Things are starting to get more grim for our hapless spider. And he’s looking sufficiently realistic that his torment strikes me as cruel — I like spiders — in which case, just in case, I’m letting you know it’s not a real spider. He’s affixed to the cross with a giant spike. Above you can…
Read MoreThe Evolution of the Spider
A spider for a work in progress, made in Blender.
Read MoreWhy am I making a spider in Blender?
Spider in progress which will be part of a whole scene.
Read MoreNew Art: Droid-ships over Downtown Los Angeles
This image may look familiar. It’s a more elaborate version of an experiment I started 10 days ago. See below: In the newer version I added 4 more droid ships, clouds, mist, made the waves more apparent, tweaked out the lighting, and did some post-production in Photoshop. Now it’s less a rogue scout ship, and…
Read MoreDroid Ship Spotted Over Los Angeles
The droid-ship is back. You might remember it from months back. I spent forever creating it, and put it in a few short animations, but never really did a definitive image or two or three to show it off. These aren’t that either, necessarily, as they are more studies or experiments. I didn’t pose his…
Read MoreBlender with Google Maps Experiment
Anything you can find in Google maps satellite mode, and that has 3 dimensional elements, can be captured, converted, and opened in Blender. For this experiment, I chose Notre-Dame in Paris. There’s a wee bit of hacking, and you need an additional program plus an add-on, but then it all works alright to get it…
Read MoreNew Art: High Pressure
Woke up this morning with an idea for an experiment using Blender, and this is the outcome. It combines elements of organic modeling (the face), hard surface modeling (everything else], and scene building, though that’s relatively minimal here. One of the good things about Blender is once you create something you can re-use it in…
Read MoreFinished the Tutorial: Tatooine Environment
My tweaked results of a Blender Tutorial by Ryan King.
Read MoreGetting back into Blender
Here are some quick studies I made using Blender’s native ocean and mountain creating properties. The program did 95% of the work here. I did the rest. Once I figured out how to do it, it took just minutes to come up with new versions. I got put off of 3D for a while after…
Read MoreCute 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…
Read MoreSome 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…
Read MoreAnother 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…
Read MoreAlien 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…
Read MoreNew 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
Read MoreConcept 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…
Read MoreFinished 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…
Read MoreBack 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…
Read More2020 Art Highlights
See the much larger, full-width Portfolio Page version here. 2020 was a bit of a break with my more established stylistic tendencies, as I focused on harnessing new skills. I moved away from fine-art painterliness, and towards creating realistic imagery from the imagination. I studied realistic digital painting techniques from professional illustrators, and then took…
Read MoreNew 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…
Read MoreDroid 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…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreDroid-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…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreDroid 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…
Read MoreAnother 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…
Read MoreDROID UPDATE
Remember this guy? I’ve made some additions and modifications. [Note: you SHOULD be able to click on any of the images to see a larger version in a new tab, if you’re using a computer, that is.] Working on the legs. It’ll have probably more than two, not sure about 3 or 4. You first…
Read MoreDroid in Progress
It might remind you of a jumping spider, a cuttlefish, or a Cylon ship, because it reminds me of all those things. This is just the main structure — OK, think of a head — plus a few of it’s extra apparatuses (eyes, guns, and ailerons]. It will get more weapons, a grill of sorts,…
Read MoreProjects and Tutorials Update
There’s something special about Blender tutorials. Even more than digital painting tutorials, you really get into the instructor’s minds, and learn their workflows. Part of the difference is that digital painting has a lot more to do with the physical process of drawing, whereas in Blender the computer handles most the mechanics of representation, and…
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