Scetch of the day

Ok, so I just dicked around for roughly 30 minutes, and this is what I got starting from a sphere. Its amazing how fast you get rusty when you dont do this regularly enough. I think I'm going to try to do a quick 30 min - 1 hour sculpt on a quasi daily basis, and put them up here. The original idea with starting this blog was to have somewhere to display my portfolio pieces, but after a lot of thought (totally like 3 minutes) I think I'm actually going to keep this blog more casual. That way I can both keep the updates more regular as well as not having to censor what I say in case I have to direct a future employer or something over here.
I have an empty domain laying around somewhere, so as soon as I get the time to re-learn Dreamweaver, I'll put up a fancier display solution there.

Peace

El Slowpoko

Ok, so its been a while. I've got no excuse. No wait, I actually do this time! So, the aforementioned gig I spent way to much time trying to land went the way of the dodo when the company in question hit a rough patch. I then decided to accept the offer I got from a company I freelanced for over the summer, and thats where I've basically been living for the past 3 weeks. Thats the charm of arriving on the day of a deadline for a project that needs at least another week of work.

I'm not going to divulge the name of the company, so I get to complain about my job on this blog without getting sacked in the process. What I can say, is that they do a lot of work for the offshore oil industry, like real-time 3D simulations and fancypants techy stuff like that. Me and this other guy on the other hand, do 3D video projects, like illustrational videos for getting a customers investors interested enough in a project to whip out their sacks (no, of money, you freakin pervert).

The projects havent been too mindblowingly exciting this far, but at the moment I'm working on a music video. That involves animation (fun) and a lot of tracking (please shoot me).

The good news is that you'll never get to see that video, as one of the lead singer chicks had a clause in her contract that it would never end up on the interwebs. Yeah, good luck with that one. We all know the unviersal rule of shit you dont want anyone to ever see; its going on youtube next to Paris' private adult excersize tapes.

So I havent had the time to really do any sculpts the past weeks, but if time and workload allows it, I'll be throwing some stuff on here some time this week. No promises though. Its not like you're paying for this shit.

The Final Brodeo

As many other artists, I would not be able to endure endless hours in front of this screen without any form of different stimulus. My drug of choice is podcasts, and mainly video game podcasts as they're often inhabited by the most outspoken and outright funny guys to listen to.

Last week, the head honcho at my favorite one, GFW Radio (also known by us initiates as the Brodeo) Jeff Green, decided to leave his position as editor in chief of the PC part at 1Up.com, to head over to EA's Sims team. I was really caught off guard at how that affected me, but I guess after some 46 year old jewish guy keeps talking in your ear over several years, you kind of start appreciating them as a part of your every day environment, and as your friends in a kind of creepy fanboy type of way. Good luck to you Jeff, I kissed your ass enough in your farewell 1up blog entry so you know how I feel *sniffle*

Well, at least we still had Shawn and the rest of the guys. But it turned out the closing of GFW Magazine had affected more than its EOC, as yet another one of its brilliant writers was about to turn his carreer in a new and different direction.

Yesterday morning greeted me with what was labeled as the final episode of the Brodeo. This epic 3 hour edition of GFW radio revealed that Shawn Elliot, the Brodeo's beloved vice president so to speak, was also resigning from 1Up to go work with Ken Levine (the brains behind BioShock) as an associate producer at 2K Boston. The Brodeo then rolled up its blankets, put put the bonfire, saddled the horses and rode off into the sunset.

So I guess what I wanted to say was; thanks for the great company over the last couple of years, for all the laughs and awful stories. You really brightened up many a long day and night of working towards some deadline, and all us listeners really appreciated all the work you guys put in doing the podcast every week. Good luck to you as well, Shawn, we're all sad to see you go but also hell'a excited to see what your amazingly creative, analytical and thourough brain will manage to brew up over there at 2K. You have definately earned the opportunity given to you, and there is no doubt in my mind that you'll go on to do great things.

Hopefully, the emptiness left by the Brodeo will be filled with something new from the remaining trio, I know we would all love to hear more "what the hell"s from Ryan, Chuff Love from Anthony and disgusting Star Wars lore from Dr. Max Chill.

Now, its time to pour out a 40 to the all the good times with the Brodeo (in a cup, of course, no sense in wasting perfectly good, and above all damn expensive, liqueur) and hope that we'll keep seing you guys around every now and then. And who knows, maybe I'll come to work as an artist for you guys some day. Then we can be best friends. Forever.

An' we out

Scetch September 18th

Ok, so as both a way to regularize my practice sessions and to actually get a more frequent inflow of shit to this blog of mine, I'm going to start doing daily (sorta daily at least) sculpting scetches and put them on here. As you can tell from the date of my last entry, I'm like the worlds worst blogger, but then again, I've been really busy lately with uninteresting work and haven had a lot of time to really do any sculpts. Besides, I'm not going to end up as some stupid ass twitterer that needs to tell everyone what he had for dinner.

