Take a Seat

Latest illustration. Done for Advanced Anatomy, from a live model session with Mandy.

Firey

Finished piece for my Advanced Photoshop class and triples for Anatomy and comic cover for Sequential.

Photoshop CS5
Photo reference shot by me and used used with permission

A Shadow Remains

Some items I posted on Deviant Art recently. Enjoy!

A Shadow Remains by ~AyaneMatrix on deviantART
A Shadow Remains - BW Drawing by ~AyaneMatrix on deviantART

Sketches and Livestreams

 The above was from a livestream session I did a couple nights ago. It's still a work in progress, but it's coming along nicely. :D
 
Live modeling sessions 4 by ~AyaneMatrix on deviantART

This one is from a live model drawing session I did at my school at the end of May. Seems like I did a better job with the model's legs than anything else. >_> <_<

UPDATED!!!!

UPDATED!!!! AWESOME!!!!


Hum of Music - Redux by ~AyaneMatrix on deviantART

More Art!

This just in, MORE ART! WHOOT! Normal study and then the alternate, which is a bit creepy when there's no skin.

Both were posted to my gallery on DeviantArt!

Hum of Music

Still here, just posting something I recently finished. I am still working on those other two images and hope to have them done soon. ;) You can also see this on my Deviant Art account.

Hum of Music

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I've last updated the blog. I've enrolled in an art school with the hopes of boosting my artistic ability and I've been doing quite well. It's been crazy busy and a lot of hard work, but I'm making progress. Woot!

In other news, I'm updating the blog to also show off some of my class work. More on that below:

A 3D illustration and infographic of how games loose their value over time in relation to trade-ins. It's a bit selective as I chose some recent popular titles with some older ones to flesh out the poster.

Made with Blender 2.6x w/built in raytracer render engine, forget which
Clean up in Photoshop CS5
Type and layout in InDesign CS5
Box Art textures from the ever helpful NeoGaf Custom Cover Art forum thread

Also, since the original was this MASSIVE 11x17 300dpi image, I decided to shrink it down

Heels stuck request

Quick request from a frequent Sticky-Site visitor who goes by the name sticky-sims2. Also added some elements to make it look more compelling. ;)

Minor update

As the title suggests, a minor update of how things are working out for Sanctioned's character Storm. I also started working on the hair again, but put it on pause until I can first get the character's outfit looking and working properly.

Looking at it now, it appears that I may need to soften the breast area for sure.

Went back and took some wireframe shots:

Medusa WIP 17

Well, it's been a few months since I've really posted any further work on this particular project. Needless to say, I've been experimenting more and more in Blender and less in Poser 6/7, mainly as both versions of Poser seem to hate the outfit I made and using it as dynamic clothing seems to make things worse. So, I've decided to move back to Blender and I'm in the middle of re-rigging Miki 2 for animation and general posing. Not too much of a problem there as setting up bones in Blender is a hell of a lot easier than it is in Poser.

But, my problem seems to step from using clothing physics on the outfit I made. After a couple of tests, it seems that the outfit does using clothing physics in Blender gives much better performance and is easier to manipulate than it ever seemed to be in Poser; but, for whatever reason, it seems that I can't get the outfit to collide and animate against the model I'm using. I'd ask for help here on the forums, but considering the general lack of interest from here, or any other place I post about this project, I honestly doubt I'll get any.

So, in short, more tests and, eventually, I'll call this finished and move on to another project.

Medusa WIP 16 update

Small update with experimental lights using Lux Render 0.6.1. It seems to fix some of the problems I was having and performs better than it was.

Medusa WIP 13?

Well, I'm still going at it, trying to better refine the render. This time, I exported everything from Poser back into Blender, then used an external rendering app named LuxRender for betting lighting and overall render finish. The end result that you see above took 33 hours to do. Oy!


For the most part, many of the materials and textures I had used previously for Medusa Final v.2 were not imported into Blender, which leaves me having to recreate them manually twice -- once for Blender and once for LuxRender as they don't seem to communicate properly amongst one another. The other odd thing I noticed is that while LuxRender takes forever to get a scene rendered, it took almost the same length of time to render this particular image (initially 14 hours or so) as it did with Poser 7 and it did not scream at me for somehow passing the theoretical memory limit as it used much less memory. Though, if I passed my installed memory for any reason, the LuxRender UI would crash as it loaded the scene. I guess I should report that to the devs. :shrug:

Anyway, depending on how much my modeling skills come to be in the near future, I may as well go ahead and replace Miki 2 with a custom model of Medusa. For now, I'm going to end up just modeling my own custom snake like the one she has in the series.

