8/26/14 Rigging, more drawing and a return to Animation!

Hello All!

This week was the return to work!  I decided to take a shot at rigging Thorn for the purpose of posing and animation!

After rerigging him nearly 6 times I realized that I really don't enjoy rigging and for the time being I will be stepping away from it.  During this rigging process I realized just how much I love animating and plan to jump back into it this week!  The entire time it felt like I was trying to fix a toy that all I wanted to do was play with!

And in the 2D corner, I decided to take a small sketch of Asla to the next stage!  I'll be going back and touching up this image for a later post!

More to come next week!

Until Next Time!

-Jordan

8/18/14 Returned from Siggraph and getting back to work!

Hey everyone!

It's been quite a busy two weeks filled with some awesome experiences!  Siggraph was absolutely fantastic and I was able to receive some great feedback!  But it's back to business!

So, unfortunately due to the hiatus I wasn't able to get as much work as I would have liked but I'm back on the ball ready to roll! Those of you who haven't seen Thorn's render you should take a look at the prior post or go to the Showcase page of this blog!

This week is going to mainly be 3D modeling work as I plan and schedule my next big piece!

You may recognize this little character from a sketch a few weeks back!  I've begun just modeling out some of my favorites.  If you'd like to see more of these check out the Random Works page to check out my many pages of gestural sketching that include this character!

With this little guy I mainly focused on poly count reduction.  I was able to majorly reduce his polys from a couple weeks prior!

More to come next week!

Until Next Time!

-Jordan

8/4/14 Finished Render of Thorn, Siggraph and the weekly Gestures!

Hey everyone and those of you I meet from the future!

As promised this week Thorn is finished!  The next phase will be rigging, but for right now hes done!  I'll be updating my flatbook/Artwork page with a couple page spread for Thorn with the trials and tribulations that came with him!

I depart for Siggraph on Wednesday and I return a week and a half later!  Next Monday the Blog will be silent as I journey in the mystical land of Canada.  For those of you who are checking out the blog in the future after getting one of my business cards- WELCOME! And please take a look around, there's a lot of work posted here!

Before it gets buried by Thorn renders, gesture work first!
This week the gestures are from "Tarnished"!

And now for the big fish!

For those interested the pilot script is completed!  And please feel free to contact Brendan Hayworth about it! Follow the link below to check it out!

Pilot Script Google Doc

Like I said above I'll be gone next Monday (8/11/14) so there wont be any new posts!  But expect them to return the following week!

Final note!  A very happy birthday to my mother! 8/5  Its strange how she continues to turn 35 each year...

Until Next Time!

-Jordan

7/28/14 Chains, Gestures and Concepts

Hey everyone!

Siggraph is right around the corner, and its been a mad dash to get everything ready!  This week was all about prep'ing for the trip, cleaning up Thorn's model as he's nearly complete and gesture drawing when I had a chance to sit down!

Ran into a lot of technical set backs with Thorn this week but hes way back on track!

This week in gesture drawing includes: Bee Samurai, Welding Absolara and a new design for an Arkeyan Gyrocopter Skylander!

Thorn now has chains! Or at least the start of them!  Currently creating and tweaking CV curves to create snapshot animation as a shortcut for chains.  Again, overall texture work and more cleaning up!

I'm aiming for Monday to be Thorn's big final post before Siggraph so stay tuned!

Until Next Time!

-Jordan

7/21/14 Blog Changes and Business Card!

Hey everyone!

This week I was helping teach a Teen Camp at my university!  Every year our campus hosts an art camp where teens can learn anything they want in the world of visual arts!  This year we set the teens up with a room that they had to fill with the theme of "City in the Clouds".  They had to fabricate, animate and construct anything that they wanted to place inside the city and the city itself!

I was on hand to teach anything from Photoshop and figure drawing to Maya.  Needless to say it was an absolute blast!  I met some very talented individuals whom I was able to help guide their drawing skills and techniques and refer them to some of my favorite artists (Burne Hogarth, Glenn Keane, Scott Campbell Jr. etc).  

On my end I was working on a new business card to have ready for this year's Siggraph along with getting this blog ready which you've probably already noticed!  I've arranged the new pages so that none of my previously posted work is buried.

Onto the work!

