3d into Paintings - Steampunk Style

The Trogger Lawyer

I'm really quite pleased with how I did this sketch. I really should do stuff like this more often. I like the painted style. This is an older piece I did for my Legends from the Void project. He looks to me like a lawyer, doesn't he.

Vision in So-Called Sanity

Abstract - Feelings in Blue

I've not really done much in the way of abstract art, but after looking through the plethora of Photoshop brushes that I have I decided to try out some of the watercolor brushes and some grunge brushes. I really liked it. It's not really representative of anything. It has no real meaning, except perhaps the fun of painting.

The Depths of Dispair

This is an illustration I did when I was going to art school and was going through one of the most difficult times of depression I've ever gone through in my life. Every aspect of the picture, virtually all the details have a symbolic meaning of some kind. And yet as dire as depression can get there's always the fight to climb the steep stairway toward the light.

There's sometimes a dark side to our minds, and a torment, when our brain malfunctions and tries to destroy ourselves, or at least my bipolar brain - you may be telling me 'speak for yourself' haha. Ok, so MY brain goes into despair at times and torments me in the black darkness of the dungeons of my inner soul. Yet deep down, somewhere in my heart, a hero, a part of my creative self, fights a battle toward the light.

I could go on about the goblins in my mind, brought on by the misfiring sysnapses and a strange brew of messed up chemicals the bipolar causes in the head. Or maybe they're cyber lemmings eating away at the brain cells then leaping out my ears to their death. Whatever. I know it's something like that. And before you say it, no I am not on drugs, except by doctor's prescription. Finding the right doctors is hard though. Actually I'm just naturally weird and have an even weirder sense of humor. Still this is one of the few art pieces I've done that represents my inner struggle with depression. And I fairly decent self-portrait too.

Blast from the Past

Wow, I just found this painting that I did back in 1998. This was one of my first decent paintings done completely digitally, that is, completely on the computer from start to finish. I haven't done a full painting like this in a very, very long time. I've been focusing my attention on comic art and 3d art. Still, this goes back to the days when I was really into illustration and people like Drew Struzan, the famous movie poster painter who did all my favoritist (is that a word? I think I'll make it one) illustrator artist type personage. Sorry, I lost my thought. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Drew did my favoritist posters for all the Star Wars movies. Check out these Star Wars posters and see if you agree with me.

So I was really into Drew and other scifi illustrators. That was before I got sucked into the world of webcomics. Still, it might be fun to try to do another fully painted, um, painting, or fully illustrated, painterly work of artistness. Or whatever. Something without the comic inked lines.

3d Comic Strip Test

This is a test for doing a 3d comic strip. Typically 3d comics are very challenging to do. It's a big challenge to get the subtle expressions and keeping the character from looking lifeless. So my goal here was to create a mock up of what a comic strip might look like. I have no story or anything but I thought it would be a fun challenge to do something that's so rarely done well. I think a big problem with it was that the character is too realistic.

Realistic characters cause are problematic for a comic strip that's supposed to have humor. According to Scott McCloud's excellent book, "Understanding Comics", the more cartoony a character, the more we put ourselves in that character. For example, Charlie Brown is very easy to identify with because he's so simple and like a smiley face. We can see ourselves in him. If he had been a realistic character we'd see him as another person, harder to identify with. It's like seeing a photo of a person - we immediately see them as a distinct person. On the other hand when we see a very cartoony character like a smiley face we don't distinguish them as a distinct individual. When we see a smiley face it's easy to see ourselves in it. At least that's the theory. So then if you want your readers to identify with a character more, then make her more cartoony. If you have characters you don't want the reader to identify with, make them more real. Again, that's the theory and just explaining it makes my head hurt.

Even so, I think I was fairly successful at this attempt at making a believable character. Another example of a 3d character, and a more manga inspired cartoony character, is the following.

Click on it to see it full size. I really like how the expressions came out. Of course, the pink girl's pose is a little painful to look at. That's what I get for using a stock pose for a quick result. I wanted to spend more time with the custom expressions. The costumes are something I bought off Daz 3d that I thought had kind of a cool Trekkie look to them. I especially like the "phaser" design they're holding. The only thing is that they have the body of a 25 year old, and the faces of a teenager. That's because I was trying to make their faces cute and cartoony in a manga style. But I think I should have not gone quite so far with it. Even so I think it was a good start. Something I'm very interested in doing is an interactive comic. This was an experiment to see how well that might work. It's still a possibility assuming I can come up with a story I like.