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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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…
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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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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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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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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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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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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…
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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,…
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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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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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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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She’s coming along. Since my last post I’ve painted some large branches in the middle background, and some lighting and shading. There’s lots more to do, including adding texture to the branches to make them more convincing. Near the end I paint over whatever I want, and however I want, but right now I’m working…
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The eyes have been really difficult. I changed the colors, the shape, added veins, a highlight, and ridges on the bottom lids. What makes them so hard is largely the ornate bat nose which bisects one eye. I want partially obscured eye’s pupil to show, but getting it to line up with the other eye…
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The rim lighting is difficult for me, and almost seems perfunctory. It’s a sort of cheap trick often used in comics. But it is also a really effective way to articulate form in shadow, which works for this sort of subject. Note that I’m not an expert at this, I’m learning it as an exercise,…
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This stage is all Photoshop. I’d almost consider it cheating if it weren’t such a pain in the ass to pull off; if I weren’t going to paint over it; if I hadn’t done everything by hand under it; and if this weren’t an exercise using professional digital painting for illustration techniques. Here, one has…
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The much more clever way to do shading is to make a 3D model, and then move the light around to find the perfect angle. But doing it the clumsy, old fashioned way is good practice, and this piece is just about honing my skills. The shading made the bat lady more 3D, but it…
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Think I’m gonna’ go for blue skin with pink details, yellow-orange irises, and a dark red/purple ball of the eye. It’s a bit saturated right now, but after I add modeling, lighting, shading, and texture, it should be pretty cool. The gif animation has nothing to do with it. It’s just a snappy way of…
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After taking nearly two months off this piece in order to finally finish my SFAU series of 36 images, I finished the line drawing stage. I used my orignal, front on, concept sketch to create a 3D version. The hardest part was the weird, ornate nose. Very difficult to place it so it comes out…
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These are just curiosities for entertainment, folks. You aren’t meant to assess them as serious works. They’re my kid stuff! When I was growing up my favorite things were sci-fi shows I could see on TV, frogs and lizards, and drawing (not to mention girls). Fortunately, I had the foresight to document most my early…
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Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 
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