Shopkeeper W.I.P.

black and white alright

New things, today I decided to make sketches in total black and white value, why? because I want my images to read with two values. I need to get my things to read with shape and this is a good way to do it

Valve pipeline

These people are in my head.

http://pipeline.valvesoftware.com/


This kind of motivation couldn't have come to me at a better time.

I cannot believe that their will be a community of people devoted to learning about working in the gaming industry for companies like valve. My entire motivation to get into the industry has been to work with great people like them.

Time to work overtime. haha

Giving everything you've got

Something I find myself doing is procrastinating.

Specifically out of self inflicted failure

I don't do the best I can because i don't believe in myself while I do the hard practice work that makes someone technically excellent.

It's a self fufilling prophecy.

If I can do that to myself why can't the opposite be true?



Because I don't go to art school, the practice work has always been intimidating, but here is what I will be doing every week from now on. Maybe anyone else not in art school will also benefit from it

1. Practice doing the preparation steps of a painting ie. thumbnailing, color studies, and shape practice.

do hundreds of these, and a few will have to turn out good, when that happens be bale to analyze why they are appealing then attempt to repeat for better results over all.

This means more then just a three tone block in, that would strictly be practice for seeing compositions, I want my thumbnails to convey what I really what the painting to look like. Nathan Fawkes has some great thumbnails.

2. Master studies, as much as it hurts I need to learn from these guys.

3. Imagination work, even if you think this isn't a good idea while your still technically bad, if you never practice coming up with your own ideas, how will you ever get better at it?

4. life drawing, I live in a place where there is no such thing as a life drawing class, So I have been acquiring about making my own group, finding my own models, and finding people who have an interest in life drawing to get it to be self perpetuated. I will probably make another post on how to start one yourself later on.

5. Paint/draw everyday or as much as you can every week, finish what you need to do and make time for it.

6. Studies of work that exists now.

I want to work in the industry, if I don't know what the industry is how can I possibly get my foot in the door?

I won't be doing all of these every week because that would be insane, rather i'm going to make the practice work I need to do more enjoyable by varying weekly what I need to do and then recap how I can do it better next time, then move onto something else.

Although preparation work is something I plan to do every day. If i can do the early stages of a painting incredibly well how will that carry over through the rest of the process?

Noah Bradley is giving till it hurts

Noah Bradley is an amazing environment artist, if this post he made had been overlooked by anyone I figured it was definitely worthy of spreading around.

Also if you join his Summer art camp it is the best investment I have ever made in my education thus far, and honestly I don't think I'll ever come by something as great as this for such a small fee, period.

https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/138c5efd45e9

Check out my item on the workshop!

Hey hey! I finished my new 3d project, I titled it Rift Ripper on the steam workshop! go check it out, or not, whatever lol. 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=157057557

closing in on this one.

Posting something again! haha.

This time a 3d weapon for Chaos knight in Dota2

I'm just gonna work on the texture some more and then do some mask authoring.

W.I.P.

W.I.P.

    Create often.

Don't let the tools you use control your work

Basically the title says whats on my mind by itself. Reading Vilppu's drawing manual brought that concept into my mind. Up until I had read that, I really was using reference, and copying everything the way I saw it. In a somewhat Loomis analogy I was attempting to be the camera instead of an artist.

I can pretty much sum up my thoughts when I hear those words as such. Everything you do when your drawing or painting, must be conscious. When you sketch from a model capture the emotion that model portrays and use the picture for a guide. The more I analyze and come up with a way to express what I see instead of copying what I see it always seems to turn out more accurate.


Here is the best 1 hour digital sketch I have done (a couple days ago) after reading Vilppu's manual

There are plenty of areas of the figure I took the liberty to use my artistic license to 'draw it how I wanted'

Studies are now fun :D

At least for me! I was going through my refrences and library of art books frustrated that I felt like I have been getting nowhere in months. I found a file on my computer that was Vilppu's drawing manual. I have never understood an author more then Vilppu. His advice was perfect for how I felt. I read the entire book and picked up a few things here and there.

I love to study now because I used to be a slave to the model. I only copied the subject in front of me, I now analyze whats in front of me. With that idea in my head (thanks to vilppu) I have learned what studies can really do for you :)

Finished my first steam workshop collection

Here it is, my complete item set. This took me a while to complete but hey i learned a lot. So this is going to be it for my 3d projects for the steam workshop for a while because I will be working on a sculpture class from schoolism.com, and I will also be making a 2d portfolio in preparation for Illuxcon.

