A Comic About Druids

I just got done with a new WoW comic. Took me the better part of a day, but I'm definitely churning them out faster. I hope they don't dismiss this comic because there is a picture of a naked Tauren in it. It's not like you can see anything, his fat folds conceal everything. I hope you guys like it.

Delilah the Sorceress

I'm doing a new character. I also decided I want a magical theme to my demo reel so I'm gonna go in that direction. This character is gonna be a sorceress and I've done some concepts of it. I actually like the way it turned out, I still have to sure up the costume and the feel of the character.

A Splash More Yellow

Wow I haven't posted in forever. Any who, Here's an update on my business card design. The previous one was way too dark for print and I decided that the crazy cracks in the background are totally unnecessary. It's cleaner and has a better design, there are still more flaws I can iron out, but it's mostly there.

Business Card

Here's my attempt at making a business card, I'm not completely happy with it, but it's better than nothing. The one element I really like is the swirly fire/cloud, it looks neat and I'm satisfied with it.

I Shall Call Him Bubbles

I just submitted this month's entry to WoW comic contest. There's still a few things that bug me about it, but it's as good as it's gonna get. The gnome's hair and the water elemental I'm satisfied with so overall I think it's done well. Time to get to work on the next one.

Goat Boy

Here is a concept from one of the models I'm working on this semester. I've already done the image planes for him and started doing the low poly version. The face is looking good. A lot easier to do since I've had experience on doing low poly modeling from my previous classes. My instructor told me I had to work on my torso anatomy and I'm inclined to agree with him. Have to whip out the anatomy books and study them I suppose. He also mentioned something about goats having split hooves, but personally I think that's more of an artistic choice. I'll still probably end up putting split hooves on the model though.

I really want to work on my detailed high poly work since I have very limited experience in that area. I'll bring this guy in zbrush and try to make a nice normal map that way.

-Ray

WIP: Tiny Mage

This is from a WoW comic I'm working on. I really love how the pose turned out. The original pencil is so messy and crazy, but it really gave the drawing a flow that would otherwise not be there. The comic is through the pencil stage and I'm gonna ink it digitally like my last comic. I'm also working on another comic on top of this one, my cousin helped me come up with the concept for it, I might post some work in process of it too.

-Ray

Pretty Birds

In a futile attempt to delay having to do my homework I'm gonna post some more work I did from my previous semester. Here is a pretty tessellation I did for my final, my teacher said it wasn't a "true" tessellation, but I followed the instructions perfectly. I think she missed the fact that it not a translation tessellation it's a glide-reflect variety. I studied MC Escher's glide-reflects and got the technique of making them from my high school years. This is definitely a tessellation.

New Comic Friday

Here is a new comic I did for the wow comic contest I hope it doesn't get flat out rejected like my last one.

Departure

My cousins left SFO last night to return to the land of gumdrops AKA Germany. I didn't get a chance to wish them a proper farewell like I wanted because I was bedridden. Not that I was sick or anything I was just tired and lazy. I think I officially got one of them hooked on Battle Angel Alita. Speaking of which I now own the entire first series now. The last two books are from a different printing and look a bit odd with the others because they are smaller. I might just sell those and buy the right sized ones. I'm such a nut I can't stand it that my books are different sizes. I'll have to be more careful when I get the second series. I was feeling a bit of a kook this morning and I made this comic. It's got a ninja in it so it's awesome. Anything with a ninja in it automatically makes it awesome.
Tried a weird new style with this one and I'm still ironing out some of the kinks.

German Connection

Who would have guessed that I have extended family in Germany of all places. For the next three weeks we have two new guests living with my family. My cousins from German. They're pretty cool. Can't really say anything bad about family from over seas bearing gifts. I got chocolates and cologne, but out of the two I like the chocolates better. Cologne is great but I hardly find myself stepping out and saying to myself, "Damn, I stink! Let me slap on something to cover that BO."

This is a pretty pattern I did for my science of art class that I got an A- in.

Inspired by Butterflies

I did a flux advertisement for a class assignment about a week ago. It was for my Science of Art class. The piece is about how the cosmetic industry was using the unique way that Morpho Butterflies get their vibrant blue color to enhance make up. I like how the hair turned out, it's kinda sketch crazy. The wording could have used more work, but it wasn't that important to me at the time.

Banner

I finished a banner for a friend recently. It was actually a few weeks ago, but I hadn't remembered to post about it until now. It's for his website Dads4Sons.com it's an interesting website to say the least. Helps out my friend and made me some money so I didn't see anything wrong with it. Actually it was the first commission that I've done that's generated by this blog. He saw it a while ago and asked me to make the banner for him. It turned out extremely well. I'll post a cropped version here and if you wanna take a look at the larger version you can visit the site: www.Dad4Sons.com.

