Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Dragons and Griffins

I look to nature for inspiration in my creature designs and these three heads are modeled after the North American Hawk.

Human study

The subtleties of the human body are unmistakable. When it is wrong the viewer knows instinctively.

Still Life Sketches

Still life sketching can offer an abundant source of pencil technique practice. Shadows and perspective are easier when the subject has straight edges.
This gun design is based on the M16 Rifle. It is intended to be a medium and short range weapon for the SBAM Robot.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Mechs, Robots and ships.

I enjoy practicing with mechanical designs. I try to envision what materials would be cheapest for a millitary purpose. A contract tp manufacture a millitary weapon always goes to the lowest bidder with the best design. *Click Images to enlarge, hit back button to return*

It was fun thinking about the parts breaking down from overuse just like the Hummers of the US Millitary.
And here I demonstrate my love for Entomology. These ships are designed to imitate the insect world on a massive scale.

Preying Men Warrior

My very first animatable biped character was a simplified version of a Preying Mantis. I was able to create a Collection of my *Animation* Assignments and set them to music. The preying Men were a fighting race of Alien bugs.
I set out to create a design that would be appealing to work with on animation assignments. The animations demonstrate jump, run, walk, throw and sneak. *Click Images to enlarge, hit back button to return*

I settled on this simple to model, single geometry character.

While I was at it I designed some props like this armor and these modes of transportation.

and while I was at it I designed a protagonist. I figure that a spider and a preying mantis would be no match if the spider was small so I had to make this Spider Character much bigger than the Preying Man.
*Preying Men Animation Video*

Adam Bristlecone and Eve 2.0

This was my first concept drawing for a 3D short film about the eventual destruction of all vegitation on planet Earth. *Storyboards will be scanned in soon and available here.*

Eve 2.0 is a robot that is remotely controled by a crane. The Crane is connected to an unseen lab deep inside of a Mountain. They work together to gaurd the last tree on earth.

Eve is used like a tool by the Crane and is left outside with the tree on a mountain cliff. The crane waites inside a large metal door safe from the weather.

Eve lays quietly upon this bench where she stares at Adam with one eye while waiting for the Crane to control her again.

Adam is a Bristlecone Pine living on the edge of a cliff thousands of feat high. Bristlecone pines are reported to live up to 10 thousand years in the California Mountains. Eve watches over the last tree on Earth waiting for Adam to give her a Pinecone.

Adam's small branches wrap around the Pine Cone to gaurd it from the weather. It gets pleanty of light. One day a Crow spots Adam's seed and attempts to steal it. Eve is able to stop the Crow with the help of the Crane but breaks some of Adam's fingers to do it.

Soon comes the day that the Pine Cone is ready to be harvested. A strong wind picks up then Adam slowely opens his branchs to let his seed catch the wind.

The Crane rushes to pick up Eve just in time to see the seed fly into the wind. Eve crashes through adam's branches to catch the flaoting seed. The seed gets away.

The crane freezes for a moment then drops Eve like a rag doll over the cliff edge.

The crane returns to the mountain while Adam stares with broken arms over the edge to where Eve fell.

The End

3D Dog model sketches

This was the first animatable character that I created in XSI. Many lessons, many mistakes.
Several body designs were contemplated.
The final look turned out to reflect that of my pet dog Jinqi (scroll down to the last pic) very accurately.
I couldn't resist putting a corporate logo on Jinqi's paw. If I ever make a Nike Commercial I will present this model as a pitch.