Saturday, December 27, 2008

hehe still working on it .. so no results just yet .
Subject: A NYC Subway car I'm actually trying to figure out how I'm suppose to color the thing in and if I'm merging all the polygons then how is it suppose to color differently

Monday, December 22, 2008

Holiday Party Work (completed)

Wee I am now a caricature artist! The Holiday Party at the Pediatric Hospital was a big success! The holiday party had 1200 children, there was NYPD on site to do crowd control.

I drew some where between 115-150 caricatures in 4.5 hours . My table was the most popular of all the entertainers I was seated between 10 face painters to my left and 2 origami makers to my right. Luckily this set up worked as these 2 other activities distracted the children while they waited in line for me. Whew that was tiring next time I'm going in with planned breaks and such. I didn't' even have time to drink my water every time I looked up there was like a crowd 15 deep.

At first I didn't get any customers as all the parents made a beeline to santa for presents and a photo but after the first 2-3 people started noticing that there was live caricature drawing so that's when it was very very busy.

My drawing skill it seems does have a limit it will go dry if it's used too much in one sitting. I could literally hear my talent go "Fizzle" and just be like oh hells no I have 2 more hours to go and I can't draw? At some point I was asking myself the question so what's a face but 2 almond shaped things with dots in the middle, a nose and some lips in a smily gesture? I was even thinking that if my former art class drawing 2 professor saw me he'll have died from sheer embarrassment because that's how bad some of my drawing were coming out. So I bluffed it for the rest of the event every now and then I would find a few drops of drawing ability left and those lucky few got professional level caricatures.

I kept thinking hey this must be what a warlock would if he lifetapped all the way down to zero. Man that was one helluva endurance test to be that tired and yet need to continue performing because people were waiting.

Pay: $0,
Lunch: Subways Turkey sandwich and grape soda (free)
Experience: amazing
Feedback: I'd do it again next year.

Things learned:
got over stage fright in 10 mins
learned to draw even faster than ever because the very young ones absolutely could not sit still


Things I need to work on:
more skill .. I am not able to consistantly capture a likeness it really was hit or miss

I woke up late too! 7:30am and needed to do alot of stuff before I was ready to leave. I made a sign for my table using an old caricature of myself as how else are people to know what I'm doing. Then tried to update mywebsite only to realize that my usb hub had died, website making software broke, and that I had forgotten how to edit a website. So my last idea at 9:15am was to just upload my entire directory and crossed my fingers and hope it works. Luckily that worked.

The children were very well behaved, most of the issues I had were keeping track of who was first and what not. Otherwise I didn't really pay much attention to the rest of the room as I was very busy drawing away.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Slacked off ....

I have been slacking off no new post, works, or any sort of art related stuff. I have posted a few new blogs though honestly I have no idea what else to do with my 8 domain names other than linking them to my blogs its a cool name.

Starting today I will make it a productive week but right now I am actually sleepy. Lawl.

Projects i'm working on:
portfolio, manga, anime, drawing, more schooling, homeless outreach, redcross disaster volunteer. I h

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Holiday Party Update #2

Update #2 re: Holiday Party 12/20

This is a go! I will be attending this holiday party as a caricature artist. The director of Volunteer services called me back today and we talked about what I could do.

Her first question was, "Do you have talent"? So much for first impressions.

BTW This is what happens when 2 "me" centric people get on the phone:

Director of VS: "I want my 1000 kids to be entertained for free and you better be good"
ME: I want to practice my caricature drawing skills, people skills, network and as side benefit provide entertainment
Director of VS: goes how about ORIGAMI!
ME: caricature or facepainting only.
Director of VS: Ok caricature it is then. What's caricature?

Analysis: .. best to not think too much on it.
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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Holiday Project: Charity Party for Children

Hi Everyone,

If everything goes according to plan I will be attending a holiday party as an Entertainer! I plan to be volunteering my "Face painting & caricature skills" at a Pediatric Holiday Party for 500 children sponsored by the Metropolitan Hospital. zomg 500? what does that even look like?

I have to admit my face painting skills are iffy at best since prior to this I have never painted on someone's face nor did it occur to me that faces were meant to be painted on. Anyways since this is a great experience to try and its a good deed as well. I made a super fast portfolio on blogger so I have something to show the volunteer director. Please see the pics below I picked some from that speedy portfolio. If they are full on volunteer entertainers I will contact other city owned hospitals / orphanages or shelters and offer my services there. I refuse to believe that I can't get a spot in those?

Oh yea and did I mention that most places are full for volunteering to serve food to the homeless. WTF I'm offering for free and they're full? okies probably everyone else is feeling generous as well so I need to offer something that most people do not have. Art!

Fears: people .. giant crowds, performance anxiety, stage fright Etc_phobia . But yes this is the first step in my quest on self improvement.

Skills: caricature probably as I actually have a few years of drawing experience under my belt. Face painting if I get accepted for that spot will be the most challenging as I'd literally have had less than 7 hours of training on it. That's learning on the fly.

Issues: Who's paying for the paints? how do i keep the stuff clean? how's the drying time on skin, blending on skin vs. paper. Inorder to achieve blending on paper I loaded my brush with 2-3 colors and painted them in quick strokes but with real people's faces I dont think that's going to work first off its going to run as skin is pretty much waterproof. I am thinking of painting thinly and using as little water as possible to speed up drying time and so i can use layers to "blend".

Benefits: Meeting new people, possible network, and a confidence builder. There's no better meter of your training than to have it perform under pressure and less than ideal circumstances.



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Monday, November 24, 2008

Self Portrait #3

Another self portrait!

