So it’s been quite a whirlwind since Artillery let me go, I’ve been updating everything as quickly as I can because I’m not really the type to take any time off of my career. I think my time as a freelance artist made me wanna use every day to it’s fullest.

Anyways, I’m process my artillery work for my website finally! I think in a day or two (or three) I’ll have a new gallery on  my portfolio page and I’m really excited to show this stuff off, taught myself how to hand paint through countless tutorials, guides, and obsessing over pinterest pages I made.

Check back soon!

Well yesterday was the end of the most important job of my life, My long stay at Artillery games is officially over. I began there as an intern, nervous and not able to hand paint to save my life and ended up a 3D Artist who made the majority of the character art in the game. Couldn’t be more proud or asked myself to work harder, made amazing friends, connections, and proved to myself that I have what it takes to work in the industry.

Did we change the face of the gaming industry? Nope, but we stuck together as a team and produced a really well polished game with the resources we had available. Love the product, the company, and everyone involved. Now it’s time to look onward and find my next home, hopefully in the Bay Area. So stay tuned because my website is about to get smashed with new work.

Have a connection in the bay area? I’m lookin’ for full-time work! hugarue@gmail.com

First piece I polished for this slew of new work was another miniature I did for Fantasy Flight. It was included in their game Battlelore <– a link to the miniature for those interested. Loads more to do, better get to it!

Started a new personal project, grabbed a random piece of concept art for a knight from my pinterest. I’m hoping to show off some of my new handpainted skills with this piece as well as some of my sculpting work. The end goal is for this to be a diorama with a monster, gonna try to churn through this work really quickly but I think I should be posting about it!

I never write on here anymore and I feel as though that’s bad, I shouldn’t just be cranking out work and not recording what I’m doing!

So it’s pretty early on in the process, I’m touching areas here and there, adding detail, removing it, moving onto something else. and I basically continue this until I have everything up to a certain level of detail. I’m always trying to consider the piece as a whole which is why I end up removing or editing levels of detail of shape language of each piece.

Well I’m posting quite a bit more now and I think that’ll increase even more soon! New projects are starting and I’m even getting the chance to rework and old one which I’m pretty excited about.

Guardians of Atlas is finally going to be open to the public, it’s where 90% of my time has been spent artistically since 2014 and I’m so excited for friends, family, and everyone to get a chance to see what our small team has been working so hard on.

Check back soon to see some new stuff! There are already a few new pieces in my gallery, check them out!

For the past year and a half I’ve been doing SERIOUS work on developing my hand painted styles over at artillery. I have to say the result is incredibly pleasing, I put 100% of my focus on it for so long and now I feel really comfortable with the style, and LOVE doing it. Something I don’t wanna lose is my knowledge of the table top gaming industry that I’ve worked so hard to earn and learn about over the past 3 years.

I’m interested in freelance work again because to move forward I need to keep sculpting so if you have a job toss me an email!

hugarue@gmail.com   <—-

Well, I’ve been working incredibly hard on a game with an amazing team in Palo Alto, we’re not by any means done but we’ve finished a first, huge push that was months long. I’m feeling an itch to get back our there and sculpt some miniatures because I spend most of my time painting instead of sculpting so I’m going to try to find one, great client that I can work with on the weekends to help keep my skills sharp! And to contribute to a community I love!

https://www.artillery.com/ is the amazing company I work for if you are interested!

Since leaving my freelance career behind for work at a studio I haven’t been posting on my website, facebook, or any social media that often. I realized that I should at least be writing about my thesis so that I can look back at my process and learn from my mistakes.

I’m first posting the finished sculpts of my first 2 heros, Bubba and Jack Sampson. Everyone could say something that I could have done better, or that I should continue refining the clothing folds etc etc but when you have limited time you need to commit to something being done.

After finishing their sculpts I immediately began retopologizing Sampson. I took care of the more annoying areas so the rest should be extremely easy. Just have his weapons, pants, shoes and things of that nature. All cake compared to face, hands, and his weird gunbelt.

As many of you know I’m a fully employed at the moment and in the last semester of my masters degree. The timeline of my thesis project is pretty intense from here on out and on top of that I’m working very hard down at Artillery games and between the two I’m finding it increasingly difficult to work on any other work… personal or otherwise.

From here on out and until further notice I’m not taking anymore freelance clients, I’ll try my best to finish projects that I’m currently on but their timelines will be drastically reduced because honestly I’m starting to crack at the seams. I’ve worked 6-7 day weeks for 3 years now and my wrist, eyes, and brain are all pushed to the breaking point.

I apologize for any in convenience this will cause my clients in the short and long term for your projects.

Today marks my last class on campus at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. It’s with mixed feelings that I’m leaving the campus I was so excited to be a part of a year ago. Things change quickly and so do priorities, when I started this semester I never thought I’d be employed at a fantastic company that is teaching me more than I imagined I could in a few months of work.

Now onto my thesis… something that needs to be done by next semester but after this class ends today will be the last thing on my mind until all of my clients are extremely happy. I have been sculpting as quickly as I can on the pieces but I didn’t quite hit my mark this semester. I’ll finish it during the break and begin the long process of bringing these guys to life inside of Marmoset.

Renders below, back to work I go! (After this class)

My thesis is at a point where the Zbrush phase needs to end. I’m resculpting them all into the same style and focusing on some forms and uniting them with clothing folds that are sculpted in the same manner.

I’m beginning to work on a color palette for the characters, but seeing as how many of their clothes are taken directly from the real world their palettes are picked for me but I plan to unite them through saturation and value. I’ll be following the Dota 2 art guide to texture them for the most part and keeping it simple and painterly is key for me on this project.