Shake comps

Here are my first comps in shake. Mind you, these are both garbage comps, just meant to give me an idea of what I need to work on. 

Lost World

CG Talk Challenge

Better luck next time.

I created a new rule for myself last night. Do 10 pushups before sitting down to do any matte painting work. Did I follow it? No. :(

On a better note I did my first compositing and tracking in Shake this weekend and had some awesome results. More updates as I have time to post them.

Feng Zhu Quotes

I've kept these two quotes in my journal for quite some time and I've found them to be very inspiring.

"there is no secret to drawing. The more you do it, the better you'll get. It's all about mileage. A lot of people try to look for shortcuts, but there aren't any. Just bite the bullet and do the work. There is no easy path."

"You are 29? Not a problem! It's never too late to get into anything. Here's a little story that might inspire you. If you have the Art of Episode 3 book, look for an artist named Sang Jun Lee. Believe it or not, he didn't do any drawings (and I mean none), before attending college in the U.S. After he got an internship at ILM, he drew like crazy. Within only 2-3 years, he has reached the level he's at now. which is pretty amazing! He draws like a seasoned pro. What a great inspiration huh?"

NHM Challenge

Just comped this out quickly. The original plate was from a CGTalk challenge and I never had time to finish. I was cleaning up the plate but now I have finally put my concept onto canvas.

Swatch set

This is a swatch set I've been developing for both matte painting and web. Hope someone finds it useful.

Panoramic matte candidate

Richard Cave (aka: RockHopper) is a fellow matte painter, but he's also an amazing photographer, embeded photojournalist, and a nice guy to boot. 

Richard has been experimenting with handheld panoramic photography. He's received much better results than I have (as to be expected) but I promised to post the results of an image that I shot back in June of 07 in St. George, Utah. 

I've just decided that this might be a good candidate for a matte and will have to test it with the groundplane painted in. 

The original image is 6841 x 2730 and 180 ppi. 194 MB

Sleep deprevation training

It seems that my sleep schedule is now perfectly acclimated to a job in visual effects. I've been working 17 hour workdays every day for the past two weeks.

My current schedule:

1. Open eyes to alarm clock going off at 4:30am, snooze cuz I don't know what else to do
   
2. get up at 5ish
3. leave the house around 5:50
4. carpool w/ Lee Glasgow and Dustin Boston
5. start work at 6:45
6. leave work at about 3:30pm
7. get home at about 4:30
8. start working on freelance project at 6:00
9. finish up work for the night at about 1:30 (give or take of course...mostly take take take)

wash, rinse, repeat

Our lonely experience

I read this quote this morning and found it quite insightful. Leave it to one of the great spy novelists to talk about loneliness.

"Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen."
- John le Carre

Hook Island

Here's another sketch I did for a game concept by my brother. It's good that I finished this sketch because it made me realize that not every angle or perspective makes for a good matte painting. I might rework this general concept but I don't think I'll be taking this sketch any farther.

Epiphanies

Epiphanies sounds too epic for posts like this but I don't know what else to call them so that's what they'll be. 

In 2007, about 6 months before my daughter was born. I had a breakdown one day. I was frustrated with my web design job and felt as though I might never push myself hard enough to become a matte painter. I began to think that maybe it would be best if I gave up my dream and focused on the reality of life as a designer. 

But thankfully I realized that I would not be setting a good example for my daughter if I gave up. How could I expect her to follow her dreams if I had not?

Every day she gives me new strength to pursue a career in matte painting.  

3d render/sketch

most of this painting is from a vue render, I took the time to re-work and piant over some of the elements. It would be great for a shot from inside a building, looking out windows, but otherwise I'm not sure where to go with it. 

Speedpainting

Speedpainting

Speedpainting

Speedpainting

for practice and to develop custom brushes

Speedpainting

for practice and to try to build some custom brushes

speedpaint

for practice.

The Lost World

I need to rework this for my reel as well. This was a  matte created for 3dm3.com 's Lost World Contest. This was my second finished matte painting.

more sketches

Sketches