Sniper's a landmark

At least for me this character is.

This model is so far been a fun mess. It was fun creating the hi resolution model but it is still a hell of a fight to create a lower polygon model and UV map the thing. Although I can say this. You get better every time you try and do it.

My first two models were learning experiences. The first was to see if I could even accomplish getting a model into the game. The second was to come up with a workflow. As I have found out with this model it looks like my workflow is going to constantly evolve.

Macquettes and light sources

So today my wonderful parents bought me a second pose-able lamp (the second after the one I got for christmas). I can say that I would not know a thing without good references from life. Their are so many new things you learn and with adjustable props you find new interesting light comps like the one I created below. besides being a refrence its also great practice creating forms when you shape the clay. This process can be a bit tedious if you don't love it. My experience with this is that making these objects is like solving a puzzle that I have seen the complete image on the cover. Sometimes things get moved around other times you get them perfect.

Also I can't stress how amazing two lights sources are!

Drawing is important and stuff

So this first still life was a complete failure. Which is totally fine because it taught me that I cannot simply start with shapes and create something fantastic and accurate. I need to do a sketch of what I am looking at before I can start putting in tones and color. Still life stuff is tough to sit down to do because you know its going to be hard because your trying to understand things through trial and error and its going to be horrible. After I had created the first still life I felt so bad about it I didn't want to start another. Yesterday I found Irv Rudleys YouTube channel and the advice and steps he shows about his own technique struck a chord with me, so this morning I began the sketch below the awful still life and decided that there is seriously no other way around the fact that good painting takes hard effort from start to finish. If I am completely honest with myself I have not put my 100% effort into literally anything I've done in the past.

So today is a new day and their is always time to do more painting and go about it with a plan of attack.

Blitzcrank redesign

This is the file I submitted to the contest. I'm worried about my monitor, I think it might be showing my files way to bright in photoshop and the result is that my work becomes way to dark when I get ready to show it.

EDIT: If you travel to this link http://m-div.deviantart.com/#/d5sytuv and download the file you can check out the PDF file that is a lot higher quality.

Time to polish!

Alright its time to tighten this guy up. I was shocked that some of the darker values came out basicly black when I created save for web files for this piece. I definitely gotta lighten some areas up and tighten some edges.

Frank Frazetta and Jim Murray

Jim Murray is one of my favorite artists. I had no idea how much Frank Frazetta had influenced him. The first thing I thought of when I saw the relationship between their artwork was that I could not believe how much Jim got away with putting Frazetta in his work without being called a clone. This is a really great example of defining how far you can take someone else's work as an influence and incorporate it into your own work. I think that's a question a lot of people have. How much is to much before I cross the line and just become a cheap imitation of my favorite artist? Personally I am going to use this as my benchmark.

Of course that doesn't mean I am condoning trying to rip other peoples work. Whatever you see about the work of another person that really appeals to you why not try and figure it out for yourself? Do some studies and learn that new trick whatever it is, and make it your own. Everyone doesn't have the same vision as you so if you learn to adapt and apply new things to your art you will grow.

current still life and master studies begin tmorrow

So Today I gave myself a couple hours to do a more complex still life and it took me forever to nail any kind of likeness. I just can't seem to pick colors that are close to what I see when I first begin. So this will continue and I will also begin doing studies of the Hudson river school artists. I chose Albert Bierstadt because of the way he uses atmospheric perspective and his awesome mountain ranges.

Still Life and some stuff about what I'm doing

So today is the day I begin to tackle my first focused piece. I am entering the league of legends Digi-art throwdown contest. I have been doing a lot of sketches and a small model to catch light on to do this one. I am taking this to a level I never thought was possible. I can't post anything yet, but before I submit (my first entry) the entry. I'm definitely going to post it here.

Still life

I realize I have been putting off doing still life practice. I've been telling myself that I'll always do it tomorrow or that I don't just have time right now. Well the fact is you have to make time. Nothings worse then saying you'll do something later especially when you know its something that won't come out the way you want it to. however that is the point of still life in the first place. You need to learn from life and if you always put it off your never going to get better.

long time with no posts

I've been working on some 3d projects and a comic book that i have no digital evidence of currently.


its been alot of work to learn how to make items but today marks the day I finally figured out a fast workflow to make items for dota