Friday 23 December 2016

A late and unfortunate post

Pretty much likely to be the last piece of work I'll do before CHristmas at this point. Was a Star Wars related concept design for myself. And then I found out Carrie Fisher had suffered a likely heart attack :(

Hoping for a recovery from everyones favourite princess...


"to me, she's royalty" Lor San Tekka, Ep7 The Force Awakens

Wednesday 21 December 2016

Wednesday 16 November 2016

Development process

So I originally really liked one of my Inktober doodles of a jeep type vehicle. Here it is below as a reminder...


First stop was to convert this vehicle into a 3D model. Dragged out some approximate lines to follow in SketchUp and started to knock the body together. Kept it at a relative scale incase detailing went as far as correct texture placement but ultimately (at this point in time) it hasn't gone that far.


On previous models (X-Wing and Shirase Explorer) I used the opportunity to take my time and develop a model that was detailed further than it necessarily needed to be. It's been good practice in the past and helps me feel I could comfortably work on high end projects with this low-poly program. On this occasion the model only went as far as interior seats and hinged doors. The rest of the exterior was enough to work on top of post render. And as a bog standard output from Keyshot here is what it produced...


Now I could have, and still may do, take that rendered sheet and really work on it to a point that shows the finished concept but from here I wanted to throw it straight into an active scene so I set up a shot with other vehicles and rendered that out. Note the mid-air cars and bike. Something had to produce a smashy attack but until the last minute I really wasn't sure what it would be...


So I took that image which I rendered out with transparancy 'on' so that I could easily place buildings and sky in behind it and got to this final image. I always felt it was some form of military or police jeep but thought I'd put them up against something unusual.

Wednesday 2 November 2016

oh and another thing

Post #Inktober Ive put up all my sketches along with a big sketch dump of previously unseen stuff on my website. Designated to a 'sketch' page.
Enjoy them all HERE

Model making 1.0

Well this might be my biggest post in a while...

So as some may know, Im a big fan of Nolan's Interstellar. Being a fan in this day and age usually leads to being able to display your fandom via merchandise but it is sadly lacking for this title (something I'm slightly surprised by given it's a WB/Paramount property. Batman/Star Trek anyone...).

And so through searching sites and general 'googling' of typical words I found a company by the name of Moebius Models that had managed to produce a scaled model of the Interstellar Ranger. A ship I happened to have been hoping would be on the merchandise list, it was great to see a company had taken on the creation of this vehicle at an affordable price and ideal scale for the average consumer to stick on a shelf somewhere.

It comes in at around 10 inches long at a 1:72 scale of what would be the real vehicle. I won't get in to the nitty gritty of the build (unless someone wants to read about it) but it was my first ever go at miniature model making and I have to say I loved the whole experience. I can totally get behind people who enjoy building airfix kits. The hidden movie maker inside me saw this as an experiment to build a mniature that could also be used to film with also so maybe I'll do something down the line short of blowing it up...

Here are a bunch of photos that show off some of the stages of the build. I took my sweet time with it as it could probably be built in a day but I took a month doing bits here and there on the weekends.
As it was a first build, I didnt attempt to make an interior like some pros on youtube, instead opting for painting a top down interior in photoshop and printing it out as a flat graphic. Also a mini TARS stands inside it :)

Enjoy

TINTED WINDOWS GLUED IN

TOP PANELLING WITH SOME WEATHERING

WEATHERED VENTING ON UPPER SECTION

UNDERBELLY OF SHIP

EVIT DOOR AT REAR

METALLIC WEATHERED LIMBS

TARS AND INTERIOR PLAN

TARS AND INTERIOR FITTED ON BASE

FINAL BUILD

FINAL BUILD

FINAL BUILD

FINAL BUILD

FINAL BUILD

FINAL BUILD

Monday 31 October 2016

Happy Halloween

While I rock some lunch. Happy Halloween. Here are the 3 classics reimagined by me. WolfMan, Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula. Tried to go a little more disturbing with them. Kids look away.
Often asked why I don't have much character/creature work on my site. Maybe it shows...

Thursday 13 October 2016

Such a while

but Im back with a mini post. This is a raw render out from Podium using the Asset library. Came about because Podium is running a contest to create an interior so I thought I'd see what was doable with their free assets.

Currently doing Inktober so end of the month I'll post thos all up too...

Monday 15 August 2016

Rogue One becomes Rogue Art

So the Rogue One trailer dropped over the weekend and having spent the week modelling an X-wing in my spare time, I was influenced to finish it as an image after seeing the trailer.
Here it be...
*Note this is NOT official art. THis is my own stuffdone for fun.

Wednesday 13 July 2016

project SPACE (soon to be renamed I imagine...)

So after a solid week and a bit of playing around with the model Ive put up the vehicle design. Lots of Sketchup and photoshop. Hope to develop the whole idea/world more in the future...

