antipode sketchblog

Blood Makes The Grass Grow!

2011-09-06T11:28:00.000-07:00

Done with a set palette for a weekly art challenge on tumblr.

Whimsy!

2011-09-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

Here's some stuff I made that falls more into "whimsical" than realistic. I don't think I'd posted these before, so this should be fun.

The sprite I've shown before. She was designed for a 3D model, then later made into a 2D sprite (haha! It's a pun!) for a different project.

This was my Junior game project. I did 2D art for the game, such as promotional art, matte paintings, and textures. This was my favorite of the things I made for the project.

Disgruntled looking tooth fairy for an animation storyboard. We were given the design of one character (Billy) and had to design the other characters around him. The teacher loved this one.

Partners

2011-08-01T18:26:00.000-07:00

I just got a copy of my friend Rochelle's comic and artbook in the mail. It is GORGEOUS so I feel the need to post photos.

This one was my contribution!

If you want to get a copy for yourself, it's on sale here!

3D pose + lighting ref

2011-06-04T00:47:00.000-07:00

This was supposed to be a quick perspective reference and I got a little carried away.

I think lighting and texture are my favorite things about 3D.

EDIT: So, I received critique that my reference was too washed out, which is TRUE. I ended up upping the contrast a lot in the final, which was made in, of all things, Tegaki.

I'm not fully happy with it, as is typical, but it was a lot of fun trying out a different process. Next time I'm using Photoshop, though.

Tegaki Background

2011-05-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

I used to participate in a Tegaki (drawing-based) RPG. I've joined another because it's basically daily drawing challenges in this little MS-paint type program. There's an option for a blog background now, so I did this little picture for that. I think her waist is a bit too small, even for the style.

Abomination

2011-04-29T01:26:00.000-07:00

This illustration was done as a gift for a friend. It will be included in her comic/artbook as a bonus image. You can pre-order a copy right over here.

Website Update

2011-04-20T12:34:00.001-07:00

You can now view separate pages about my Drowlove Low-poly project, NWN2 projects, Arkaz projects, and Dragon Age projects. There are now also a selection of sketches and life drawings to see.

More content soon, I have a few things in progress!

Swimmers

2011-04-09T23:44:00.001-07:00

I'm working as a lifeguard right now. Though it's very much not what my degree is in, I'm enjoying the exercise and I get to see a large variation of interesting people and body types. Here's a few of my favorite swimmers so far.

I guess this is sort of life drawing? :D I showed this to some of the other lifeguards and they were able to guess exactly who all of these people were, so I will take that as a success for now.

Sketchpost!

2011-03-30T15:45:00.001-07:00

So I just realized it's been a while since I posted some sketches!

This is from when I was working for Brand X, fairies started creeping into everything I drew. This one is labeled "bug" and I don't know more than that. On that topic, my game is coming out soon, so everyone should go preregister!

Here's some more Mucha-inspired Andy because I haven't drawn enough of that lately.

Undead animation. I don't know how the skeleton is holding together like that, and I don't know where its legs are... I like the concept though, it's on my list of drawings to improve.

This was Andy, in a disguise she never ended up wearing. I still like the design.

Spider... sort-of new character. She has a fun face, so she's really enjoyable to draw.

I spent a few months on WoW, which I'm not sure I enjoyed as a game, but the art was spectacular. This was my attempt to draw my character, Rin.

I've been attempting to push styles a bit farther by distorting shapes and all that... Andy has gotten to be my target pretty often because her build is curvy and fun to draw. I'm not sure how well I like this yet, but it's a fun change and I think the efforts will help my art.

Ghost!Andy. She's creepy when she dies.

Andy and her boyfriend Zachary. He is harder for me to draw, but I liked this one.

Eilshe. I don't think I've posted anything about him before. He's a retired character now--a shapeshifter who has taken the form of an elf. He was not very smart, but very friendly.

Spider again, with poofy pants.

Spider. This is her in-game outfit. You can tell she is a barbarian because she wears furry boots.

I'm NOT SURE what this is. I think I just wanted to draw little kids in gloves and boots and poofy hats. I think they would be fun to model in 3D.

A CAR. I actually really love cars, but never quite got around to practicing drawing them. I try to sketch 'em when I find myself waiting for someone in a parking lot.

Here's my map for the Dragon Age level. I think I'm going to start over so I can get it closer to this idea, I really like this design and I didn't quite have it nailed before.

Aaaaand that's it for now. :)

3D + Watercolor

2011-03-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

... Because these are apparently my favorite mediums all the sudden.

This is a semi-secret project I'm working on, to learn to import into a game engine, something I don't have a lot of experience with. I extruded a cube to make this ugly object (appropriately named "testblob") to see if it would retain smoothing, UV, and texture data. It DOES.

I haven't tested maps other than a diffuse yet, though. I really want to play with self-illumination and animated textures.

