I actually know how to make models that games can use, not just pretty looking statues for renders.

This guy is based on a concept from the comic book Zecta; I don't know anything about the comic really, I just liked the art. He weighs in at only 3,866 triangles (not quads, actual triangles).

Next I'm gonna do a "medium" resolution game model somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 triangles, and then a "high" resolution one at around 20-25,000.

Thanks for reading, more to come!

Sculpting Touch-ups

I've decided to revisit and polish up a bust I did in Zbrush a while back, now that I have some portrait sculpture under my belt.

Here's a close to done work in progress. I think I'll probably end up putting this guy on a pedestal next to the pinball table with some candles or something, I dunno. I'll probably slap on some procedural textures too.

3D Pinball Table Almost Done

Well I have been working on this project off an on for quite a while now, and it's getting close to completion - finally!

This is a recreation of a classic video game pinball table called Devil's Crush; it's easily the best video pinball game ever made, even 20 or so years later.

Click HERE to see Images of Devil's Crush on Google

The following are my renders:



I have plenty of other stuff to move onto so I am looking forward to calling this one "done".

Looks like I haven't posted any stuff from my sketchbook in a while either - more soon!

More sketches!

Here's some more stuff from my sketchbook. I've been drawing more lately than I have been in a long time, and I think it's starting to pay off. In only a month or so I've filled about two thirds of an entire book. All were done in ball point pen; in #6 I used a Prismacolor 10% gray, which I thought had a nice effect, but it bled through the paper and onto the next sheet, which sucks.

Hope you like them. More on the way!

Slow News Day

Been working on my portfolio some more lately so not a lot to share. But I did this sketch in Photoshop tonight so why not, eh chief?

Been Mackin

Sabrina and I were recently turned onto comic artist and watercolor extraordinaire David Mack (google him!), and this is my attempt to copy a couple of his Kabuki paintings. I really love his style; it's a lot like my illustration instructor Thomas Applegate's style, really loose and colorful.

New sketches - Part 2

And here we have some of my favorite pages from the same sketchbook, also in ball point pen. These were done within the past couple weeks.









Next up, some new watercolor stuff!

New sketches - Part 1

It's been a while since I have made a post so I thought I'd start off posting some stuff from my sketch book.

These first pages are sketches I did at my girlfriend's college. I sat and drew people in a quad while she was taking a final. It's pretty funny how freaked out people seem to act when someone wearing dark sunglasses is sitting and drawing on a bench somewhere. Needless to say these were very fast drawings. Medium is ball point pen, my new favorite drawing tool.











Part 2 comin' up!

Still alive... again!

So this summer I'm taking a figure sculpture class. The following is a work in progress of our final, a semi-nude figure. I wanted to do an approximately 1/6 scale model of a famous sci-fi or fantasy painting. I chose this Luis Royo painting because, well, it fit the criteria and it looks cool!

I have spent about 3 days on it so far. Kinda hard working at this scale but I am LOVING this Roma clay I am using. It's a work-in-progress, but feel free to let me know what you think. =)