Here is the creature I made for the Gnomon master class entitled 'Creature Head Texture Look Development'. I made some style variations in Photoshop starting with a simple layered comp rendered from Maya. About 30-40 minutes each. Very fun to do! I create these at 4096x4096 so that I can project the image onto my model in Bodypaint as a solid startpoint for final texturing. Click on the image for a high-res version.
Blog
Founder/Director, Gnomon
Gnomon Master Classes
I recently organized a bunch of super cool master classes that will be running the week of December 12th-19th. I can't wait to watch them all!! Check them out the Gnomon School site.
Jordu Schell at Gnomon Gallery
So tomorrow night is the opening for Jordu Schell at the Gnomon Gallery at 7pm! If you're in or around Hollywood, swing by and check out some amazing creature sculptures. -Alex
Wordpress!
So the home page may look the same, but my friend Dani just installed Wordpress so that I can more easily update news in here! (Thanks Dani!!!). So now I have a bunch of news posts with zero comments. Looks a little sad I must say... heh. Anyhow, I look forward to updating this blog a little more regularly now that it is so easy. :) For those of you who have been posting comments in my guestbook, thank you so much... all of the feedback is very much appreciated! To Abhay in Mumbai, India... yes, I need to get back into production of some new tutorials! I just got the beta of 2009 so perhaps you'll see some new stuff from me this fall. -Alex
Gnomon Gallery closing party!
Hi all... so the Gnomon Gallery Rabbitholes show is having a closing party (open to the public) this Wednesday, September 17th at 7pm. Swing by and check out the work! The images are really stunning in person. www.gnomongallery.com
Guardian
 Image made with Maya, Zbrush, Mental Ray.
I started this as a head sculpt/sketch from a sphere in Zbrush, but then added the torso... then the lower limbs... then decided it needed a background... then some bugs.. then some smoke.Since I didn't start with a design, I just poked at it from time to time over the past couple months. So I guess the image evolved over time, but I'm happy with where it ended up. The final image is 4500x8000 to be printed at 30"x54". |
Fume
 Same guy as below... it was tough settling on an angle to work on him from. I'm still not even sure if this was the right choice, but time to walk away from it. I shot a bunch of photos of smoke specifically for this image that I comped in Photoshop... and now I am a big fan of smoke photos. They're purty. |
Ember
 So I recently started shooting friends/models with the initial intention of finding interesting poses/lighting to use as reference/inspiration for my 2D + 3D stuff. I've been taking photos and tweaking them in photoshop to create possible directions for a 3D image. In the process, however, I've found that I kinda like how some of them turned out on their own, without the need to become just 'reference'. I thought I'd post one of them in here just to share what I've been doing... |