Using Symmetry for Concept Art Silhouettes

ctrl+Paint has some awesome tutorials, and the symmetry tutorials reminded me of an awesome Technique I use!

You simply make your silhouette into a smart object, duplicate your silhouette half and flip it, and voila, you have a mirrored object that updates every time you save the smart object!

Neat!

ipad sketchles

The iPad tends to make things look good so I had to add about -25 brightness for this to look right on a regular monitor. 

This was pretty fun to do, because let's face it--any sort of symmetry tool across any program fucking rocks. If there was a single word for "fucking magical" it'd be "fuckgical" or maybe "magucking" and that rightly describes getting to use an active symmetry tool.

I used sketchbook pro for this, which has an amazing brush that sort of looks like this:

And it frickin' rocks! You get a lot of great gradients from this guy, and sharp vs. soft forms are really easy to create. 

Anyway, working more on getting better at the iPad drawing stuff...and just got a real stylus today so hopefully that helps with future stuff!

first shipped title!

Whoo!

Unfortunately it's also the project I got to spend the smallest amount of time on so far, but hey! A wins a win!

I love console games, so hopefully if I keep this up there will be more soon!

I don't really believe in "heroes", but

... every time I discover JK Rowling putting a new way to describe something with a fart on her website I think I love her just a little bit more. That among other things, like her creative writing!

I recently spent some time re-reading all seven Harry Potter books, and man, it's a lot different after you've experienced the story twice. It's really nice.

I feel like when I one day have kids they'll definitely enjoy these books (unless they're assholes--I'll have to make sure they're not). Not the pansy e-books though! (Unless it still has the Mary GrandPre drawings in them. They're a real treat to look forward to every chapter in addition to everything else.)

But there's nothing like curling up to a book that's bigger than you and reading without glasses on!

I spent most of my life writing more than anything else, and now that I've spent a few years doing art, I think I realize I do miss writing quite a lot. So trying to figure out a way to combine them in a video game that I actually like would be fun.

 Anyway, here's a little guy I spent a little bit of time on the other day, trying to mimic this character:

Should probably add color to the model just for practice. 

poopers

Learning awesome animation stuff...

So I always wondered why folks locked attributes for animated objects. The rule of "you don't want to fuck something up by accident" seemed justified enough, but I couldn't find a way to make it so that attributes that I did not want animated to be excluded when I set a key. When hitting set key, all attributes would get a curve and key when I did not necessarily want that.

And thus, learning to struggle through curves, super long clean up of unused curves made it all made sense. Locking and unlocking attributes on the fly prevented new curves from being created, and therefore allowed you the flexibility to change an attribute's lock state while you animated.

I like learning the practical way, but it also taught me I shouldn't be afraid to question my teachers and fellow colleagues. I learned, by making this mistake, that having too many curves also causes performance issues in game, but also clogs up your file quite a bit.

So lesson learned: Lock and unlock your attribute as needed! 

fruity pooty

Learned about shadow box recently and did this unfinished 3 to 5-minute little designs on a Zbrush-created shadowbox mesh. Radial symmetry is crazy!

funkie feets

One thing I've learned about modelling (from my results and watching videos) is that its best to model from non-straight on views (like I have here). These look alright from the front (where I modeled them) but falter from the 3D view a bit from my expectation. It might work out better to draw guides from the orthographic views, but then to model from the non-orthographic.

Draw overs also seem effective, and from this view you can really see that her hands and feet are also suffering in terms of structure and size (as well as some other stuff too). I should probably do a draw over of this little lady to help guide me through the problems.

Just working on this little guy for a game I'm working on with Kirk.

i'm your mother!

Been trying to learn some ZedBrush lately, so here's what I'm working on!

I prolly need to check out a couple more books about sculpting techniques and stuff, but its been fun so far.

Also:

Best gum commercial ever.

this is what i look like when i look at my bank account

blubbers

Paint over of a small 3d assignment. kuler.adobe.com is awesome!

Hopefully when the games at my internship start to ship I can post more work here. Until then....

http://www.brinkleys.org/users/tsl/Files/1237823385_shaky-boobies.gif

boobielicious

Didn't have pressure sensitivity on my tablet today, but learned how awesome fade is when used with opacity dynamics. Try it out sometime!

A Word:
Anyone notice how panned Metroid: Other M and Suckerpunch were, despite being decent products?

Who gives a fuck why they decided to disable her weapon, bitch needed to start the series over somehow!

Seems like Metroid: Other M got panned for revealing sides of strong women that even fanboys don't want to know. Why is it now detrimental for strong women to be displaying feminine tendencies? Is that really so bad? It seems that all these wrong ideals of 'feminism' is being used to misinterpret and deface the complexity of strong females. If feminism is a belief in the superiority of women, then why make women so single-sided?

Critics must have some sort of mech-zombie-nazi-dragon up their ass

Also, most gamers have watched at least a little bit of anime. Doesn't anyone see the relationship of a super-dramatic story in Metroid that's similar to the majority of animes? (And shoot, Suckerpunch had the same negativity associated with it despite mirroring the story sense of many animes). Is the problem that people aren't ready to realistic-looking animes yet? Hell if I know!

"DRAMAZ"

All I know is, having gone to film classes during college, is that I sat down to Suckerpunch and laughed my ass off at the ridiculousness of it, enjoyed the eye candy (CG and cheese-cake related) and I thought it was a hell of a show. I did like the story elements as well, and felt it was an editorial comment on the extremity of action movies, told through pictures and a fun adventure. I also liked the small touches of tragedy that framed the otherwise fantastical story.

One word: hotpants

But anyway, either way, peeps need to calm the fuck down and shut the fuck up and enjoy a good experience when they see it. It's not as serious as they might think. And you shoulda played X-2, it was a good game. And, uh, there's hotpants in it. What's not to love?

Bottom-line: Don't let some bullshit excuse for a story element ruin a wonderful product for you. Do you really take anything they say about the Mario story seriously (c'mon guys...they made his name Mario Mario)? The fact of the matter is that some people choose to make art and story a shrink-wrap for a product--and to me there is a strong theory in Japan for irreverence, and the same is true for a lot of Asian storytelling and cinema.

Games are games, and story can be part of that too, but story does not make or break a whole entertainment product for me, especially when it's obviously loaded on farce.

And lets be honest--we exploit everyone. Male action heroes are an example of exploited and idealized men, if you look at the flip side of the gender argument. It's when we actually take exploitation seriously that we will have a problem.

Yessss

skullbrushhh

f your couch!

papsicle

Gradient map is the shiiiiiiittttttttt

Lets you draw in black and white and the proceed to a color pass very easily

tttttt

Awwwwwwwwwww

my dark twisted ewok fantasy

Custom smudge brush is the shit for blending

parties and farties

Sad Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day

Been doing some paintin' when building / exporting at work :]

bloop

No updates lately--been doing an internship! Once the title comes out I'll post what I got! It's been a really, really awesome experience so far. :D

Want to do some assets in this style and learn 3D coat with them.

Also, a poem I wrote a long time ago.

Do you find the wicked path

Under feet, cracked shells of stone

And fall apart, the paths we lay

To broken sinews alone.

The light in echoed sheets will fly

And find no states’ embrace.

Though sweat-sticky hands lay over eyes
The light penetrates its corners
Bending to find the open slits
Where radiance never returns from.

The land in twisted wretched grip

That lets nothing go, holds nothing in.

We bend, we fight, and crack our spines
And lose to gain much less

And shout our thoughts, mirrored worse

Where words fail to digress.

Makes you feel all gooey inside.

Also, a popsicle.