Weekly Update October 5, 2015 — After the Summit

Posted on October 6, 2015 by SusanG

Last week was mostly taken up with returning from the awesome ZBrush Summit at the Gnomon School in Los Angeles. Since one day was taken up with travel and the next spent getting things ready to return to work and such it seemed a little daunting at first that I would get any art in. I especially wanted to get started on something in ZBrush while I still had some of the excitement from the weekend. I figured it might get me far enough into a sculpt that I would be using some of the techniques I saw before I even realized I was doing it. I didn’t quite get that far.AlienFall2015_sm_wm

Even without getting myself totally immersed in a project I have still managed to gain a bit more comfort in ZBrush. I’ve started an alien character and made quite a bit of progress on it. I just sort of kept working on it until it had hands and even feet and then what I wanted to do with it started to come to mind.

I’ve started detailing the body with clothing, of a fashion. Partly that came about from the way the sculpt was progressing and some errant strokes across the legs that caused inspiration. I fought a bit with the feet to get them close to the shape they are and decided that would work because the alien could be wearing boots or shoes of some kind. With that I added a cuff sort of thing at the top of the alien_10032015b_sm_wmboot. I started looking at the body area and decided to add cuffs at the wrists and then the regular round collar like our t-shirts. I also added a waist band to help distinguish the body and a bit of detailing from there. As you can see, it’s all still pretty soft and I need to add the eye balls. So far, I’m quite happy with how this is working out. I have plans for the rest of the detailing and an accessory or two, as well as the eye balls. Seeing it develop to this point has been fun. I’m excited to see how it continues to progress.

One of the things I came back from the Summit with is a desire to really make better characters and to get better at sculpting in ZBrush. That, I know, takes time and practice. So I am starting by trying to work in ZBrush a few hours each week, preferably not all at once but a little bit across several days. I think doing it that way will get me more comfortable and better much faster than if I had a once a week marathon session in ZBrush. I did good last week, I think I had 4 days where I worked on the Alien and
one day where I started another piece.

Yes, it is Autumn around these parts, and thanks to a weekend of being sandwiched between two not so nice weather systems, we got a pretty good taste of the season. And it got a little wet. That inspired me to finally start on a piece that I keep saying I’m going
to do. I’ve started on a piece that I am hoping will be a Halloween piece, but it may end up being an Autumn piece.

Pumpkin_Fall2015_10052015c_sm_crop_wm  Pumpkin_Fall2015_10052015b_sm_crop_wm

In addition to working in ZBrush this week I also delivered my two pieces of art to FuManChu Cup Cakes in Charlotte to be displayed and possibly sold. I was really happy with the reponse to them by the employees. It’s always good to hear nice things about your
work. So those are being hung there either today or tomorrow before they open. If you’re in the Charlotte area between tomorrow and December, stop by and have a look. Oh, and get some cup cakes. They are really awesome.

20151002_180700-1_smAnother thing I came back from the Summit with is a desire to finish rigging Sticks and get him animated. I wish I could say that I got right on that this week. I didn’t. I was still trying to recover from the travel. I think I’m about there and this week is looking more promising for working on Sticks.

That brings things up to date for this week I think. With a bit of discipline there could be more to share next week. Check back to see if I spent the week arting or slacking.

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Weekly Update September 29, 2015 — All About the ZBrush Summit

Posted on September 29, 2015 by SusanG

Last week was basically spent in getting ready to go out to Los Angeles for the 2nd ZBrush Summit so little, wait, no art got worked on. It was pretty much a mad dash week with ups and downs and the Summit turned out to be a nice break from the rest of the world.

This was the second ZBrush Summit that the people at Pixologic have held and I really hope they decide to have it again next year. Like the first summit this one was held at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Games + Animation. Unlike the first one, I went out
to see this one live and I am so glad I did. It was great. I want to tell you all about it but I don’t want to bore you so I’ll try to touch on the bigger stuff.

