Conceptually challenged

Heroes Con and Summer

2011-06-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

The end of classes came and went. I went to Heroes con 2011 for the next weekend and was in charge of the SCAD booth for hopefully my last year. I had a blast getting everything running, and I was running nonstop all weekend. I will say it was the best Heroes con experience I have ever had and yet also the worst. The bad was all on Friday and after that it was all good. I got to meet Bernie Wrightson which was nice and made a few more great connections which I loved.

Now that summer is here I am working on my toys again. I have a full summer of writing classes and working on my house, but every other day or so I am working on making my own rotational moldmaking machines. I am making two. The learning curve is already happening and I realize when I make another one everything that I am going to do differently and better. I need these now so I will deal with my janky models that should be done by the middle of next week. Once I get them tested and going well I will start posting again. I have a LOT to post here and I will be doing so to promote my new line of toys plus everything else I am going to be working on over the summer.

Wow

2011-04-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

SO I've gone an AWFUL long time without any sort of posting on here. I have no excuse. I have a lot of new sculpts I have been working on too. Im not going to lie. It will probably not until June when I will start posting regularly but then I will be back on top of it. I have a few commissions plus my own sculpts going on right now. I should be doing school work paper work etc. but Id rather be sculpting. And so that is what I am doing. I am sculpting on 8 different sculpts right now and it is crazy but fun. None of the have any hard deadlines, but I have myself set for 3 weeks on most of them since I have a few new projects that should be coming into after that. Most likely I wont be getting anything for 5 weeks but the harder I push myself then the more I will get done. When I finish them I will photograph everything. And then...around Juneish more new work will post.

New photos coming soon I promise!

2010-07-02T14:33:00.000-07:00

I have a long weekend this weekend so I am going to do my best to finish up 2-3 sculpts this weekend and post their final bits and pieces before I get them molded.

The envelope please!

2010-06-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

After much waiting here is the commission sculpt that I worked on. It was a hellacious two weeks. Note to self: Dont take such a short deadline again while teaching an overload.

The sculpt is about 85% Apoxie sculpt, a little bit of propoxy, and the rest is super sculpey. Let me say for the record that I really do not like sculpting capes. They are tricksy devils in the best of times. Every time I sculpt one I do get better so who knows how I will feel about them in a few years time.

So here are the photos I have been promising.
The first three are when it was done before painting.
The next are when I painted it in 6 hours. It was a horrible paint job. I warned the people who wanted it that I needed more time but they wanted it. So I took it to them and then they told me to take it back and bring it back later. A friend of mine, Michael Brown, who teaches painting in Atlanta told me to come up and he would paint it for me. Not having seen him in awhile and liking the idea of not painting the maquette again, I opted for that.

The next 6 images are of the process of repainting it.

And of course the last few images are of the finished piece.

And with these last few images I bid you adieu. There will be another posting of sculpts in progress this week.

Still waiting

2010-06-09T16:02:00.000-07:00

for the okay to post pics of my last sculpt commission. It is a gift and I cant post just yet. Apparently he is getting the gift tomorrow so then I can post images.

School is done!

2010-05-31T10:22:00.000-07:00

So school is out for summer, which isnt that big of a deal for me since I will be teaching summer classes however I will have some down time. I have Heroes Con coming up this next weekend where I will be doing a short lecture/workshop on maquettes. www.heroesonline.com

It should be a lot of fun. I was supposed to be done with my secret project but it is going to take about two more days and then the pics will be posted. I took some in progress photos but for the most part you will only get the unpainted and painted pics here.

More than anything I cannot wait to have the time to finish up my sculptures from the past year. Most of them had to be abandoned at a close to finishing point, but not finished and I promised myself that I would get all this stuff done, painted and posted so I can move on to the molding process and production process. Next week start looking for images from me. If not start harassing me!

Secret project

2010-05-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

It's been a few weeks to say the least. Between 5 classes, preparing for Heroes Con, trying to write another class, trying learn a new program my life has been very busy since March. I have a new sculpt that I will be posting the first of the month once I am allowed. It's not a NDA but I have been asked by my employed to wait until the end of the month before I show it.

I should also be posting some new photos of about 3-4 more sculpts I will be finishing up in the next month or so.

Latest Sculpt

2010-03-09T17:21:00.000-08:00

Hey folks. This sculpt isn't finished but it's presentable. I still have another 15-20 hours left on it before I'm completely happy. I am going to rip the saddle off and redo it, redo the bridle, and I have so much more sanding to do. Next will be the rider. I have a lot more to post. It's been awhile.

Fall Quarter

2009-10-31T09:27:00.000-07:00

Not much art has been accomplished this term from me so thus no real updates or photos. Since my friend Jeremy Mullins passed away this summer, I have taken over the podcast for the Sequential Art dept. This is a joy to do and I really think that somewhere Jeremy is watching me and smiling and saying something off color.

