Character Concept

So for my 3D modeling class, I had to create a simple sketch for what I want my character to be. I am going for a female spy.

Anyways, this was something I threw together quickly. Thanks for reading!

Drawing - Tharja WIP

So I know that I only do a few drawing every once in a while, but its because it takes me kind of long to finish. So I decided that I would start doing WIP (work in progress) post every few days for the ones that take me longer than usual.

This is a drawing based on Tharja, one of my favorite characters from Fire Emblem Awakening. That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Drawing - Velma

Here is another drawing, this time its of Velma from the children's cartoon Scooby Doo. I also did some quick simple shading. That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Drawing - Supergirl

As I said before, I have been trying to draw more often. This time I drew Supergirl and did some quick shading. That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Drawing - Genderbent Vega

So I have been trying to squeeze more time drawing and this is what I drew, its suppose to be Genderbent Vega from Street Fighter. Anyways, that's all for now, thanks for reading!

Anime Drawing - Sakurai from Rail Wars

So the other day I was talking to a friend of mine at work and the show Rail Wars came up. I did a couple of drawings awhile ago of one of the characters, so I decided to do another. This one is another of the main characters of the show called Aoi Sakurai, and she is awesome in the show.

Anyways, I don't think I will coloring this one, so this will be as far as I take this one. I need more practice in 2D art, so I will try to have more of these more often. As you can probably tell, I still have a long way to go on my line work. That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Drawing - Ninja Girl

Here is some Ninja Girl that I've been working on for a while.

Texture Tuesday - January 13

Its Tuesday again (technically its now Wednesday since I'm posting after midnight) and it means another speed texture. This time I decided to do a Sci Fi themed floor texture.

I created the base mesh in Maya and baked out the Normal, AO, & Convexity maps. Everything else was done in Photshop and finally rendered in Marmoset Toolbag (bottom picture).

That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Manga Drawing - Morishita from Love Theory

So this is another character from the same manga that I wrote about the other day, called Love Theory. Her name is Morishita and she is actually a gamer in the that avidly plays Monster Hunter throughout the story.

I will probably do a few more drawings of my favorite characters from the manga. Thanks for reading!

Manga Drawing - Saki from Love Theory

So I recently found a new manga that I really like on CrunchyRoll that I really like called Love Theory. I really like most of the characters in the book, but this is the main love interest of the main character, her name is Saki.

Anyways, I really liked her and I decided to do another trace and keep practicing steadying my hands while drawing. Thanks for reading!

Anime Drawing - Lida from Rail Wars (Colored)

So the drawing I was working on is finished and i added some color. The point of these exercises are to help me steady my hand when I try to draw something. When working in 3D I can push and pull vertices until it looks good, but when drawing its different. I will soon try to draw something of my own since tracing won't really help me in the long rung.

That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Anime Drawing - Lida from Rail Wars

So not too long ago I finished watching an anime called Rail Wars. Its essentially a show a guy that really likes trains and wants to be a train operator/driver one day. One of the girls he meets in his job is the girl above called Lida.

Now I'm not going to go any further into details of the show, but I do have to say that I really like this anime and all the characters in it. I have decided to keep training and trace picture I found of her. I find that tracing is helping me understand the anatomy more every time. I will add color to this here in the next few days post another when I'm done. 

Thanks for reading. 

Drawing - Koi Fish (Colored)

I have been working more on ZBrush, but I decided to take a break and do some sketching in Photoshop. I added some color, but this was mainly a drawing exercise. That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Batman Beyond - Melanie

So I've been watching a lot of Batman Beyond recently since it was one of my favorite shows when I was little. Also, it was my favorite skin in Arkham City.

So I got curious about one of the characters in the shows and I found a really good picture of Melanie and decided to do a quick trace over and paint. I'm not really good at 2D art, so a friend of mine told me that the best way to practice is to trace and get in the habit of drawing.

That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Sci Fi Floor Texture Version 2.0

So after posting my last texture, I went back to the art dump on Polycount that the developers of Borderlands posted. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to go to this link RIGHT NOW because you are missing out big time.

Ok, now that you have been enlightened by the awesomeness of all that art, I realized that my first texture was not close at all to the style of Borderlands. My texture was too clean and I have changed it. Behold!

Maybe I overdid-it this time around, but it much closer to the Borderlands art style. I read through a lot of the tips the game devs posted on the site and it really worked.

Now I will have to keep working on the rest of the scene. I'm really trying to beef up my portfolio because I intend on getting hired soon! I need to show that I as good in 2D as I am in 3D.

Anyways, thanks for reading!

Sci Fi Floor Texture

I've decided to give the Diablo sculpt a break and go back to my Sci Fi environment and get it textured once and for all. So I have broken it down into pieces and decided that I should start out by doing the texture for the floor.

Here is a test render from Maya on what I have:

I'm still sticking to my original plan of trying to mimic the Borderlands style, and I think I'm on the right path. Right now this is too clean, so I will have to add other stuff to the scene like papers and miscellaneous junk. But for now, this will do for the floor tile. I have rotated a few of the tiles in an effort to make it no so Tile like.

Here is the png file:

I added the "ink" in illustrator. I think I may have to remove the white cracks, but I will go back to that later. I also still need to do the specular map, but I think I will do that in ZBrush with polypaint along with some of the metal feel for the normal map. I was going to do it tonight, but I have to get some sleep before going to work in the morning, hopefully tomorrow.

Anyways, that's all for now. Thanks for reading!

Breaking In My New Cintiq

So for graduation, my wife was very generous and paid for half of my new Wacom tablet. Its a Cintiq 13HD, and I love it. I haven't been able to stop using it and I feel that it will really help me as I try to get better in art and in my future career.

For the mean time, I've decided that I need to start doing more 2D art and I saw a drawing on the web and I decided to do a trace and a little of my own work. I'm not happy with some areas and I think that I need to add a little more detail in others, but for now I think its the beginning of something good. Once I'm done with it I plan to take it into Illustrator and make it a vector image and then paint it on Photoshop.

Here is the image of what I have so far:

If anyone actually reads my blog, I would appreciate some critique. Anyways, thats all for now as I continue to work on some side project now that I'm out of school. Thanks for reading!

Getting Back Into Digital Painting

So ever since I finished working on the geisha painting, I've been wanting to go back to doing more painting. I've been looking for a something to paint, and I decided to paint a black and white picture from one of my favorite manga series called Gantz. I found the picture that I wanted, and made a trace of it a while back, but never actually got around to painting anything on it. Here is what I have so far:

I did some of the shadows and put down some base layers for the colors, but I don't think I like the color that I picked for her bikini, so I may have to look for something else that works better.

Anyways, hopefully I'll be able to work more on this piece since it gives me a chance to develop my 2D art skills. Thanks for reading!

Final Diffuse Texture for Shield

Here is my final diffuse texture for my shield:

I think over all it looks really good, and it certainly turned out better than I thought it would when I first started to work on this project. I've been putting it all together, but I've been trying to find a better way to render my models than just using the production setting on mental ray. I will make sure to post a render of my model in the next few days, thanks for reading!

Specular Map for Shield

Here is the finished specular map for my shield:

I've reworked this specular map a few times by now, I belief this is the 5th version, but I think it will look ok on the final render. At first I started to work on it in Mudbox, but after a while I realized that it would be faster to do it in Photoshop.

I'm so happy that its all finally coming together, I just couldn't help but feel like I would never finish this project when I first started a month ago. I was afraid that this would become one of those project that I started but never finished. That's all for now, thanks for reading!