I also have recently obtained some new watercolor pencils, which I love since you can get such nice results with so little mess. I wanted to test them out, so I jumped on the Arkaz IRC room and took the first suggestion I got: Narcissa, an NPC vampire from the game.

The anatomy is horrible and there's a lot I should have done differently (the color scheme, least of all...), but overall I'm pleased. I learned a lot about my tools doing this, and that was the point. :) Looking forward to using them again.

Miranda for Wiki

2011-01-04T16:21:00.001-08:00

I finished a picture I was doing today and figured I would post my process here. This was done specifically for Andy's wiki page for Arkaz.

Thumbnail:

Sketch:

Inked lines:

Final:

The lines are done traditionally, ink on bristol paper. I spent so much time getting her legs right that her hand was very wrong initially. I ended up using tracing paper to fix her hand, then I scanned and composited it in Photoshop, then did the colors in Photoshop, because I've misplaced my watercolor pencils.

I'm happy with it for now. I really enjoy doing this style of art.

Wild Career Change

2010-10-18T22:29:00.000-07:00

Not that wild.

Following an enlightening conversation with someone at a DigiPen alum meet, I suddenly realized that all that level design stuff I was doing for fun is something I could do for a job. Crazy!!

I'm working on fixing up my site, but in the meantime I really wanted to get something up here!

These are some areas I made for Arkaz, the NWN1 server I work on, in the Aurora toolset. It's a little old but we still have a lot of dedicated players.

These ones are from Neverwinter Nights 2 and were made for ID Tech as my demo project.

These are some screencaps of the project I'm working on right now. This is the Dragon Age toolset, which is probably both the BEST and most difficult tileset I've used so far. It has 3Ds Max-style rotation and that makes me soooo nerdily happy.

The tower is constructed from a lot of pieces of things that I'm pretty sure aren't supposed to be tower-parts. There's loads of bugs with the level but I'm working on it. I have a story planned based on tarot, should be interesting.

I've been doing this for ages and felt it was "cheating" to use a toolset so I never posted anything about it.

New Header

2010-09-16T00:54:00.000-07:00

I did this instead of sleeping! :D Have a close up.

Would you believe I've been wanting to draw that picture since about seventh grade? Yeah.

Andy Costume Update

2010-09-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

I think this is the version I'm going to start working from. I'm not sure if I'll keep the blue. The character is meant to have rather drab robes. However, I'm happy with the overall design.

Hopefully the next post will be a WIP low-poly model. :)

Andy Thumbs

2010-08-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

Did a couple more this morning based on critique I received. We're heading off to the ribbon-cutting ceremony at DigiPen now, I'll keep working on it when i get back.

New Project

2010-08-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

Hello, sketchblog!

I am beginning a new project today, with the intention of reaching a few different goals.

It'll likely be much more realistic than a lot of my work has been in the past. It's been interesting so far, but I feel bad using this much photo reference.

I'm using Andy for this, half because I know the character like the back of my hand, and half because there's a new Neverwinter coming out and I thought it would be fun to translate a character from NWN1 into current gen graphics.

Here's the first four of my thumbnails for her costume.

So far I like the "pirate" one best but I'm not sure about the boots. I want something that looks roughly like what she wears in NWN1, but past that I'm unsure.

She has the skeletal arm, a set of distinctive bracers called "Evershade" (I only drew one in the thumbs though), and supposedly, really great legs. If I can get something that showcases those things while still keeping the resemblance, I will be really happy.

EDIT: After some initial critique, I've altered her proportions slightly:

Legs a bit longer, head a bit larger.

Chain of Roses

2010-05-31T16:21:00.000-07:00

That hair is what I get for inking something at 2 AM. I'm pretty happy with those roses, though, and overall I think that experiment was a success.

There's my sketch for this. I was thinking dragons instead of roses at first but changed my mind.

Painting at Midnight

2010-05-31T02:06:00.000-07:00

Why am I painting at midnight and/or 2 AM, you ask? I have no idea, but I've spent the last couple of hours looking at Mucha paintings and that may have something to do with it.

There's loads of errors here, but mainly I intended to use it as a test painting to try out my watercolor pencils and water pens, which I haven't actually used yet.

Scanned again so I had a line art version of those roses. I really like drawing roses.

Fairytale

2010-05-18T18:31:00.001-07:00

Finished! Just for fun, check out the sketch that got me to paint this:

Haha!

Zach, Andy, and other mythological creatures

2010-05-12T01:47:00.000-07:00

Forgot to update!!

I completed my contract work for BrandX Games and they have given me permission to post the final two images! This is "3D Concept art" for an unreleased and unannounced game.

The project was a little rushed, but I think it came out very well for the amount of time I had. I also taught myself ZBrush for this project, and while I'm still fairly new to the program, it's SUPER FUN to model with it and I look forward to doing more ZBrush work!

