"it is you, ichabod crane, who is now put to the test"

one of my favorite films for breakfast today! looking at it, i think i should have brought the round of his cheek bones down further, especially under his right eye. also, he shouldn't be scowling so much. the menace of the line was actually stronger because of the lack of a scowl. mr. lee actually raised his eyebrows more at the end, communicating the threat of the moment from a place that didn't really need the help of a physically angry expression. also i should have made the finger more exaggerated... and the silhouette could be pushed to be better and clearer. his pucker on the "oooo" of the line doesn't look tight enough. i would push that forward more and squeeze it in more i think.

don't let the bastards grind you down

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ok i did another one.

aunt mary says they have the darkness in their eyes

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being that it's friday, i thought i'd do a horrible sketch. i also desperately want some cookies. i don't see that happening though. i'll have to settle for some water instead. now i get to move on to modeling road signs and wee posts. how could i ever want to put that off?

last night i was sketching some buildings. "buildings for what?" one might ask if anyone read my blog. i'm recreating a town from a video game i played as a young whelp in the frozen tundras of idaho. i'll put those up when i get home tonight. or tomorrow when i awaken from my television induced stupor.

it's a cup

morning warmup... meh

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mercy's eyes are blue

this is moses. not that moses. i've recently joined the mudbox bandwagon, and there are treats on that bandwagon my friends. treats of great deliciousness. since this is my first foray into the delicious world of the digital sculpting, i started with a cartoony situation which is a character i was already doing for a friend (that's moses, but obviously not that moses). normally, i wouldn't put a bunch of muscle detail and stuff, but i figured, "why not? this is after all mostly practice." i'm sure i'll do a more realistic sort of anatomy study. or i might just watch television until my brain froths out my ears. right now i'm going to bed.

you'll notice that the models are "faceted" which means they're not smooth shaded. that's how i've been working, and i forget to turn on the smooth shade before i do a screen grab. it may be a good idea to model with smooth on though as i find that i get too noodley trying to grab individual vertices and push them around into pleasing topology. i don't know if that's defeating the purpose of sculpting in mudbox or if it is indeed a good idea.

if you're wondering why his body is all blocky and his faces isn't, well that's how subdivision surfaces work... i won't try to explain that here. all i'll say is that i've been noodling the face longer, so it's more finished and subsequently has been subdivided more than the body. i just started pushing around the body tonight, so i haven't gone any deeper than level0.

i intend to take him back to maya and animate him, but i still haven't decided if i'll model him nudish and put some clothes on him in maya, perhaps fiddle around with cloth (yikes), or mudbox up another version of him with clothes on. we'll see about that eventually, but for now i'll do his torso as if it were nude, and perhaps he'll have a really tight shirt on. or i may just through out all this detail for the animated version. who knows? i sure don't.

descending angel

it lost something from my first sketch to here. that saddens me.

fond of y-o-u

so every now and then you'll get a song that's like cocaine for your brain. i don't know if there is some sort of magical combination of melody, lyrics and other crazy tonal elements that fits your cerebral tumblers and unlocks a rush of dopamine. all i know is that occasionally i run into something that i can listen to literally over and over, and then i play it two or three more times. this is the case with several songs by the shins. there aren't many artists i can say that about. this song from their new album, "turn on me," really does me in. i lack the musical appreciation 101 credits to properly explain what it is about the song that resonates with me. it may have started the other night when i passed out on the couch (not very unusual at all). consciousness was seeping back in just as the shins took the stage on the david letterman show. that was the song that they played. it may have had something to do with the state of half-sleeping delirium or maybe it's just the greatest song i've heard in the longest time, i can't say. it is great and i think i may listen to it again.

ramble on

sure, the darks are muted, but that why i experiment. overall it probably needs better contrast. originally i had thought of just doing a flat treatment with sharp shadows... i may have gotten carried away in rendering. especially considering this was during lunch.

the landlord's daughter

i laugh at just about anything. i'm not really sure why. i don't think it's always for the same reason as everyone else. there's just something absurd about most things.
you may recognize this from a series of photos of apes and monkeys. i don't remember the name of the photographer, but that's what i drew this from. that's from what i drew it.

my crane wife

sometimes i do wee drawings on postit notes. little scraps that are about 3.5 inches square. here are a few of the not so crappy ones

















remember what i told you about world of warcraft? here's a blood elf as further evidence that i need to stop.

































yeti the kid
















i like squirrels. you know that. i know that. we all know that.
















surprised. this i pulled out of a magazine. i first took a quick glance, went back to work for awhile and then drew what i remembered. it was pretty bad. this is from the second glance.
this was drawn while actually looking at the image in the magazine.

these are cartoons of the wee chihuahua that runs our lives. i drew them for my brother in law that is in navy boot camp. i don't know why that's the only thing i can think to draw for him.

the aforementioned navy bootcamper. he'll be doing some sort of flag dance at his graduation ceremony. so here's how i think it'll kinda go down. i hope they do it do some crazy disco song. i have a feeling i'll be disappointed in that hope. one last drawing.

who could it be? any guesses?