I found this picture in my sketch book and decided to scan it into photoshop and add some colors there. One annoying thing about actually using paints to color is that one mistake and I've destroyed my good original drawing. What I have been doing is doing one original and then use my lightbox and make a few tracings on a new sheet of paper and then paint or color it in there. Photoshop of course works.

These aren't the only self portraits but these are the only ones from 2008 hehe my 2005 ones are actually better .. but i wont post those here.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Software: maya
Subject: modeling with polygons
Notes: fairly simple model but issues were in how to make finger nails and adding details I will be taking this model up one more step and practice rigging it . Okies 4.5-5 hours spent but i now know how to make finger nails woohoo.





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Saturday, November 8, 2008

Maya: Grimoire

Software: Maya
Subject: imaginary book for my animated clip
Reference images: olympic medal, ornate books.
Issues: lol plenty I couldn't figure out how to "cut" metal so I left it as a square. The metal filigree omg that took me 1-2 hours to do! I took a cylinder or pipe and hand curled it.

Time: 8-9 hours!



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Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Wee new toys!! erm Tools

Okies my shopping has arrived! I ranked my items by Need & Want. I would liked to have gotten top of the line stuff for everything but I had to compromise a bit due to a chronic shortage of cash. The Wacom tablet was the only thing that I spared no expense for and picked it based on reading 1reviews, artist recommendations and my needs. The rest .. I had to make do with older models or one with less features.

wacom intuos tablet 6x8 (need)
imoega external hard drive 1 TB (need)
sandisk flash drive 2 gig (need)
Dlink Wireless Router (need)
Dlink wireless adapter (need)
Clarity P300 phone (need)
canon A590 digital camera (want)
media card reader (want)

Comment: woot time to figure out what else this fancy tablet does! Yes i

Friday, October 31, 2008

maya nurbs portrait
















Software: maya
subject self portrait (using nurbs)
comments: WTF? okies this needs alot of work. but it does sort of look like McCain with it's lumpy jaw.
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Marvel Comic: Speedreader girl with book

10/30/08
format: manga, or anime, comic strip or movie clip with full modeling, animation and storyline.

Storyboard deleted and made private .. it kinda spoils the comic strip if I gave away the entire story upfront. I am working on the technical details on how to set up the comic strip as I have the info written out
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Summary.
Our superhero is a girl with speedreading ability that grants her instant understanding for a short time. X carries an old book which has unlimited pages which X uses as her notebook/spellbook.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

maya: modeling

software: maya 2008
suject chapter 4: modeling

Yea book 3 so this is starting to look familiar. Book: maya 4.5 by john kundert-gibs and peter lee ISP 0782141099. I really like this book it assumes nothing and explains everything in layman words. Note: this book was published in 2003 aka 5 years ago but i like it's way of explaining stuff.



3x5 index card white
pen on paper
subject: nel from bleach
time: 1-2 mins
comments: amazing that this took less than 2 mins ok i admit i made this upside down vs. right side up.
Software: Maya 2008
Subject: Animation: curves, coloring, texture, lighting, stretching, squashing, gravity, and impulse and animation of course.

Comments: Okies i took a 2 week maya break and now i'm back. this was a very simple rocket using curves and resolved shapes the main focus was the animation. I actually had alot of fun watching my own creation.. you know flying a rocket for the first and accidentally crashing it! Wow for the first time maya was actually fun!

I even got to fiddle a little bit with movie making. That i didn't want to get too caught up but i mastered the basics so i could upload stuff as later on i'll be wanting to make mini clips and upload those to youtube. It does look like i need to pickup more movie making skills .. there's no way to shoot an animation w/o it.



My very first animation too! complete with sound track and edits

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Maya Problem - no textures!

New thing learned!! my invisible textures!! 2d extures wouldn't show up .. duh #6 is called turn on textures.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Photoshop Lesson 10: Night Elf Cereal!

Software: Photoshop
Lesson 10: Advanced Layering

Image Sources: blank box from adobe lesson 10, Night Elf screenshot off WOW, strawberries from stockphoto.com, and nutrition lable from google.

Comment: Clean up wasn't too good as I was rushing and didn't bother with being careful with where edges were. the elf could use better lighting but this is the max that photoshop can fix. What I really need is a better screenshot to start. * Yes this was all made by me I used a blank "box" and modeled my cereal box off a kellogs frosted flakes. and there's no such brand in the supermarket so dont go looking for it.

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Photoshop Lesson 10: Undercity Air Freshener


Software: Photoshop
Lesson 10: Advanced Layering
Image Sources: Aerosole can with blank lable from stockphotos.com, Tristafal city wallpaper from warcraft.com, and a robert frost poem "October"

Comment: this wasn't too hard as all the images were from stock photos or online aka nothing from me except placement. ** inspired by World of Warcraft's Undercity's yucky green glowing sewage ... it must smell in there.


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Friday, October 24, 2008

Photoshop Lesson 10

Software: photoshop cs 3
Lesson 10: advanced layeringthis is a cellphone packaging
Comments: I had fun this this lesson lol i think i'll spoof am few boxes just for the hell of it. Hmmm time to think up something weird but fun



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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Photoshop_ Lesson 9: text paths

Software: photoshop cs3
Lesson: #9 text on a work path. Note how the text follows the image outline.
Issues: none

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Photoshop Time

Software: photoshop cs3
I learned some editing skills copy, pasting, restoring images. All images are posted in this order (Original Before edits>After my edits) I'm lazy so i'm going to post all my backlogged post in 1 post.

Lesson: 1-8

































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