Here is today’s Houdini doodle using some of the scatter tricks I used on the album artwork from the other week. My coffee sketch from this morning for the concept as well.
Outgrowth Podcast Soundtrack Artwork
Just finished the cover art for the soundtrack to the podcast Outgrowth. It’s a horror story set here in the PNW. You can check out the soundtrack by We Are Parasols on Bandcamp now.
EP Artwork. We Are Parasols
Just finished up the artwork for another We Are Parasols EP release and got the permission to post it here. All done in Houdini and Redshift. I am tinkering with the idea to give Karma / Solaris a try and see how those work. Would be nice to stay entirely native to Houdini for the renders. I’ll have to do some testing.
Cloth Sim study with Sub-D experiments.
The Chair study from the other day had a cloth sim on camera right that I made in DOPs, which is what made me want to mess a bit more with some cloth sims and this is the result of that study. This time though, I just made it directly in a vellum SOP with some pinned points. It’s a much simpler workflow for sure. Used good old JSplacement for the textures and displacement and subdivided the cloth mesh with a poly reduce to get the “webbing” stuff.
Lighting Studies
Worked up another lighting study today for practice. Quick cloth sim thrown in to keep that stuff fresh in my head as well.
Mike's Motels 1974
Pretty cool photo set here from Mike Mandel on Motels from the 70’s. Some fun stuff that could be interesting to recreate in CG… maybe…
Mike's Motels 1974
Some Digi Painting from the Oregon Coast.
Was messing around with Procreate on the iPad while at the coast and started to get some interesting results.
Basketball still life
Here is the finished render from the sim below that was glitching out. Houdini vellum and Redshift render.
Vellum Doodle
Just messing around with some vellum cloth sims today. Going for that cloth landscape kinda look.
Iryna Nalyvaiko, Back to Bed.
Really cool series by Iryna Nalyvaiko, “Back to Bed”.
There Will Come Soft Rains, by Ray Bradbury, read by Leonard Nimoy
Stumbled upon this on Sunday and it was a perfect fit with the rainy day and a beverage….
Doodle and notes and portfolio updates
I hate pinterest with the burning intensity of 10,000 suns. What a garbage site that spews out so much search engine spam on anything I search for. Good lord, try to google a CG technique and just see page after page of single linked junked with no info from pinterest. Anyways, just add this to your search to kill it.
-site:pinterest.*
The “*” is key as it kills EVERYTHING from that domain and they spew out so much crap just the “-site:pinterest” won’t clear it. Yeesh…
Two new portfolio pieces dropped on the home page as well. Some allbirds and some Nike both with CG elements.
And today’s doodle is a rehash of a older set for some EP cover art that got shot down.
Yesterday's doodles.
So I have been taking a bit of a creative hiatus / break for a bit to help with the COVID burnout and I opened Houdini for the first time since (checks blog posts) yikes, January. Was just messing around with some displacement and then the map box node to import the topo data on Mt Hood. These are the results of the stuff. I actually enjoyed the process and exploration of it again. Which was the goal of taking a break in the first place. Now I just need to update the portfolio….
Pak on the frontier of NFTs.
Interesting interview with Pak on Foundation.
“As a creator who doesn’t self-define as an artist, I can only compare the crypto world with the design scene. There are many differences in intention, purpose, and value distribution. For a design production, the product* is generally assigned value based on how much time goes into the work’s creation, and the creator’s vision is substantiated based on their back-log of successes (aka their "portfolio"). The crypto space (specifically the #cryptoart space), on the other hand, can value ideas almost instantly. This valuation sometimes ignites the realization of the product*—which wouldn't exist in a traditional production world. In short, this scene makes some things* exist instantaneously.”
NFTs
We all know about Beeple and his crazy NFT sale at this point, but I am interested to see how this all shakes out. For so long now art and music has just been digital trash artist’s though out into crappy social media platforms for free and get nothing in return for creating their art. If it actually brings value back to creative pursuits I am all in. Checking out Nifty and Foundation ATM to see what the deal is. Will keep you posted on how it all goes.
Album Art Feature.
Got a little write up for some of my Album Artwork I did.
“Inertia by We Are Parasols is coming in hot with this rainbow orb! The art was created by Daniel Kopton . This feels like something I could see in a museum. It would make a great desktop background, too. A poster, even. Basically what I’m trying to say is that I love looking at this. The choice of using a bar code instead of text is bold, but I think it works well.”
Karan Gujar - DIORAMA.
Karan Gujar has created a lovely set of abstract landscapes on her Behance page, titled DIORAMA. The mood and simplicity of these is really compelling. I have been taking a sabbatical from most of my creative outputs lately but this series is kinda motivating me to create again.
Learning Caravaggio Lighting Techniques
This is pretty cool to watch. A CG artist and a Director of Photography do a zoom call and go through lighting a scene in Caravaggio’s style. It’s in C4d and Corona, but it translates to pretty much anything. It’s interesting how the DP calls out real world lights and flags and where to put them. It’s not anything crazy new, but the discussion and the iterations they have going on is what I found the most interesting.
More Album Artwork
The band that I did the Shatter Bust artwork for liked that one so much they asked for something for a Single. So I blew up a disco ball, as one does.
Houdini Doodles
Just playing around with simple clean sets here a bit. Want to work on bashing out a few sets a day to see what I can come up with.