However, right now I'm trying to get this painting finished!

I think I'm getting close to "finished" but there's a lot of untouched areas here still-- check out Andy's white blob of a spellbook! I also checked my sketch and realized I read some of my lines wrong and gave Zach a huge butt, so I might try to fix that too.

Progress

2010-04-07T15:04:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I forgot to put this here!

I applied some critique from some other artists, particularly on minor tweaks to the anatomy, and I'm working on detailing and better defining the forms now.

My current project for BrandX is due to be finished on Monday, though, so I'm a little busy with that and can't work on this right now. I'll hopefully get some time to finish this up next week. :)

Fairytale Colors - From Scratch

2010-04-02T22:34:00.001-07:00

So, remember this?

I took another look at it today and all I could think was, "wow, this looks awful." So, I ditched everything but my linework and started over completely on the colors. I entirely threw out what I was trying to do and worked differently, and I think it's a better painting for it. Here's what I have so far:

I think it has more life this way. Obviously it'll require a lot of work still, that's very roughed in, I just wanted to get the colors and lighting right off the bat. I also threw it into greyscale to see how it looked, and I'm much, much, much more happy with how my eyes flow along it now.

I'm excited about this, because I had gotten stuck and stopped working on it entirely. I'm really happy to get it going again. :)

Mirandy & Batstain

2010-03-19T17:22:00.000-07:00

I've been working on character designs rather than colored doodles at work lately, so this is all I have that I'm ready to show yet. Sebastian is Bryanna's character, by the way... her prissy half-orc butler and my cute happy necromancer, because we apparently really like strange archetypes. :)

Robots from middle school

2010-03-02T21:56:00.001-08:00

More work doodles. I was curious if I could interpret her armor design to something that might work a little more realistically. I'm not sure if I like it, but it was fun to draw.

Blood Magic

2010-02-23T18:42:00.000-08:00

More stuff I drew on my lunch break!

One day I will draw Andy doing something she, you know, actually does sometimes.

progress and lost lighting

2010-02-20T10:21:00.000-08:00

This might have been slightly ambitious given the amount of available time I have right now. Anyway, I've finally got Zach's face to a level where I don't cringe to look at him, I've put in the base of a sword and some placeholder lightning. I had some blue light on them from the placeholder lightning, but accidentally closed the file without saving it, so that will have to be redone. I've also adjusted the seams on Andy's robe in the sketch so that it actually makes sense... might seem like a small tweak, but it was driving me insane.

I think their hair will stay as-is until I get the clothes to a more complete level, since I'll probably end up with some flyaway strands on the clothing and I think it will be more efficient just to do that once.

Here's what it looked like with the blue lighting I lost. The previous picture is more recent and has some tweaks to Zach's face to make him look a little better.

Finished

2010-02-12T18:21:00.000-08:00

Finished this at work today. :D

The paper got all waffley from being colored, so my scanner destroyed it pretty well. I did my best to fix it up in Photoshop. Pretty happy with how this turned out, but I really badly want to go get more col-erase pencils now, considering what's shown here is basically every color I have left.

Work Doodles

2010-02-11T22:30:00.000-08:00

Obviously Mucha-inspired WIP Andy. Complicated by the loss of most of my col-erase pencils, resulting in a VERY limited palette that does not, unfortunately, include her hair color.

Andy & Zachary WIP

2010-01-31T13:19:00.001-08:00

I've posted some art of Andy/Miranda before, but it's all been little sketches. Well, recently I liked one of them enough to clean up.

The anatomy is entirely horrible here, but I liked the pose, so I scanned it in.

Here's the reference I'm working off of, by the way. Neverwinter Nights, quite old game, but still very good.

After a lot of sketching and redoing and moving things around, here's what I've got so far! The image got flipped since Zach's right handed and Andy's left hand is important, I'm not sure what I was thinking doing it the other way to begin with. The lines are more of a guide, I plan to remove them in the end. Oh, and I had no reference of Zach's sword, so I put off drawing it. I have some reference now, so that will probably be in the next version.

This is a better idea of what it'll look like in the end. :D She looks like a Disney character to me, but I'm cool with that.

Grab Bag

2010-01-12T23:29:00.000-08:00

So, I now have a job working at BrandX Games, but since I can't post anything I'm working on, I am going to post a whole lot of unrelated doodles instead.

This is the loading animation on my website. I need to throw her on a nonwhite background.

Here's Zeb, who is a Megaman X fancharacter from middle school. Mind you, in middle school she looked like:

But no matter. :D

These three are of Miranda Rose, another D&D character who I haven't quite had time to do a painting of yet. I did unearth some really fun sketches, but the anatomy is so bad in them that I won't post it here until I've got a better version.

