My Commander Norton project was recently featured in 3d Artist magazine. I’ve included a quick image of the article- apologies for the low quality, I’ll update it when I can get a scan (rather than a photograph).

All being well the magazine will feature the final Norton image as a follow up article over the next few months.

Thanks to Sarah Slee for spotting my work in progress thread over at CGTalk and getting in contact. If you’ve missed Commander Norton, I’ve included some images below:

This is my most recent character study that I initially started as a zsketch but decided to develop into a more finished piece. Facially he isn’t based on any one man, but I was inspired by aged leading actors that still have a physical presence and intensity (Eastwood, Patrick Stewart, late Paul Newman and a touch of Bruce Willis).

As the concept developed I was reminded of a series of books I read as a child- Rendezvous with Rama. Specifically I thought the role of commander Norton fitted the type of character I was trying to depict. Here’s a quick description of Billy Norton:

“Bill Norton is the 55-year-old commander of the spaceship Endeavour. He leads a mission whose task is to explore the alien spacecraft Rama. As a commander, he takes an active role in most of the missions. Just like a true captain, he is always the first one to go in and the last one to come out.

Norton has two wives, who live on different planets. He is traveling through space for most of the time, so he keeps in contact with his spouses by sending them near-carbon copies of his messages. His hero is Captain James Cook, a mythical explorer of the 18th century. He often relies on the imaginary advices of Captain Cook to make important decisions regarding his missions.”

Modelled in Maya and zbrush, rendered with mentalray. The background was made in post. Initially I was displacing the head but found it was killing render times, so I used a midlevel mesh with a 4k normalmap….an awful lot quicker. Rendered at 2800 x 2200, though the final image isn’t that aspect.

I’ve included a few work in progress images below. Commander Norton is due to be featured in the community section of next months 3d Artist magazine. I’ll probably post an update when that is released!

Three pieces of my artwork are featured on the FXpose DVD included with the August edition of Imagine Fx. The Wanderer was awarded image of the day over on their website so the disc editor got in contact and asked for another couple of pieces.

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I recently entered the Don’t Panic competition to create an image that summed up my vision of summer. The image needed to include the entire range of Vitamin Water bottles as well as their branding. On top of that it needed to be scaleable to over 10 metres across, as the winner was to be printed on the side of Cordy house in East London.

My entry was entirely vector based, created in illustrator- which is slightly different to how I usually like to work. There were just over 250 entries and my image finished 3rd in public voting. The final winner was chosen by Stuart Semple. Unfortunately my design wasn’t chosen to be printed on Cordy house…but Semple had this to say regarding my design:

 ”A great response to the brief, yummy vector skills. Light and playful, definitely one of my favorites. A lot of depth and I appreciate all the hard work that must have gone into this.”

I was also invited to the Vitamin Water launch night over at Cordy house- where the finalists (including myself)had their images exhibited. I’ve included a few snaps below.

Finally, thanks to everyone that voted for me

A recent concept piece exploring themes of binge drinking and alcohol abuse.

It was awarded image of the week at It’s Art  Magazine and featured in their newsletter.

 You can find a medium resolution version here.

Here is the rough work in progress:

I recently did some concept work for Bluezoo on a healthy eating campaign. The basic idea was a ‘pimped’ van that would have a healthy food kitchen in the back. As far as I know they are planning to build a version at some point to tour around schools. It seemed a strange idea to me, luring children in with a spoiler and alloys before handing them some falafel in a napkin.

I’ve included some of the initial concepts below, all painted in Photoshop cs2.

This is a character concept piece that I’ve been working on and off in my spare time for around five weeks now. Having been quite intensively involved in a number of realistic/scientific projects recently, it was great to switch off and get back to what I love doing, painting characters!

All together it took about 15 hours, painted entirely in Photoshop CS2. Primarily it’s using the default brushes, but I also made some custom skin brushes for pores, wrinkles and any repetitive skin features. I’ve posted a few work in progress images below so you can see how it progressed. I actually saved my canvas every hour or so, so I will try to make an animated gif of the process- but that’ll be another update.

This was the initial stage after about 30 minutes, just getting a feel for how I wanted the strange creature to look- in the case of the wanderer, almost entirely humanoid with a twist on a couple of features.

Just tightening up his features at this stage, I decide early on that I want the eyes to be the focus.

At this stage I block in the background and tighten up some details. I notice some issues with the hair and bone structure that need to be addressed.

Getting pretty close to the end product. I add an ear and repaint the hair to fit his skull a little tighter. From this point onwards it was really just tightening details up and trying not to overdo areas that didn’t really need it. I toyed with the idea of blue eyes, but it seemed to kill any empathy with the character.

You can find a higher resolution version here.

Thanks, any comments appreciated.

//Tired of England

This is a personal project I’ve been working on in my spare time to learn a bit more about mental ray. First off the melting phone box is inspired by Banksy and his work mutilating red phone boxes; so I can’t take any credit for that part of the idea.

I had a couple of themes I wanted to try and convey in the image, the first of which is knife crime, which is an ever increasing problem nationally and a big issue in the capital. Secondly I wanted the phone box to hint at the current economic problems with credit and over lending that is crippling a lot of people in England (and globally). I thought that one of England’s most famous symbols of an age gone by would be an ideal victim to an increasingly difficult financial climate. I’d like to think the circling vultures represent the shameless banks who are still, despite all the press, giving credit cards to people who can’t afford to pay them back. Though I’m aware the image doesn’t even begin to tackle those two huge issues, it was nice to have something in the background motivating me to finish it, which is sometimes tough when work on a personal project is so sporadic.

The title is from Dirty Pretty Things:

“How can they be tired of England?
They’ll never know the England that we know
Never know where the ones with the dreams go, no
Never notice the skies with their eyes down low”

You can find a high resolution version here.

I had various roles during the project but my primary role was modeling and texturing the environments,  vehicles and texturing the secondary characters.

The advert was directed by Oli Hyatt with art direction from Chris Rais.

I’ve finally got the nextgen-gallery plugin working nicely with my folders; so I thought it was about time I published some of my work onto the site. 2D & 3D.

I’ll strive to keep it updated with artwork but generally it’s going to be filled with personal projects as it usually takes a while before I can show/discuss any client or corporate work on the web.

Also as a side note if anyone knows how to separate ‘nextgen-gallery’ galleries on the same page while maintaining page navigation functionality let me know!…as ideally I’d like to have a single portfolio page. Separating 2d and 3d seems a little pointless to me and the way I feel my work developing will probably be a hybrid of both.

You can find the nextgen-gallery plugin information here. The author is Alex rabe- a talented chap. Blog can be found at http://alexrabe.boelinger.com/.

slowgolde.