The Summit was Friday through Sunday and was jam packed with presentations, interviews, demos, workshops and a lot of great and talented people. Rick Baker, the Monster Maker opened things up on Friday. He talked about his career and what brought him to ZBrush and his experience with it. I found it a bit heartening to hear someone of his talent talk about the stops and starts he had with it since I have had that problem. He was a great choice to get things started, no demo, no presentation, he just talked.

There were so many talented people making presentations, the guys from Face Off, Neville Page and Glenn Hetrick, as well as Ian Joyner, the team from Sideshow Collectibles, Disney Interactive, Riot Games, MPC, The Mill, Furio Tedeschi just to name a few. There was more. There was the first ever ZBrush awards. The winners chosen from and by the community on ZBrush Central. That turned out to be a ‘black tie’ affair. And in the interest of fairness Pixologic handed out ties for everyone, you had your choice of the standard or the bow. I did not get a bow tie.

20150929_105429_sm_cropThere was also the sculpt off. The sculpting for that took place on Friday, then voting was on Saturday and the winners awarded on Sunday. After Furio Tedeschi’s talk it was great to see him win the Hard Surface challenge for the Sculpt Off. I am sorry to say that I am not that familiar with the winner for the Organic challenge in the Sculpt Off.

This year they offered Workshops, this was the only part of the Summit that had a fee the rest of the event was free. There were some interesting choices for the workshops and some I would have liked to take except I felt they might be a bit too advanced for me at this stage. But there was one that was designed as being for beginners which I decided to take. I find even if I have experience with something it never hurts to reinforce the basics. In my case, being self taught on ZBrush, I probably didn’t get some basics. Because of that I signed up to take the ‘Digital Sculpting for Artists’ workshop taught by Eric Keller. I’m really glad I did.

By the end of the workshop I didn’t feel nearly as lost as I sometimes do and I learned at least 3 things that I will be using in my future endeavors with ZBrush. And that was really the point in taking the workshop. I just wanted that little extra to help me get past a couple of things that have been vexing me or delaying me.

There was so, so much information being presented that I went back to my hotel with a full brain every night. And I wasn’t the only one. On Sunday, towards the end one guy I met, Brendan, sorry I didn’t get your last name, said something to the effect of ‘who knew sitting in the dark for three days watching presentations could be so exhausting.’ And that really is true. But it was so worth it.

I wasn’t the only one who flew in from out of state to attend the Summit. I met Tyler from Texas who has been travelling around the country just to get to see it. I met Jose from Mexico City who flew in on Friday and went straight from the airport to the summit. And there was Dennis originally from France but I think he now lives in the states though I don’t remember. And then there were the presenters who came in from Canada, Antwerp, South Africa, London and I’m not sure where else. Everyone was so open and excited and
interested that it made the whole thing really enjoyable.

And it wasn’t just the attendees or the community. The guys from Pixologic and the volunteers and vendors were all friendly and open and approachable. You didn’t feel like anyone was on a pedastal or stand-offish or anything like that. They were all a bunch of really nice people that make you want to be a part of the community they are building.

I’m not sure I can pick out a favorite moment of the whole weekend there was so much good stuff happening that it might be impossible. I think I can pick out the best answer to a question this weekend. It was a question asked of Furio Tedeschi. I think the Pixologic Twitter feed has it best.TwitterPixFurioAnswer

I think my head is still spinning with all the information and great people and ideas of what to do next. It may take me a few days to get the rest sorted out so don’t be surprised if I’m still writing about it in a week or two. Thankfully the Pixologic team will be posting things to their YouTube site. I did come back with the beginnings of a game plan for really tackling ZBrush and 3D art and animation and even some ideas for my website (the other one, not that other one, that other one) and my home studio.

20150929_083946_sm_cropOf course I did have to pick up some swag this weekend as well. Mementos. I love having the coffee mug because I can take it to the day job and have it as a constant reminder of what I want to do and of the weekend, at least until next year.

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Weekly Update September 22, 2015 — Totally Unproductive, Artistically

Posted on September 22, 2015 by SusanG

This last week was busy. I had stuff scheduled every day after the day job and a couple of days had more than one thing going on. I knew going into the week that getting time to work on anything was going to be tricky if it happened at all.

