Life and Art

I thought it was about time I got back on with some arty stuff.  Looking at your blogs you all seem to be way ahead of my skills now but I need to get back on the horse.  Life seems to have gotten in the way.  I know it is no real excuse, but I just worked 12 days straight and managed 68 hours last week.  Fun job though...

Anyway, I dusted off the old waccom and sketched this draft.  It is a work in progress, that I just had in my head.  I had an idea of a big daemon dog thing.  It is fun, and we shall see where it goes.  I am hoping that if I start to blog again I will keep working a little more consistantly.  It is a step in the right direction at least.

Dragon Painting

Right, I am back in Bristol for the weekend so I have decided to update my blog for the Digital painting.  The process from start to finish.

This image started out as doodle bout a year ago.  I was sitting waiting for a disc to finish burning for a college project and scribbled an image down.

It was just an idea at the time.  A beast that a character would ride.  If my memory serves me right it was a potential beast for a bounty hunter, but he went down another route.  I had come across the image a couple of times since and really wanted to do something with it.  

This next image is a painting that my dad did whilst he was at Uni.  I have always loved it and took inspiration from this for my image.

I wanted to link my image with this one not only visually but as a story too.  I have always wondered where this knight is off to.  I imagined grand adventures.  So I based my image around that idea.  I decided that if this was an image of the knight leaving on a quest my image would be his return.  It was meant in a very loose sense.  I did not want to copy the knight as that was my dad's creation, I wanted my own visualization from that theme.

So these were my primary sketches.

From these I used photoshop to put together a rough idea of where I wanted to go.

I did however have trouble working out what to do with the wings.  I couldn't decide what was the best corse of action

I decided to start working on the colour and see how the whole image developed and worry about the wings later.  As it was my first proper digital painting, I was a little unsure where to go at first.   I was just playing really to see how close to actual painting in colours, brush strokes and textures you could get.

 I wanted the wings to be a prominent feature in the image, something almost beautiful as well as imposing. Many sketches followed to try and resolve the problem, but I couldn't come up with anything that I found really worked. I also wanted the Knight to be a focal point so having the wings coming too far over his head shut him too much.  I looked a bird wings, other dragon images trying to get some insight.

Here are some sheets of reference I used for this image.

I finally came up with this pencil sketch of some wings from a cormorant.

I leds the idea of feathers against the scales.  Soft against hard.  

I tried different sketches of knights in armour, whilst looking through my research.  As my dad was a freelance illustrator, I wanted to get it right.  I could have designed my own knight from the refernece but when I found this image, I decided that I would use it.  It fit perfectly with the idea that it was a knight coming back from a quest.  Slowly ambling along.

I added the leg from my reference and happy with the knight, moved onto the rest of the dragon.  

 And the finished image.  I say finished, I don't think I will ever truely finish an image.  I hit the deadline.  I can always continue.  I am always learning new and better ways to do things.

New Shoes Again....and Again

Ok, so I seem to take two steps forward and then two back , and then two more back, but that is was you get when you don't plan and design properly.  I have been struggling with this character and mainly the feet.  As I have mentioned I want to keep that smaller look to the feet, giving him a light weight shoe.  Well today I have modeled a new design yet again, but these I am pleased with.  They are ninja shoes (tabi boots) and they may even stay for a week or two.

As you can see it keeps the silhouette the same as the simple model all those weeks ago. 

Quick Update

Hello Fellow Followers,
                                    I have unwrapped the new shoes and put a texture on them.  I am not happy with the texture on the shoes yet but it will do for now.  I am finding it a bit difficult getting time to work on the model as much as I would like at the moment.  It seems there is always something that needs doing.  I am decorating my mums living room ceiling mainly.  She has tongue and groove which I painted white a couple of years ago but now she wants it smooth, so she bought this pollyfiller that you are supposed to be able to roller into cracks and smooth.  Load of crap.  It went everywhere except the cracks.  I have spent the last two days manually pushing the bloody stuff into the cracks with a spatula and an old RAC card.  To positive is I can do it whilst standing on the floor so I need no ladder.

Anyway, here is a render of the character.  He is coming along, just very slowly.

  

New Boots

Because I have been busy with many other life altering activities, I have had a rather large break from this character.  I must admit, I was not enjoying the character and couldn't put my finger on what it was I didn't like about it.  Having a break has allowed me to see it with very fresh eyes.  I looked over the development of the character and saw an earlier image that still had the simple thin boots.

As you can see the silhouette is very different compared to the boots that i modeled later on.  I prefer the earlier style slim fit boot.  As a character he is supposed to be more about agile hand to hand combat and I think the current boots look too big and clunky.

I had a day of evolving the boots until I came to the result I was looking for.  The smoothing groups are a little bit odd at the moment but I will sort all the conflicting polygons before I texture the boots.  Of course this means that I will have to unwrap the newly modeled boots and reshuffle the UVW map.  Lucky me.....

I LOVE MY MAC

Hellooooooooo,
                         Once again it has been a long time between posts.  To be honest, I have been away from 3D Studio Max for quite a while as I have been relishing in my love iMac.  I have been re-learning Maya and having a look at Mudbox which is an awesome program.  Also I have used the power of iWeb to create the most fantastic website all about me.  If you fancy a look, then follow this easy to remember link, www.ashbyartwork.com . Let me know what you think by clicking my name or 'contact me' on the website.  I want to know if anything doesn't work or you think something can be done a different way.

 I have had a month of problem free computing.  Turn it on and away I go.  I get a little bit disconcerted to be honest.  And then I turned on my PC and went to work on my character and within the five minutes this happens.

Have no fear, I have solved this blacking out issue.  As long as I keep the Sky light below 1.2 on the intensity and don't have too many other lights it is fine.  So just another normal day for me on my PC.  Oh and I have to prop it up all the time now as it over heats and shuts off........................lots.  I tried to render a video a while back and it took 56 hours.  I think that was the tipping point.  The video was rubbish too.

Anyway here is a render of my progress.  I can't wait to get it finished.  I am enjoying the project still just not the computer it is on.  It is difficult to persuade a computer to work when it wont turn on.  

Decisions Decisions

Here is my decision.  I went with blue. I have also added some geometry to the goggles to make the ear section more prominent.

I have also added blue and green to the hood which I think makes it stand out more and become less flat.  I want to add some highlight to the rubber hood as well to break up the one colour.  Accentuate the edges etc. As for the obvious joins on the forehead and right cheek, just ignore them, they are from the AO map.  Pretend they are not there............'there is no spoon'.