An olde experiment

This was a piece from last . . . fall?  2d Design Class.  Methinks . . .

The subject is James Goldberg, a BYU professor who is highly active in the local and Mormon art communities.  His other credentials include alsoplus being a way cool guy :)  He has the best gestures, I was sketching him all the time in class lol.  He was a good sport, and very kind to allow me to do the painting.  Thanks again James!

Old Biker

This one's from a couple of months ago, but I just never got around to posting it lol

 Emily and I took a trip with my family to visit Devils Tower this summer, which was an absolute blast!  It also happens to be a tourist hotspot on the way to Sturgis, South Dakota where they have an enormous motorcycle rally every year.  So many interesting characters!  I mean that of course, as an artist, and in the most endearing possible way.  I wish I could have stayed all week just to sketch bikers . . . :)

The Prospector

This one was kind of stream of consciousness lol, but fun.  And fun. :)

The basic thought is that he's looking for a rare mineral inside of an asteroid honeycombed with tunnels.  He's a member a hardy alien race with an uncanny ability to discern the properties of substances by touch– hence making them very good miners, prospectors, and chemists.  They spend a lot of time underground, and have developed both biologically and technologically to a subterranean environment.  While not unintelligent, the enlarged forehead is not brain mass, it is primarily bone– a thick pad that acts as a shock absorber in the event of a cave-in.

Because he works in space, there is very little gravity or heat.  Still, he needs physical contact with the rock in order to do his work.  Instead of a traditional space suit,  he wears on his back a localized gravitational unit.  The pack houses a very small and specially shaped piece of neutron star to lock atmosphere and heat close to his body when he leaves his ship.  As gravitational force exerted on objects closest to the source increases exponentially, and the core of the apparatus is located next to his lower back, the pack must also act as a protective brace. It uses physical support and advanced counter-gravity technology to prevent the gravitational force from causing strain or injury.

Final Sign Design!

Hip hip hooray! Hip hip replacement!  I've got the go ahead to prep for print with the final sign template!  The text may change a bit on this one, but other than that :) Now to crank out about 40 more of these puppies . . . lol :)

Thanks so much to everyone who gave their input a few weeks back, you really helped determine the final look. Stay classy!

An Announcement :)

Most people never even get to see an angel, but this Saturday one agreed to marry me :)

Nerdy jokes aside, I am so absolutely blessed :)  Emily is my best friend in the whole world, and I am so psyched to spend all eternity with her :)

So here's the story:  We hiked Bridal Veil Falls with some of our best friends, who were of course all in on the plot :}  At the top, near the falls, we found an abandoned guitar and proceeded to "search" for the owner.  Of course, no one claimed it, as the guitar had been provided by my sister and planted by our cousin Joseph lol :)  Finding a dry spot, we opened up the case to look for some kind of identification.  We found a capo, a tuning pipe, a guitar stand, and my roomate Garrett Parker "found" a camera.  Supposedly fiddling with it, he began filming :)

(sorry about the noise, waterfalls tend to . . . make it. lol :) My buddy Jameson and I did our best to tone it down)

'

Lol afterwards, as we were both totally soaked, Emily's roommate Jayne presented emily with a change of clothes she had smuggled on the hike and the two of us completed the evening alone together at The Roof restaurant in Salt Lake City, then with a walk around Temple square.

Next to our table in the roof restaurant (image re-composited from 2 photos
in the same spot to compensate for flash lighting on window.  sometimes
it's convenient to be a nerd lol)

Flying Monkey Material Test

A quick and dirty materials rendering test for Sam Nielsen's class.  Honestly kind of just threw this one down . . . it could use some more love, which I hope to give it on the final version.  I learned some things, though :)

Tentative colors for page 4!

These are the tentative colors for page 4 of Path of the Feather, my contribution to the upcoming compilation comic Reality Not Included.  I'm so psyched!

Character designs for a new comic

I posted these some time ago on the Reality Not Included blog, along with a complete script, but for some reason never put them up here :}  I figure that since I'm going to be posting the finished pages here over the next couple of weeks I had better get some of the concept up.  Enjoy!

Synopsis: A young boy is sent by a shaman on a spiritual quest to learn the nature of destiny

This Sketchmonkey went to market . . .

A few sketches from the aforementioned farmers' market :)

(A composite of moderately cleaned up sketches from several different pages)

More than you ever wanted to know about glowing sheep cheese

This was kind of a fun study of some cheese I bought when my girlfriend and I visited the farmers' market by Lavell Edwards Stadium today.  I had been looking for an opportunity to study sub surface scattering ( [Readin' Words], [Video]), and this seemed like the perfect subject to work with in a controlled setting.  Lol I know normal people buy cheese to actually eat it, but ;)  Placing a light directly above the cheese, I was able to see the light's effects on the material at various textures and depths.  Best of all, because of the uniform consistency of the cheese, the smooth surface of the cut, and having the light angled from behind, I could see exactly how deep the light was penetrating and how it changed the color temperature. Ok, enough nerd talk ;)

The guy at the farmers' market said that the cheese comes from a sheep, and as I recall the particular variety starts with a d . . . Derby? Daphnia?  Delouse?  [Link]  Daddy Long Legs?  I suppose it wouldn't be daddy long legs cheese if it comes from a sheep, would it?  Ha . . . everyone knows daddy long legs cheese comes from daddy long legs.  Like, seriously.

