Beatrice Solas!

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Beatrice is a bachelorette who lives alone with her dog in a small townhouse. She is very unlucky in love, but it's likely that she's looking in all the wrong places. Will she find Mr. Right?

My Little Quetzal - Finished Renders

I just realized that I never uploaded any of my finished renders of My Little Quetzal! My Little Quetzal is a friendly, vegetarian version of the fearsome Incan feathered serpent; during the summer of 2008, I took My Little Quetzal from concept to finished model. He is the protagonist of a fictional video game.

To refresh your memory, here's his concept, and a final render of him next to his checker-map:


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(Right-click and choose 'view image' to see the whole thing!)

Aaaand now, here's the final renders. You'll notice that he's a little more refined than his squishy, fly-swatter-spots concept; this was partially a personal preference and partially due to critique and feedback I received during the course.


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(Right-click and choose 'view image' to see the whole thing!)


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And these are his texture maps:


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Parakeet Legion WIP

Just one today, a snapshot of my latest painting. It's a little bit quirky, but... well, what isn't?



Not too much to say about it now, other than "It's a parakeet." Specifically, it's a budgerigar - Melopsittacus undulatus, literally "small striped parrot." The term 'parakeet' can refer to any small, long-tailed parrot, so it's important in aviculture to be specific!

I'm excited to work on this. :)

The Linebacker

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A little something from this weekend. I had an image of horses fulfilling the high school stereotypes - the jock, the geek, the art student. This fellow is the linebacker, all muscle-bound and showboat-y. He doesn't know that he's running towards the wrong end zone.

I don't think I'll tell him.

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Next on my list is this crazy idea of an attack parakeet. I don't know where (if anywhere) that'll go, but I'll be sure to let you all in on it if it winds up being something!

Evelyn portrait; Crayons!

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Just a little portrait of Evelyn wearing her hair-towel. At one point, Radar's stomach growls mightily, but she can't hear it over the noise her hair dryer is making.
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My Advanced 3D class was given an assignment: Produce a 7-second animation that tells a complete story. We worked in groups of three; my group produced the following video. My responsibilities included modeling the crayons, animating the coloring-page scene, and post-production. My groupmate Melissa animated the texture on the page to make it seem like the crayons were really coloring, and my groupmate Kat was responsible for the scene with the pencil sharpener. We had three class sessions to complete the project.

Early Concepts

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Concepting took a while. What kind of dog would Radar have to be? What kind of woman is Evelyn? My final result, as you can see from a few posts ago, is somewhat of a mixture of these two ideas - she's homely without being dumpy, and she's pretty without being a power-mad psycho woman. Radar is a fairly stereotypical hound, with the long ears and the lanky build, but he's a little more clever than your average beagle.

A fantastic dog/owner reference, for anyone looking to drum up some characters, is Disney's 101 Dalmatians (the original one, not that live-action re-make with Jeff Bridges, ugh). At the beginning, Pongo is looking for a date for Roger, and surveys the local women as they walk their dogs to the park.
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On Tuesday in class, we watched several of the animations from Siggraph. They were beautiful, and so inspiring. The French animation schools have really become a force to be reckoned with, and Tree Robo was immensely moving and thought-provoking. If you haven't seen them yet, you should definitely check the DVD out!

Dog Reference

As I worked on Evelyn and Radar, I realized that despite having two big, goofy dogs at home, I really had no idea how a dog was built and how it moved. I looked up some dog anatomy on Google, and discovered that they're constructed pretty interestingly!


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I've been watching my own dogs more closely now, and they're pretty inspiring. They'd be better models if they did something other than sleep all the time.

Updates!

Been a while! I've got some shiny new stuff to share this week, including one of my animated projects, so stay tuned!

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I've been hard at work on my senior thesis here at MICA (eek!), and have generated quite a number of sketches and peripheral-type pre-production artwork.