So, I'm still working on it, and hope to have some better results in the future!

Medusa Final v.2

Version two of the previous render, now with better hair, textures (hair only) and lighting. Also added some effects in Photoshop.

Well, I went back and redid the ponytail and textures for it using Kozaburo's messy Jessi v1 hair textures, then spliced it to match the same hair. I also ended up reworking the hood to to cover the parts that were exposed or coming through. Other than that, better lighing and snake textures.

Medusa Outfit Final... Somewhat WIP 11

Well, I've finally managed to get the outfit to a point where it moves decently enough not to destroy the collar and the hood! WOOT! I stayed up almost two days trying to figure out where I was going wrong in Poser 7's cloth room and the book did not help very much. If there's one thing that needs work, it's the manual to the software. Oy...

Anyway, I had to adjust the collar, buttons, and hood to be constrained portions of the mesh since they were always in contact with either the hair or Miki2's head. While I lost some minor detail with the hood not moving a great deal, it kept it from messing up everything in the area and looking like it went through a meat grinder when it touched the hair. I also did the same thing for the thigh portion of the mesh as it saved a TON of time to calculate the dynamic mesh deformations. The tail was set as a soft decoration with the tip being included in the calculations so it wouldn't make contact with anything else.

The hair... well, not much has changed a great deal with the hair other than I managed to use the above techniques to make it move to match the bends of Miki2's body and to come over the outfit without making part of it explode. Later, I hope to have the hair fixed in a manner that looks faithful to the original character's hair. Though, the same could be said about making a fully original piece and render that entirely in Blender.

Let's see... other than that, there are some texture changes for her nails to match up the original character, eye color was altered, and two snakes were added from www.most-digital-creations.com for their Shadow Serpent object as it saved me some time in creating another mesh (I'll have to make a better one that's actually specific to the series though) with altered textures. I wished I could have added Medusa's vector arrows to better show her as a character, but I ran out of time and was really too tired to draw up additional textures. Maybe later... or next time. XD

Anyway, I think that's it for this one. Time for me to get back on schedule.

Been a while

Ugh... seems like my text editor is conspiring against me! I couldn't even get the original text typed up before it crashed on me while spell checking the document. Major loss, so I'll just retype it to the best of my memory.

Anyway, it's been a while since I've posted much of anything here on my personal blog; two months to be exact. I've also had a thought that no one so much as glimpses at any of my pages (blog, personal website, and DA account), so I don't imagine there being much, if any, sort of response to this depressing drivel.

Moving on - no updates to any of my projects, image requests, or game project. Yup, that's right, no updates! This is really due to nothing more than me either being lazy or depressed, or a combination of both. Plus, everything I've attempted to do lately doesn't work out or has been lost when my external hard drive died - did get a working replacement though. Not that I expect anyone to care... no one reads this anyway.

Did post a couple of images on DA, Sticky-Site and QS Fans a while ago. They're not much and are not related to any of my projects, but you can expect to see them at the end of this posting. Hope whoever reads this enjoys them!

I'm still unemployed as ever and, as a result, have considered taking commissions to fill the money gap. The idea is/was to do some images for people with Poser or do photography shoots for people in my area. The Poser portion seems pretty straight forward and with a nice overhead; but, being that I have yet to sell any of my prints for photography in nearly ten years, I'm having my doubts about photography. Plus, I have yet to really do a photo spread for anyone. So, that entire idea is pretty much up in the are at the moment, but if people are willing to pay, then I could give it a shot.

And, what of my IT troubleshooting, repair, and administration job you ask? Well, it's not so much a job as it is a once in a blue moon deal that people seem to call me up for. Hardly, if ever, do I have any jobs constantly lined up to make a decent income to be considered self-employed. Seems that when I finish, everything is working in such a way that I never get a callback unless it's catastrophic; which is good and bad. You obviously know what it's bad, but the good thing is that I did great work. :) And apparently, having that much experience seems to be a problem in getting a more permanent job anywhere in the town I live in.
Which leads into my other recent problem: getting, but not getting a job selling stuff. Sure, I was called out of the blue due to posting my job information on Career Builder; but, it seems that my resume is probably telling employers that I'm overqualified for many jobs. Case and point with the call I received a couple of weeks ago, this marketing company needed people to fill a position that sells computers for HP. Sure, the job is right up my alley, great part-time hours per week, and with nice pay; yet, even after being pretty much guaranteed a job with this company, I somehow managed to not get it. When I pressed the issue to see what made them think this way, all I got from the recruiter was another guy had more experience since he was already doing the same thing for another company. Okay..? Somehow you want to say that makes sense; but, at the same time, I have salesman experience and an in depth knowledge of computers and how to fix them. Another clue that I should have picked up before was during my interview, the guy mentioned under his breath that I had a LOT of computer experience. AT first, I figured it was a good thing to be acknowledged for and, yet, here I am still unemployed! So, I figure that they were thinking that I would want more money for what I know - which is true, since I did ask about it during the interview - and they went with the cheaper choice. Oh yay... So happy that seems to be working out for them! *Heavy sarcasm*

