Future City (imaginative huh?)

Ive been trying to put into practice some of the techniques I learnt from my DMP course.  This was a development of a thumbnail I was fond of.. for some reason.

The Internet and the Artist

Ive had some thoughts niggling at the back of my mind with regards to social network and art. I appreciate the irony of posting this on a blog site but bear with me.

Recently I got caught up with the sudden explosion of drawcrowd and duly set up an account like every other artist on the planet it seemed. At once It felt like one too many ‘platforms’ for me. I felt almost ashamed to be another cog in the "look at me" art community. People seem to want to do great work in order show it off and get ‘props’ and ‘kudos’ rather than to develop their skills. Im certainly not immune to this criticism, I wish I could claim the moral high ground. I understand exposure is all part of the package especially when you are freelancing, but more is not necessarily better. If I was freelancing the last place I’d want to put my stuff is where there are countless other artist that are either better, cheaper, or more unique a mere click away.

Look at the sudden emergence of 'spitpainting'. People seem to want to crank out quantity over quality. Ive seen good competent artists clog up their folios with tonnes of this stuff. Sure it’s great to spark an idea you wouldn't have thought of otherwise to work up at a later date. But take time and enjoy the process. Worthwhile art takes time.

Then there is another angle. There is just so much great art it can almost be discouraging and certainly, to me at least, upsets my focus on what I do and what I want to achieve. Don't get me wrong I enjoy looking at a great artists site or blog and deconstructing and learning their processes. It’s the breadth of work that overwhelms me. All different all great and all contradicting one another, like I say. It clouds my mind. I’m in the process trying to reign it all in. of course you need some presence and its useful for professional networking but there has to be a limit. It's hard as every artist wants some validation or encouragement but I just find all the other baggage that comes with can make it counterproductive for me.

I guess the only thing I can do is be honest with myself as to why I'm producing this piece of art. Is it conveying an idea? Is it developing me in some way? Or is it for vanity, which is fine from time to time. We all need a little pick me up now and again.

Matte Paint - The Sentinels

Here's my latest Matte paint.  More concept and painting in this one than the pontoon DMP I did.  I could probably do with beefing up the texture on the structures but I just haven't found the textures.

Matte Paint - Pontoon Village

I've decided to get on a learning binge this year. Fortunately my work paid for me to do a Matte painting course over at CGSociety with Blizzards David Luong.  Here's my first complete* matte paint.

Matte painting certainly makes me look again and the way I work and indeed my perception of what art for the entertainments industry is. I tried to be controlled in the fact I used photos and minimal freehand painting.  I think the real value for me will be when I use these techniques as a launch pad for concept art.

*complete until I decide to change it

Toy Story - Pixel Art

This was fun, just a small distraction from other stuff

Creature Concept

I'd like to break this down and tell you what exactly its a concept of but in all honesty it was just a bit of fun in Z Brush then spruced up a bit in Photoshop

This was my first attempt at painting IN Z brush. My next step for Z brush is to get me some better materials or a better renderer.

You've got red on you - Pixel Art

Thought I'd try and do something productive today

Ghostbusters - Pixel Art

I enjoyed my one yesterday so thought I'd do another.  They are so damn addictive.  I'll have to get back to doing some proper work at some point.

Back to the Future - Pixel Art

It's been a little while since I did any of these.  I always meant to do a Back to the Future one.  A nice low maintenance piece to do.

 

An Old Pal

I was stuck for something to work on so I decided to work up an old concept I stumbled across.  Doesn't quite have the lines and angles of the concept but still maintains the forlorn attitude. Lesson learnt from this exercise is to be more daring and push it more at the sculpt stage

Concept - Organic Armour

More experimenting with getting z brush into my work flow. The design could be alot better and cleaner but its still early days.

Design and Work flow

So I thought I'd get some more mileage out of this bad boy.  I thought I'd add a design sheet as well as a really topline workflow image.

The DEEEEPP!!!

 I wanted to have a go at some creature design using the multitude of techniques I have at my disposal.  The first image is a quick image board of reference and inspiration.  Then there is some quick thumbnail generation which explore design and and shape.  I then roughly modelled it in 3D max and exported it to Z Brush (the model of which I'll post a little later) to flesh out the design and continue to make further design decisions.  Lastly I use that Z brush model as a base to a digital painting.  I'm sure I'll keep tweaking it and eventually ruin it but here it is as it stands.

LG - Pan Redesign

Just another pass at the character design for 'Pan'.  Just trying to fine tune proportions and silhouette.

Okay I need to do something concepty and more gritty :)

LG - Awakening of the Titans

This is a first attempt at marrying Z-brush and 2D painting.

First Zee-Brush concept

Okay, so this is kinda crappy but I'm just getting into 'Zee-brush'.  Im trying out 3d concepting, this time a design of a elemental titan.  I'm compositing it into a pic I'm working on so it's really a base to work from at this stage.

The Creeper - Vehicle concept

Here's the result of a recorded demo I did.  It was about 45 mins start to finish.  I had NO idea what I was going to come up with at the start so this is pretty cool.  Not quite as polished as the last one.

The Gryphon - Vehicle Concept

A work up I did for a recorded presentation, find out once I had finished it, only 15 mins recorded.  Fun though, took about and hour and a half with faffing about.

New Website

Here's the link to my revamped website

www.jasonpickthall.com

Some thoughts from the Trojan Unicorn was a Horse [sic] event

I'm currently sat on the plane on the way home from an art and vfx conference absurdly named Trojan horse was a unicorn.... naturally.

The 4 day event was a mixture of technical talks and lectures as well as more informal workshop style presentations.  All the big hitters were present and correct. ILM, check, pixar, check.  You get the idea.  There were also some well respected individuals the more famed of which were Raphael Lacoste, Loic Zimmermann, Aaron Mcbride and Scott Ross.

As well as sharing their techniques and approaches there was plenty of opportunity to take 5 or more minutes with them to chat or to get some feedback on your portfolio. This seemed like too good of an opportunity to turn down so after some hastily grabbed some work from my dropbox folder I went- a-hunting, ipad in hand.

I shared a beer with Kemp Remillard ( http://www.kempart.com/kawp) from Massive Black whilst he poured over my work offering me his thoughts. I got on good terms with the very awesome Justin Goby Fields (http://www.justinfields.com/), who again, was cool enough to review my stuff.  So too did Loic Zimmerman (http://loiczimmermann.com/) and Dan Luvici (http://www.danluvisiart.com/). Thankfully the advice they gave were just tiny tweaks here and there so my ego came away pretty unscathed.  It did give me some food for thought though on modern day approach to concept art.  It's essentially summed as this:

Use every dirty trick in the book to make your design look as good as its can.  

This isn't supposed to sound cynical.  Its still takes an eye for design and a skill in application to make something look great otherwise everyone would be doing it. What i mean is that use 3D models, z brush models, photo bases, photo textures anything at your disposal, to give the best look in the shortest time frame.

If you want to be an art purist then production design in games and film is not the place for you.  There are no prizes for artistic integrity and painting everything from scratch.  No one cares how you got to the end result.  The ends justify the means. Now if you'll excuse me i'm off to brush up on my 3d and z-brush