Note: this post is a duplicate of the newly, long overdue revamping of my “new art” page, but you can also go directly to the page . The new version is simplified and updated (there are over 150 pieces), and there are blog posts devoted to all but a handful of my oldest pieces that…
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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…
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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…
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My tweaked results of a Blender Tutorial by Ryan King.
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This is a kind of relaxing work I like to do. Just start drawing with one brush, and mostly on one layer, in Photoshop. Completely unpremeditated. See what emerges. It’s a little like doing a puzzle. I did this a couple weeks ago, but haven’t been sharing much because I had a big move across…
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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…
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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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A glass head! That’s the one idea I had before starting, and a vague notion that I wanted to go retro. OK, to be fair, it’s not really glass, but rather some super sturdy, shatterproof, glass-like substance, of course. It’s an excuse for me to put lights in there and who knows what else. The…
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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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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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If you missed the introduction of the tree orb in my last post, here’s a gallery: I kinda’ surprised myself here. I didn’t intend to create these images, or make a sequence out of them. I just woke up this morning and wanted to try combining a few different Blender files I’d produced. After rendering…
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Taking a break from the Enterprise, and having fun with Blender. Here’s a rusty, traveling, metal, tree orb with circular glass on both sides. An amazing thing about working this way — and I’m just doing somewhat rudimentary experiments here — is how many images I can generate. I made the orb in a tutorial,…
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I’ve been adding a bunch of little lights. It hasn’t been easy, at all. I won’t bore you with the process, but there’s gotta’ be a better way of doing it than the two methods I use. Nevertheless it’s good practice doing it the crude way. The main disc is DONE! All the little lights,…
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Making the star ship Enterprise in Blender.
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Taking a break from my tutorials and practicing the fledgling skills I’ve picked up so far. Can I pull off the enterprise? I THINK I can. Worth a try. First thing was finding some blueprints. I cut them out in Photoshop, and then arranged them in Blender. They form a hollow rectangle, but it doesn’t…
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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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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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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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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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