Of Pigs and Squiggly Things

I did two tessellations for my online class I'm gonna post them here for kicks. I love the pig one, I wasn't really trying to make a pig but it just kinda turned out that way. If I were to redo it I would probably give the piglets some more color in their cheeks and not add the back leg in. It would seem more like they're moving forward if both their front legs were visible. It would take lots of work to correct and I just plain don't feel like it right now. The other one is a rotation tessellation that's more abstract. I wanted to do a third one but I still have lots to do and I feel my energy getting low already.

Sinister

I've not been feeling well lately, even though I've been exercising lately. My apatite has been really low, well lower than usual. The last time I went to the family doctor the nurse weighed me and said that I lost some weight, there really isn't all that much to lose.

I decided to take another photo for my profile here, it's rather sinister looking, just the way I want. This is definitely not a photo for me to use for a dating service though, it has the potential to scare people away. Since I know nobody ever reads this blog anyway I don't really have anything to lose putting it here. I'm content to know that this is my personal journal for whatever I want to write about.

Everyone Loves Cherries

My friend, Zia, came over and she lent me her digital camera so I can do an assignment for my online class. I gotta get a camera soon, it's a disgrace for a 3D modeler/texture artist like me to not have one. We took pictures of hubcaps for the class it was an on the whim choice of subject matter, but it worked out well. I also got some photos of when we went cherry picking. Here's a good one of me.

WIP

Haven't posted anything in a long time, but with good reason (I always say that don't I?) In any case I haven't really had the energy to do much lately, been stuck in this dazed sort of funk. I have been working on two things though, a new comic and a drawing of the zombie cowgirl. It's not finished, so I'll refrain from posting it. Instead I'll post something that was rejected, it was a wine label design that the person who asked for it didn't like so they ended up not picking it. It's kinda abstract and not my best work, it's still charming in its own way.

A Good Birthday

It's been a long time since I posted, and an even longer time since I've done anything constructive. But I have my reasons. I stopped posting because it was finals around the middle of May. At the 28 of May I celebrated my birthday with my friends and family. We went cherry picking and had sushi. One of my better birthdays. It certainly sets the bar for how I will judge subsequent ones. I don't need any presents, just good company and they were. I got my favorite shoes dirty in the orchard and I don't even care. I'm gonna try really hard to work on models for my portfolio as it stands now I have a lot of free time I just hope I have the self control to not spend it all on wow.
Here's a concept drawing I did that got used as the base for the bar environment I made for my modeling/texturing class final:

Procrastinating

I have a ton of work to do and not much time to do it in, but for some reason I just feel like posting. Here are more concepts of Karen Blackwater. I like the one with the Poncho and Dagger.

Blackwater

I haven't posted in a while so I thought I'd share my latest project. It's an environment scene with a freaky western twist. It's the zombie version of the Wild West. Here's the drawing that inspired it:

I'll post more later when I have a bit more time. Working name for the figure is Karen Blackwater.

Job Hunting

I'm looking for some side jobs now, I think it's time. Dug around and hopefully I'll get something. Here are lots of example of my work.

Trying Out a New Background

I'm trying out this new background, it's a bit loud and ornate, but it'll do for now.

A Delicacy

I just finished a submitted a new comic to the new round of the WoW comic contest, I'm not holding back any punches this time. They will feel the full fury of my comic making skills! This time, I'm using techniques from Kazu Kibuishi, the creator of such great comics as Copper and Daisy Kutter. I don't yet share his wonderful sense of color design, but I'll just have to keep on trucking. Again, this time I use the knowledge of my previous comics to improve upon my latest one. Tell me if you notice a difference in quality.

Oh shit... I just notice some supertypos, even spelled my own name wrong! ARGH! This is what I get for staying up to do it. I'll fix it on my end, but it's too late to fix the version I already sent them, have to grin and bear it... sigh. The one on top as the fixes, the one on the bottom has the horrible typos.

More Comics to Come

My special edition Ipod arrived yesterday and I excitedly imported all the CDs I had (trust me it wasn't much). It certainly better than the bulky CD player I carried around. The package also included the complete Warcraft: Sunwell Trilogy, which I had fun reading as I waited for the songs to import. In the e-mail I got from Blizzard (I will work for this company one day I swear), they relayed that I could submit more comics and win again if I liked! This is great since I'm already half finished with penciling the next one. I also added a new banner of a ducky and lily pads at the bottom of the blog, isn't it cute?

Above is a sketch of Christian Bale that I did for a male figure study.

Drawing Cuties

I recently discovered the joys of watching Brothers and Sisters, the hit new ABC show. My favorite character is Kevin Walker portrayed by Matthew Rhys (Reece). I sat down and watched every episode, in fact, and is now officially enamored with the yummy star. In fact, I did a drawing of him, in color no less. Brothers and Sisters is the first thing in a long time to capture my attention and I actually stopped playing WoW to watch it, which is a testament to the greatness of the show. I'm glad to hear that they will be getting another season.