So I was surprised to get to the end of the weekend and find I had managed only one item in the sketchbook and no work on anything else. At least not art wise. I did manage to get a little caught up on my magazine reading. I take both 3D World and 3D Artist magazines and I am a few months behind on my reading. I’m getting close to caught up though so it must be time the the next issue of each to be out.

I thought I mentioned, but maybe not, that I was hoping to get to have a couple of my traditional type art pieces on display for the public. There is this really unique shop Charlotte called Fu Man Chu Cupcakes. They make cupcakes with a twist. They combine
interesting flavors to make their cupcakes some non-alcoholic and some alcoholic. One of
the features of this place is that along with the cupcakes, they have a whole wall or more of art for display and sale. They all appear to be relatively local to the Charlotte area. I met the person who curates this art collection at the art supply store and she said she would be interested in my having a couple of pieces on show. At the time I only had the cool pumpkin piece. She prefers at least 2 pieces not just one so I did the guitar piece. They are both all done and framed. I made a visit to Fu Man Chu Cupcakes and spoke with her again. And I will be delivering these two beauties Friday of next week to be on display for two months. I’m kind of excited.
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So my sketchbook only saw a little action this last week. I managed this snow or sledding sort of scene. I was really disappointed I didn’t get to do more stuff. But as I said it was a busy week.DSCN0525_sm_crop_CC_wm

This week isn’t much better to be honest. I have been getting ready to go out to the Zbrush Summit in Los Angeles. I know I’ve told you about this. I watched last year’s inaugural Summit via LiveStreaming and it was awesome. So much great stuff and some really
talented, informative, and entertaining presentations. So this year when it was announced early enough that I could make plans to go I started doing just that. The summit is this weekend and I’ll be arriving in Los Angeles on Thursday so I’m rested and ready to go on Friday. Once again the Gnomon School is hosting the Zbrush Summit for Pixologic. This year, in addition to the presentations they will be having a sculpt off, the Zbrush awards, and work shops. I’ve signed up for a work shop on Sunday being lead by Eric Keller and I’m really looking forward to it. I am hoping it will be that little push that will help me get past a few things I have been struggling with in Zbrush. I’m also looking forward to some of the artist presentations, particularly Ian Joyner. I watched a Live Stream of a talk he gave at Gnomon a few weeks ago and I think he will be really interesting to see. And if my eyes do not deceive me it looks like we will get to see a short presentation from the legendary VFX artist Rick Baker which should be cool.

It’s looking like a really full and awesome weekend and I am sure that my brain will be full by the end of the weekend if not by about mid day on Saturday. I hope to have lots to share, if not about the event, at least about the excitement.

So with that all said, hopefully you will indulge me for a week or two while I partake of this fun event and I will get back to rigging Sticks and creating more 3D/CG art, sketchbook pictures and regular paintings soon.

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Weekly Update September 14, 2015 — Back to the Regular World

Posted on September 15, 2015 by SusanG

Last week was back to the day job and the regular world for me. I was a little surprised how tired I was the first couple of days. But I made it through. As I suspected, I didn’t get a lot of work done on Sticks or even much sketching. Though I did get a couple of things done.

Working on Sticks was particularly interesting. As I finished up working on the foot and leg controls I was overwhelmed with the work that it looks like it is going to take to animate Sticks. This will be my first fully animated object and while I knew intellectually that it was going to be involved, I don’t think I had really internalized the scope of the work. It should be an interesting challenge and I don’t doubt that once I’ve done it a few times it won’t feel quite so overwhelming.

With the foot and leg controls complete it’s time to start on the spine. You can see that I’ve got the bones in for the spine and the Inverse Kinetic (HI-IK) solvers created and their controllers. It looks a bit odd I suppose because if you look really close you’ll see that each bone is only connected to it’s own end point (nub). This is apparently better that just creating a full spine and then applying the solver from end to end like with the hip to ankle. This way should help with the twisting that I need in the spine. I guess, I will find out just how important that is once I get started with the animating.

