Painting While On the Phone ...

Hey! Nothing to write home about at all. I usually talk to my girlfriend on the phone. And while I'm doing that I'm quite often painting. Being on the phone makes my paint mind flow more easily. This is just a little sketch - I call it "Parrotfish". Well, hey - at least I'm painting ;)

And now ...

... I'm at home, sick. Great. Still not getting to paint. Grrr. I can just think about painting - which I do quite often these days. I'm having some new ideas and the desire to go back to some old ones. Either way - without time, neither will happen, haha.

I will visit Austria for the whole month of September - after not having been there for FIVE years! Time goes by so quickly. I'm looking forward to it! Anyway - I better get some more sleep.

Still Alive ...

... but still working like a mother! I hope that pretty soon things will go back to normal and I can finally return to making my own art. Right now I just don't have the energy. Worked over the weekend. Worked 15 hours yesterday - you get the picture. Speaking of picture - I still have time to take some quick photos. Here you go. See you soon!

My Stars!

Holy moly! Omg! Well .. not really - took this image yesterday - part of the milky way. Gotta love the southern night skies.
I took this with a Canon 40D and the 50mm f1.4 and ISO 800 and 8 seconds exposure. The picture you see was created from four separate exposures, that I then stacked together in Photoshop to reduce noise and get more dynamic range. It's not a stellar image ( sorry for the bad pun ) but still pretty interesting and once again confirms that the 50mm prime 1.4 is my favourite lens.

And there's also the moon rising above the fogs of Seatoun. Shot from my balcony.

Aquatic Dweller Update

Argh. Not happy with this yet. This is really total work in progress - will probably change quite a bit. Also note- there is no 'under water' treatment on it yet. And all kinds of other stuff missing. But feel free to give me some pointers anyway - maybe this helps me finishing this sucker nicer than I intended. Further down you should find the initial sketch that led to this. See you soon!

For Raine

Hey - thanks for your kind comments. To answer your questions:

"would love to know what projects you're working on"

Weta is working on James Cameron's "Avatar" - which will release in 2009. I didn't do too much for it yet - mostly minor production concepts.
Right now I'm full time on the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still".

"and who are in the matte dept. at the moment, I wanna find their portfolios :D"

I can't really tell you that, I'm sorry. But - the two links on my blog lead to artists that have graced the matte department with their talents in recent months / last year. They work more on the concept side of things but are all great people and great artists. I'd bookmark all of their blogs.

Another person who used to work here is my good friend Christian Haley. I can't seem to find his online portfolio rightnow, but just search for his name - you should find plenty of stuff. He is phenomenal. I learned a lot from this guy.



Hope this somewhat helps! :)

Some more shots

Hello! I'm still terribly busy at work. I'm the only matte artist at Weta for a week, so that'll be exciting. I thought I'd post some more of my photos to keep this blog going. Thank you for all your kind comments, I hope I can post some original work soon again! Until then take care and keep checking :) And sorry about the terrible formatting of the post - still trying to figure out this weird interface.

This morning

Hello! Just a view from my bedroom that I shot this morning - 3 stitched photographs. I'm soooo busy at work, it's not funny. I didn't have any time to do any personal work :( But hopefully soon. I need to finish that fish thingy! Cheers :)

Progress

Hi! Quick update: Actually got some time in for "Aquatic" - it's coming along fine. Nevertheless work's got me by the balls I have to be in this Saturday. I hope I can finish this painting soon though.

Busy

Work's rattling me pretty hard right now, since we're only two matte painters in a facility with three projects in full production mode. I like it tho, since I'm much better when working under some pressure :)
But nevertheless, I'm working on a quick illustration of that creature in my last post. Hopefully I'll finish this week :) Until then! Back to work with me!

Aquatic ...

Little sketch in Artrage - maybe I'll make more of that later.

Going Weird ...

Well - not too weird. I'm just having fun sketching out some details for my next painting. Here are two sketches, that's all I'm going to divulge.
One thing I have to be careful about is that I don't get too complicated / indulgent with preparation and execution. That's what made the end of "Launch" somewhat of a drag. There were too many elements to get lost in. No idea how to prevent me from doing that - actually I do - I need to make a simple layout / sketch first, which locks down all the important elements and then play by that layout. Well - we'll see if I can pull that off. I'll keep you posted :)

PS: Oh and I still owe you the 'making of' for 'Launch' - I'll do that as soon as I have a bit more time than right now. Cheers!

