random thoughts 01

Can we share thoughts with conviction of the heart?

I believe that people have the capacity to be considerate while maintaining a sense of honesty (however difficult it may seem) whenever critiquing. To be thoughtful and remain encouraging. That's what I'm always striving for.
I think the notion of brutal honesty has been mistakenly thought of these days as congruent with being the epitome of 'genuine' and 'real'. Not to say that it is wrong because it has its place when learning through hard medicine.

It's a personal preference I guess, because I've never been one to believe in methods of feeling good at the expense of other people. It may be the easy to point out dislikes, but I've always hated the mental discouragement that came with it.

movingBLOG

started up another one for external reasons. That one's going to be more of a personal scrapbook of stuff.

http://thelocalballoonwatcher.blogspot.com

An Intriguing puzzle.

Dunno how many of you have seen this already, but a good pal of mine sent me this link to check out The Thomas Beale Cipher.

It's a 10 minute short film. Quite interesting.

don't sharpen to draw. draw to sharpen

I may be learning digital tools, but that doesn't mean that good ol' pencil and paper will ever become redundant nor should it be seen as a 'less efficient' way to portray ideas. Every medium has its sensibilities that make it a viable, concise method for communication.

Here's to drawing:
http://man4art.blogspot.com/2011/01/drawing.html

The words of Werner Zimmermann.

A pencil that cannot be dulled is not the essence of good line work. It is the heart and mind that drives the hand.

stay classy,
Mike

Messin' About with Glass

Been getting into shaders a lot more in Maya.
Just a quick test of glass that's got frosted stripes on it.
It's a jar made in a minute with nurbs and 20ish minutes
fooling around with the glossiness and caustics.

started modelling a toilet. YES

for a personal project. Here's the first test render of a quick chrome texture i made just to see if the geometry was disruptive in the reflections.

final fruitbowl... for now

and this is the render i finished for the semester. still a little flat in lighting but it'll have to do right now.

take it easy,
Mike

exercise in texturing

Ahoy, I've been doing my first assignment in learning texturing and here's a quick render from working a bit on the cherries.

So far it's been pretty fun.

Mike

downtown

heya. here's something that's been keeping me busy this past week amongst learning as much as I can in maya. A quick concept for a city for a story I've been writing is all it is.

SkyNavy aeroship

Desert Hoppers

I've been having quite a few things on my mind these days, and my imagination has been bearing some pleasant epiphanies.
I've taken some old photos of the Canadian Ram from the web, and i've superimposed my own impressions for the browncoat hopper. The engines are now under the sponson, and the landing struts are actually encasing the lower half of the engines. the actual gear is somewhere in between the engine and the main hull, and would extend when the engines are deployed in flight configuration away from the hull.

Desert Hoppers

After consulting with Mike for some ideas and his impressions, I've made the following refinements and added a figure and some colour. It's not final, but it's looking good in its own right I think.. made the cockpit bigger. added a few more decals.


I was walking about today and for some reason I started thinking about Firefly, and how Alan Tudyk had imagined perhaps Wash was a Browncoat transport pilot that got shot down and became a POW at the outset of the war. I have also been reading up on this link about famous canadian military vehicles over the past century, as well as tales of the Chinese soldiers during the dynasty and cold-war eras.
And that's all I'm going to say about what I have got in mind..

modified typhoon concept. need a new name for it though.

'elo boy-o

so I just did this in a couple of hours and it is bounced from Brian's concept take. Inspired by Brian's point about making the character more pronounced, I explored with the notion of tilting his hat upwards to reveal his eyes and then everything came to what it is now.
Evidently, key themes that were at play in my mind were wide-eye, open-worldly, explorative, adventurous, as well as wiry and firey of particular interest. The Indiana Jones tune was resonating with me in my mind whilst I was sketching him out. Which later then evolved into the whistling tune of A Bridge To Far - A tune of boyish wanting for daring adventure and tenacious danger. An innocently happy and rousing tune that is at the same time counterpointed with woe and sorrow which is the inevitable price of adventure.

At present, I haven't decided which colour to go for his jacket. It really depends on what the Jacket particularly is, which I think could be a plot-mystery of future importance. I conject that the Jacket itself is significantly valued by the character. Perhaps it's his (lost) dad's. What sort of jacket it should be? I don't know.. You can see that the colour strongly influences what it will be, so officially it is still ambiguous, but nevertheless here's a colour comparison chart.

Finally, note the subtle touches in his eyes and how his hands clasps the long sleeves. I'm interested to hear what you have to say on those! He's also wearing both a white undershirt and a 'wife-beater' but I am not sure which one the character should go with. Or maybe both?

auf wiedersehen.

Co-op Group Project

So this is the first post for a group concept project that we are collectively going to be working on towards a possible animation. Right now the basic framework revolves around a protagonist character, in a field with a tree, and a ball. My mind is currently elsewhere, but this is what I've sketched up thus far. Expect to see more works posted on by us related to this project. Optimistically it looks to be a good one!