I'm planning on digitally coloring this Grant.  I'm really enjoying the weapon master elements Grant is starting to develop!

And then finally the new business card!  Top is the front, bottom is the back!

Until Next Time!

-Jordan

7/14/14 A Little Bit of Everything!

Hey everyone!

This week is a little bit of everything!  We'll start off with house keeping!

In preparations for Siggraph I'll be adding a few new pages to blog for the sake of ease to feature the work that has otherwise been buried.  These will be titled as such:  Kingslayer (Grant, Thorn, Elsa, Pacifica and all things in that universe), Tarnished (All things super hero related), Skylanders, and then Misc for anything that might not fit in a category but still be show worthy!

As stated in the title this week was a little bit of everything!  Nannies to Skylanders!

We'll start with the 2D work!

As I've been studying, reading and playing I realized that the above design is more of what I've been trying to convey with Grant.  This is the character design Grant was supposed to originally have and I'll be constructing a new character sheet complete with expressions in the coming weeks!

A few sword and weapon studies.  Looking to give Grant's sword a bit more of a rendered bug head feel.

I've also been looking at British Nannies as reference for a Tarnished elderly heroine character.

With the large Skylanders Trap Team leak this week I've taken the opportunity to look back and redesign a few characters based on Toys for Bob's new level of detail standards and I have to say I'm again really enjoying  the challenge!  This page is strictly preliminary work.  The two characters here are Surf Striker the Trap Master and RanSnack the Core character.

And on to 3D work!

This week I've finished Thorn's Base texture and I'm now focusing on detail clean up and rigging!

As you can see I've begun a basic skeleton for Thorn!

In my personal world!  My monitor of nearly 8 years died this week and I've upgraded to a much larger monitor which is why the Thorn screen shots are a bit larger than usual! I'm over joyed!

More next week!

Until Next Time!

-Jordan

7/7/14 Texturing details and 3D modeling!

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend!

This week I was able to get a little bit more of Thorn's texture done along with some more modeling on the little robot from a couple weeks ago!

I've added and moved Thorn's arm scars to a place that makes more sense.  Upon revisiting Thorn I realized I had his scar in the wrong place for how he came to lose his arm.  Overall I've done a bit of texture clean up, nothing too noticeable to post a screen of.

And finally I did a little bit of modeling work this week!

More sketches and ink wash character work on the way!

Until Next Time!

-Jordan

7/1/14 Creative breakthroughs and "Tarnished"

Hey Everyone!

Its a little later than I would have liked to have posted but life happens sometimes!  After a week of family, friends, Scott Campbell and the amazingly inspiring Double Fine Adventure Documentary I've gone through a bit of a creative growth in my art.  I've added a few new techniques to my overall process and I'm enjoying my work more than ever!

This week will be just 2D work!

These two characters are from the previous set of gestures I had been working on set on a post golden age super hero world with the TT of "Tarnished".

Cinders pretty much designed herself, flame retardant suit with a pair of goggles so she doesn't dry her eyes out from her flames!  Combine that with the fact shes been living with and possibly bumming gear of Vortize for awhile now and you've got a pretty tech geared out flame tosser!

I'll be taking Vortize's costume design out to the five mark as I did with Cinders because I feel personally that it takes that many before you really find something decent.  I'm happy with how he looks right now but I know I'll be happier when I discover how awesome he can really look!

More drawings for next week and a bit more 3D work!

Until Next Time!

-Jordan

6/23/14 Thorn's texture pass and more concepts!

Hey everyone!


More work done on Thorn and I'm nearly complete with his first texture pass! And overall a bit of everything this week!

More concepts!  This week's set of drawings are for a video game concept.  This game idea involves the partnership and upgrading of a robot counterpart, but I'll spare you guys the details for now.

These are quick gestures with the only goal in mind of getting down as many robot ideas as possible with couple design rules set in place.  These designs would be for starting character frames with a couple more advanced designs tossed into the mix of these.

Then to test both my modeling speed and proof of concept I went ahead and made a base model for one of them for fun: 

This model was created in less than 30 mins and I'm really pleased with the results.  I'm thinking about taking this little robot further and continuing to use him as a speed tester.

More stuff to come next week so stay tuned!

Until Next Time!

-Jordan