Sticks_3d_connected_09102015a_sm_wm Sticks_3d_connected_09102015b_sm_wm

As I indicated, I didn’t get much sketching in. At the moment I’m working with the idea ofDSCN0515_sm_crop_wm them being a little more quality instead of just random, think of something and put it on paper in 10 to 15 minutes. This is a good exercise and I will likely pick it back up again but right now I’m going to try this way. With that said, here’s the sketch for last week. It’s approaching Autumn here and so also Halloween. The Halloween decor has been on sale in the stores for over a month and so it’s starting to creep into my brain. This is my scene for Halloween. It’s a little more staged that what I’ve done before. And as you can see, that non-photo blue is still showing up. I’m getting used to it.

 
I finished reading the book “Creating Characters with Personality” by Tom Bancroft and started on his follow up book “Character Mentor”. It’s been interesting so far and as with the other book I think some of the information will start to seep in and spread from my Sketch09112015_1_sm_wmbrain to my fingers and out onto the characters I’ve been working on. With that in mind I think this piece is an example of some of the information from the first book starting to seep to my fingers. I started this in Sketchbook Pro on my Kindle fire. I started out with my finger and then tried using the Bamboo stylus that I got for my iPad, when I used that. It turns out the stylus works on the Kindle and on my LG Android tablet. Woot! Drawing on glass with my finger it weird and I don’t enjoy it. But this guy was a bit of a test and as I got a few of the shapes down he really started to come together. But he was really rough. So I took him into Photoshop on my PC where I could use my Cintiq and did a bit of a draw over and then refined him. He was a lot of fun. He has a companion that I did but I haven’t got that one refined.

For some reason I don’t seem to be able to get my work space just right. At the moment it’s in need of being rearranged again due to the cable outlet changing from one wall to another and now there is a CAT-5 cable laying on the floor in front of the door. In addition to the need to rearrange, I realized I have been really trying to make the room into too many things. As I was working through what it really needs to be I also figured out that there is a lot in a name. I had been calling the room my “office”. That’s not right because I do so much art in it and that’s more what the room is dedicated to. I’ve also never had an “office” it’s always been a “Studio” so I am renaming the room my “Studio” and to help with adjusting my mental processes to that I’ve decided to make a sign that says “Studio” to remind me. I just got started on it so it’s not very far along but here it is.

DSCN0510_sm_wm

I have not gotten back to the head-stock of the guitar painting. I had intended to and found I didn’t have the energy when I finally got the time. Turns out we had a bit of a
weather shift around here and it ramped up the allergy season for me. I wish I could say I will get to it this week or this weekend. Sadly, I don’t really see that as happening. It’s a busy week for me with lots of appointments and getting ready for the Zbrush Summit. In case you didn’t catch it last week. I’m really excited about the Zbrush Summit that Pixologic is holding at the Gnomon School in Los Angeles. It’s not quite two weeks away. You can watch the LiveStream of it if you are interested but can’t go. I watched the LiveStream last year and my brain was so full at the end. I can only imagine what will happen for me this year.

With all the prep for the Summit, I expect that the most I will be able to get done this week is a little more work done on the rigging of Sticks and a sketch or two. When I look at my calendar for this week I don’t have a lot of big chunks of time for much more. So…

Check back to see what I do manage to get done and what else might be coming up.

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Weekly Update September 8, 2015 — Work Avoidance

Posted on September 8, 2015 by SusanG

This was work avoidance week, also known as, vacation from the day job. As well intentioned and optimistic as I was about getting several things done this week, or at least
worked on, I just wasn’t able to make it happen to the extent I hoped. That isn’t to say that the week was a total wash out. I did finish the guitar piece, and I started a new piece. I also got in some time on Sticks, just not as much as I hoped, and I did some extra cleaning.

And while those are the basics of what I had wanted to do, truth is, I would have like to have been able to write that I finished rigging Sticks. And I would like to be able to write that I got a lot of sketches done. Neither of those things happened so I won’t be writing them.

