Goya’s infamous nude “Maja” has some problems.
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Some Sorta Orc: Sculpt Practice
Got a bit carried away with a beginner Blender sculpting tutorial. Organic sculpting is the reason I decided to explore Blender months ago. For me, the ability to sculpt digitally is the most astounding capacity of digital art. To do something like the above by analogue means, I’d need a lot of space, materials, oodles…
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Another Alien
This alien is just the result of going through a tutorial and taking it in my own direction. I’m doing several organic sculpting tutorials in order to see how different artists approach the medium, and picking up which techniques work best for me. Here’s the tutorial I was going off of I gave my alien…
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New Droid-ship Animation
This one’s 420 frames, and comes out to 17 seconds. It’s more sophisticated technically than my earlier animations, and the video includes sound. ~ Ends
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Runaway Rant: Participating in politics is inviting war into your life.
I’m retiring from politics. I’d managed to avoid engaging in the political quagmire for months on end, largely because I publicly pledged to do so after the media and politicians created an extremely volatile, self-fulfilling prophecy of racial discord, hatred, distrust, and violence, all in the name of advertising clicks and other ulterior motives. I…
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The Droid-ship Invades a Landing Bay
Mission accomplished. I wanted to knock out a full-fledged, original 3D scene before the year was over, and make a print [see bottom of post]. I’m planning more scenes with this droid, and I already shared a test scene, but here I created the landing bay, posed the droid with its arms and fastening disc…
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Tricking Americans into Hating Each Other for Profit and Political Gain
I vowed on September 26th not to say anything on my blog about politics until the election was over. I succeeded, and it’s a lot harder to NOT speak out than it is to vent. The election lingers, but the voting is over. I just have a small observation or two. The vast majority of…
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My Blender Enterprise in Space
The Enterprise has finally left on its maiden voyage into space, where it’s zooming along at warp speed 6. And that just reveals that I’ve been watching some Star Trek TS on Netflix above and beyond what was necessary to get screen shots of the ship at various angles. Above you can see the model,…
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My Enterprise is Finished
Thought I’d knock this out in a day as practice, but I never intended to do the small lights, logos, lettering, or any of the more intense details. But once I stuck my toe in, I sunk waist deep, and then soon I was up to my eyeballs. In the end I took it as…
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The Orb Descends Into a Canyon
Reflections in water — perhaps my very favorite visual phenomenon — are possible to create out of the computational ether in Blender. I didn’t need a clincher to persuade me that working in 3D might be the next avenue of my artistic exploration. I’d already said that Blender is God’s free gift to visual artists,…
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Making a Simple Mech in Blender & Painting with Virtual Reality
Above is a mech I made in Blender (v2.83.3). This was fun and compulsive, much like playing a mech war computer game I got into recently, before cutting myself off for wasting too much time on it. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the program, and this creation was my version of a beginner tutorial…
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Basic alien with UFO in Blender 2.83.3
The alien required a flying saucer in the background. If you missed my last post, I’m just doing some practice using beginner techniques in Blender. I do a tutorial or two, take a break, and apply what I’ve learned. It’s a good combo. Instead of getting sick of doing tuts, after messing around on my…
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Basic Alien in Blender 2.83.3
Took a break from the rank beginner tutorials to have some fun being creative with the basic building blocks. I’m always going to make aliens, and I’ve been doing it for more than a quarter century. Aliens, robots, cyborgs, and monsters. Green is also my favorite color. I’ve always loved ’em. This one’s greeting us,…
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New Art: Stick Girl’s Epiphany
And that’s about as far as I could take her. if you’ve followed the development of this piece on my blog you know it was an exercise in technique, and based loosely on a tutorial. It’s evolved into something a bit more, and I’d consider it part of my portfolio. Along the way I discovered…
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WIP: Adding Texture
I’m not that big of a fan of photo-bashing. That’s a technique where you take photos and superimpose them on your digital painting in order to achieve textural effects. It can be a cheap cheat that looks cheesy, or it can be a sophisticated process that when done right can really add something. Here I’ve…
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New Art: Bat Girl Bites Back
This started out as an exercise in lighting, shading, and workflow, but it ended up being an artwork I’m proud of. A lot of the techniques and procedures I employed I got from a digital painting course by veteran Disney animator, Aaron Blaise. The initial drawing and the character design are all my own. If…
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Cruel Abominations of the Old Masters Exposed: Goya’s “Maja”
Goya’s infamous nude “Maja” has some problems.
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Runaway Rant: Art succeeds inspite of politics, not because of it
Why politics are the enemy of art.
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Cute fish exercise, with animation
This little guy isn’t up to the standards of my other recent sculpts, but the takeaway of the exercise was training at retopology, using alpha images to create textures, and how this can affect a form in animation. If it sounds complicated, probably because it is, a bit. And I know far too much about…
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My Dastardly Fan Art Featured in a Sonic & Amy Video
My dastardly fan art digital painting of Sonic and Amy is featured is a video by the official Sonamy people.
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Alien Tutorial Results
After months of working on hard-surface modeling, I’ve finally started doing organic sculpture in Blender. I did some work in ZBrush before, so this is more familiar terrain. The real magic is going to happen when I combine organic and hard-surface modeling, and start making complex scenes. This was just an exercise I knocked out…
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New Banksy Mural a Blast!
