Today I finished up revisions (I hope) for my client Fantasy Flight. Can’t wait to show the miniatures I’m making for them but I fear it might be 2-3 months before I can!

After I finished those revisions I edited the 25mm jungle base for my client Warsenal All of this base creation is new for me, I’m taking references from all over the place and building up a ton of plants to use to fill out the spaces. I’m getting better but I still have a ways to go. I’m counting this as some environment art practice 🙂

Since it’s for 3D print I can’t have gaps underneath plants, so some things look a lot thicker than they would be in real life. Have faith! It’ll work at 25mm

Today I’m adding in plants to some bases I’ve been working on for a client of mine. This is new stuff to me and I’m trying to learn and adapt to what is needed. Doing a set of jungle themed bases that people will attach their miniatures to and if all goes well I’ll be making a whole lot more bases for the company -crosses fingers-

I am basically creating an insert mesh brush for all sorts of different plants, rocks, and different tree branches. After I make a few more bases I’ll have an arsenal of environment brushes for base sculptures.

Just a quick post right now, school is over and I’m in full time freelance mode. It’s much more relaxing than dedicating 2 days a week solely to school work. I’ll be posting more often, I need to talk to some clients and see if I can post progress shots. Either way I’ll be posting work on my summer personal project. FROG from chrono trigger! Concepting him out later this week, stoked!

There is a double-edged sword when working for larger, more professional clients and that’s NDA’s. I’ve been hard at work in Zbrush day in and day out and unfortunately don’t have a lot to show for it as far as portfolio pieces go. Because of this I’ve been blogging and udpating my website less and less! that’s never good! The more traffic the more clients the more I can actually survive in San Francisco! hah.

The school year is drawing to and end and final projects are in progress. Going to be pushing out a large thesis update for Thursday and I’m truly excited for where my characters are heading. Some bad ass stuff is going to be going on in my portfolio soon. Can’t wait to get these bad mother (watch your mouth) into a game engine months from now where they will really come to life.

During the summer I plan on creating at least 10 miniatures, 3-5 game characters for Membraine Studios and a personal project. Sort of a childhood dream of recreating one of the Chrono Trigger stars as a high end game character. Pretty excited but also nervous about my timeline for that piece. Hoping to fall into a groove and really crank him, and the rest of my summer work out. Time to head out and get to work so I can have the update I’ve promised to post for Thursday!

I have to admit I’ve been all but absent on my own website as of late. I’ve been very busy and can’t seem to bring myself to write about my work. Unfortunately I have some time today and tomorrow to reflect on my recent work because my Tablet broke. I have another on rush order but I’m assuming tomorrow will be a Zbrush free day -shakes uncontrollably-

So Jack Sampson, my first thesis character is coming along. While detailing all over and building up his character I’m developing who he is. There is a large back and forth process with this method, I would much rather have very detailed character information to work from but hey, whatcha gonna do?

(Some spots on him have detail, others have almost zilch. Soon he’ll be SLAMMED with detail)

The last thing I did this morning before my tablet died was the final base shape for his shotgun that’ll be holstered to his hip soon. It’s lacking all of the interesting things as of now, here’s the thing that killed my tablet. RIP Mr. Drawey.

Bubba has been changing over the past few weeks as well. I’m shrinking some aspects of him to make other seem much larger. A large” update for him will be coming soon. God I hate myself.

I’m developing the stories behind my characters right now to help drive their designs. The first I’m attempting to really add some back story and personality into is Bubba Hendricks. (I changed his name from Bobby to Bubba last week, felt it was more… fitting?) Alright, so on with his story. First lets get up a little shot of Bubba so everyone knows who I’m talking about.

Ah, there we go.. Bubba is here in all his glory and back fat. Bubba Hendricks was a trucker for years before the invasion happened. You name it, he’s trucked it, and he trucked it better than anyone. Bubba’s greatest strength is as you probably guessed… is his great strength. He’s huge and a seriously formidable opponent. There isn’t much else to say about this guy so we should probably move onto the few minutes after he met Jack Sampson, the wanna-be mercenary.

