Happy holidays!

Need to revive this blog! C'mon! :)

yuki

Adobe Photoshop CS4 + texture from CGtextures

(Sorry to those of you who see this twice!)

running with a fish theme

Hello! For a lab group I'm volunteering with, I get to make icons of animals and plants from a west coast kelp ecosystem!

Here is a colour, photoshop sketch compiled from about five internet references:


And here is a more cleaned-up version I altered in illustrator:

They'll be about 50% this size in the final module, which is great because my favourite drawing style isn't exactly polished and clean.. hope everyone is enjoying the fall!

a dead fish

i decided that it was time to revive this blog! And what could be more appropriate than a dead fish for such an occasion?! :'D

unidentified fish from Montego Bay

watercolour on paper

grant's museum specimen: now in technicolour!

(I find that a painting frenzy makes me more productive the rest of the week)

Intersitial Screen Cap

soft selection lymphocyte

Some days I love maya UI colours.

-krista

An MRP preview image...

Yeah, this is all I have time to draw! I feel like I'm doing it 8 hours a day every day. Sigh. This is my first time working with halftone, so critique is welcome!

-Tab

cat in a bag sketch

In retrospect, I probably should have used warm colours for the cat, but there's only so much procrastinating you can do..

happy mother's day!

Sophie Anticipating the Ball

A bit older (predates the blog) but I was really happy with this when I completed it. I processed it in Photoshop just yesterday though, so that counts right? :P

Sketches!

Haven't contributed in a long time, mostly due to being too lazy to set up my scanner. I'll start with one that I did sometime last year but have intention of colouring some time in the near future (this is a character belonging to a friend of mine):

Next up is one of the speed sketches from the Science Center trip:

And finishing up with the obligatory Muscle Bear:

Take care, everyone! (And possible welcome to our JHU and MCG friends?)

Happy Easter weekend, or, if Easter's not your thing, happy spring!

None of these companies will hire me if I keep drawing flower girl dresses

A full day of Illustrator has produced:


an info-vis skyscraper filled with BMC grads

some questionably clear symbols about what kinds of BMC work people do (any guesses what they mean?)


and a flower girl dress.

frog eye study

(krista)

2.5 D Avatar!!!

more bear.. and chicken

More bear

Strange juxtapositions

A couple of pages from my sketchbook... Ontario Science Centre BodyWorlds sketch night. It was great to see so many BMC students & alumni there!

--Shelley W.

mental ray

mental ray. A rendering engine constructed by a German company that puts in a TON of calculation into how light bounces off objects. Of course this is all translated into neat little attributes such as reflection, refraction, weight...etc.

And after tweaking these attributes to death, you can somewhat capture the appearance of a real life object. Somewhat, because there's always going to be little things that don't quite seem right. Argh.

Anywho, this was done using mental ray 'material_x' (ooohhhhh). Lighting was a basic 3-point light scheme, with a backdrop that takes a bit of shadow. The magical 'final gather' option has been turned on, and that automagically makes everything look realistic. Though it significantly ups the render time as well.

If you're interested in the theory of final gathering, click here. It's basically another form of calculating global illumination, but also really putting into consideration the effects of indirect lighting (i.e. light bouncing off objects).

No more maya this week...Pathology awaits.

Alb

orthographic penguins

(krista)

(sorry again june!)

beetlejuice!

Drew this while I was TAing the undergrad beetle drawing lab.

-Shells

Doggone it!

Well, I actually finished a demo illustration for a change... woof woof!

D.

Cinema 4d sure is exciting...
I've combed hair for about 4hrs today.

Bea

i <3 Batman

HI Y'all...i'm glad i have an outlet for the useless art stuff i make when procrastinating instead of doing real school stuff...

week 2 into Maya, i still can't get myself to start modeling stuff i actually need for MRP...anatomical stuff can be so boring...so instead i started another side project...

i hope this can count as something...there goes my day off...

Ambient occlusion...with a bookstore!

Right now we're learning modeling in Maya, and I found a neighborhood bookstore building that seemed fun to model. Thank goodness for Google Streetview, so I don't have to go out in the snow and take reference pictures.

The ambient occlusion shader is surprising easy to apply; you can see a Youtube tutorial here.

The great thing is that detailed areas (the doorway, or the blinds) can be rendered out pretty well, without adding any external lighting whatsoever. The main purpose of AO is actually to compensate for occluded light, which may or may not be present/correct using traditional lighting methods in 3D programs. If this were rendered as a pass, and then composited to a 'beauty pass' that contained textures/colors etc, then a more accurate 3D render would be produced.

What's exciting is Eddy tells me there's a method (in progress) that manipulates AO and specular highlights to mimic a look of carbon dust in Maya. Now that would be an interesting rendering style to consider...yay.

-Alb

carrot tree

(Krista)