falling asleep, pen in hand

i get up really early in the morning in order to go to the gym without impacting my afternoon, which is very vital to my slackering lifestyle. i'm sure i need to go to bed earlier to compensate for waking up early. since that would make total sense, i'm not going to do that. instead, i'll just try and power through the afternoon. maybe i'll have some yogurt too.

oh, and here's what i was doing while falling asleep. this is the troll in some warrior gear. it might not look epic, but let me tell you! it's not. the next profession blizz should roll out should be leaf crafting. leaf is the new epic.

can't get enough of myself

it may not look like me, but this is me as juice. you can tell from my crooked teeth, super nose and horrendous snoring. it doesn't make any sense, but sleeping juice boxes drool out their straws, where they keep their juices, not in their mouth, which is only used for talking and not eating, making saliva unnecessary. not that i'm the kind of person that would think about things like that.

photoshop ate my homework

i was going to post some progress i made on the troll's wardrobe from my last post, but photonchop conspired with the network drive to make my file explode. luckily, i had a backup copy, so i only lost the stuff i did today and not the whole thing, which may have led to my own head exploding. i refuse to accept any sort of personal responsibility, as is my prerogative as a citizen of these fine united states. this is clearly a case of negligent software developers and hardware engineers grossly failing to foresee each and every possible problem that could ever arise and make provisions for said problems. i suppose i'll actually have to set aside some time this weekend to get some drawing in between all the strenuous channel changing and mouse clicking.

maltomeal is basically cement

every now and then i'll think that a nice steamy bowl of maltomeal is a good idea. i quickly remember though that i should use maple syrup instead of water to make it because that's just how much syrup i feel i need to dump into the paste to make it palatable. later, i'll have to pull out the sandblaster to separate the cereal from the bowl too.

oh yeah, the troll's full body, round 1.

I play too much WoW

it would seem from the evidence that i spend a good deal of time thinking about world of warcraft, not to mention the obscene amount of time i waste actually playing the thing. i figured the best way to make that work for me is to parlay it into something more productive... like drawing silly characters inspired by it.

i fiddled around quite a bit trying to get a good handle on how to construct the head. a good and funny shape eluded me for a long time because i had to integrate the tusks in there. i still don't know how he'd do alot of mouth shapes, but they would be funny. i was inspired a bit by the head of american dad's roger. i haven't actually looked at roger's head in a while, so i'm hoping it isn't too derivative.

next thing i need to tackle is a full body sort of thing. i imagine he has very long floppy feet, and it makes me giggle inside to visualize them flapping about as he walks. if all goes well, i hope to build this guy in 3d and animate him. i do believe it would amuse me greatly. i'll probably be playing wow though.

it's not very good

i need to work more on my painterly stuff, this is kinda sad even for a lunch time speed thing.

this is lomoe. it seems like he's looking at something very close.

minotaur

just a quick doodle. another of my amibitions is to make a cadre of characters and creatures as might appear in a role playing game, just all groovy and cartoony. who knows, i may even take them into 3D.

by the way, if you've ever spent any time around cows, you'll know that 1. they're dumber than posts and 2. they can jam their tongue into their nostrils. not just a wee touch, but a full on Jammed On Up There.





and a cleaned up version

First of all, small utility programs such as one that might come with your monitor should not presume to think that they're the only programs that might utilize hotkeys. I hit a command in my ancient JPG compressing software, and my monitor rotated its display by 90 degrees. NO! bad little utility, that's not your hotkey.

I finally did some work on Lomoe's head today. I've been spending quite a bit of time, perhaps too much, trying to get the topology efficient and flexible for the crazy deformation i'm planning on putting him through. Sometimes i forget why i'm reworking him.

focus on one project... why would i do that?

So in the mornings before I start work, I like to eat my peanut butter and jelly and work on a little cartoon zombie warrior, Brickface. It's slow going... I took a long hiatus where I guess I'd drag myself into work, punch myself in the face for 30 minutes before working and made no progress on the little bugger. Right now I'm back on it though and working on his blend shapes. This image shows his cheek bulge shape, great for puke faces. I can imagine all kinds of great stuff for him to vomit, being a zombie... little bits of brains, toes, maybe even an entire cat. Fun!

Lomoe: what the?

So, back in the heady days of school at Full Sail, my buddy, Brandon Ford, and I got together to work on our final project. We came up with this character, the last man on earth. In a derth of creativity, we called him Lomoe as in Last (insert a random O) Man On Earth. Why is he the last man on earth? it doesn't make a difference, but he is, or at least he thinks he is. We decided that we could have alot more freedom if we never said why he was the last man or if he really was the last man. Our initial plan for him was to put him in situations that one might always want to do, but felt restricted because other people were around watching.

I think the character still has alot of potential, so I'm rebuilding his head with better topology (i hope) and making him new blendshapes. I'll be using Osipa's blend shape control method, tailored to my needs. My main objective is to really push the blend shapes so I have as much flexibility as possible. I may realize in the end that blend shapes don't give me that flexibility, or deform too linearly, so it's possible that I may be forced to find some different solutions. We'll see.