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.

They do a series on them as well. Rembrandt and Hopper so far.

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.

2020 Fall Portland Color Palette

Just walking around with the phone collecting some images that I will use for some Fall color palettes this season. Some interesting tones to pick from.

Jar Studies

Here are the three jar images all finished up and in one post to check out.

This Machine Kills Fascists

Inspired by the Great Woody Guthrie, I made a new piece of artwork  this weekend in response to the Alt-Riot / Proudboys coming into our town from out of state to cause havoc. Get out and Vote people. It’s pretty bleak out there, so do what you can.

FlowerPower Blue- Robert Peek

Amazingly cool technique on this series by Robert Peek. I was pretty sure they were paintings when I first saw them. Check out the full series on Behance, FlowerPower Blue.

Working on a little something something.....

Just mashing some stuff together for a new piece I am working on and this little graphic I wanted to drop as a preview. These two were kinda fun. The “eyes image” were scrapped form the internet but the game graphics style of “VOTE” was done in C4d.

Still lifes by Rebecca Ritchie

Was digging on these oil paintings by Rebecca Ritchie. I am such a sucker for this kind of lighting style.

Continential Breakfast, by Niall McDiarmid

Found this series of photographs by Niall McDiarmid on This Isn’t Happiness. The color and composition is pretty awesome. Really would like to try something like this in CG. That lighting is so spot on.

Principles for better design

Crazy, windy, smokey weather here and not enough time to continue with the Jar project. I did start to play with adding more jars and getting the boolean dirt to work with them before I got busy again though. Found this good article on Design though.

“The moka coffee maker may not produce perfect coffee, but it requires so little maintenance compared to a large coffee machine with radiators, pipes, grinder, etc. that it makes the compromise “complexity / coffee taste” great.

Remember the Pareto principle: in general 80% of a things can be done in 20% of the total allocated time. Conversely, the hardest 20% left takes 80% of the time. Perfection requires infinite time and energy. This is impossible and therefore should not be part of your design.”

And here is where I left off with the jars. Need to tweak the UV’s on the far left and do all sorts of other stuff, but it’s coming along.

Not a Drop to Think.

Water, water everywhere….

Newest little jar study I worked on over the weekend. Pretty happy with the sand texture I was able to come up with. The water itself works but is a hacky bit of shading held together with duct tape and chewing gum. I did one version where I punched in with a 110mm lens instead of a 90mm like in the first and added some volumetrics to the lights, but It kinda broke it out from the series too much. So now the whole series will have the same lens and light settings. I don’t even think I’ll rotate the jar. Just change up floor textures along with what’s in the jar. Might drop some cloth in the background for some texture and see if that works though. The light rig is basically a room with a slight gap to the “front” and two windows on the side. It’s giving it that nice classic still life look. As always, click the thumbnails to see bigger images.

Pretty happy with this series so far. Next one will be fire.

Been enjoying staying off of social media and my very limited news diet. Highly recommend a news detox to anyone. Also, facebook is mostly made of evil. Check the links on the right for non, “Walled Garden” content. 3 Quarks always has some good long reads to check out.

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Gregory Crewdson, New Work. "An Eclipse of Moths"

Write up in the NYT about his new work, “An Eclipse of Moths”

“The section of Pittsfield where he staged his pictures is near a General Electric transformer plant that poisoned the environment with PCBs but also employed most of the town. Ms. Hiam, who was born in Pittsfield, said, “My parents worked for GE. Everyone I knew had parents who came here for GE.” Pittsfield was devastated in 1987 by the closing of the factory, which now looms over the landscape like a ruined castle in a European village.”