Bubba was walking out of a gas station with a bunch more fuel for the last push of his latest trip, armed with a liter of cola and a box of little snackey’s snack rolls  Bubba was pulled aside by Jack Sampson. Jack claimed there was an invasion on the other end of town, flying saucers he was saying. It would have been something to ignore if it weren’t for the flying saucer’s that just passed overhead and the explosions in the distance.

Bubba shoved his snacks into is overalls pocket and knew he had to help, he didn’t have weapons like jack sampson did, the guy was armed to the teeth! He did however quickly make short work of an I-beam by bending the end into a handle with his bare hands. Knowing he would need protection if he planned on getting up close and personal with whatever these things were he snatched a tire off of a smart car, he also grabbed a few signs and with a few wraps of duct tape he made some armor for himself.

I’ll be writing more once I concept more, all part of the process! Cheers.

Wow,  it’s April and I haven’t been posting much of anything lately! How sad… I’m going to attempt to change that in the coming weeks through the creation of some tutorials. I’m planning them out right now but they’ll cover how I create miniatures in my style, how I damage armor and sculpt well.. most things. The first I’ll be creating this weekend and will focus on the process I use to create stylized hair.

My thesis is coming along as well but I feel as though I’m obsessing over it a little bit and it’s really pulling away a lot of my attention that should be spent on my clients and launching my professional career. The clients I have right now are great and I just impressed my newest super secret client with a miniature in progress so I’m quite pleased with that!

I suppose since this post has the word “thesis” in the title I should be writing about that. The first two characters are turning into what I hoped my first attempt at my thesis would be. great, stylized sculpts that portray very distinct attributes. The first of 3 for my thesis is coming along, I’m attempting to build up his personality and bad-ass level at this stage in the sculpt before truly  hammering home the detail. I’m liking working on him and really have been getting some fantastic critiques from everyone.

Also I should add in here that I titled this screen shot “Jack Sampson” so that might be his name now?

The second is on the opposite side of the spectrum as far as body types. I’ve posted other shots of him before and am still working on preliminary stuff for him, IE silhouette and forms for musculature and such. Loving how he’s coming along and I can’t wait to finish a few more aspects of his larger forms because I think he’s going to truly come to life!

I should probably also say that since I titled the first screen shot I named this one Bubba Hendricks

Both of them are coming along and I’m trying to move from one another quickly as to not get incredibly caught up in what I’m doing. Tunnel vision is bad when working in 3D and it’s what made me waste 4 months of time on this thesis before I completely rehauled my idea. I’m feeling a tunnel forming with Jack Sampson so I’m pulling away from him for the weekend to focus on my upcoming tutorials!

Lots of things are happening over here, I’ve been ABSOLUTELY neglecting my website posts and I blame spring break and lots of work as an excuse. I’m always looking for new clients and just landed two fantastic ones with two very different yet interesting projects. Couldn’t ask for better timing because I’m closing the door on two long term projects in the coming weeks. (I think)

Final renders of hellboy are going up, his game model came out great and I think it’ll be a great portfolio piece. Guess I need to do a few more contests this year to flesh out my character art so I can finally land a job! Hire me by the way! 🙂 Oh! I almost forgot. Hellboy’s turn around and stills will be in my gallery sometime today

I’m hard at work on many projects at the moment and have 2 new clients that I’ll possibly be working with in the near future for both game assets and miniatures! yay, both worlds! I’m also working as much as I can on my thesis.

I’m taking my time and building up the character and spirit of my first 2 characters right now by going back and forth with professors, polling artists and friends to see what they like and by looking at all different kinds of character art I can find. Below is a shot of my first 2 characters in their current form which is well… messy and all over the place. Armor is blocked out slightly in some spots and other areas just have nothing.

I’m also working on hair styles to bring the right feel to my first character. He felt like a super buff indian chief last week so I’m polling friends to see what sort of hair they like. 

Today I spent some time working further on my thesis before diving into some freelance work. I blocked out his robot elbow, started stapling his skin to it as well as began working on his clothing. Blocking pieces out in Zbrush and detailing in Zbrush. More to come soon!