A Few Current Projects

My new year’s resolution is to stay back on top of this blog once again!

I’ve have been working on a lot of stuff lately, some of it which I cannot show unfortunately. However, here are a few projects that I am working on right now. The whale is a character that I designed for a friend on mine. After I create the maquette for him, Jessica Dunbar will be modeling him. In turn, she is creating character concept art for me to model! It’s a fun project so far. We are hoping to create a final render with both characters in a scene, as they will be from the same world. We shall see how it goes!

The polar bear model is close to being done. He doesn’t have any teeth or a tongue yet. Originally, he was going to be for a Christmas tree ornament at work, as we have a 3D printer. I didn’t really get it done in time though. Maybe I can have him printed for next year! He was modeled in Maya and then I brought him in to zBrush to do the fur.

The Autumn Dragon is complete at long last! Photos will be coming soon! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and happy new year!

More Autumn Tree Dragon

I thought I would post some progress since I haven’t updated in a while. Here are some photos of him before and after the textures. I am still refining the texture a bit more, as well as the shapes of the branches. The final piece will include leaves too as well as a fully detailed base. Still tweaking the pose a bit too, not 100% happy with it. Comments are welcome!

I’ve been working a lot in Maya lately, learning more about modeling and texturing. I am hoping to have more to show soon. I want to finish my model of Dezzi as well as my Heman/Battle Cat zBrush piece. But I will also be modeling the Tree Dragon. It’s going to be a huge project involving some of my coworkers. Mike Corinella has been so kind as to agree to rigging him. Then, I just have to bribe someone else to get him animated. I am really excited about that.

I have really been enjoying working digitally since I started using Maya more. Surprisingly, I like it a lot better than zBrush. I am still waiting to work with zBrush 3.5 though. zSpheres look like they make so much more sense now to us traditional sculptors.

Autumn Spirit

Once again, work has taken over my life. I love my job, but I haven’t had the time to work on my own stuff as much as I’d like to lately. I’ve also been lacking a lot of motivation for it. I feel like I’ve lacked direction since I got back from SDCC. There are so many options and I don’t know what to go with.

SO, I decided to do a little art for me to ground myself. Some of you may remember the forest spirit I did a few years back. One of my coworkers told me I should do a series of them representing the different seasons. Since the equinox is coming up, I decided to do an autumn spirit. I’ve done some concept sketches and built the armature. He’s going to have a bunch of maple leaves on him.

Also, I did a sculpture for our online stuff at work. I was working off a character design by one of my coworkers, Mike Sanborn. He’s a mad scientist type guy, he was fun to make.

More to come eventually!

Battlecat zBrush Progress

I’ve been busy with work since I got back from SDCC. We are getting ready to go online with our class so there is much to be done. I am still working on my own stuff too though, just haven’t had the time to get a post together.

My current project is a pair of zBrush sculpts featuring He-Man and Battlecat. Here is some progress of Battlecat. He is still pretty rough, but I am moving a lot faster with it than my last zBrush sculpt. I had a big fight with zSpheres on this one. I probably redid the zSphere configuration 6 times! But I learned a lot about zSpheres so it’s all good I am excited for zBrush 3.5 to come out this month. zSpheres2 looks amazing and I am looking forward to playing with it.

I have also have a sculpture I am doing for work for an online tutorial. It is a mad scientist character created by one of my coworkers. I should have photos of that pretty soon. He’s totally out of my style, super cartoony. I really love working off of someone else’s artwork!

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been doing work with Joy & Tom Studios, learning cool new stuff about molding, casting, and production. I have an opportunity to help out with some pretty big projects so that’s really exciting! The artists Joy and Tom are a pair of awesome people, very talented and helpful. I am really happy to be working with them.

Finally, my book is coming back to life again slowly. I am really hoping to have it done for SDCC next year.

Thanks for watching, people. I’ll be around

Comic Con 2009

This was my first time at San Diego Comic Con and I was totally blown away! So much to see, so much to do, so many people to meet! I attended the con all 5 days and I felt like I had JUST enough time to get everything done. And I still missed out on some panels and meeting/talking with some people. Good times were had. San Diego is a beautiful city with some of the best food I’ve ever had. I got to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I will be doing everything in my power to be attending again next year.

I had the honor of meeting so many people including the Shiflett brothers, who are two of the most awesome people I’ve ever met! I had the honor of having my portfolio critiques by the very talented Clayburn Moore. I chatted with one of my sculpting heroes, Damon Bard, which was amazing. I met a bunch of other awesome artists too such as Paul Komoda, Rachel Young, Justin Ton, Jordu Schell, and many others. I got to see Miss Monster too, but not nearly as much as I would have liked to. I spoke with people at Mezco, Gentle Giant, Hasbro, Sota Toys, Kotobukiya, Shocker Toys, and Symbiote Studios. I dropped off portfolios, business cards, postcards, and Wolvie busts. Networking was a lot of fun and I feel like I learned a lot.

I also met someone from a local studio Joy and Tom Studios just 30 minutes from my house. Small world! I dropped by their place yesterday to look at the studio and I am going to be doing some work with them soon helping with castings and such.

