Coffee is good for your teeth

Apparently coffee protects your teeth from some forms of tooth decay, latest research shows. Well thats some good news at least, I'll have a cup before I go to bed.

Heres a quick update to that "scene" I'm painting, pleased with its direction though the background could end up being anything. Ain't it exciting?

Still all a work in progress and anything could change but thats the fun of it. Getting to love this Intuos drawing tablet now - the best investment I've made in a long time.

And I did think she looks nice against a coffee background, it might set the tone of the piece. 'Ark at me setting the tone, dontcha know.

I said I'd paint a scene!

Ok, here's something I'm painting in Photoshop. Its gradually developing from a very rough idea of a spaceport (possibly...).

My first attempt at painting a scene.

Ever.

Working from photographic reference for the face, I might possibly incorporate some 3D into the background if I bottle it but the aim is to paint the whole thing and kind of make it up as I go along.

This is just a small part of the image. The whole image is 2400 x 1800 resolution and this character takes about a third of the screen. The face has taken me four and a half hours to paint from scratch(ignore the hat, thats just a stand-in). I'll post more as soon as its worth posting. I'm having a blast. Oh and ignore the eyebrows too!

Do no be alarmed

Floating Anarchy

I decided to get some Photoshop (7) practice last night and had a speed painting sesh. Totally hooked again. What started out as a blob ended up as a ...blob. But a colourful blob!

So here's Harvey the floating anarchist Pitta larvae, fresh out of the hatchery and floating to a swimming pool near you.

I'm chuffed with the little feller, he took about an hour. I will definitely do some more but will try and plan it out better next time! Yes there's shedloads wrong with him but he's colourful and I like that. You should see the other 25 versions.

Rusty space marine - low poly

My first attempt at a low polygon game character (3472 faces) with normal mapping. I did no preliminary drawings, just jammed and came up with this. I think I'll plan the next one out a bit more as I had some problems with the undercuts when it came to normal mapping him in Max9. In fact when it boiled down to it the normal mapping was really unnecessary, good experience though!

Modelled in Silo2, UV'ed in Max9 and rendered out in Max 9. I'll try out some of Ben Clowards shaders soon if all goes to plan with the next character.

Wireframe ...........Rendered .............. Plasticcy!

I was pleased with his "attitude" and think it might be interesting to rig him up and pose him.

Anyway, he's kind of finished and I'm now working on a character inspired by the work of Moebius and Bilal (thats the plan anyway) I'm a sucker for the European artists.

More soon...

Steve puts title just here...

Umm, how daunting - more new toys to play with.

Ok, this is my first Blog and its just a bit of a vanity project for me to keep tabs on my progress as I start to explore the joys of 3D character modelling.

I've been an 3D environment artist for gawd knows how long (14 years) and its about time I had a bash at this whole next-gen character thing. I might post some of my old pre-rendered and realtime environments up here at some point because it looks pretty....I might not.

I've started using a cool piece of software called Silo 2.0. Its a subdivision modelling tool which also has displacement painting capabilites. Heres my first effort at a character from a month or two ago.

And a test render in 3ds Max9 with Mental Ray.

I shall try in the future to write some tutorial type stuff for anyone reading who's interested (once I get the image posting sussed)

Currently I'm working on a low poly normal mapped character so expect more posts soon.