Lads: This is what I've loosely sketched up as concepts around the main character. As you can see, I've based him to have a prairie farmboy look, in a tall wheatfield where his tree is. I've projected that the tree is special to him because it is a tree that he has conquored - He knows how to reach every branch, inside and out. My character skills are pretty unsophisticated, so forgive me on that.
Also, I've conjectured into drawing up the main character's little brother, who in earnest wears an iron pot or a collander for safety. It sparked up an idea I have in mind for a group of prairie boys who bands together in a similar fashion. I'll ellaborate them in more concept work unrelated to this project that I'll post up here at some point.
catch you later lads.

From the Starving Artist

Went down to a dessert bar last Wednesday to listen to a friend's jazz quartet gig... and eat some waffles. goooooood waffles.... 'The Starving Artist' just north of Lansdowne station in Toronto.
Here's a quick abstract portrait I did of Dean (sans ecstasy face, tho), who was jammin' to the keyboard. I'ma try fixin up some of the other ones I did that night too.

Neither airship nor plane..

I really must thank Mike for forwarding that link of gigantic aeroplanes for reference, it really help inspire and propell the look of these aeroplane/airship hybrids that I had been hard to define as of late... These are various aircrafts for the British and French strato fleets.
The very top one is a giant floating air port. It has two flight decks on the successive top two decks, and a Terminal/Tower on the port side of the craft, where airships can dock portside via terminal bridges (like today's airports) which file into a main airport enclosure. The lower decks under the flight and on the other side of the terminal, are service, maintenance decks and the helium ballast tanks which keep this airship afloat. A passive behemoth, it serves mostly as a refuelling and docking port for traditional airships and smaller air craft like those beneath it for the Royal Air Force.
The bottom right one was originally the path I was exploring - the standard WWII era type bombers with their top wing being the inflated helium floating ballast. After looking at the reference link, I got inspired to actually increase the volume of the airplane fuselage and let the wings retain their engine profile for! You'll love this - Wind power! So the ballast in the fuselage keeps the buggers aloft, and the engines collect power from the high presure winds and also propells the airships to wherever they need to be! In general, the overal size of these crafts compared to their actual WWII counterparts would be alot more roomier - say 3-5 times. So that they would actually be comparable to naval corvettes.
Here is a rough colourized detail of the bulkied up Lancaster. In a newer sketch I've got post scanning, there are more turrets and details that depicts the larger scale of these crafts.
This here are sketches for the US Strato fleet, inspired by the 1936 Boeing Stratoliner, which subsequently inspired this whole strain of sketches. You can see with the evolution line in the middle lower left, the original Boeing Stratoliner (slightly larger than to scale) the USS Akron which was an actual US Navy Airship that sank in a storm (with the senior staff of the US Navy's Airship division, which led to the demise of Airships in the US entirely) And the hybrid of the two ideas, the Stratofortress which is a giant airship with wings. It would have loads of carrying and cargo capacity and six aircraft carrier like hangar doors along its side.
In this sketch you can also see a sketch of Joseph Mallord William Turner's "the Fighting Temeraire" which I unwittingly sketched whilst roaming the National Gallery. Premonitionally, you can see how it relates to how the RAF aircrafts hull in the previous sketches mimic it, both in size, shape and function. here is an idea of the stratofortress with some dimension to it. I think for the US stuff they'll keep their shiny metallic silvery finish, with striking yellow tailfins and various from the late war period. But keep the giant print of 'US ARMY/US NAVY" and white star with red center and blue background from it's early period.

I've got more coming, I'll try and post these in good spacing with my fellow colleagues!

it's a boat. yes. just a boat

here's a simple photomanip I did of a boat from the harbor in Hong Kong. Done for a good friend of mine.

Chocks Away!

Speaking of paradoxes, I frequently dig myself into holes, and I'm joining in on this blog!
I typically prefer drawing aeroplanes, airships and starships, though I try to keep a pretty diverse sketchbook and draw everything around me. I'm currently on an 'excursion' and will occaisionally if not frequently post up some of my sketches that aren't classified ultra-top secret!


This here is a sketch for an airship in a world where the voracious lures of mongering and industrialization was stemmed with the end of the Great War.
A world where war-wearied individuals and sombre idealists romantically battled against feral extremists and ultra-fanatics.
In skies filled with airships from navies and air fleets of nations and empires, with floating wings filled of helium, manned by wary men and women who keep those in check who would let rampant a second world war.
Its a world where the mechanics of chaos is tempered by the wonders of flight.

was looking at pics of tree mushrooms

you know those mushrooms that grow on trees like frisbees that were thrown so hard that it lodged into the tree trunk? just wondering what they'd be like on mountains with cities on them.

wanted to add expressways but that would make the composition a lot more complicated. just did this in a few hours cause i had to have a free drawing for the portfolio. i'll dive more into this later hopefully.