Personal Project: Napkin Sketching PART XVI

A Fresh 2012 sketch from about 1am last night[ today!]

A little playhouse or Tiny-Home in the Coastal Redwoods, .......

A little animated character design in a Superhero Jumpsuit

Personal Project
Napkin Sketching Part XVI

 

 In this sixteenth installment of the Napkin Sketches, Drawings, and Doodles I do when I have a pen in hand, I have put up a some 2012 sketches that I have done this month.

Itry to keep sketching every day a bit so I put up a few examples of what has been in my head.

The Frankenstein Monster above came from a discussion with my six year old about make belive and reality, so I explained to her that the Monster is from a great story, so I did a quciuk little 3" X 5" doodle on a new scratch pad I picked up last night. Pencil on Bond paper.

The other two Ball Point pen doodles, were done at my PIXAR meeting a few weeks back, when I had about 10 minutes to kill until the client came in. I had recently found the Arts and Crafts sketch I did, so it was in my brain to do a variation up on a little hill in the Coastal Redwoods of California.

I also did a little animated Superhere Character in  a jumpsuit, based on someone in the room,....shhh...:o)

Sketching really is a joy to me, and I would encourage EVERY 3D artist, and designer out there, to stay on it, it helps in ways you will only see, once you do it regularly.

You can view the other parts as follows:

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

PART V

PART VI

PART VII

PART VIII

PART IX 

PART X

PART XI 

PART XII

PART XIII 

PART XIV 

PART XV

Cheers, THOM

Project Review: Robots 2004 Motion Graphics-3D Animated Cards.

 A card where the "g" in Missing, falls off, and bounces into camera with turning gears etc...

 In the Adventure card in a billboard scene, the type flickers on in Neon.

 We ended up with a cool rocket that flew into scene to show "Adventure" for Robots back in 2004.

 A Title Logo using the font supplied by the studio at the time.

 A reference Card for Ice Age to help promote the Studio behind the project.[ Not used]

A spinning gear flips fast around to reveal this "ACTION" 3D Neon sign I made for the film Graphics for Robots.

Project Review: Robots 2005

Motion Graphics 3D Animated Cards.

Client: Twentieth Century FOX film Corp. via The Cimarron Group.
Art Direction; Erik Counter.
Project Date:Summer 2004

I had a fun opportunity to develop the looks in 3D for these Motion Graphics Cards for the Animated Film Robots, from Blue Sky Studios back in 2004.

I was working with Erik Counter on the Herbie Project so he also, wanted to use my 3D skills for this piece with some fun little viginettes of old neon signs, and things for the Motion Graphics look to present to the client.

I had a great tiume on the project due to the professional nature of Mr. Counter, he was always great to work with, as he himself uses 3D quite a bit, and was easy to create with someone with the knowledge to back up any crit. 

Cheers, THOM

CAR CONCEPT DESIGN SKETCH

Custom Interior Car Lights

Cool Interior Car Lights

Interior Car Lights

Project Review : The Island 2005-PART II

 A Logo done for Calvin Sumler for the Print work. I did a curved alt cut up here as well.

 Adrienne Burk gave me the illustrator file and a piece of Logo scrap she always loved to emulate this look for her.

 A Calvin design done for Erik Counter our resident Predator at Cimarron at the time.

 An alternate metal plated design done for Adrienne Burk as well.

 Another Calvin Logo executed for AV.

 One of my favorites with the vectors from Calvin Sumler.

 An alternate view and material on Adrienne's design.

Project Review
The Island-2005
PART II

Client: Warner Brothers via The Cimarron Group.
Art Director(s): Calvin Sumler, Adrienne Burk, and Joseph Stamper.
Project Date: Winter 2004

This is my second posting for the various 3D Illustration design work that I did for both the Motion Graphics and the Print Divisions at The Cimarron Group for the film The Island, starring Scarlett Johansson.

I was tasked by a few different Art Directors to develop some main title logo loos in 3D. We used metla and glass as the textures and all were a bit light in value as the film had a blue sky look that ws being pushed at the time.

A fun project, and once we started animated the logos they came alive with the moving lights and reflections.

You can view PART I here.


Cheers, THOM

Personal Projects: Napkin Sketching Part XV

 A Craftsman Arts and Crafts 1920's era Cabin. River rock base and an attached greenhouse up in the Pacific Northwest.

 I knew a bartender who worked at Q's in Pasadena in the 90's he eventually went to Occidental and became a Graphic Artist. We always chatted when I had a Newcastle and doodles, this is him.

 An Alien in a full hooded space suit having a scotch[ Lagavulin!]

A speeding American Taxi with a Buick Tooth grilled toon car.

Napkin Sketching Part XV

 

 In this fifteenth installment of the Napkin Sketches, Drawings, and Doodles I do when I have a pen in hand, I have put up a few additions today that I had scanned in from the mid 90's.

I found these still in my old school portfolio book I used to carry around before the advent of my blog and website. It has these napkins taped into a layout for almost a decade, so I pulled them out yesterday, scanned them for todays post.

I have a little Arts and Crafts Bungalow cabin with an attached greenhouse on the side. This little one was done near the time I was going up to Spokane for Cyan[ 1999], as I was looking at the homes around there in the Arts and Crafts style as I was considering a move up there.

I also always do these little characters and Heavy Iron cars as well on a regular basis. And even though I re draw a few cars over and over, I always get a little bit out of the exercise in perspective and basic hand control for the sketching itself, as well as each design is different is some way or another.