Onto Something New

After a few days rest in the wake of finishing "Launch" and getting a PS3, I'm getting the itch again. It'll be a hopefully quick painting. I don't want to say anything about it, except that I think it's a pretty funny idea. Presentation and composition are key though. If I do the 'ideal' version that's in my head, it will involve a character ... eek! My weakness.

Otherwise I want to state my happiness of the reception of "Launch". The crits were all dead on and will help me to make better pieces in the future. I certainly won't go back and improve, because I'm sooooooo done with it :)
I was especially happy to see that Concept Art found it worth deeming my first post five star worthy! I was really surprised, because oh man, are there huge caliber artists at large. So I feel happy and rewarded.

Launch also gave me a bit of closure, since I first came up with it when I was deep in the black pit. Finally finishing it is a bit more proof that I've left my depression for good and am holding the rudder of my creative ship firmer and firmer. Happiness. Nothing can buy it! (except five stars at CA, haha).

With that I leave you. Thank you for visiting and hopefully I've got a new painting up!

Finally Launching!

Eeep! It has holes as big as a house. It looks quite incomplete. There are lotsa mistakes and flaws. But I had to kick it out! It was a creative thrombosis! I have a few ideas for some other paintings - but I didn't want to start anything until I had this painting done. And it was dragging on and ooon and ooooon! So I finished it - not as I would have liked it to be - but I don't want this to be the last piece I'll ever do.

I hope you like it nevertheless as it is - there is quite a bit of work in it. I made the first sketch for it over two years ago if I remember correctly. Still stuck in my creative black hole, I was already happy to get a sketch out. That I actually completed it, is a bit of a triumph for me - you know why if you've read this blog's profile.

I probably will make a 'making of' if anyone is interested. Please let me know.

And now, to bed with me - up way past my bedtime! See you soon! Cheers :)

Still Working ...

... on Launch! Eeek! It's taking forever! And I'm not sure when I'll be done. I just wanted to quickly check in and say that - no - this blog is not abandoned. It's jsut taking a while to finish this image. I also do not want to start another painting inbetween, so I finally get this done.
I got the actual carrier pretty much finished, but now the fighter looks kinda old - never looked good anyway. For that reason I got a new render of the fighter cooking. That will hopefully be the last one!
The photo is one I shot over the weekend. See ya soon!

Trouble

I have an idea for a new painting. It's a quite challenging task for me since the main subject is not, as usual, an environment, but a character. Still far from human, being a robot, it's still quite the jump for me. This is first contact - dirty little sketch done in Artrage. I'm not claiming any greatness to this pic. It's really just a very very first step.

just in case you're interested:

http://www.artrage.com/

Back on "Launch"

After my excursion to planet Ulōlō, I returned to finally finish off the flying aircraft carrier. Much easier task on the new machine. Ulōlō wasn't hard to do on my old computer, because it was only 2.5K resolution and I grudingly kept it 8-bit. That was ok, since the subject had so much details and hardly any soft gradients.
With "Launch" it's a bit different. It's 16 bit, 3.5K and has a ton of layers. I already had put a lot of work into it, so I didn't want to compromise.

I still have a lot to do on it. Tonight I designed and modelled some anti-aircraft deck guns. I'm pretty happy with them - they will populate the somewhat empty roof of the hangar part of the ship. I hope to finish the painting this week - but don't hold your breath. ;)

I also wanted to give a little shout-out to my girlfriend Glenda: Thank you for always being there for me and for being so supportive. Thank you for helping getting me back on my artistic feet. Thank you for being so understanding and full of encouragement! You truly rock my world!

A New Arrow in the Quiver

I recently complained that my computer, an outdated PC, was way too slow to do serious paintwork. Today I fixed that problem and got me a 24" iMac. I already have a 24" monitor, so the screen real estate that is available now is plentiful and inviting.
I initially wanted to get a Mac Pro Desktop, but after some consideration, mostly financial, decided against it. It's a true work horse, nicely engineered - I use one at work - but I just took the iMac for a test spin and it is wonderfully quick. A lot of bang for the buck - runs Windows like a charm too.
I can't believe anyone, who is not strapped for cash, would buy a PC instead of Apples. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a blind believer, but Jobs and the guys and gals at Apple have done a lot of things right in recent years.
OSX is a great operating system too. If I didn't have to run Windows for a couple of reasons, I'd abandon it forever. What a backwards POS.
And lastly - come on - we're artists! Apple computers are really easy on the eye and cleverly designed. They're not just looking good, but easy to use. Alright - enough praise out of me!