So, we did eventually eat the cheese, in a lovely meal my girlfriend cooked with pasta and peaches of all things, which turns out to be a really good idea.  Like, no joke :)  However, my highly cultured better-half (who knows some pretty cool Frenchy words about cheese) had to explain to me that you do not eat "le croüte", or the crust of the cheese, because that is basically mold.

P to the somewhat related S:
An interesting video about the visual aspect of food- [Link]

Nasty but posting anyway!

A quicky from this eveternoon :)  I've been trying to learn more about architecture and spatial lighting.  While not a masterpiece, I feel that I definitely learned some things working on this one.

This is a church across the street from Smith's Supermarket that I've had a hankering to paint for some time.  This afternoon I parked across the street, rolled down my window, and painted from my laptop & wacom; twas cramped, but the fun. I may give it another go lol :)

As much as I love working with traditional media, I feel that digital tools offer some flexibility and insight that couldn't be obtained with pigment and canvas.  In a way, digital painting is an even more "raw" form of image-making than painting in oil or watercolor.  Rather than mixing from a pre-packaged set of colors bought at the store, digital painting forces you create your own swatches and deal with the properties of value and color at their most fundamental level.  You pick the hue and saturation from a limitless palette with no limitations or reference points, and no where to hide.  This makes it hard at first and often the initial paintings can look really bad (for that and other reasons).  It also makes for a lot of brain-work, but the understanding it brings is worth it.  Again, all respect for physical media, but for me digital is just as valid and respectable a media as oil or marble, not to mention much more flexible and full of potential for innovation.

Last and unrelated, something to make you smile:  Link

Captain of the Guard

This is part of an ongoing series of assignments in Sam Nielsen's digital painting class.  We are doing character redesigns from classic literature, in this case the Wizard of Oz.  I chose to work on the flying monkeys lol :)  This is a value study of Nikko, captain of the flying monkey guard.  He still needs some occlusion and some work on his hat . . . but this is what I turned in for class.  I'm actually really excited to work on this character, L. Frank Baum gave the flying monkeys a rich and tragic back story that isn't explored that often.

Homegrown Tomatoes

Ok, so I've been taking this class from Sam Nielsen (plug!) who is an incredible digital painter.  We've been discussing the properties of light and the way they interact with surfaces, which while enlightening, has made a bi-hemispherical omelette of my brain.  Resultingly, I've been trying to sort out some of the thoughts from class this week, and I thought it would be useful to do so on a simple form. My girlfriend's grandparent's were kind enough to visit us on campus this week and bring some fresh-picked  tomatoes (et. al) from their garden!  It was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.  Thanks Baa -Chan and Jii-Chan!

Some Stuff From Work- Public Opinion Needed!

Help design the new BYU Dinosaur Museum look!  Which dinosaur sign layout do you like best (forgetting that "C" is a different dinosaur)?  Why? Please comment!

A

B

C

ZBrush! :D

I just barely started working in ZBrush, and I'm still a total newb at it, but learning a little more every day :)  This was a speedsculpt ( a little under an hour) from the open figure drawing session today using zspheres and sculpting tools, no template.  I think I slapped chrome on it because I'm still excited about all the nifty  ZBrush features . . . kind of like the first-time birthday party video editor who uses a different and more obnoxious transition on every cut (link). Okeedoke, off to class! :)

A'ight kids, keep feeding me them patties!

Happy Labor Yesterday!

This one started out as a speed sketch that went a bit farther.  The story of its conception is rather silly.  I saw this amazing old man on a summer-themed commercial; he was so hairy that laying on the beach there that he might have been mistaken for a really gross shag carpet.  It was glorious.  I had to draw it.  Honestly I would have liked to give him more hair, but time waits for no follicle :/ Perhaps I shall revisit it at a later date . . .  I had to come up with a story for why he had his shirt off in the first place, and with labor day coming up, and my perennial beticklement with the concept of dentures . . . man, I really hope no one from NIMH subscribes to this blog.

This painting was kind of a neat opportunity to play with the way slight interacts with soft materials (ie skin, meat, and polymethylmethacrylate (apparently the polymer used to create dentures)).  In the case of meat for instance, which is semi-translucent, light actually penetrates the surface and bounces around inside, creating a slight glow.  In physics and computer graphics they call it "sub-surface scattering".

Rendering out materials is an area in which I can definitely stand to improve . . . I'm beginning to undersand the emphasis the old masters placed on still life paintings of food.  There is definitely a lot to be learned about light, color, texture, and form from those kind of exercises.  The best modern 3d artists still learn by studying in a similar way.  Here's a short video Pixar put out on studying food for Ratatouille: link

The Modern Gritty Batman

Lol so my roomie Garrett is a die hard batman fan, but only of the recent Christopher Nolan franchise.  In an effort to expose him to some real culture, I showed him the classic Adam West Batman "just can't get rid of a bomb" scene (link) but he would not be persuaded . . . so, in an effort to make classic American culture more palatable for a modern audience . . . .

Witchdoctor