This quarter has been the busiest I have ever been at school and I doing my best to stay on top of all of it: grading, teaching, podcasting, and writing another class for our online class schedule.

If you want to listen to a fun podcast please go to our podcast seqalab.com. It is filled with news, must reads, occasional professional interviews, departmental news and alumni news. I am working on getting us bigger, more professional, and getting more foot traffic coming our way. So if you want to do us a solid and come by, take a listen and leave a message or two, or email us at seqalab@gmail.com

Everyone Have a Happy Halloween!

Jeremy Mullins Memorial Anthology

2009-09-10T16:40:00.000-07:00

So here's what I did for the Jeremy Mullins anthology. My inks, a grad students pencils, James Workman. About 95% brush.

Ouch! Too long

2009-02-07T17:01:00.001-08:00

It has been waaaayyy too long since I've posted. No excuses. Im going to try and catch up here one step at a time. Here's some work I was working on last time I posted. It's pretty much done, ready to mold and cast now. I'll show those at a another time. I have done a good bit more since this, but like I said I am going to catch up on posts one step at a time and then show new work. I'm actually drawing some pages so those will get posted when I can. Class and grading calls.

Xrays of a dead kitten turned into art

2008-08-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

So last weekend I had a kitten that I was fostering pass away on me from some fall. I am not certain how it fell or why, but it ended up having to be put to sleep. Anyway, at the same time I was struggling with my final in my digital sculpture class that I was taking. As a result I decided to do an homage to the kitten and use the xrays seen here in my art. I have a fascination with xrays. They show how we are all put together. So here you see the two xrays of the kitten.

I then took the xrays and manipulated them in photoshop.

Here is how I started to put them together in photoshop. I took the side profile and added it on both sides of the top view xray.

Then I manipulated it a bit more and turned it into a halftone screen.

Then I took it into illustrator and livetraced it, expanded it and manipulated the halftone. I came up with a few different versions.

These are the two versions I liked the most. the skateboard deck came out pretty sweet overall, but I need to manipulate the layers more before I will get it looking like either of these two images, which means I have to burn a few more decks but I dont mind. I will post images of the finished deck when I get it back from my friend who is taking photos of it as I write this. I am going to be laser cutting a bunch of skate decks in the next few weeks so you will see more of that stuff soon.

I also had to take my other two digital sculpts and render them in Maya: a daunting task for me. I managed to get one rendered okay. The other one I am still struggling with at the moment.

This is the first image I rendered. Keep in mind I just snagged photos offline and then rendered my digital sculpture into the scene. This one looks like a ballsack sculpture...eh. I just liked the color of the building.

This one came out a lot better I think. It fits the environment and I lit it properly. All in all I am pleased with this. I still have so much to learn with this program, but I am taking it step by step.

I haven't abandoned my burritos, but this class ate up a lot of time and I have got a lot of new ideas churning. More burrito images will be coming in the next few weeks, but that is, I realized, a slow process for me.

Oh my goodness!

2008-08-02T13:29:00.001-07:00

I have been away from this blog for too long. It has nothing to do with my lack of working. It has everything to do with me doing a lot of digital learning. I am in the process of learning Maya and modelling sculptures in this program. It is a tough uphill battle but I am starting to get it. Here are some jpegs of one of my models. I promise I will be posting more soon since I have to texture and light this and place it in environments as well once its done. This is about 90% finished.....I think. I can never tell when I am done. "No artwork is ever finished. It is only abandoned."

I have posted my character in both polygon mode and smoothed out. He will be sculpted smooth, just so you know.

Nothing new yet...

2008-07-11T14:50:00.000-07:00

Im still sculpting away on my little characters and also working on some digital sculptures that I am doing in Maya. Ill be posting some stuff up soon.

More From Heroes Con 2008

2008-06-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

So here I am doing my workshop talking about how to use vaseline on your sculpey sculptures.

"And the fish was this big!" It was amazing to have all those people there.

More photos of me and Tom Lyle working. I'm smiling but studiously ignoring making eye contact here.

And here I am explaining some stuff to this gentleman.

And on another note on the Newsarama site: http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080607-RingoTribute.html

We didnt even know about this until we got there but it's awesome for the school and the Sequential Dept.

Heroes

2008-06-23T19:05:00.000-07:00

Yup that's me sculpting away on one of my burritos at Heroes Con in Charlotte, wearing a Brian Ralph tshirt. Tom Lyle is next to me working on a con sketch. The weekend went quite well and my workshop was well received. I think I had about 40-50 people there. I'm beat and recovering now. It was lots of fun and everyone appreciates all the workshops. I met a lot of great people and got a lot of new contacts and some commissions....hopefully.