I just want to add that somehow I feel my creative juices are really returning. It's a great feeling. I'm not going to get ahead of myself though, because I have been disappointed too many times before. I will just take it easy and enjoy whatever creative energy comes my way. Thinking back to how I was feeling a year ago, I can hardly believe I've come that far. It's also nice to see that after sticking my head out again a little bit on forums, a few people still remember me and gave me a "Wondering where you were - welcome back!". Until next time!

Oh and here's a shot I took last saturday: Fireball, fireball!

"Deployed" - Step by Step

I had a request to show some inbetween steps of how the painting in the last post was done. I'm more than happy to do so and will probably go overboard ;) In general I wanted to go for a fairly photoreal style and have it be a little bit funny. As much as I like futuristic cities and huge spaceships and will do paintings like that again (and am working on one right now) I wanted to do something different.

The idea for this painting was flying around in my head for a few years. I made a few very, very rough sketches in the during that time, but nothing really satisfying. I always imagined the statue being some kind of Tiki. So, I jumped into SketchUp Lite - an architectural 3D program you can download from www.google.com and threw around some geo. You can see the result on top. Basically I just wanted to use it as a perspective guide, but I liked to 8-bit charm the layout had and decided to stick with it. SketchUp (the Lite version) is free, easy and a lot of fun to use. Give it a try! :)


Next I threw in a background plate I shot on the southisland of New Zealand. I wanted a guide for general lighting direction and athmosphere. It had the water on the bottom already, a detail I strayed from while working on the painting, only to return to it in the end.


After putting the background in, I started loosely sketching on the 3d render, trying out different things. Very quickly though, I started dropping photo reference into it. Below is one of the photos I used. Over the course of the painting I must have used around 30-40 photos for sure. Except the soldiers I shot them myself.



Here I'm playing with different things - a waterfall to the right, a photo of my dad studying the statue and some more greenery in the background. The Tiki is fully textured now.


I always wanted to have another statue in the background, so I put in a placeholder before I got to the real one. I lost the waterfall to the right and replaced it with a very steep rockwall. In hindsight the waterfall might have been a nice choice. On the other hand I wanted nothing to distract from the scene in the middle.

If you look carefully, you can see a big planet in the sky. I despereately wanted to improve the feel that we're on a different planet - and used the oldest trick in the book - celestial objects one doesn't see in our sky.

I also droppedin the group of soldiers I stole from the web. They were part of a much bigger group. I rearranegd faces, added helmets and did a lot of other work to make them unrecognizeable. I tried a lot of different people / persons, but that group seemed to fit the best. Maybe I'll make another version where I take a photograph of a friend dressed as an intergalatic tramper. ;)


Here is the finished painting. I returned to the water, which I think is much nicer than the rocky floor I had in there before. Additionally, I realized, that the rock was way too detailled, rough and distracting. So I went ahead and smoothed the whole thing. I put another statue in the back and changed the background to something nicer. I also wanted a darker sky, so the two moons I added would stand out a tad more than in the previous background.

I also let a shadow fall onto the statue to tie it into the background some more.

Before publishing the painting I did some post processing and added some grrrrrrain. Voila - done!
The whole thing took me three (long) evenings. The original is 2450 pixels wide. I did it in 8-bit color space, since my machine is reeeaaaaly slow in 16-bit mode. This image is hopefully the first part of a series, based on an idea I had a while ago.
Well, I hope you liked this 'walkthrough'! Here's an original resolution crop of a detail as a bonus ;) Cheers.

Deployed on Planet Ulōlō

It's almost 2am ... but finally finished. A fictional photo of future troops deployed on planet Ulōlō, checking out the local cultural highlights. Taking a snapshot and sending it home. I'll write about the making of another time since it's late and I have to get my behind to bed. I hope you like it ... I had a lot of fun painting it. Cheers.