-Ray

In Other News

I won the comic contest! Yay, joy is me. Damn now I can't submit more comics to them. It was fun while it lasted, I regret not being more productive and making a crap load of comics and not posting here as much as I would like. I still have a few ideas for comics on my drafting board, maybe I'll finish them up.

Unexpected Business

Here's a screen shot on the environment I'm working on for my CG environment class. It's still in the super basic blocking out stage

In other news, I'm on spring break. In the meanwhile, I got a commission as rare as that is. I won't go into any details right now (I'll ask the client later if it's OK to publish the results here). However, if anyone needs a figurative artist for any commission work I welcome any chance to test my skills.

-Ray

The Pains of Slowness

I had my friend rebuild my computer, it runs fine except for one thing: he was out of ram. So for almost half a week now the damned thing has been sluggy as hell. And now I'm stuck in the labs on a computer that makes mines at home look like the Easter Bunny on coke. At least I got a stick of 512 mb ram in my backpack to upgrade my home computer with. However, there isn't much I can do about my current situation. I just have to suffer this until 6:30 and go to the zbursh workshop to get my project for tomorrow done. I have to get to posting more, but for now here's another concept sketch.

The Calm

I'm feeling the coming of a storm, its name is midterm. Only a few weeks before I have to sweep what I have done so far into something presentable (which is not much). Here's a sketch:

Third Time's a Charm

Ding ding ding I just submitted the third wow comic I did. As usual I will be posting it here early and here it is:I like the concept and I'm using some of the things I learned from the other comics, that really helped speed up the process and make it better than the other ones. The colors are vibrant and the forms are solid. The only problem I have with it is the hand in panel 2, it is kind of awkward and I didn't catch it during the refinement phase. Overall. I'm very happy with it and hopefully I'll finally win!

-Ray

Curses to Maya

Since Maya is being a royal bitch and is not letting me open 8.5 files on 8.0 I thought I'd be more active here and share some more of what I'm working on. Here's another perspective drawing for the Scrapyard.
This one got all smuggy but I thought I'd show it anyway. This part of the scrapyard is actually the arena and the setting is a near future where all the humans have died off and robots now run the show. The robots duke it out in the arena part of the scrapyard for supremecy as well as entertainment. I know that this is so very similar to the scrapyard from Battle Angel Alita, but I have a different vision. It's definitely more whimisical than the gritty scrapyard of Alita's world. I's say it's 80% whimsy and 20% gritty. The glowing cube suspended by the stick in the picture is an idea that my teacher said I should look into. Something along the lines of knowing the robot version of what a head on a stick is. I came up with a data cube that's been completely magnetized so that all it's data is destroyed.

The Scrapyard

I'm working on a scrapyard environment for my CG environments class. It's the "hard" class for this semester, hopefully I actually get something cool by the end of it. I'm kinda scared though because it's the 4th week already and we haven't even started modeling yet. We've been doing a ton of preproduction though, and I guess that doesn't hurt. Here is a sketch for the class.

A Little Time

It's the third week of school and I have been neglecting my posting again. Good news though I'm almost 70 on my mage, woot! I'm currently 69 and 1/3 hehe. I'm so close to spellsteal and a flying mount I can taste it. That's probably the biggest reason I haven't been posting or drawing. School have ignited my drawing again as it tends to do so here's a thumbnail sketch. I'll go into more detail of it as I post more drawings about the environment I'm doing.

Caught in a Rut

I'm caught is a tangled web. It's name is the WoW expansion pack: The Burning Crusade! Curse you why do you have to be so gosh darn fun! I haven't gotten anything done that I said I would. I also haven't been posting worth a damn. Oh well here's some more environmental sketches to look at.

Back in Business

OK computer is up and reconfigured and if I'm lucky I'm looking at a more powerful machine soon. Here's a quick doodle of a scene I just made up out of the blue.
It's lacking something but I cant put my finger on it.

I'm working on a drawing that I really like at the moment, it really shows off what I was able to pick up in ecroche class, but I prefer not to scan works in progress as doing that tend to throw me off, but I'll be sure to share the finished product.

-Ray

The Reason for Silence

Well it finally happened, I don't mean me going completely crazy cus that happened a long time ago. I mean my computer caught something bad and cut me off from my daily daily. This also wiped my buffer of work I scanned and did for the blog. I'll have to do that work all over again. In the meanwhile I'll just have to keep it going without posting pics with my posts. It's a real pain to have to reinstall and reconfigure my computer again, oh woe is me.

Here's a design I did for a friend, it seems like he's not gonna use it though so I have no problem with posting it here. It's still quite unrefined.