Reblogged from: By Joanna Jones New Banksy Mural a Blast! Lactose Intolerance No Laughing Matter Banksy has confirmed that he is behind a new artwork depicting an old woman succumbing to a violent ‘shart’, and holding a kerchief to her nose to block out any odor, after consuming a glass of whole milk. The political…
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Confession: I had to abandon Ubuntu
I tried. I really wanted to go with a free, open-source operating system and programs. There were clear benefits, including not having to worry about viruses and anti-virus software. I wouldn’t have to locate and disable hidden options that compromise privacy, including the “keylogging” option [checked “on” by default] that sends your every keystroke to…
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Runaway Rant: I identify as a shapeless, colorless, genderless soul
What quackery is this?! Is your pronoun going to be “that”, or is “that” already taken? No woo-woo here, folks. I’m not saying I don’t have a shape, color, or gender, or that those things don’t have importance, I merely point out what should be so obvious that everyone takes it for granted. It is…
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Concept and Realization + I detest GIMP
Making a concept sketch was really useful. I was going for something a bit weird. I kept a lot of the design, including the small, circular spider eyes on top of the “head”; the peculiar navigation flippers in the front; and of course the four legs with different tools on the ends. I ended up…
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Finished the Tutorial: Droid Creation and Animation
This free, four-part tutorial on YouTube is one of my favorite tutorials so far, including paid ones. You learn to sculpt the droid using hard-surface modeling; then to rig it so you can move the parts and animate it; then to texture-paint it; and finally to animate it and make a video. I think a…
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Confession: I Converted ~ Open and Free
Windows my friends, Microsoft itself, Adobe and its Photoshop, are no longer an integral part of my waking existence. You could say that they can join Facebook & Twitter in the hell-o-sphere. I fooked off the proprietary, pay-to-play, hold-you-hostage platforms, and am now smooth sailing with all free, open source programs. I would have done…
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Runaway Rant: Is it Time to Crush the Conservatives?
I’ve railed against conservatives on this blog. When authors of a study dared suggest that political affiliation was dependent on “predispositions” rather than choice, I fumed: That kind of milquetoast thinking is just finding excuses for social cowardice. We know that social change has demanded great sacrifice, because those who have power, whether they are…
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Reality is Now the Enemy!
I’m old school on reality. Well, technically, I’m kinda’ old period. And white. And male. You could say I am a remnant of a bygone era. I still believe that reality should be sought, and accepted, and that to do so is healthy and necessary. We should defer to the greater argument. There are a…
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Back in Black, with Grunge and Scratches
It got a paint job. Texture painting in Blender takes a lot of getting used to. It’s not exactly what one would call intuitive, as in, you can’t just figure it out yourself. All objects need to be UV unwrapped before you can paint on them, and UV unwrapping is its own discipline. There are…
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Runaway Rant: My Art is not a “Practice”
I am absolutely certain that you will never find in over 500 posts on this blog that I’ve ever referred to my art-making as a practice. I just make art. I don’t have a practice. Recently, a lot of people are referring to their art-making as a practice — even landscape painters — as if…
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2020 Art Highlights
New Droid Animation + Print
You may have seen this character from a few days ago. I added a subtle motion blur to the background by creating an animation, and isolating this frame to make a still. Then I decided to explore the possibility of animating the droid-ship flying through the tunnel. You can see the higher quality result on…
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Droid Animations
Hot Dog! I figured out how to do some basic animation to get this droid careening into the enemy landing bay, hovering for an instant, then planting itself, extending its arms, and getting ready to use its tools to cause some dammage. You can watch the version I made for Instagram, which I had to…
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The Lost Basquiat Portrait of Warhol Rediscovered
Up until recently, Basquiat’s infamous portrait of Andy Warhol was only known through a reproduction leaked online. An article surfaced in May of 2017 alleging this painting was being auctioned on the dark web for $150,000,000 following the sale of Basquiat’s skull painting for $100,000,000. Both paintings appeared to be from the same period, and…
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Droid-ship with test environment
The end of the year is coming, and people are making posts about the art they created in 2020. I thought I should complete one full-fledged, original, 3D scene. How about putting my new droid-ship in an environment? Here I just tested making a quick environment just to see if I could put my model…
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The Droid/Ship Model is Finished: New Additions
This just means the model (or mesh) is finished. As is the rigging, so that I can easily pose it. Next up is the “materials” phase, where I will see about improving on the uniform metal texture. Then I’ll need to create some sort of backdrop or environment. But let’s get on to the new…
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Droid Update: Tools
New developments! Each of our droid’s appendages are now outfitted with tools for dismantling enemy machines, and the descending disc includes a suction cup mechanism. Let’s take a quick look at the tools: You just gotta’ have a saw. Each tool has an adjacent rudimentary eye (that’s the green dot). We’ll get to what the…
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Another Droid Update: It Can Run
It wasn’t even the plan. It’s a flying droid, and it has arms or legs that will be outfitted with various tools. I designed it to be able to stand, and even walk if necessary. I put globular, glowing modules on the tips of its legs to help it gain purchase on surfaces. But I…
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