Concept Design Exhibition - Design Centre Enmore Wed 27th - Fri 29th Nov

Theres to be an end of year/course exhibition for the concept design guys at Design Centre Enmore this coming Wed 27th Nov 6pm-9pm, that goes on for i believe 3 days, if you're in the area its worth checking out. There should be plenty to see from the other courses also : graphic arts, film, 3d... Lots of art, sculptures and plenty of showreels on show and many peeps to chat with and mingle...

i also heard whispers of free grog (ehh but dont quote me on that one). Should be a fun night all the same. Heres a link - unfortunately theres no mention of the concept design course strangely... Click HERE for details. If you cant make it on the night, the show continues on Thursday 28 and Friday 29 November 2013, 10am – 3pm, and HERES a different link to that (finally some mention of concept design)

SUMMARY:
When: Wed 17th November 6pm-9pm. Thursday 28 and Friday 29 November 2013 10am – 3pm
Where: Design Centre Enmore, 110 Edgeware Road, Enmore   

Trying a hand at traditional sculpting...

This was a real nice change of pace, its awesome being able to explore concepts at the throw of a dice in Zbrush. You can literally start out making a fish and half way scrap the idea and change it up into an orc from mordor when working in 3d, i quickly found at this wasnt the case with traditional sculpting. You really gotta get all your ducks in a row before starting a traditional sculpt, there are huge pitfalls to trying to concept out a piece with traditional sculpey, especially since the clay will literally fall off if it doesnt comply to the armature, if it kinda just hangs off, once the sculpey gets cold over night - it will most likely just fall off, and you'll cry over all the work you had done in the morning when you walk into discover that your piece has self-decapitated overnight. Trust me I know. This happened. I actually ended up resculpting this piece 3 times before finally painting it up.

1st Attempt: head fell off, the sculpey was too far from the armature (had to strip it down and start back from the armature).

2nd Attempt: I did the full sculpt in a generic forward looking pose (kinda what you have a t-pose in 3d i guess), no expression on the face, no Contrapposto, no heart - it was technically sound, but had no heart - and i quickly learnt you cant just repose a real sculpture, i had to resculpt quite abit after bending into a pose.

3rd Attempt: Learnt my lessons well and finally hit a pose i liked and did some self-reference in the mirror to get a nice expression out and finally got it painted up - much thanks to my dog for providing the nose and eye references. Then i learnt it also takes quite a bit to light it... (thank god for my macro lens and experience photographing small stuff). And so heres the result

The Lighting Setup

Speed Sculpt

Finished this one as fast as i could, was a nice change of pace - working fast means theres less time for procrastination and noodling over details. Working to tight deadlines forces you to think of the big picture and really keep things moving along. Blocked in, in about 3 hours, then many an hour spent detailing...

Living where there are no life drawing classes....

Ahhh the pitfalls of living out in the west of sydney unfortunately means a lack of life drawing classes available to us budding artists out this ways. Sometimes i wish i lived in the inner city just so i could walk down to a life drawing gig.... then i wake up and head up into the blue mountains to walk the dog, and am grateful for the lack of crowds which seem to drive me ape-shit and are just plain exhausting to be around. Hence this is my version of a life drawing class - giant masonite board, couple clips to hold the paper, water color brushes and a pencil or two, a tune or two on the headphones, and a monitor with a bunch of pictures - it aint the same as a live model thats for sure, and something is lost there in my opinion, but its better than driving 40k's out of my way.... wish someone would bring up some life drawing clubs out to penrith - if anyone knows of any out this way plz drop me msg. Cheers.

Narrative with leanings from toppi

Tried paying more attention to the first read silhouette with this one, as well as trying to tell some sort of narrative story - inspired by toppi. I kept the colors really simple, kinda like just watercolor washes, this helps the colors support the linework as opposed to competing with it in my opinion. Inks on paper, colored in Photoshop.

Hirez can be found HERE

Another Concept Creature

Another concept creature conceived in pencil and colorized in photoshop. Hirez version can be found on HERE

Creature_009_A2_Concept Design

This was the first time i worked this big - was originally done on A2 sized bond layout paper. An illustration/concept design i did for a prehistoric creature of sorts... Trying out more stuff with line work and texture.

You can see the ultra hirez version HERE