The saga of the burrito continues...

2008-06-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

Now with a mouth and the rest of his outfit, plus smaller eyes. The other ones were just too big. Now I just need to correct a lean by messing with the feet and then sand, sand, sand...

Now with mouth and eyes. I need to sand him a lot and then add a few wrinkles here and there.

Now with eyes and I cleaned up his top waddle a little, but it still has a looooong way to go. Next are his feet and then little details all over the place.

Dear Lord!

2008-06-13T15:40:00.000-07:00

I didnt realize it had been this long since I posted. Weellll I have been working this whole week and shall be posting updated images of at least 3 of my characters tomorrow. I just ordered around 500 dollars worth of moldmaking supplies and I have been researching vinyl and that industry since that is the market I am aiming towards. I am getting a test sample of vinyl to try out next week. I wont be ready to cast for at least another week or more in vinyl. I am going to cast one piece in another plastic for Heroes if I can manage it. Until then....

Still fighting the good fight

2008-05-28T15:07:00.001-07:00

Sorry for not putting up any new improvements on my sculpts. Ever since Editor's day I have been winding down/up (whichever way you choose to look at it) for the end of the term and busting out the rest of my paperwork and grading. Next week I will put some new versions of my sculpts up. Until then there shall be a void due to grading.

Woman and her spool continued

2008-05-13T17:33:00.000-07:00

Ah...the butt. I am loving how it is looking so far, but look at her tiny head! Ack! No dont look. I have to cut her chin up about 1/4-1/2 inch up to lengthen her neck so it works with the rest of this sculpt.
We have this new model at School and I really need to get her to pose for me to get the muscles down in the legs. Her legs are similar to this.

I am loving the gesture however. This has a number of hours left in the sculpt. I think so far I have put in about 10 hours since I am working with Apoxie sculpt and trying to get a handle on that media to its fullest. The hours are probably less that that if I broke down how much I have to get up and help people.

The Woman and her spool

2008-05-13T17:30:00.001-07:00

So I have been working on this sculpt only in class time since the very end of last term. She is of course not realistically proportioned, but Id like to find someone with her proportions....except for the huge feet.

And now her spool of happiness is gone.
I love the pose.

So much more to do here.

Getting closer

2008-05-11T17:17:00.000-07:00

So I started 4 new characters. They are, of course, in the very early stages as you can see. One is only aluminum foil which is really much of anything but the most basic of forms. I know I like to see other artist's process so I figure you can see the basic foil form I start off using. As you can see, one of the forms is very different in shape. This is because that particular character is a curvy female burrito.

Here are the ones you have been seeing. New add ons are ears and the chicken's floppy head stuff. And the one on the left I started its belt, but it has the most out of these left to work on overall.
There really is still a lot of work left to do on them. The lamb needs a ton of sanding and then more little cottony balls at the bottom. The two in the middle still need mouths. The one on the far right needs a mouth too but his is less involved. The three on the left get tails as well.... yippee!
And here's a little closeup of the chicken's thingy. Dont stare!
Tonight I am working on cleanup on the lamb.

2008-05-08T18:52:00.001-07:00

I started on three more burritos tonight. I am almost done with two that I started. Will post new photos this weekend.

2008-04-30T19:47:00.000-07:00

So here is smorrito with some ears on his costume now. He kind of looks like a little gremlin. And yes, yes that is a burn on his forehead, and that is why sandpaper was invented.
Here's three of them in a second draft of photos with new details added.
There you can see the chicken's beak poking out a bit better. Still so much to do....
Chicken looking all arrogant and badass. He needs his feet and his head danglies.

Here's the cow. Those are bulging eyes on the top of his head. Dont worry. You'll get it eventually.

Lamb part two aka Smorrito!

2008-04-28T17:20:00.001-07:00

Still working

2008-04-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

So midterms are eating up my time right now. I am still sculpting a little each night but I dont have enough new stuff to post process work as of yet. Hopefully in the next two to three days Ill have more than I had and post some new versions of the burritoes.

Burritos

2008-04-15T18:14:00.001-07:00

Here are the burritos I am working on.

Lamb burrito

Cow Burrito

Pinhead burrito

First post

2008-04-15T16:06:00.000-07:00

So here it is. I had promised for a while now that I would start a blogspot account since I try to stay under the radar on my other accounts and both students and friends would like to see what I am presently working on in my life. I will try and keep this art related only, but I will probably post a few hippie gardens and house things from time to time if the artwork doesn't stay at a fast enough pace for the hyenas out there.

So for now I am putting up an oldie but a goodie from three years ago. I am working on a bunch of small scale sculpts right now, and I will be posting the in progress images this weekend. I know you want to see them so they will be here, and then I will do what I can to keep the latest and greatest up.