And so, I'm also playing in a closed beta online MMO which has a pretty wacky NDA contract. Can't say much more than that, other than my computer is totally under spec for the game; but, I do my best to inform the developers what's good and bad about the game. I only wished I could afford a better rig to play it on. Sigh... and a better internet connection.

So... other than that, nothing else has been done! I'm a total loser... :(

Anyway, enjoy these images!

Two variations of the same character, only one has a real photo backdrop! These were posted at DA and the later at QSfans.
This last one is actually a re-render of an old piece, not that anyone has seen it anyway. <_<>_> Posted at Sticky-Site.

It's been a while

Yup, it's been several months since I've last posted anything here on my journal. Most of you have probably forgotten about me, and some may have not. Either way, it doesn't really matter, as I'm here now and giving updates.

First off, I've had my birthday and I'm currently 27 years old. Woo... I don't feel much different, but I am older and approaching 30.

Second, my family and I have moved out of our previous residence to one that's much, MUCH more livable and secure. The downside is that during the moving process, I've found that I'm in terrible shape and have begun a pretty brutal workout regimen to at least begin feeling better and stronger. So far, it's working! I just need to get my walk in sometime this afternoon.

Third, my plans in the game design space have been put on hold for the time being. Yeah, yeah, I know what I've said before; but, I've come to the sad realization that most people are not willing to help out someone in my position, regardless of how interesting the concept may be. Plus, I have yet to get any headway on the game engine needed to play the game in the manner I've envisioned.
So, for now, the super large scope game will be placed on hold and a simpler, already planned out game will take it's place until more work can be done with it. Once I've nailed down a couple of specifics, I'm going to get some characters designed and playing with the idea for it. More details to come!

Oh, lastly, I've come to the conclusion that it's best that I at least try to finish some of my outstanding requests and trades that I've somehow accumulated over the years. Some of them are really simple - which may be the reason they were skipped over, lol - and some require some real planning to get right. So, I'm going to be posting quite a few things over in my Deviant Art page and here on my blog as I finish them.

Next, I'm in the process of writing out a short sinking and sticky story/comic. You can see where it's going based off the initial render that sparked the idea below. Enjoy!

ARR! Thar be UPDATES!

I needed to get that out of my system! LOL

Anyway, I'm just letting everyone know what I'm still alive and still working on my projects, hence the quirky title. In this update, I'm posting a work in progress shot of what I'm currently modeling, in this case it's a dress for a request. Obviously, if the file name stays the same as it was while on my computer, you may have a hint at who the dress will end up being for and what it should end up looking like when everything is all said and done. Still need to get the hair done though. I'm not too sure if I'll upload it to my DA account page since it's fairly early in the modeling process, but as it currently stands, it's not a bad start.
Odd thing about modeling this outfit though - it's so much easier to do it in Shade (currently Shade 7.12 LE I believe) with the open/closed curves tool than with other applications I have installed. Really odd, but at the same time so much easier! Now, I just need to worry about how the rest will look like...

Oh, and for those that don't know and still care, my birthday is this Friday! I'll be 27!

Any who, that's it for this update. Stay tuned!

Another project update!

It's not much, but thanks to another online buddy of mine, Shin-Kensou, work on some character concepts have been produced! This one in particular is of Rad, with a mustache! lol

What I've decided, with the prompting on Shin-Kensou, is to make a smaller project that uses some of the characters in a way to explain their past, or their reason for being part of the story. As it currently stands, Rad is the furthest along in character development, and yes some of his information that I had previously posted here has changed. The next step will be to get some further in progress shots of him and finally get started on some plotline for him and a 3D model worked up.

I know it isn't a very large deal to many people, but work on my game project is finally underway!

Yay! Updates!

YES! UPDATES and a portion of my projects on the way to completion! For chem-halo, the first in part of our image trade! Look above to see it n full. You can also view what he drew as part of our trade.