Here is something I haven't posted much of... a landscape!

This is something I'd like to paint as well. It's an elven temple, even though it looks like a tree. And on that topic, two pictures of a character from this area... drawn on the back of a D&D character sheet, because I am classy and also cannot be presented with paper without drawing all over it.

I think the second one is stronger. This character is always sticking a hip out, I'm not sure what's up with that.

Also from the back of the character sheet, but from a different game, Rhysaar. She's an aquatic elf of some kind.

Finally, here is a super pro drawing from the back of another D&D character sheet. It's our entire 4ed D&D party, inspired by the 4ed artwork. Princess in the middle is a (male, even) elven bard, the two on the end are lovely gnoll and dwarf fangirls of his, who apparently have similar taste in enormous, swirly bras. Emo tiefling and generic male paladin lead the party!!

This is on our fridge as though I am a four year old who made a picture for his mommy.

Aaaand hopefully one day, I will have something to post here that makes me look less crazy. :D

Sad robots

2009-12-10T16:02:00.000-08:00

Approved final robot design!

The picture on his chest will change throughout the animation, probably to exclamation points and hearts and little pictures of pizza and things.

Robots

2009-12-07T13:25:00.001-08:00

Here are some of my silhouette thumbnails for the Flying Saucer ad.

This is a rough idea of what the final one might look like, based on feedback from Flying Saucer. We liked the clampy hands and noodle arms, but wanted a kind of traditional robot monster rather than something like the slug or giant rabbit.

The ad will be mostly very sharp black and white, with bright colours and gradients, but all very simple, graphic shapes, think Patapon or Michel Gagne.

I'm working with Bryanna Lindsey on this project, but as she's still in school, it's been put on hold so she can concentrate on her classes. More images as soon as I have them.

Rriilp Update

2009-12-02T11:32:00.000-08:00

So, remember that water creature painting I was doing? When the computer crashed, I misplaced him deep inside my reference folder. I found him yesterday! Obviously, still a WIP, but this version looks a little better than the last one I posted.

I'm tempted to redo his feet, and I'm beginning to believe he needs more jewelry. Opinions?

Self Portraits

2009-12-01T20:27:00.000-08:00

Done in a couple of hours today just for kicks. It's been a long time since I did a self portrait.

For comparison, here's one I had on the computer from 2003.

Final Textures

2009-11-17T15:51:00.000-08:00

I just realized I never actually posted these, so here are all of the diffuse maps for the DrowLove project. These are all completely hand-painted at 256x256. No photos were used!

Autem's texture sheet includes some blank space at the bottom right where I was planning to put a texture for her amulet.

Arinae's was done first, so her face was unwrapped a little differently.

Due to time constraints, Pyras and the props were never completed for this project. You can see more on this project here, at least until I change my website around.

Currently, I'm working on redesigning my website and working with Flying Saucer on the Flash advertisement. Hopefully I will have more to show soon.

Andy Rough & Flying Saucer

2009-09-19T22:20:00.000-07:00

So, since last time I posted, I had a major computer crash. I'm posting from a new desktop now, because my laptop will no longer even turn on. I've recovered all my data, thankfully, and the new setup is quite a bit nicer! I'm looking forward to having Photoshop again.

In the meantime, I've just been doodling a lot at work. I'll scan some more later, but I wanted to show my favourite at the moment:

This is Miranda Rose, a character I've been playing on a Neverwinter Nights game. This is just a doodle that I coloured up with col-erase, but I'm pleased with the composition, so I think I might make a redo my first Photoshop project with the new computer!

I've also been commissioned with my good friend Bryanna to do some advertising animations for a local pizza place. I'll post what I can for that here, in the meantime, check out Flying Saucer.

Painting from life!

2009-06-02T14:21:00.000-07:00

So here's two weeks worth of life drawing, since I didn't upload last week. Luckily, (unluckily??) I didn't like many of my drawings last week, so there isn't too much I have to show this time.

I drew several like this, with too bit of heads, due to having my (very large) sketchbook in my lap instead of on an easel. I kept forgetting the perspective of having the thing in my lap means that I don't have to draw the head so big. Sigh.

This week, there were two sessions back to back: a normal one, and a three hour session with only one pose. I went to the long pose but skipped the others.

Acrylics because my gouache has apparently dried out! :c This was interesting since I've never done a nude from life before with paints, and I spent quite a lot of time fighting the tools rather than focusing on creating a likeness. This is something I should probably spend more time on, but next time I wouldn't mind having a canvas, I think, since this one was just in my big sketchbook.

Life Drawing

2009-05-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

Here's some more life drawing.
Hands and feet. These aren't actually from the eleventh, I'm just really smart and mislabelled.

On the eleventh we actually had a clothed female model.

