Just a quick word about HD

July 26th, 2009

HD looks pretty cool. I’ll admit it. But I find it’s use in period pieces to be very jarring. I feel that it looks too home movie like and that distracts me from the film. I enjoy HD in scifi or fantasy style pieces, but for past times i don’t like it. So please stop it.

District 9 Trailer out

July 9th, 2009

I can’t wait for this. When I saw the original trailer I was very very excited. I went back and found Neill Blomkamp’s past works and just drooled. This may just be a full length film of Alive in Johansberg, however I remember when I first saw that I wished that it was a trailer for a film soon to come out. And at last it’s here

Dark Tower Citgo

July 6th, 2009

So I’ve been working on this one for a couple of days. Been trying to get feedback from mattepainting.org. But nobody’s really writing back. That just makes me think it’s absolutely terrible.

Dark Tower Citgo v05

Neil Gaiman reading

June 30th, 2009

So I recently joined in on the whole twitter fad. Yeah it’s pretty lame. But it’s fun to see what celebrities say. My favorites so far are Neil Gaiman and Nathan Fillion.
But anyway the point of this was to link to these awesome videos of Neil Gaiman reading each chapter of his book The Grave Yard Book across the country. Very cool.

Another Dark Tower Sketch

June 25th, 2009

This is from the 4th book. It’s the Citgo oil field that Susan and Roland check out.

darktower_citgo_1.jpg

*Updated - 6/29/09*

Actually started working on this as a matte painting. There is a WIP thread over at mattepainting.org. It’s got some way to go. If there’s anyone actually reading this and you happen to be a member at mattepainting.org, please give me some feedback. If you aren’t a member but are interested in matte painting I highly suggest the site. It’s a great community and a wonderful resource.

Mountainy sketch

June 24th, 2009

very green.

sketch_2.jpg

Skecth

June 23rd, 2009

Just a random sketch I worked on today.

Future City Sketch 1

Marine Painting Progress

June 20th, 2009

And then the beauty pass! Dadadadaaaa!!

Marines_beautyPass_1

Marine Painting Progress

June 20th, 2009

And then there was texture paintings! Here’s the diffuse and specular maps I painted for each of the the parts of the drop ship. These images are only 512×512, but the original textures are 4096 squares, but are dropped down to 2k for the actual geo. Basically cause I was killing Mental Ray, and I didn’t actually need the full 4k res.

marines_textures_engine_diff_1.jpgmarines_textures_engine_spec_1.jpg
marines_textures_runner_diff_1.jpgmarines_textures_runner_spec_1.jpg
marines_textures_strut_diff_1.jpgmarines_textures_strut_spec_1.jpg
marines_textures_shipbody_diff_1.jpgmarines_textures_shipbody_spec_1.jpg

Marine Painting Progress

June 20th, 2009

Next came the Zbrush! This was probably the most time consuming. Mostly because I’d make a displacement map and in Maya it totally mess up the model. So there was a lot of back and forth. And much swearing. But in the end these are the hires models created with Zbrush, which were used as displacement maps in Maya with Mental Ray.
Marines_Zbrush_runner_1

Marines_Zbrush_engine_1

Marines_Zbrush_body_1

Marines_Zbrush_strut_1

And this is the mid poly geometry. It’s basically the Zbrush models with the subdivisions reduced to 3:

Marines_hiPoly_1