Not good enough

So I spent several days on this piece but yet I'm still not satisfied with it. Perhaps it's because I struggled a bit in my process. I tried to go straight to color but couldn't get it to work out so I spent most of the rendering time in black and white. I also wasn't completely happy with how the face turned out. 

I guess this is sorta a good thing. I know that there are areas I need to improve at least!

CTN and Networking

A few days ago my friend and I went to a Robotpencil workshop featuring Anthony Jones, Dan Luvisi, and Kalen Chock. This was really one of the first workshops/art gathering or whatever you want to call them I've been to outside of LCAD and it had a ton of industry professionals attending.

What do I even say to these people? How do I network? Part of me just wanted to shove my portfolio in their face, fall on my knees, and beg them for a job. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Networking is an aspect of the industry that everyone talks about and yet don't explain how to.

I shook hands with a couple people, did some small talk, but that was it. How do I find you later? How do you find me? My website?

Now having experienced that, I feel like my next major networking opportunity, CTN, will hopefully go a little bit better. I just designed and ordered some business cards and I'm going to make sure I bring my tablet to show off my portfolio next time!

Meanwhile, here's a little doodle for WideAwake after a month long break!

Breakthrough?

I feel like I managed a breakthrough after the Warcraft piece. I learned how to separate light and shadow into shapes the past year but one thing I neglected to think about was where the light source was in 3D space. I would arbitrarily add light sources coming from seemingly nowhere to create my shadow shapes.

Now I think about where the source is in 3D space and which planes are facing it and how it should interact with the light. Before, I was able to separate different forms by "faking" light and adding a backlight but now with the light source, I don't have to make stuff up. Also the realistic lighting makes stuff look so much better! Definitely going to focus a lot more on lighting and materials.

Huge thanks to Justin Oaksford for helping me understand this!

New illustrations

I rarely do illustrations but these are my attempts at it. I ended up rendering that fox spirit sketch for the spitpaint group. I'm not too happy about it looking at it now after finishing the Warcraft piece. I learned a lot about lighting and color with that one and feel like I could've applied those principles better.

The Slyvanas one took me around 3 days to finish. Got some nice feedback from Justin Oaksford over at 343 industries who mainly criticized my lighting. I entered this into the Blizzcon art contest. Wish me luck!

Fox Spirit

A sketch for the Daily Spitpaint group. I might take this one to a polished finish later

English robot butler

Did a Google hangout with some friends and doodled this robot butler. After taking CGMA's dynamic sketching, I feel like I always need at least some line work now or everything gets too unorganized and messy!

Minibosses monstrified

Took my sweet time with this one and tried to really clean up the line work. Director told me to beef up the monster factor on the minibosses so went with this.