The last one was a twenty, but I thought it was going to be a ten and spent probably the last eight minutes overworking my lines and going MAN WHEN IS THIS POSE GOING TO END??? That's what I get for having headphones on when they are saying how long the pose will be.

I'm going to try and go to life drawing every week until I get a job and/or have to move.

Rriilp

2009-04-30T02:27:00.001-07:00

There are two things that I consider to be my "artistic weaknesses;" things that I will like, always, no matter what.

Rainbows, and water creatures.

This is Rriilp, a character for a D&D game I'm going to be playing online. I had absolutely no reason to draw this character other than that water creatures are AWESOME and I've wanted to RP as one for bloody ever.

For those who know or care, he is a water genasi who was raised by kuo-toas. He is/used to be a whip, but was captured by slavers and is now owned by another player character.

Painting WIP, I want to put more work into this one, but got so excited about colouring it that I did a fast one just so I could show something. c:

DrowLove By The Sea

2009-04-23T00:49:00.000-07:00

This is my final animation render for ANI400.

So, I wasn't able to finish Pyras in time. I pretty much had to choose between all eight models and no animation for the showing on Friday, or something to show off with, and no Pyras. Since Pyras has essentially left DrowLove anyway, I went ahead with this animation today.

It's 105 frames long and loops 18 times to music. c: I'm very proud of it, considering I'm not aiming for an animation job, I think I did well.

I aim to finish Pyras, the weapons and props, and Onion after graduation.

Also, check out this sweet walk Bob did for me! c:

FINALS

2009-04-20T23:10:00.000-07:00

I finished Granth, but I have to go work on my sociology paper now, so no time for pretty renders. Pyras might be delayed until after finals, I'll know by Wednesday.

TEAPOTS

2009-04-19T01:49:00.000-07:00

TEAPOTS.

Also notice: lue's fixed self-illumination, arinae's fixed skinning and self-illumination, Drea's coat still not fixed, the one teapot I forgot to put a double-sided material onto.

lots of pictures

2009-04-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

Fie is done.

I actually figured out how to use biped extras, so I rigged his coat. I'll probably go back and do Drea's coat this same way, but not yet, I need to finish the last two models first.

He doesn't really have enough geometry for a good coat rig, but it works way better than skinning to his legs.

ANGRY WALKING.

So, I added him to the lineup, where he is coincidentally right next to Lueali. I don't think either of them would be particularly happy with that.

He brings some boot colour variation to the group.

Aaand then I did a bunch of renders because I'm getting a kick out of this project.

Flan is the favourite of all my professors. XD Oddly, he translated really well into 3D.

Fie is my favourite, I think. I really like his glasses.

Autem, who is pretty.

Arinae, the first I did. I'm noticing skinning errors on her, and I need to tone down her eyes just a little. She is supposed to have very pale piercing eyes, but right now it's a bit of an overkill.

♥TRUE LOVE♥

She is somehow one of the most expressive ones.

I really like Fie. XD LOOK OUT LUE.

I think I did something strange with Lue's self-illumination. He looks fine in Max, but gets weird shadows on his face in all the renders. I'll probably take a look at that when I get to the point where I am fixing old errors in these models.

Granth is next! These are due on Wednesday, I'm hoping to have them done this weekend.

Five Finished

2009-04-12T19:58:00.000-07:00

So I've got two more models for the DrowLove project.

Flan! I had to get a lot of critique from Bob to get him to look like him, but we're really happy with how he came out!

Uh. I'm a little burned out. :D;

Bob likes this one.

And I like this one. XD

Texture makes a lot of difference!

And here's Autem!
Same deal, I had to get a lot of critique from Yubi, but luckily, she actually has an actress she knows of that I was able to use as reference for what a more realistic Autem might look like.

Her skin test was a little prettier than Flan's.

Here's the current lineup. I'm replacing and posing models as I finish them. They each have diffuse, opacity, self-illumination, and specular maps. I've skinned them to bipeds because I really don't have time for eight custom rigs.

ALSO, BUTTS.

Fie is next. c:

Texturing Like Crazy

2009-04-09T16:48:00.000-07:00

Skeletons are as finished as I am going to worry about getting them for now. I'd like to touch them up a bit, but this is workable unless I get free time, which I don't think will happen, unfortunately.

And Drea makes 3/8 DrowLove models done.

For fun, here's a render before he was skinned properly:

And here is one after skinning. I've noticed a few obvious errors since this, but really, that big coat creates problems for dynamic poses. I might experiment with ways to fix this, but I don't really think I have time, and he works great when he's just walking around.

Finally, I did some fanservicey renders for fun, since I have both Lue and Drea done now. c: I haven't done alternate expressions, though, so they are kind of going :| at each other. ROMANCE!!!

Flan is next!

SKELEBLUE

2009-04-06T23:26:00.001-07:00

I'm trying to finish up the skelebots over the next few days.

