April - Day 2

Got a base gun down and 3 iterations. Trying to really focus on cobbled together odds and ends scrapped together and welded on.

~2 hours

Wasteland Survivors

A study of a few characters in the theme of Fallout using reference concept art as a base.

April's daily art challenge - Day 1

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not that inventive i know… but it counts!

I was inspired by Peet and Riot's recent daily art challenge for the month of March so we started one up at the studio for April.

Had time before class today for a 30 minute sketch - the theme being "Vehicle" and the tags being "Electricity" and "Hover"

Cya GDC

Other than sleep deprivation and a 14 hour flight delay this GDC has easily been my favorite. Was a pleasure seeing so many old friends while making some new ones. 

Got a good stack this year around. Time to officially retire my 5 year old card design with all its many terrible flaws.

Now time to triage business cards!

...Or just play more "Out There" on my iPad...

A view from Andrew's roof. His apartment was a life saver. 

Speedpaint - "Spy" "Confident"

Done for Concept Art Sessions - a website that gives you various topics and tags and holds you to a strict time limit.

Topic: "Scene"

Tags: "Spy" "Confident"

Time: 1 Hour

Color profiles are wreaking havoc on this darker picture. By the time I got color reference and a perspective grid laid out I had 50 minutes left. 

Speedpaint - "Antigravity + Nuclear"

Done for Concept Art Sessions - a website that gives you various topics and tags and holds you to a strict time limit.

Topic: "Scene"

Tags: "Antigravity" "Nuclear"

Time: 1 Hour

If I could spend more time on it I would have elected to tighten up the cooling steam coming out of the tower. That's what bugs me the most.

GDC14 - 2 Weeks

Just a quick update - I will be at GDC, let me know if you want to do lunch or catch up!

I will be updating the mech 3D print when things get warm enough for me to touch it up and paint it. Things turned out quite well if i do say so myself, but it needs a lot of dremel love. Such is the state of the art i'm afraid :(

3D Printing a Mech using the Makerbot Replicator 2X - Part 1

Around April of 2013 we started throwing around a game idea that involved bear-esque super giant death mechs. While the idea was ultimately scrapped for a variety of very good reasons, one mech was already loosely modeled in 3D. Over the next few months in free time around rendering we decided to print out 3 sets of pieces for 7" models. 

Here is a chronicle of the first few trial and error steps we took through our most complicated print yet.

We used the Makerbot Replicator 2X with standard software and stock plastic - but as you can probably tell we didn't have enough time to 100% devote ourselves to trouble shooting issues that came up. Some are obvious user error, but many are just weird 'hauntings' that i have no way of explaining!

Hopefully these issues can help somebody out somewhere!

"Bear Mech" Concept

Here is where I first learned that mech orthos look super wonky. Only when it was posed more naturally in 3D did I stop second guessing myself. 

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Upper Torso

Upper Torso Print Attempts 1-3

The chest blocks were printed all at once and were duplicated within Makerware. The right print was almost perfect except for the tessellation seam in the front. The other two left out complete sections of geometry and made weird slices seemingly at random.

Upper Torso Print Attempts 1-3

Another angle...

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Arm Cannon, Hip Block and Head

Arm Cannon, Torso and Head

The right arm cannon, head and hip bock all printed without issues.

Arm Cannon, Torso and Head

Another angle -

A third flawless hip block was printed off a day after this - When the rocket launcher prints were attempted.

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Rocket Launcher

Rocket Launcher - Attempt 1 (Bottom)

This is the first attempt at printing the rocket pod - essentially a beveled rectangular prism. Makerbot is trying really hard to completely hose the raft...

As noted this was the second print of the day. Minutes before we had finished a flawless hip block.

Rocket Launcher - Attempt 1 (Top)

Detail of the rocket raft's top - it started printing a triangular fragment of the overall shape.

Rocket Launcher - Attempt 1 and 2 (Top)

Second rocket raft printed and failed in the exact same way.

Rocket Launcher - Attempt 1 and 2 (Bottom)

Raft-path detail

Rocket Launcher - Attempt 3 and 4

The left print was the same unmodified maya file but on the fast preset.

The right print was the model after being processed by cloud.netfabb.com - The makerbot seems hellbent on corrupting the raft print and everything above it.

Rocket Launcher - Attempt 5, 6 and 7

To 'fix' the problem we rotated the model onto its edge...

Top Left: First print - Printed as shown. The detailing and final print were very close to what we were hoping for. No signs of the raft distortions shown above. Middle: Printed on its end to be taller in an attempt to avoid some of the raft marring that occurred on print 5. There were some major geometry issues on the very small front section that should not have occured, but nothing catastrophic... yet. Lower Right: We decided to rotate the model back to the long edge within MakerWare. Things were looking good casually, however upon closer look at around 80% we realized the internal structure was a nightmare of distortion. When we peeled off the raft shown below we realized it hadn't even printed a full bottom shell.

Rocket Launcher - Attempt 5, 6 and 7 (Print bed side facing up)

Here are the above 3 models with the print bed side facing up.

On the left one you can see some of the distortions we were trying to avoid - the aborted right one shows what the bottom looked like after we removed the raft.

Rocket Launcher - Attempt 7 - Detail

A closer look of the internals. All other prints have a proper honey combing.

Rocket Launcher - Attempt 5/6 and 7 - Detail

Upper Left is attempt 7.

Lower Right is attempt 5/6. Note the proper lip before intersecting with the long broad side.

Rocket Launcher - Attempt 5/6 and 7 - Detail Flipped

Upper Left is attempt 7.

Lower Right is attempt 5/6. On the opposite side the print wall failed to print...

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Upper Torso - Attempt 2

Somehow - between running the geometry through cloud.netfabb.com, repositioning model and uninstalling makerware we finally got a chest block to print out correctly. 

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Shoulder, "Forearm", Feet and Shin

From Left to right: 

Shoulder block, Arm connectors and feet. 

Shin

Here is the shin - with details on some rough edges that cam out a bit wonky due to their print orientation. Considering the weird shape I am happy with the results. 

We also have NO idea why the left one has a line that didn't print in the side panel compared to the right one that printed fine. This level of haunting wasn't worth dicking around with at this stage to us. 

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Hopefully in the next month or so I will get pictures of construction and painting. I've also seem to have lost images showing the thighs but other than their complex shape and the cleanup that involved we have somehow avoided many of the issues that have plagued us at the start of this project. 

Iberian 2 - Early Sketches

I've Always wanted to revisit the old "Iberian" gunship i did so many years ago. It always got favorable opinions on its pretty unique design and at the time I was spinning my wheels with Painter instead of Photoshop which did it no favors compounded with my abilities at that time. 

From here I plan on block modeling it for paintovers - Possibly with different loadouts and configurations.

"Lion Rider" - Final*

Done noodling and need to push this guy out and move on. Happy with much of it for now, but some elements like the dudes in the back still bother me.

All in all I'm really glad to have jumped into the deep end on this one! Many firsts!

A more detailed process can be found here!

Lion Rider WIP 2

More progress! Hopefully for the better! 

The hardest part at the moment is fighting saturation and gamma differences between the 4 monitors i am working on... I wish color calibrators worked as advertised :P

Lion Rider WIP 1

I've been working on this in hour chunks for the past week or so and I think it has come a LONG way since then. Again trying to do something way outside my comfort zone.

The launching point for this comes from CGhub.com's drawing jam from 2 weeks ago entitled "Prehistoric Adventurer".

Anyway, maybe a bit more than halfway done? We will see!