Journey of the Mountain King

Here's an update to my painting with some color added.  Still have a ways to go...

(New title: Journey of the Mountain King)

I'm going for a more muted color palette so I will try to keep most of the color to a minimum except the robot when I paint the color on.

The Wanderer

Just a quick post to show a new painting that I just started.  I finished another one and I'll post it soon.

This painting is called The Wanderer.  It still has A LOT of work to be done to it but I'm really happy with the concept!

 Step 1

Step 2 (Blurry : / )

More Sketches and Another Steampunk Creature

I saw that a lot of people were coming to my blog to look for steampunk drawings so I thought I'd throw another one up with a couple other sketches.  I love sketching and I'm glad that I can share my sketches with other people who come to visit my blog, even if it is just in passing.   Behold! O_o

 This guy is based off of a very disturbing break in that happened a while back.  This is my mental interpretation of the criminal.

 This is based off of a cool picture that I saw in 3D World magazine.  I took the basic form and added all kinds of creepy stuff. (unfinished) (It says To Babysan: my infinite inspiration)

 This one came from my mind when I was studying art nouveau and wanted to put my own spin on it.

This was something that was inspired by Brian Despain, my favorite artist.

Here is the steampunk degu.  If you don't know what a Degu is, I recommend that looking them up.  We had 2 of them in Budapest and they were the sweetest little rodents EVER! (Not Legal in California, just FYI)

So that's it. Hope you enjoyed it :)

Before and After

The main reason for this update is to show how dramatic of a change I have made to my SHIVU. However, before I get to that I would like to say that Val and I are very happy to be going home for the holidays! Can't wait to see everyone when we get there!

Anyways, here's the before and after of my SHIVU bot.

Here's the before....

and the after!

I think it's a pretty big improvement. That's all for that. Got some other projects in the works and I'm still working on this one as well.

SHIVU Pr0ject Re1n1tializing.....

So, I've started up my SHIVU (Simulated Human IntraVenous Unit) project again. I looked up some awesome tutorials and found out how to make some awesome reflections on my robot. Check it out.

(SHIVU and background)

I'm very happy with how the rendered image came out. I discovered a bunch of new techniques along the way and know a BUNCH more about scenes, rendering and how everything works in general. Great stuff!

For anyone who's interested this is the site that I found the tutorials on. VERY good information: 3d tutorials

Major Overhaul

I made some pretty dramatic changes to my SHIVU. I was very displeased with the limbs and their lack of interesting shapes. It just seemed far too normal. However, I did some concept drawing and redid the limbs as well as adding some decals. There still needs to be a lot of tweaking with everything but for now they are as they are. However, I am very satisfied with the results.
I also added some basic feet and am also pleased with those. I think that this project is really coming together even better than I thought that it would. I have not done any dramatic lighting work or done anything that will make it look realistic at the moment. Have a look! :)

2 Weeks and a Robot

As of next Wednesday Val and I have 2 weeks until we leave for Budapest. There's still a couple of things left to do before we leave but it's hard to get yourself to do anything when you know that you're leaving so soon. I pretty much just want to sit around dreaming of Budapest. However, this wouldn't be the best of ideas so I push on... kind of. I slack of sometimes and other times do things that I shouldn't when I need to be cleaning and packing. One of those things is doing CGI. Not that it's unimportant but there are things which have a higher priority at this point in time. Oh well, this is what I've been working on. It's called the S.H.I.V.U. bot.

Simulated
Human
IntraVenous
Unit

The Woman Robot Saga

I'm very slowly building my robot and I even have a scene planned. She's going to be pulling herself away from the wall that she is plugged into. I'm gonna edit in some steam for effect. I'll also build a scene based off of the Hungarian movie "Kontroll". It has these awesome gritty scenes and there was one particular one that I liked. It'll be pretty cool. The torso is going to be tricky and I'm going to have to look at a lot of reference photos for the different parts.

I like the green glow :D. If anyone wants to leave feedback I would love it!

Nice dynamic angle :D

Side view.

Seriously! If anyone has any ideas or critiques let me know. I'm always looking for input!

Woman's Head: The Robot

This is something I made based off of the robotic woman in Starcraft 2. I'm going to work on it a lot more but this is a good start. I also haven't made it so that the parts are interacting together with the light.

RUN FOR IT!!!!!!

Totally rigged my "Toughbot" up. I also posed him like he is about to take off sprinting.

So..... close... to being.... done.....

This is yet another update of my "ToughBot" as I've been calling him. I almost totally finished now.... in a way anyways. I've layed out all of the armor, where it's going to be, and essentially defined how the body is going to be shaped. What's left is to add all of the mechanics, rig, pose and maybe animate if I'm not totally burned out on this guy at that point. So here's the updated pics.

Basic front shot.

Here's the legs. I plan on changing the feet though. Right now these are just place holders.

The back....

and the front!

Tough Bot Update

Here's an update on my progress with my newest creation. Bah! I have way too much on my plate and I don't want to do any of it. All I want is to be in Budapest!!!!!! Right now!!!! *regains composer* Anyways, I worked a little on the torso. If you look at the old torso you can see how different it looks when replaced. It took a lot longer to do this area than I thought it would. Mainly because I didn't know how to make the croch area. If anyone wants to give some feedback I would really appreciate it :D

Another Robot

I started another robot. This one's supposed to be more like a fighter than my last one which was a scout bot. He's only a little bit done but I thought it would be fun to post all of my progress. So here's the first!


You can see that the legs are barely started and the joints need to be built but you can get a slight idea of what's going on.

Short Animation: Part 2

Just an update of the video. I fixed some things and changed some others. I think it looks a LOT better now.

A Short Animation

I worked on a short animation for about an hour today. The rendering took FOREVER so I didn't want to fix anything with it today. It's not perfect but I think it came out pretty well. :D

The Run Cycle

Here's the run cycle now.

Oh My God I Can't Waaaiiiiitt!

I'm rendering my run cycle right now for my robot and started on another robot guy. I'll post the run cycle for those who are interested. I had to post something though while it was rendering. I'm just too impatient not to! So in the mean time, for all those Tim and Eric fans out there....

Walk Cycle

I'm taking the next step in my animation. I'm using this walk cycle in order to study things like weight. In this first walk cycle the robot seems to have a decent amount of weight to it. I don't really like that and want it to appear to seem very light weight. I want this to be some sort of scout bot so being heavy at all would not be good. This is also why there is very little armor and why there are many cameras on the front. After making a short animation using environments and such I'll start making other types of robots.

Slacking..... a lot : /

So I've been putting off rigging for a REALLY long time. However, today I took the initiative. It's not that I don't want to do it.... but it's just so much easier not to do it. Aaaaaaannnyways, I had some of it done but decided to finally finish it out. So here it is (drum role)..... the first test video of the legs.

The Knee Joint

A quick update of the robot. He's almost completely done. I just finished the knee joints. This was basically my 3rd attempt at knees. The first ones were basically just a place holder. In my concept drawing I made them very indistinct. You can see them in some of my previous posts. I then decided that I wanted them to look very organic so I looked up some reference photos of knee joints. I started to make them but I realized they looked far too organic and didn't fit with the rest of the robot at all. The version that I have now seemed like a good compromise and fit with what I wanted the robot to look like.

The next step will be to rig the robot. I'll post some hardware renders so I can have pictures of what the model looks like with the invisible joints. Then I'll move on to animating and looking for a nice scene to put the robot in. Lastly, I'll do some sort of short film test for this guy! Enjoy!