Blue skele is the "perfect" version. He's got metal parts and is clean and sharp. I want his teeth to look like sharp blades, but haven't finished the texture yet.

I really like how his back looks.

In conclusion, self-illumination maps are now my favourite thing ever.

Life Drawing!

2009-03-22T20:18:00.000-07:00

So, life drawing. What this blog was actually really supposed to be for.

These are going in my print portfolio. I tidied 'em up in photoshop with burn and dodge (of all things) which is a pretty sweet technique Lynda taught me. Those tools are dangerous, but for cleaning up black and white drawings, they work perfectly!

Actually the first one here was originally pink col-erase, but the others are graphite. These were in my 11x14 life drawing sketchbook, so the originals (and these scans) are pretty big!

I want to do more life drawing!

Oh, and...

2009-03-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

I keep forgetting about Djinn & Juice, which is now called just Djinn, I guess.

I'm doing two more versions of the skelebot texture. The three versions will behave differently ingame.
I haven't done anything but swap colours around at this point. The green one is going to be "rotted," and will move in a more creepy fashion. He'll be fun, I will get to do rust and mold. The blue one is going to be metallic, he's the "perfect" version who is the hardest to kill. He'll have like, metallic plates in his bones, no dirt or blood on his clothing, and probably fancier looking pants and shoes.

Here's the tarmantuloid, which I guess is what we're calling the golden mantis now. We decided to just use procedural textures for him, though I did a simple unwrap in Max anyway. The red lights self-illuminate, the rest is gold and silver metallic.

I've been spoiled by unwrapping and texturing my own models, these were done by a teammate. Among other things, he wasn't modelled with the blades I gave him in the concept art, so I did the best I could to make him look as extravagant and dangerous as he was intended to.

He should look great when he moves, I think.

I've also been asked to create the logos and website for the game, as well as 2D assets. I haven't done much for the website yet due to career day, and my team hasn't gotten me the specs and FTP info yet, but as soon as it's up, I will link it here.

Here's the logos I made.
Djinn is the final title of the game, Fire Alarm is the team name. For Fire Alarm, I used the font Eurostar Black Extended (which is basically my favourite font ever, it fit what I wanted perfectly this time) and for Djinn I used one called XXII Arabian Onenightstand, and then "destroyed" it with photoshop. I pitched several different rough logos to my team to get feedback before I made these final ones. They really liked that particular font for the game, but disliked how clean it was and requested I make it look rough, more like Chicago House. I like the final result and it looks great on black, which is likely how it will be seen in game.

After Career Day

2009-03-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

I didn't update at all for a while, so I have a lot to show this time.
I finished Lueali. This is the render I took for career day. I have one from behind as well, but that's less interesting.

Here's what his wireframe looks like.

This is with a WIP texture, but I did his eyes on several photoshop layers so they can be opened and closed, and moved around to make him look in different directions. I'd like to do different expressions too, but haven't had time.

Close up of the face wireframe with texture. The eyes are mouth are not modelled.

Messing around. XD; I wanted it to look like he was holding a LENSFLARE but it didn't really work, which was too bad.

These are the full resolution textures for Lue and Arinae. I mirrored her face but not his, she's kind of a more symmetrical person. I might redo that, but I don't think I have time. She has such piercing eyes that I don't really want to move them around much anyway.

I've only started Drea. I've got his face finished but haven't touched anything else yet.

Lynda showed me specularity and illumination maps, so I added those to Lue and Arinae yesterday. I really like the look, but I'm not sure it's something that could be used in a game like this. I figure they are extras, the model still looks nice without them. c:

Lue's hair with the spec map on. The alpha lets light through, it's the greatest thing. His hair still doesn't look curly enough for my taste, but it works for now.

This is one of the renders I did for career day. I handed out post card-sized prints with this image, as well as an 18x24 poster.

This is the last print I did for career day. This one was *really* popular, which surprised me a lot, considering it's a photoshop speed painting on top of a render. Well, I had a version without the wonky grass, anyway. This is before the lum and spec maps, but unfortunately the daylight system blows everything out so much that you couldn't see the self-illuminated materials anyway.

I'm putting Drea on hold until I can get some feedback on his texture, so I'm starting Flan instead. I should have some renders of him soonish.

Arinae with lighting

2009-03-08T23:32:00.000-07:00

I made some simple rocks and posed Arinae on them with Max's daylight system.

That one doesn't actually have the lighting working properly, but it almost has the look of a night shot, which I really enjoy.

I think I might look into finding a way to make her eyes glow more, and maybe put a spec map in there. Probably not though, I have seven other models to do!

I started on Lue's texture today, but I don't have any renders of him yet. He'll be finished within the week, and then I think I'm doing Drea next because I am DYING to do the little metal things on the ends of his coat, which is not weird at all.

Arinae is finished!