I am a lifelong nerd. What I am nerdy over has been ever changing throughout my life. But I ALWAYS appreciate a well made action figure. The Wonder Twins by Mattel are one of the coolest sets I’ve seen in a while. The packaging makes lights and sounds!

I also picked up one of these awesome models from anatomytools.com! I’ve been wanting something like this for a while, what great reference material!

My Yokaiden sculpture on display at the Del Ray booth. Nina and her publisher Dallas were kind enough to do this. Next to my sculpt is a custom Lumi made by one of Nina’s friends. The sculpture looked so great in this case, the lighting was perfect.

The book signing went great with 90 signed copies of Yokaiden given out to con goers. Each book had one of the postcards I made stuck inside. Another nice thing Dallas did! What great people!

This was probably the most amazing sculpt I saw at the show. This is The Godfather done by Toynami. The likeness and attention to detail are just amazing!

Downtown San Diego is full of large sculptures. This one was super reflective. My husband, Nina, and myself are reflected here.

If you want to see more photos from Comic Con, check out my husband’s Flickr stream.

Comic Con has been very inspiring for me but very overwhelming too. Since I’ve gotten back from California, I’ve been stuck at a big fork in the road. There’s so many paths I can take, so many things I can do. I am trying to hone in and figure out where I want to go next. Since so many companies told me they do almost all their work digital or are headed that way, I want to dive into 3D now that Comic Con is over. I am also planning on attending Siggraph next year so I would like to have some work to show there.

Thanks for being patient with my blog and art updates. I am starting to get back into life here. You will hear from me again in the hopefully not too distant future.

SDCC Here I Come!

I am off to San Diego Comic Con tomorrow, woo hoo! I will be there throughout the length of the convention.

While I do not have a table this year, be sure to stop by the Del Ray/Randomhouse booth (1128) on Saturday the 25th from 3-3:30pm to get your own FREE copy of Yokaiden. Artist Nina Matsumoto will be there signing books and displaying my Yokaiden sculpture. We’ll have postcards there as well, while supplies last. I am going to do my best to be around there at that time, so long as I am not getting in Nina’s way

I will also be at the Shifletts’ sculpting panel on Friday evening. Let me know if you will be there as well. I really want to meet as many people as possible.

See you when I get back, I already have plenty of projects lined up, including getting back to the production of my book.

Last Week!

I can’t believe that Comic Con is next week already! My husband and I are finishing up the Wolverine casts this week. He’s been doing the casting and power sanding, and I’ve been doing sanding by hand, patching, and painting. I always forget how much work casting is.

Here is a photo of the mess that is our kitchen table. The casts are so strange looking…like hardened mucus! I usually use a plastic that cures opaque white!

SDCC Home Stretch

Just over two weeks left before I head out to San Diego. I’ve been getting all my work done on schedule, and I should be good to go with a little time to spare before I get on a plane on the 22nd (at 6:30am, much to my dismay!)

The Wolverine casts are coming along nicely! Unfortunately, the metal powder wasn’t working out and I don’t have the time/money to experiment with it right now. My husband has been casting these for me since I am super allergic to the casting resins when they are in liquid form. So that makes it even harder to experiment when I am shouting instructions from the other side of the house! Anyways, we went with plain resin and I’ve been painting them up to look like pewter. It is working out well. I’ll have some photos of the Wolverine army later on, haha. I have some photos of the unpainted casts too, they look so weird.

I printed out some test samples of the box packaging I did for these and that looks nice too. I should have a nice little package to give out when it’s all done! Today I finished up the last of my portfolios. I did 50 total, 5 of which I gave out to a few people already. The other 45 are coming with me to SDCC.

Yokaiden Madnessss!

Dimensions : 6.5″w x 11″h x 8.5″d

I have been working non-stop getting ready for comic-con. It’s just a few weeks away now. I head out on the 22nd. I just finished up the Yokaiden sculpture. Man, it was a lot of work! But I am happy with the result. This was SO far out of my style, and I really loved the challenge. Check out the original illustration that I based this sculpture on. Some things were tweaked, but I largely followed the drawing bit for bit.

For those of you that don’t know, Yokaiden is an awesome manga by buddy Nina Matsumoto. Pick up a copy today. You won’t be disappointed. Nina was very helpful and accommodating during the creation of this sculpture so many thanks to her!

If you are going to be attending Comic Con on Saturday, be sure to drop by the RandomHouse/Del Ray booth (1128) to get your copy of Yokaiden signed by Nina. You can also check out my sculpture in person at that same table. The signing will be from 3-3:30pm.

Also, I will be toting some postcards promoting this sculpture as well as Nina’s manga. Vistaprint.com is great for last second, small run postcards. Just ordered them up today on priority shipping.

Had a few snags with the Wolverine casts, but my husband and I are back to work on the tonight. Gonna go do that now!

Yokaiden Update

I am getting close with this! The basket still needs some more texture work. I still need to finish up the little paper umbrella guy who is going to be hiding out behind the skull. I couldn’t leave the back empty! I will probably put another frog or two back there too. And of course everything still needs to be refined and smoothed. I love how this is coming together!