Waters Above the Looking Glass

If you could peer through the alleged dome that separates the waters above the heavens and the flat Earth from the other side, it might look something like this.

Playing with Fyre

Fyre is a math art.  Lit a few algorithms, tweaked in GIMP.  Becomes fun when mapping gradients to grayscale values.

(Not so) comic book v0.2

A sample panel reduced from 1200 to 400 pixels wide.  I may add in more texture detail later, but for now, I'm experimenting with tools, workflow, and style.  The real challenge will come from establishing shot panels or splash pages.

(Not so) Comic Book

I'm not a fan of comics, but I can put one together.   Recently, I had a vivid dream and decided with some tweaks to make sense and tie ideas together, it made a pretty decent storyline.  Rather than write it out, I wanted to preserve what I saw, so I sketched what I saw in my mind's eye.  After the first few shots, it became apparent it was going to be a lot more than I wanted to organize, so I decided on a comic format to preserve the visuals.  Drawing at 4096x6144 (2:3), I've (digitally) penned 8 sequenced but unfinished pages.   See if you can understand what is occuring with this low-res mockup.

Flesh Eating Mutant Zombie Paramilitary Monkey

 A few years ago, I created this 8.5x11 inch printer-ready halftone shooting target for the local Project Appleseed group using pen and paper, a scanner, and GIMP.  However, you don't have to be woman or child that gets free rifle training in order to enjoy it - anyone with a desire to bullseye can, and now you can too.  Fire at will, netizen!

 

Around the same time, I'd been digitally sculpting with Sculptris, so I thought I'd try to make a 3D version of the 2D drawing.  Turned out all right, but considering the model is all triangles and thus has no topology, it is unsuitable for animation.  When Blender3D updated to the 2.6x series, I finally could understand the UI and see the potential within after much flailing with 2.49 and 2.5x.  I soon appreciated it's most excellent snapping tools to retopologize the static mesh so it could be animated.  I'd not got very far if it weren't for Jonathan William's modeling tutorials at CGCookie.  Later, I discovered the Blenderella series on Youtube, but I digress...

Matte painting for Experience: Jungle

In the past, I volunteered as a matte painter for an amateur film so I could have a means to increase my skill.  These are a few examples:

Shot 17-9 composited background.

Comparison of the camera footage for shot 17-9 and the background composited behind the actor.

 

 

Deconstruction of composited background for shot 17-9.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shot 15-7 composited background.

Shot 15-7 lo-res camera footage and composited background comparison.

Shot 17-2 composited.

Shot 17-2 camera footage and composited background comparison.

Shot 17-6 composited background.

Shot 17-6 camera footage and composited background comparison.

The Nameless Freedom Fighters: 3D Sets

Line art and concept art activates creative juices, but I'd like the end result to be either be entirely 3D (ala Pixar animation) or live action with all the wiz-bang digital production provides. 

One of the methods I use for story ideas is to alter interesting photos, imagine a situation with characters, and determine what motivates them to be there.  I may overpaint the photo, paint it entirely with modifications, or build a 3D model of the interesting traits and fill in the blanks.

I recently used Blender for the latter process and animated a sweeping camera following a character and it's escorts (represented as retangular boxes) inside what could be a prison, compound, bunker, observatory, etc.  You can get a sense of the environment in this crudely rendered 42 second shot.