2009-03-07T13:34:00.000-08:00

More shots on my DA if you are interested. :D

I'm not 100% certain who to do next, but I think I might go with Lue since he's fairly simple and symmetrical, as well as my design.

DrowLove Low-Poly Models!

2009-02-19T12:07:00.000-08:00

Granth was the last model I needed to do. c:

AND WITH THAT...

I get to unwrap them all and start texturing next!

Drea!

2009-02-17T14:53:00.000-08:00

He has his P2 hair, but both ears. I figure I can destroy his ear with alpha.

He's got an eyepatch, too, but you can't see it much when it's all the same colour, so...

c:

He's easily the broadest of them.

AND LOW ANGLE FOR ADDED DRAMA!!! :D

Granth is next and then I'm done modelling and get to start on textures!

It worked!

2009-02-17T12:56:00.000-08:00

I didn't really think it would work, but it totally worked.

His torso in front is attached to his pants!

And his torso in back is attached to the coat! Smoothing looks perfect!

I also fixed Pyras, and updated the LINEUP.

c:!!!!

Fie & The Skeleton

2009-02-17T12:35:00.000-08:00

...that sounds like a TERRIBLE children's book.

He's 498 tris. I can't make his coat pockets or boot details without going over, so that will be done in texture.

The skirt is done the same way as Pyras's... I wish there was a way to make that look more smooth easily. HMMMM I might play with this, I have one idea.

Glasses will be done with alphas.

His hair looks like a banana. D:

Skelebot I've been texturing, I think I'm pretty much done with him, at least for the first pass.

Uh. I kind of went nuts with the teeth. XD;

The lighting is glitching and I'm not sure why. I promise it isn't textured to do that. I'll probably be trying to move him to a new file and see if that fixes the problem.

You've pretty much seen this view, but I added a lot of red

The wires and gems are self-illuminated, but are not light sources. All the max lighting here is just white lights so I could see the texture.

Drea is next for the DrowLove project, and Caleb is next for Djinn & Juice.

Flan and Co.

2009-02-12T16:54:00.000-08:00

I finished Flan!His outfit is very simple so I was able to put his whole poly count into his HAIR.

Which, by the way, makes like NO SENSE.

It'll look better with alpha obv.

He has only a little nose c:

OKAY AND NOW SOMETHING SPECIAL

Just material colours, but it really helps. I can't wait to texture!

Fie is next!

Skelebutt

2009-02-12T11:57:00.000-08:00

Here's the renders of the skelebot texture I promised.

Of course, this isn't complete, but this is what I had for alpha.

I need, most importantly, to make the alphas not suck, and add texture to his pants and sash thing.

He's also going to have to be reskinned, which is really too bad, but apparently not too big of an issue, which is nice!

Lue and the girls

2009-02-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, I finally did the Lue model.

I used the same base with a *lot* of modifications, but I have a base for the guys now.

He is 501 tris and 5'7" with heels, lol.

THE HAIR TOOK SO LONG.

However, I am really happy with how it came out! c:!

It looks like him, I think!

Didn't manage the duster, but he has his collar for the vest.

And the current lineup! He's about the same height as autem, and oddly, she's more broad than him. XD Arinae is still a shrimp.

Maybe Flan next, since he's also really slim?

Skelebot Texturing: Take One!

2009-02-11T18:43:00.000-08:00

I started on the SKELEBOT texture today, and he is proving to be a lot easier than Mehmed, as expected, so I pretty much have a workable texture on him already!

However, it appears that I forgot to take screencaps, so these are a bit old.

I'm not sure what's up with the brown belt. I think I thought it would look good? It got changed to blue, I promise he does not still look like that.

This picture is brought to you by accidentally turning on mental ray.

And here's THE CLAW.

More screencaps when I remember to save them, and Lueali should be finished by tomorrow! c:! These models seem ridiculously high-poly after my drowlove project!

Unwrapping

2009-02-10T14:13:00.000-08:00

I've been using UV Layout for unwrapping, and it's amazing.

Here's the unwrapped skelebot. I'm going to start texturing him today or tomorrow.

For those who haven't used the program, red is "too small," blue is "too big," and green is perfect. c: He has a LOT of cuts since he's so weirdly complex, but I think he will be easy to texture. Easier than Mehmed, anyway.

I don't have any new screencaps of the DrowLove project, but I have finally started on Lueali. His hair is going to be a pain, so I decided to put him in just the vest and pants, since it will save polys for the hair. If I have some left over I might add his duster, but I don't see that happening.

THE GIRLS

2009-02-07T18:11:00.001-08:00

Okay, so, I lied again.

Since I already had the base model for the female body, Pyras was easier to do than Lueali.

She's 502 tris, iirc, and would be higher if I hadn't deleted her crotch. XD

It's not like you'll see it. I hear her skirt is made of cardboard.

