The Innsmouth Look

Inspired by HP Lovecraft's description of 'The Deep Ones', this is my own take on the ever popular Innsmouth Look. These are hybrid human's who, as they age, get consumed by fish or frog-like features and seep back into those murky waters of Innsmouth. Little creepy for my tastes so he has a bit of my weird spin on it.

This was sculpted in Zbrush 4 R2, rendered in Zbrush 4 R2 and composited in Photoshop. Although it's been awhile since I used purely Zbrush to composite out a render, the process has improved a tonne using BPR. No more accidently shifting things, forgetting focal settings, painting in cast shadows etc. Just render separate passes and plug into Photoshop. It feels as if it's not a hack anymore but a focused streamlined process that more and more people are taking advantage of. Fun indeed.

Happy Halloween!

A Wicked Witch done just in time for Halloween. Done in Zbrush, decimated and bought into Maya for rendering. Zbrush 4 R2 mind you, and I really like the new features. I even accidently created fabric rips using the new feature Dynamesh. You can mess up topology and Dynamesh will 'sew' it back up making it look like a tear. That's my top tip. yeah.

More renders and blab after the jump. I will also post a video turnaround in future I'm sure.

The Karate Kid Painting Montage

Going through my hard drives made me stumble on some old WIP files of my Karate Kid painting I did awhile back. What a joy it was too.

Although I still watch the movie on a religious basis, artistically it was the European Masters exhibition held at the NGV last year that really made me want to stick with this painting - it was a study.

It was a real privilege to see such works at that exhibition - but what amazed me was the artists' richness, variety and control in their darks - things you'd never notice on crumby scanned or photographed images on the internet. Works like this one by Edgar Degas were one of many inspirations for the Karate Kid painting that I should credit in the video above.

Hope you enjoy it anyway!

'The Big Squeeze' for Fountain Sauces

Fountain's latest campaign is now live and on the airwaves! If you haven't seen it already, check out the video above.

I was lucky enough to work with director Stephen Watkins of XYZ Studios on the CG animation advertisement. Cute!

Fittingly, I worked on the old, cranky Salt and Sugar shakers who, like me, have a problem with young punk tomatoes running amok. You've been warned tomatoes, you've been warned.

iPad Painting from Live Model and video

Keeping things fresh by changing the process for this one. Colour is one of my favourite subjects and I saw a technique by Jeff Watts where he'd first lay down 'abstract notes of colour" - ie anything he feels like. I guess it harks back to Harley Brown's book where he talks about making sure you aren't timid about your painting from the get-go.

Mucking up the painting up from the start did relax me, I must admit, but since it was on the iPad there was always a thought in the back of my mind that I could undo this. So...not as brave as I could have been.

The video of the process is below. I firstly did a sketch before a 2 hour live model session and scanned it in, Placed it on a layer, and went ahead.

Done with the Brushes App.

Modern Game Art: Weapons with Jon Rush - CGWorkshop

Jon Rush gave a workshop on "Modern Game art weapons". There were buttons clicked I didn't even know existed. As you can tell, it was a fun course. Highly recommend it!

Seascape Plein Air with iPad inc video

Yet another iPad finger painting using the Brushes App which STILL remains the most responsive and simplest painting app out there.

People often ask me about the glare off the screen. Although, yes, it does exist, if you crank up the brightness to max and paint under some shade there really isn't any problem. Which got me in thinking, how great this thing will be for night plein airs with a back lit screen? Next time perhaps.

Hope you enjoy the video process too.