I always sketch and sometime soon, I hope to get digital with it with a tablet with a digitizer pen[ NOT captive] so I can sketch with varied line weight and pressure sensitive thickness and opacity variations in the lines.DELL and ASUS now offer this.

You can view the other parts as follows:

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

PART V

PART VI

PART VII

PART VIII

PART IX 

PART X

PART XI 

PART XII

PART XIII 

PART XIV

Cheers, THOM

Project Review: How to Lose a guy in 10 Days: 3D Illustrations for Key Art 2002

 Here is the front only shot of the Chrysler Building I built for BLT for How to Lose a Guy in 10 days back in 2002 a decade ago now.

 A Front view of the model with out textures showing that I modeled in the details.

 When I turn the camera you see the sides lack any details at all, this was done as we had a time constraint for the project, and I can always add it in form the other parts at a later time, and this is the main advantage to 3D , that is it can grow beyond the basic first delivery without any loss of product.

 Here you see the 3D rendered Illustration for the Parking Meter, as well as the comp provided to me for lighting and angle.

 The Parking Meter was eventually prepped for online sales, here it is a bit closer up.

 Here is the Painted into the Corner Comp I did for How to lose a guy in 10 days.

Project Review

How to Lose a guy in 10 Days

3D Illustrations for Key Art 2002

Client: Paramount Pictures via BLT and Associates.
Art Direction: Jeff Barnett and Ronnie Blumenburg.
Project Date: Fall 2002.

I always got a variety of requests while in-house at BLT, to build out a prop for a movie poster to use, and sometimes the prop was a small hand held item, like a gun or something small, and othertimes I needed to build out entire citys, so for the Paramount property, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, I eneded up building out The Chrysler Building for a shot.

Now this is the first time I built the model in 3D so it was my practice so to speak. I built out just the front facade as we had no time to build the full 3D all sided model, so I focused on the view we would see in the Key Art for the posters. 

You can view my 2nd full 360 model here, or buy it here from my prior employer.

Taking the same gag with the two main charcters leaning on it, I did the Parking Meter next. I used the comp as my Global Illumination lighting model, so the prop dropped right in the comp cleanly.

I also did a "I'm painted into this corner" type of gag for a third idea, but that one was scrapped early on.

All in all, a very fun project to do a variety of fast 3D illustrations in a quick turn around is creatively a great challenge as a 3D Designer.

Cheers, THOM

Project Review: Rutger Hauer Traveling Gym 1992.

 Here is a 8 x 10 photo of the final artwork 22 x 17 blue-line on velum.

(Note that in the lower right corner they covered my signature on the artwork)

Project Review

Rutger Hauer Traveling Gym 1992.

Client: Rutger Hauer via Charles T. Cohen and Associates.
Art Direction: Charles T Cohen.
Project Date: January 1992.

This was my second job out of Art Center back in 1991, and I got the work by the connection to my first job, at Design Setters on the Mazda MX-6 Project for Rhythm and Hues.

I delivered what was tasked, a single sketch as posted, but the story behind it is what has shaped my carear for 20 years now. I was asked to sketch out a 18 wheeler with a gym in back so Arnold Schwarzenegger, or any other 'Action Star' could take it with them to the set, and I did. 

A major partner in the venture was actor Rutger Hauer, and it was the only time in my carear I was a bit star struck to meet him, since I am a SUPERFAN of bladerunner, and I did not expect to walk into him at the project meeting back then.

This is the ONLY job I have ever bid a full delivry price on, or a flat rate. I estimated 6 Hrs, [4 to sketch it at 22 x 17 and 2 for changes]. Well, I learned the hard way early on with a new client, that you never know how many changes they will want to make, and the job ended up taking me near 30 hours for 6 hours of pay. A tough lesson, thankfully only needed this one time to learn from.

Consequentlay I realized that art is always an open ended contract since I cannot guess when a client will finally stop changing the art, so I have charged hourly since then and only been stiffed by one client[ in 2010 no less!]. I also have never missed any deadline, as I will not agree from the front end if it is unreasonable,and some clients do not quite get that this benefits them, that I will not even take it if I know it cannot be done.

Cheers, THOM

Project Review: Dreamcatcher PART II: Virtual Dreamcatcher 3D Model Details

 Here is the final design for the Virtual Dreamcatcher I did a decade ago at BLT.

 I built the feather out as a 3D object with all "hairs' and individual tips.

 A full shot of the model showing most was modeled not a texture exercise.

 All wood was twisted triple rounds so I had a grove running the length of all sticks.

 All the little "bits and pieces' were scattered on the main model for close-up detailed shots int he AV work.

 The original FAX'ed copy of the design from the film done by Mark 'Crash' McCreery.

Dreamcatcher 2002
PART II

Virtual Dreamcatcher 3D Model Details

Client: Castle Rock Entertainment via BLT and Associates.
Art Director(s): Alon Amir, Alen Petkovic
Project Date: Christmas 2001

In this second post on the 3D dreamcatcher model I built for BLT back a decade ago now, I have some close up shots showing the details that went into the 3D virtual Model, that was used in the international Motion Graphics Trailers.


I made the mesh very detailed, as we had a duplicate actual hero prop from the film there, so I tried to achieve a look that was consistant.

I also had the rough sketch done by Mark 'Crash' McCreery that was FAX'ed, YES FAXED[ remember those!] to us to build off of, so I built right over the sketch in 3DSmax.


This was one of the first high detailed models a that I attempted to build out for print, and it did take a while to render out I remember, as it approached a million faces, and this was back with Max 4.0, whew!


You can view PART I as well.

Cheers, THOM

5th semester project - preview