Monday 20 June 2016

Historical props

Just some prop work for you to see. Museum items that could sit in a background shot or feature in use.
16th Century spanish cannon and a Chinese sword.

Friday 6 May 2016

Happy friday

Some original stuff finally! Some rough space marine helmet guff and a design for an arrow head :)

Tuesday 29 March 2016

Conference room for a conflab

A set design thats a little more real world. Used sketchup to block out the important shapes and produce ortho views for what could be turned into better blueprints to build off of.

Wednesday 16 March 2016

Thursday 10 March 2016

Raiding the art after a long gap

With talk of a new Tomb Raider in the works, and the idea to do this a little while back, Ive finally put digital pen to paper and doodled up a visual.
An actress I'd love to see take on the role would be Alexandra Daddario. So I put her in there :)

Wednesday 2 March 2016

whats this PolyBrush?

So Im trying out this PolyBrush software. Currently free and in beta phase for about 30 days. Drawing within the program is quite intuitive, if a little fiddly when trying to position the workspace in a specific position. Plan on having fun with it over the coming days though. Here's a little test I did taking a random 'doodle' from PolyBrush in to Keyshot and then Photoshop.

Sunday 3 January 2016

Friday 1 January 2016

Top 5 of 2015

Well it's technically the 1st of the new year so I should have done this last week or yesterday. I was really hoping to fit in just a few other films I'd missed this year but that sadly didn't happen. Regardless, here's my personal top 5 that I saw and that were of course released in the UK during 2015. In decending order:

5. Big Hero 6
- yep that's right, a Disney movie! And in a year of a lot of animation, Ive put this above the likes of Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur. A fun film with such a well designed and fairly original entry in the robot catagory. I think this appealled because it felt like a Disney film I could enjoy that wasn't all about princesses or sisterly love. There's nothing wrong with that of course but after a mega hit like Frozen I'm glad they came out with this rather than playing off the success of that one film.


4. Kung Fury
- OK, so at 15mins, it's not techincally a feature film and could have easily gone into my 'honourable mentions' at the end of this. However this achieved such style, action and general fun packed nostalgia (somehing that appeared in a fair few of this years major releases), it's earnt it's entry due to its rewatchable quality. This probably doesn't need to be expanded to a full film and may just be a great calling card to Hollywood from it's makers. Either way, it's exciting stuff.

3. Whiplash
- again another great entry from right back at the start of the year (see Big Hero 6). Quite the Oscar darling back in February and for good reason. Steller performances all round but J.K. Simmons gets the limelight after so many amazing side performances and bit parts.

2. The Martian
- so after last years Intersteller, I was really hoping the sci-fi wouldn't let up and Im pleased to say this kept it going. Clearly a Ridley Scott film brings a lot of attention but this had added value having made Prometheus, which quickly became unfavourable in the fan and critic commuinities and Exodus, which is at this point kind of a standard of what to expect from one of his historical epics. This was easily the most light hearted and entertaining he had been since Thelma & Louise. Matt Damon is on point and the script is great. Ultimately after Interstellar and Gravity, space finally looked fun as well as perilous!

1. Mad Max Fury Road
- few would disagree. Few also seemed to expect it. It's really of little importance but there's a lot of online response that suggests the MM bandwagon was jumped on pretty hard with few people aware or bothered to have seen the previous 3. I don't state this with any particular pride but I had been waiting on this film for sometime. Yes, I had seen the other 3 countless times and they are top notch action films (minus 3) in their own right but they always had more of a cult following. This made being openly affectionate about the films difficult as they aren't in the pop culture conscious as much as say Star Wars, Harry Potter, LotR etc.
This film had a rough time getting to the screen it seems. It had been filmed and wrapped up probably 2 years before it's release it would appear. So when that initial thunderous trailer arrived, I was more than excited for what was going to come out. And with added build up towards it's release date, excitement grew. Not only does this film take my No.1 spot for its out-right acion, tension, world building, performances by the leads, great (and ugly) characters and a director who really gave us a film that said "this is how you do a car chase, Hollywood"; it was a film that lived up to its hype!
Over the passed few years, my favourite films have often come out with me having little personal attachment or investment in the excitement of their releases. Some have taken me by surprise and some have simply lived up to what I had heard. When a film did appear that I had hyped up it either failed to deliver at all or just couldn't live up to a rather unrealistic level of expectation on my part (again Prometheus, sorry). THIS DID. This was 2015 in all its visual and audible glory!!!

My honourable mentions shall go to the following; Inside Out, John Wick and a documentary I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story.

My bottom 5 this year aren't really aweful films. They were just the ones I happened to see that weren't up to scratch for my liking or fell well short of expectations (except no1):
5. Maggie, 4. SpongeBob Squarepants: Sponge Out of Water, 3. Terminator Genysis, 2. Jupiter Ascending and 1. Sharknado 3


See you for next years countdown!