Personal work, Office and Ice Study

Worked up two CGI personal projects this weekend.  The astronaut "Office Hell" image was to work on interior lighting, dynamics as curves and some simple UVing. Also shattered the helmet a bit to get those cracks which is always fun to do. Then I brought it all into Painter to explore some treatments in there.  I wanted to take it away from the fully clean CGI look and grunge it up a bit.

The Ice Flowers was done in responce to Makoto Azuma's installations which are awesome looking.  I wanted to see how close I could come to those using Modo. Besides some work on modeling the ice block I am pretty happy with how it came out. Fairly minor post in Photoshop adding some slight grain and darkening the foreground. Took 8 hours to render that out using 38 cores.  

Holiday Half Study

Wanted to do a little project for Sara since she just ran the Portland Holiday Half and this is the result.  Wanted to work on my text chops. 

Made with MIschief

The Foundry, makers of my fav 3d program Modo, just released a sketching program called Mischief and so far I am having a ton of fun with it. While I would not consider myself someone who draws stuff from scratch I do enjoy it and have been dabbling in Painter and different Photoshop techniques to do hand drawings for years.  So far this program is the simplest and most intuitive to use for me. Just the other day I tried showing Painter to someone who is a  accomplished painter and it's just too freaking complicated to easily use for anything.  With Mischief if you want a bigger brush, zoom out. Smaller brush?  Zoom in.  Kind of how it should work.  Plus, you can zoom in forever without any pixelation.  It is the most bizarre thing to do and really awesome. This is the first thing I did in it last night, once again I am not a drawing type of guy but it was easy to use and sketch in.  I could really use this when concepting or storyboarding.   Oh yeah, bonus, there is a free version and a $25 version.  You really can't say no.

Personal Work: Modo Stencil Study

Was working with stencils, replicators and volumetric lights last night and pulled this one off. The volumetric light started breaking up into almost a plasma type feel.  Included the AO render as well so you can see the model without the volumetric light turned on. Interesting shape there as well. 

Personal Work: Grass Fields.

Just picked up a bunch of new models of grass and did this quick test render with a stock photo backdrop.  It is a tad "glossy" on the plants but I enjoy it visually quite a bit.  Great models...

Personal Work: DoF, Bokeh and particles study.

Little study I did last weekend exploring DoF, bokeh and some interesting particles and dynamics.  The bokeh has too much noise for me but I can not for the life of me figure out how to clear that up.

Personal Work: 70s Sci Fi study

Felt like doing something a little bit different so I went for a 70s sci fi kind of feel with this piece.  Wanted to explore bigger landscapes and more atmospherics using 3d. Plus, this is completely useless for any of my commercial work so I was free from that side of things influencing my choices. 

CGI study

A study of particle effects and volumetric lighting I did last night.

Oneonta George Hike

Went on a relaxing hike in Oneonta George over the past weekend and took a few snappies. Now we are back in sub freezing temps…. boo.

Personal work: Oregon Coast 7/28/13

Just some snaps from the coast the weekend of 7/28/13.  Had a great relaxing time and picked up four new pieces of art while out there. 

Weekend Personal work

Been busy as all get out here so I have not been posting as much, many apologies.  But in trade have some images I made this weekend.  

Most shots are from a hike at Wahclella Falls on Saturday with a dead phone booth on Alberta on the same day and a 3d render test from Sunday night. The render is noisy and unacceptable but I still enjoy the direction it is heading.

Photo Project: Tattoo Machines

Portland Tattoo Artist Jason Leisge, owner of OddBall Tattoo asked me to photograph some of his hand built Tattoo Machines before he left for a convention in NY.  Here are the results of a two hour shoot. ​I hope to continue this project with the title, "Machines of Ink and Blood:  Images of custom built Tattoo Machines."

Photo nerd notes: Shot with a Canon 5dm2 with the 90mm tilt shift lens and lit with a few Dedolights. I love my Dedolights!  Shot a few frames for focus stacking then made the background in Modo.  

​Sweep, gun block model and lights in Modo.

Composited it all together and there you have it.  Fun stuff.  If you build your own Tattoo Machines please drop me a line, I'd love to photograph them.​

Portrait shoot: Parasols

Did a shoot last night for the band Parasols here in the Studio last night.  Parasols is on the Left and my lovely wife is on the right for a lighting test.  Really happy with the outcome.

Personal work- Hawaii 2013

Some images from Hawaii this year.  All of these are taken around the town of Paia with the Fuji x100.