Crack Juice

Imagine, if you would, a short, West Virginian* man approaching you. He presents with notable intensity a small, thin pouch of a powdery substance you don't have time to read the name of which before he declares with stern enthusiasm:

"Crack juice."

Meet Billy, our new Animation Director. He likes Crystal Light powder. Recently he's gotten into the habit of using warm water.


*not Kentuckian, it turns out.

Quick Concept

Working on a new comic for Atomic Lead #4! Here's a rough sketch of one of the characters from my story...

Atomic Lead is basically Sucker Punch's just-for-fun comic project that we do every once in a while. I did one last year and it was way awesome to be a part of. So I'm doing it again. :)

Excuses are like fingers--

They are always on hand.

So, yeah, I've been finding a few other things to do than post stuff on my blog lately. Here are a few examples:

- Showing off Infamous (which you should buy) to my friends
- Taking my vacation (first trip to Disneyland!)
- Having an awesome summer
- Breaking my computer
- Texting my girlfriend, who lives in California :'(

She is awesome. Probably better than your girlfriend.

Cool robot!

Working on this lately...

Eyeball, Revisited

Did another eye, from reference this time. Man, there's some weird color stuff going on in there. I've been spending way too much time in the oranges. No wonder my last eye looks jaundiced (aside from it being monochromatic).

Eyeball

Yup.
Eyelashes are hard.

Animation!

It's true, I actually am an animator. The witty remark in the "about me" section is, in fact, not a huge lie. But finally, I have the proof that you no doubt clamor for! Rest easy, internet denizens. Rest in the downy comfort of this link:

http://www.vimeo.com/4525097

It's an old 11-Second club audio clip! Why an old one? And why not during the actual competition? Trifles!

Strange thing about ideas...

...is that so often they are much cooler in one's imagination. Suffice it to say that I had the idea for this image, I was not thinking "Windows Live Messenger icon with lips."

Dumpy Time

Practice...

I'm watching Jeremy Vickery's Practical Light and Color dvd from Gnomon...and it's a lot to take in all at once. I thought I'd try my hand at painting some subsurface scattering. I discovered that it's actually kinda hard. So I decided to start from the beginning. It helped, but I've still got a ways to go...

Another old shirtless man.

Maybe it's weird that this seems to be becoming a theme, but to be honest, I wouldn't draw them if it weren't so fun.

Quickie

Just a quick sketch tonight. Good ol' MS Paint.

Finishing what I started...

Finally had some free time to finish a song I started at the end of last year. I'm into re-arranging videogame music from games I played as a kid. So I rearranged some music from Mario 3 and Mario 64 into a little ditty I called "Submarine Dream." Freshly posted to my MySpace music account this afternoon. I plan on submitting it to the panel of judges at OCR to hopefully get it posted as an official OverClocked ReMix. This one's definitely better than my last one, so things are looking good for that, I'd say. :D

By the way...two months after the comp is finished, here's my entry for Oswald. :P

Westerns?

I've been watching a lot of westerns lately. Unforgiven, 3:10 to Yuma, Tombstone...all for the first time, too. This has clearly made an impression on me. Oh, I also read Doug Tennapel's "Iron West." That probably only made it worse.

It's a muck monster.

Crazy idea: what if the next Zelda game is a western? I mean, American style--I know he was technically a cowboy in Twilight Princess, but American cowboys don't wear girdles. They wears chaps. And ponchos. Also, the thought of him wielding an Epona .45 makes me geek out for some reason.

Sleep can wait, I guess.

Super quick update before I hit the hay...

Finally got transparency working...but only in the renders. No idea yet how to view those in real-time.

The comp ends January 30th. Only three days left, and I still need to rig and pose!

Good Day

Today was pretty sweet. I helped a buddy of mine move into his new place (moving is way more fun if you have a bunch of friends to help you out), took the best nap ever, and got some good work done on Oswald. I forgot to eat dinner, though, but still--a good day, overall.

Didn't end up using FAOGEN, after all--I found a sweet tutorial and baked the ambient occlusion straight in Maya using mental ray. Still gotta figure out how to set up a .psd network and get transparency working. I feel like I should probably know this stuff already, but then, I'm just an animator; I have other people make my 3D toys for me. :)

Not dead, just busy.

I'm writing this post from my sweet new desk! Finally, I have room for all my computer crap without stuff hanging over the edge or piled on top of other stuff. Good times.

I've been hard at work modeling Oswald over the past few days, and I just finished the UVs (still have to pack them, though). I'm stoked to try out this ambient occlusion generator aptly named FAOGEN...

Here's a flood of progress!

This is me getting over-excited about solving the eye geometry problem.

Oswald, Kingdom Hearts style!

Over at http://www.gameartisans.org, where you'll find me under the name "chumble spuzz," they have these mini-challenges. I've gotten swept up in the latest one, where the object is to create a new (or used, I guess) character in the style of Kingdom Hearts. Once the idea entered my mind, I couldn't resist following through with adapting Oswald the Lucky Rabbit into that style. Here's my initial and final design:



...took me forever to think of a good design for the feet. Just got them down about 30 minutes ago!

Sketches!

A grim reaper. One of my favorite sketches from last year.


Picture of a homeless dude. Not sure what inspired me, here. Spent 30-40 minutes scribbling in some color...need more practice. Need more patience.


And now for some more light-hearted fare, it's Captain Can't! Kind of a mix between Frankenstein, Juggernaut, and Bender. Hm.

Hi.

Greetings, Internet denizens. It's a new year, and according to tradition in the U.S. of America, that means it's time for a new habit. This year, it's blogging for me!

Actually, I just wanted a place to post art and/or my thoughts and keep tabs with friends who also blog and/or post art and/or their thoughts. So here I am, and here's some art. Thoughts forthcoming.

This is an old sketch I finally got around to coloring tonight. I'd like to figure out this coloring thing a little more better.