yeah yeah yeah...

Heather and I've been spending the last half-year or so looking to buy our first house... a soul consuming task to say the least. Now, suddenly, we find ourselves in the position of being able to choose between two different houses who's lenders have accepted our offers. Sure, we've recovered from the shock of having a lender actually accept our offer... but now what? New territory.

In the midst of all that this year I'd received a commission to sculpt an iconic statue from a popular TV series. Cool man. Was fun to do. I'll post photos once I'm sure that it's legally ok to do so.

Paper craft

In between searching for a new home for my family, sculpting new rubber parts for the vintage motorcycles I restore, and my responsibilities at work... I've been focused on some of my paper craft designs. I've had to train myself to use some simple 3-D design software to be able to adequately produce project designs that will unfold into usable flat parts. You can see some of the designs I'm currently obsessed with. The design that is closest to completi0n is the "Kolywopter". A cross between steampunk and science fiction design. The majority of the model has been flattened into parts and even assembled as an actual model in real life. I still need to complete the engine nacelle, and the wings...

I'll post pictures of the Kolywopter later. But for now, here are the exploration sub and the eel powered lantern vehicle as designed in SketchUP. Ready for flattening into parts sheets.

Been thinking 'bout steampunk subs again...

Yep, mechanical things moving under deep water. After making a few more idle sketches here and there... I decided to plunge in and start building the model in Google SketchUp. I'll post that later. But for now, here's the latest little fishie-sub sketch.

StoryBoard Artwork

I was just recently working on some storyboards for a series of 15 second commercials. Now, obviously I can't show you the storyboards since the project is live. But here's a sample of one of the panels.

The panels were drawn quick and fast. I had to complete five storyboards (four to five panels each) within two days. Mostly black and white with some coloring to hi-light desired areas. It works out to ohhhh... about 30 minutes or so per panel.

After about 30 minutes... you have to go with whatever you've got and hope that you can come back to redo it later if you have time.

Stressful.. but fun in a panicked sort of way.

Notice how I artfully slipped a plug for my website into the focal area of the panel?

...smoooth...

10 minute sketch

I've been watching my 2 year-old daughter move about the house clutching a stockpiled bunch of plastic horses to her chest. She hordes them with jealous passion. It got so ridiculous to see all those horsie-legs poking out every which way that I had to take a few minutes and sketch the impression down.

Merry Christmas and all that

An interesting holiday season for me this year. I've been so busy with family and such that I haven't pressed any lead to paper or gripped a mouse or stylus at all. The demands of family can really impede on ones own narcissism. I did, however get an idea for a childrens book about flying sheep. Will do some drawings for that this week. 

Heather and I didn't have much money for presents this year but we managed to make things work out alright for Christmas morning. The highlight of the season for my oldest boy Jesse, however, was the discovery of a Lego crane set under some brightly-colored wrapping paper and bows. He's only 7, so the construction process was long and arduous. But I had fun helping him get the model built. He's been playing with it and yes... even sleeping with the thing day and night since Christmas.

Here's the "thankyouverymuch" video he sent to his grandparents. The other little monster you see in the video is his 2-year-old sister "Emmy".

 

Biomechanical robot project

This was a fun project. It was a concept that required two characters... a robot and a man. The robot represents the sophisticated systems and process of the clients specialized field and the fellow represents the clients service capabilities in that same field. They idea is that the systems robot half of the team is so advanced and powerful, that it can seem a daunting task to control. Like driving a souped up hot rod with a monster engine. Hence, the human "service" half of the team. This is the guy that helps us use the immense capabilities of the systems robot correctly.

Using the above mentioned description as a basis, I knew I needed to stay away from cute, simple, and diminutive. This robot needed to be smart, sophisticated, a little wild, and of course, it had to be _cool. I felt that it was important to keep the gender of the robot as neutral as possible. No curvaceously sexy, or overtly masculine body shapes.

What I ended up doing was creating a mechanical skeletal framework draped in luminescent wiring that was than all covered over with smokey, translucent plastic pieces. Suggesting the impression of a business suit. Pure white hands and solid bio-luminescent eyes help keep the robot just a bit unsettling. Which is precisely what we want. Finally, finish that off with a crown of fiber optic hair with glowing tips, and I think we've got an advanced, yet "hip" android.

I've included some of the robot concept sketches I went through that led to the final, approved sketch.

Another challenge about this particular project was that the client planned to make HUGE, high-rez prints of the robot, so the working file was rendered at one half of the actual size of a normal, full-sized human being.

The Photoshop file was monstrous. Approximately 1.5 gigs If I remember right. My 24" screen imac, running OS 10.5, handled the workload just fine though. The illustration was painted entirely in Photoshop 10 using a Wacom tablet.