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My thesis involves a young woman named Evelyn and her dog, Radar. Evelyn is preparing for a date, and realizes that she's late. As she rushes to prepare, her dog Radar keeps begging to be fed. Will she make it to her date? Will she remember to feed the dog? You'll have to wait and see!

My Little Quetzal

For my Video Game Art class, I've been creating an original video game character. Mine is My Little Quetzal, a friendly, vegetarian version of the fearsome Incan feathered serpent.


Right-click and select 'view image' to view the entire picture.

He's still a work in progress, but he's almost done. I am very pleased with him - check out how much more awesome he is than Naraya!

3D Character Model - Naraya

Naraya's low-poly model is complete! This is my first-ever actual model in 3DS, and I'm pretty pleased with the result. The only catch is, it has to be completely unwrapped, Z-brushed, textured, and rigged by next Tuesday. It's not like I need sleep!

Artemis WIP II

Another in-progress shot of my current piece. The earlier one may be found here.

This will be the first piece using my new Intuos tablet. My old Graphire was starting to act up and was wearing out a little. I'm really excited to start working with this one!

FURRIES. D:

NO.


NO.

Shaina and Andy

Best wishes to Shaina and Andy, who commissioned a Save the Date for their upcoming nuptials. :)

I'm happy to work on commissions for anyone who's interested; feel free to comment or e-mail!

Serendipity, Skylark

I've been having some ideas lately.

ser'en'dip'i'ty -
-noun
1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
2. good fortune; luck

sky'lark -
1. a brown-speckled European lark, Alauda arvensis, famed for its melodious song.
–verb (used without object)
2. to frolic; sport: The children were skylarking on the beach.

wren -
1. any of numerous small, active songbirds of the family Troglodytidae, esp. Troglodytes troglodytes, of the Northern Hemisphere, having dark-brown plumage barred with black and a short, upright tail.
2. any of various similar, unrelated birds, esp. any of several Old World warblers.

Persephone

Artemis WIP

A new image I'm working on. Eventually I'm going to submit it for Diane's contest, but for right now it needs a lot more work. Artemis is the Greek goddess of the forest and the hunt. She was a virgin goddess and is always depicted as this beautiful 20-something woman. I don't think she's necessarily that old, so my Artemis is a lot younger. Also, she has freckles. Who doesn't love painting freckles?

Doktar; Naraya; Peafowl

And now, some newer art. :) As always, if an image is too wide for the table, you can right-click and select "view image" to view the entire piece.


This is Naraya, a bellydancer who's kind of a bitch. Her design was inspired by the costumes of Rachel Brice. The ortho (short for orthograph, or turnaround) is for a 3D model I'm making as a class assignment.


A sketch which was supposed to be something else. When I sat to draw up some concepts for my thesis, the girl turned out to be too young for that character. I liked her, though, and I think I'm going to keep her around. Her name is Princess Carnation; everyone calls her Nat. The bird is Frank. The tentative title of the story is The Princess and the Peafowl and is, of course, a play on the classic The Princess and the Pea.


And, just for kicks, a sketch of the Doctor with the TARDIS. Didn't spend much time on him, but I felt like drawing pinstripes and figured he was as good a subject as any.

Feathermane; Psychofeesh; Edgar

To start, I'll upload some of my older art. For any images that are too big for the layout, you can right-click and choose "view image" to see the whole thing.


The original of this piece is an Illustrator file. It's based on a photograph I took while on vacation in Myrtle Beach - a shopping center down there had a lake full of carp. If you look hard, you'll notice two ducks, as well.


Done as a favor for a friend who wanted a tattoo design, this image features a woman who has feathers instead of hair. She wound up going with someone else, but I still like how this one turned out.


Edgar has been around since high school. He started as a germ and has kind of morphed into this not-quite-a-mascot character who follows me around and takes my lunch money.

A Revival

Hello, all.

I found this old blogger account (originally created as part of an assignment for a class during my freshman year) and am re-vamping it.

From now on it'll be used primarily for posting artwork to the web, but also for art-related ramblings.

I dunno, intro posts in blogs and online journals always sound so stilted.