Wrapit!

Andrew Kincaid's model based on my concept is used as a sample image for the Wrapit plugin for 3dmax!

http://www.matt-clark.co.uk/wrapit/pic.php?o=171

Andrew Kincaid's model from my concept!

So here it is! After some months of working on it on his spare time, my good friend and amazing artist Andrew Kincaid modeled my dungeon master character:

Latest Painting

So this is a piece I have been working on Lately. It was done personally but also served as a an entry into a themed exhibition (or art event, rather - kind of an auction thing) organized by Innovate Baltimore and the Baltimore Love Project. The theme I was to interpret was "Innovate Love". I could explain my idea, but I often find the most interesting thing is to let people make up their own minds about what it means - some of my friends have come up with pretty cool stuff.
The piece is Oil on Canvas, 36" by 24". I did most of it with the palette knife; I wanted a very textural feel. It was a challenge, since I haven't painted in oils in a very long time (years). I started with a digital sketch to get a sense of the general color palette, composition, and concept. I highly recommend this if you want to get a quick preliminary idea. Doing this, though, did remind me that digital painting can teach you a lot about color, but nothing about mixing oil paint. In the end it was a pretty malleable process; I didn't want to stick to the sketch too closely so as to let the painting breathe, but I wanted to keep the general elements of the picture the same. I'll post the digital sketch as soon as I find it.
Cheers.

head anatomical sculpt

Just a quick zbrush study of the head in three layers - bone, flesh and skin.

More sketchbook stuff.

So here are a bunch of sketches from Dr. Sketchy's sessions and some studies. Finally got around to scanning this stuff.

A lot of them are quick 1 or 2 minute poses. Some others are 5 minutes. I think there might be a 10 somewhere too. I'm trying to approach these a bit differently as I go. Some are more movement oriented, some more abstract, and some more carefully measured. I don't like being dictated by just one way of observing - it's more fun that way.

Dojo

So here is a little quick piece I started on my Nintendo DS, on a program called Colors, which is awesome. It's pretty much like a mega-reduced photoshop. Great for quick ideas or studies. Anyway, I took it onto full-fledged photoshop and finished it there. Once again I am focusing more on color than anything else. I find that I need to do this every now and then, for some reason. I do some tightly rendered piece, and then move back to a completely loose, quick one. For this piece in particular, I had very specific colors in mind from the very beginning. I wanted to use red and green as the main colors by using mostly purple and blue to give them more importance. Red and green tend to work the best for me as complementaries. Here are the wip's.

Awoken

So here is another piece I did recently. I think of it as some sort of undead catacombs ruler. It started as a concept for a friend of mine that's modeler at Firaxis (where I work). I then realized the spectrum deadline was approaching, so I decided to finish it in time to submit it. What ensued was a crazy-ass couple of days where I didn't get enough sleep, seeing as how I also had to prepare for teaching a class that same deadline day. I may get back into it, I may not. Here are some wip's:


And Done. Added spirits coming out of his staff of souls, drapery in the background, and there you have it.

Resolved a staff idea, added an aged carpet, and put some splatter here and there to give it more of a sense of history. I wanted this place to feel like it's not been cared for much, since it's in a dungeon sort of environment.


I then focused on the background. I wanted it to have hard, sharp shapes to emphasize the character of this guy. I also tried to come up with a staff idea, but it sucked, since I wasn't sure if I wanted it to be a head on the end or not (stupid idea).


For the modeler's sake, I kept the robe on a layer and clarified the armor some.





I then moved onto fleshing out some of the main shapes I wanted, especially in his armor.


I wanted a "creepy ruler" sort of figure. A throne seemed like a fitting idea. God ol' red and green complementary palette.