To scale. Arinae is a shrimp.

Anyway, I'm out of girls now, so next time it'll really be Lueali.

Autem Low-Poly

2009-02-05T19:51:00.000-08:00

Here's a better shot of Arinae's face, to show her pig nose and huge ears and earlock. I can't wait to texture this.

Okay, so, remember when I said I was going to do Lueali next, like, a few hours ago?

I lied.
Autem was easy, since she has a similar body type to Arinae. I used a previous save before I added distinctive Arinae things, and just pushed the vertices around and kept building. This is her day one BLUE VEST CLUB outfit, so, puffy sleeves!

She has planes for her bangs, and a little collar, and smaller ears. c:

Okay, NOW I'm going to do Lueali.

DrowLove Low-Poly Project

2009-02-05T15:17:00.000-08:00

Here is the promised D&D post!

I am attempting to create low-poly game models of all eight DrowLove protagonists for ANI400, so now I have a whole lot of D&D stuff that will actually be polished nicely in the end! I was very inspired by Tom Tallian's low-poly TF2 models, and I've spent a lot of time examining his edgeloops and textures. I hope I can make mine look so nice!

I did these silhouettes to get a feel for what I would be modelling and how I would need to alter their costumes. The four on the bottom show two alternate costumes for Lue, Pyra's day two costume, and Autem's day one costume. I am thinking I'll go with day one costumes for Pyras and Autem, but I'm not fully decided on Lue yet, his archmage's robes would make him more distinctive, but he doesn't have them at this point in the story.

I've just finished the Arinae model. She took a few hours so far, but hasn't been unwrapped yet.
Most of her costume is going to be done with the texture, since her clothes are fairly form-fitting. I'm not sure how to get the smoothing to work perfectly, I'm going to have to play with it. I also chose to give her the day two costume since it's a little more finished-looking. She has a couple planes where I will detail the hair with alphas but the braid simplifies it.

I'll be starting on Lueali next. I hope to have all the models finished in a couple of weeks, so I can texture and put bipeds in them.

Djinn Texturing

2009-01-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

I'm nearly done with Mehmed (protagonist)'s texture. I'd like to work on him more, but I think I'm pretty much going to finish up his clothes and then move on to Caleb, the antagonist.

He has some shiny, shiny metal on his arms right now. I said I was going to recolour him, but we decided to leave him red and change Caleb to black and green.

To be honest, I don't update this much since a lot of my sketches end up as D&D stuff! Maybe I will do a D&D post later?

one sketch, one not-sketch

2008-11-23T00:45:00.000-08:00

So, I scanned some things from my personal sketchbook a day or two ago.

This is one of my D&D characters, Arinae. I am going to try and do a low-poly game model of her as a personal project. I was unable to start today, but I did manage to finish the first version of the "skelebot" model!
I want to get better renders once I have textures in there, and a rig, so I can pose him. He's a bit under 4,000 polys.

Tomorrow I'll hopefully doing some new renders of my "Sprite" model, getting some better shots of the skeleton, and starting on the Arinae model!

b^_^d

2008-10-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, so, this isn't a sketch, but I'm posting it anyway.

Richard Williams came to DigiPen to talk to us and it was amazing. He let me take this silly photo with my cell phone (the camera I brought ran out of batteries!) and signed my sketchbook. :D

I've also finished my website, which you can see at the proper URL, www.antipodeart.com!

POAST

2008-10-22T17:04:00.000-07:00

This is how you spell "post."

Um! New blog!

I'm going to hopefully use this by uploading all my fiddly little sketches that I don't really have anywhere else to upload. I've always thought that sort of thing was cool. This means there will be LOTS and LOTS of images.

So I guess let's start with the unified designs I did for "Djinn & Juice," the game I'm working on for school. The rough designs were done by my teammates, then tweaked back and forth by all of us, and finally taken by me to do the final designs and colours. The glowing orbs are a major plot point in the game, so I tried to put those into the designs as much as possible!

This is our protagonist and antagonist. Protagonist will probably be getting reworked colours a bit, since we don't want him to match the antagonists so well.

This is the general design for the "fodder" enemies you fight throughout the level. I'll be doing several different textures for the one model, just to get a bit of variation into the game.

This is the chandelier mantis, or jewelled mantis, or whatever we decide to call him. XD He will be in the castle entranceway and will drop down on the player as a sort of pre-boss or midboss. We're going to foreshadow the hell out of this, so it should be really scary once you actually get to fight him! He's VERY BIG compared to the other characters!

This is my "look and feel" painting of the city. It takes place in Constantinople, around the fall of the Byzantine Empire, but, well, you know, with aliens and genies and things. I haven't added in too much detail here yet, but this is a good idea of what the environment looks like.

Anyway, that's it for now. :B Test post! Looks like 400px across is the limit!