Background Design

An advancement of one of my earlier value paintings for

Background Design and Environments.

I'm rather fond of my graveyard.  The original graveyard was completely revamped due to massive non-awesomeness, and now if you look reeeeeaaaaally close, you can find a zombie near the church.  I'd like to keep working on my tree, especially the canopy.  It just doesn't have much personality or style.  Certainly not deserving of an awesome, zombie filled graveyard.

Still, its one of my most complicated B&W's so far!



Maya Predictions

No, it isn't the end of the world!  But it *is* a fabulous computer program for 3D modeling!  Getting the hang of it rather quickly, I dare say.  Perhaps there is a 3D artist in me yet?

HD720 standard format, FTW!

Below are some of my first Maya produced works, children's block toys.  Take a close look and you'll find numbers 1-6, as well as the letters K, A, Y, C, I, and E.  Hmmm... could it be coincidence?

*wink wink*

The first is the simple shaded structure after building and repositioning my toy blocks.

An upside down view.  I realize the numbers are upside down in the right-side up views, but I'm an upside down kinda person.  Who wants to be entirely right-side up?  Not me!

The following are right-side up, from five different built in camera angles and three light sources.  Two area lights, one above and moderate, one below and generalized.  One spotlight to give a really nice *POW* to its presentation.

My Minion! My preciousssss!

Behold!  My Flash, "nested" animation minion!

Flash is, in my limited experience, an entirely new animal in the animation world.  A few bumps and bruises along the way, but learning many new tricks, and looking forward to advancing!



Value Studies

A few of my value paintings, no line work in these puppies!  The original photos are included where I used them.  The dots are my used values, I tried to use as few as possible for my first studies.  It took perhaps 30 minutes each.

I'm rather enjoying Background Design, and painting via the Wacom.  Feeling rather spoiled, in fact.

Below are my first independent studies, still with limited values.  Being a little playful, if minimalistic.  To design the environment or background, I'm trying to relay something of the story without being overpowering with details just yet.

Working from a combination of genres, including horror and fantasy.

These are some of my more intense value studies, and they are absolutely fascinating to build from scratch.  (One is from a photo reference, but I'm afraid I've lost the original file, my apologies.)  I'm looking into reference material to make improvements, but I'm delighted with my "tree in the graveyard" study, continued from my simpler studies above.  Working subtle visual faces into the waterfall to give it a scarier surface feeling.

I've abandoned the limited values in pursuit of a more painterly realism and textures.