This one is about a 2 hour thing I did, its nothing great but I wanted to start practice doing sculpts without reference material or detailed base meshes, so as to start imprinting the human form and proportions on my brain.

Plus, a good friend of mine just told me that he checks in on the blog on a regular basis, so I guess I've got to start adding some new stuff for him to check out. That puts my current amount of followers at 1. Yey!

 

Something old

Just figured I'd throw this one up as well, a quick piece I made for my reel this spring.

Peace

Yarr! I be a space pirate!

Ahoy, mateys! Just thought I'd post my submission for the 3D Total SSC07. The theme was Pirates - Past, present, future. Time limit was 5 hours. I had a bunch of ideas for this one, but as I sit working on the model, what do you know, I just spent most of the time available just dicking around. So I just did a real rough dagger and stuck it in there to at least get something that fit the theme. I'll update you (meaning myself as no one actually reads this) on the results of the compo. A couple of the entries really blew my socks off, so there are some talented guys hanging around over there at threedy. One of which made the material (same as I used last ssc), Mr. Ralf Stumpf, so thanks for that.

Peace

King Triton - 3DTotal SSC04

So this weekend I decided to jump into the fray that is the 3DTotal.com Speed Sculpt Challenge #4. I ended up with doing a realistic rendition of King Triton from Disney's "The Little Mermaid". Looks like there are too many awesome sculpts in there to hope for 1st place, but it will at least be fun to see how high up I can get. Its all done in zBrush, 4 hours of sculpting. Rendered with a green clay material made by one of the great artists on the zBrushcentral forums, cant remember his name right now but when I find out I'll be sure to post it.

L

Orphan Works Act of 2008

Ok, so this is something that was brought to my attention a while ago, and while I thought this could not possibly even be considered by the US Congress, it turns out I gave them way too much credit. I am not going to go through all the ramifications and details of this bill if it ends up passing (I'll give you some links to the information you'll need), but let me just state that this would not just make all your artistic work, that you'll ever do or ever have done, become up for grabs by anyone who wants to profit from it, but also cost you future employment. Why hire an illustrator or a photographer to shoot what you need for your ad, when you can just hop on the interwebs, pick out just the right photo that someone else has taken, and use that one for free? All you need to do, is compose a document that says "yeah, I really sort of tried to find who owned this image, but couldnt find 'im. It said some name on the bottom of the image but I just cropped it out and pretended it was like that when I found it."

This is really bad, people. And as always, it seems that trying to oppose this bill is like talking to a fucking wall. No wonder, really, when the people deciding it aren't the ones affected by this bill, and the ones lobbying it are the people who will be making a shitload of money on the new copyright register libraries.

I have done a lot of thinking about this issue, but I am going to let the bill and the documentation and commentary around it talk for itself. I really encourage (and beg) you, if you are any kind of creative person anywhere in the world, to check out these links and spread this around. If this is not stopped, it might mean the end of all online creative communities, and the nail in the coffin for a lot of smaller companies and independent artists.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CqBZd0cP5Yc (the full interview at http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html)

http://orphanworks.blogspot.com/

Showreel done, applications sent

Going away for the weekend, so I got to make this quick. Here is a compressed version of the reel and some screens in somewhat better quality. My quicktime exporter kept acting up on me, and the only setting that wouldnt crash it was the default iPhone export. Just freakin' awesome. Luckily, Im sure youre used to being happy with what you can get. I mean, you dont look like much. Snarky insults aside, I finally got the applications out the door, spoke to a couple of the studios targeted, so things are starting to look up.

Later

edit: finally got my QT to work properly, so I exchanged the iPhone file with a proper one. Mind, its a somewhat hefty 25mb file.

Finally!

I'm done! Today, I finally patched up and sent out my reel. And although I didn't get to bed until 4am yesterday (and not at all the night before) to get the stuff done on time, I actually got a couple of hours of sleep. This all night business is making me all kinds of messed up. I guess I'll trade in my trip to the gym tonight with some candy, a cold one and the south park movie thats on tonight. I'll try to get the reel compressed for web tomorrow or something. I'm actually pretty happy with how it turned out, which I hope is a good sign. Even made a proper dvd out of it, holy shit. Now, I have to go catch up with all the porn I've missed out on the last 3 weeks, so if you'll excuse me..

The Hunt

Ok, so as we speak I am working my ass off, doing late nights (more like early mornings) to get all the projects that I need for my portfolio ready. The reason being, I have given myself until tuesday morning to get all my job applications out the door. When everything is done and I have finally washed my hands of it, I'll post the results on this amazingly awesome blog-thingumajig, for everyone to see. That probably means only myself. Right beneath this bullcrap is a little preview to satiate your thirst. You greedy bastard.

God damn, I'm on the interwebs!

And so it begins. I'll ry to use this blog as a portal for all the sculpts and models I do, as well as try to squeeze out some words of wisdom every now and then. And if everything I put up here sucks ass, you do at least get the chance to tell me how much you hate my face, or try to sell me some sweet replica Rolexes or member enlargement drugs. The wonders of the interwebs.