As I said, I did get the guitar piece finished. I have it signed and framed. I have sent an email to contact the place I was hoping to hang them but have not heard back yet. I think I will need to make a trip out there and see if I can speak with someone. If not I have a couple of other places I may look into. The idea is to get some of my work out in the public where it can be seen and people can start to know some of my work. It’s looking like this may be a little tricky though. In any event, the guitar piece, and the pumpkin piece are the two that I am hoping to show, and perhaps sell. Here they are in all their beauty.

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While I was in the store searching for the frame for the guitar piece a squirrel ran across my path and I had to chase it. I was wondering, since I do the stippling on paper with acrylic ink, how it might work out if I did it on canvas or canvas art board and used acrylic paint and a brush. I purchased a few additional items towards this project and went home. Once the guitar piece was in its frame it was time to really chase this squirrel. I had to play with laying down some paint first and then I decided I didn’t want a white base to start with so I chose and odd sort of blue. I was thinking of re-doing a picture I had done many years ago, thus the blue for the base color. But I didn’t really want to repeat myself. Then I DSCN0489_sm_crop_wmdecided to try something else guitar related. I took pictures of the head-stocks of three of
my guitars and chose the one that I thought would be the cleanest and so easiest to start with, the Gibson. I then penciled in the reference so I could have something to guide my work. And then paint. As you can see, I only got some of the text done so far, but it’s a start and I think it will work out nicely.

I knew that I might have some old paints that were close to dried out and I found one right out of the gate. It was still usable though it needs replacing. I’m thinking that will be another trip to Cheap Joe’s or an order to Dick Blick’s. Not sure which yet. But, as with most things art related, it won’t be a small bill.

The sketchbook mostly got moved from room to room this week. I really didn’t put much pencil to paper there. I did get one done that I think is rather fun. I was experimenting DSCN0486_sm_crop_wmwith using a colored pencil for the rough in and then using a regular graphite pencil to finish it out and do the detailing. I used what is called a non-photo blue pencil which means that a camera isn’t supposed to be able to pick it up. However, it looks like my digital SLR didn’t get that memo because you can see some of the blue.

I took a bit more time on it than I usually do since I typically do my sketches in the morning. I think it came out much nicer because I had more time to spend working on it and as I head back to the day job it has me re-thinking some of my scheduling for my day. I may change the sketching to an evening activity. It should work out nicely even after Taekwondo class and the trainer. And then I won’t feel like I wasted my evenings. Ideas.

And I finally got to working on the rigging for Sticks. I am farther along than where I left the original one, which is progress. I’m just not as far along as I would like to be. Still, I have finished with the foot controls and the knee controls and will be starting on the spine next. The tutorial that I am following along with will cover the eyes and eyebrow controls in some of the future lessons, these I will be able to skip or just listen to since Sticks has neither. That means I may be farther along that it seems like if I were to just look at the number of lessons total compared to where I am. Here are a couple of shots of the rigging with the x-ray of Sticks and a screenshot of just the bones with the controls.

Sticks_3d_connected_09072015a_sm_wm  Sticks_3d_connected_09072015b_sm_wmSticks_3d_connected_09072015c_sm_wm

This week will likely be taken up with the process of getting back into the flow of the day job. I know I have a couple of days of big project stuff to do. I’m guessing I will be pretty mentally spent at the ends of the days so I’m not sure how much Sticks progress I will make. I’m going to try to do one segment a night. Or the equivalent. I think that is a reasonable goal.

I will also want to start preparing for the Zbrush Summit that is coming up in just a couple of weeks. In case you are interested the 2nd Zbrush Summit is being held in Los Angeles at the Gnomon School September 25th through September 27th. If you can’t go in person the entire thing will be streamed live. To get more information go to the Pixologic website at pixologic.com. I am really looking forward to this event. And hope to have much to share afterwards. Of course, my brain will be so full it may take me weeks to get it all sorted out.

Keep checking back for more news and updates on projects and art pieces.

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