Happy 2012 and new art!

     Happy new year to everyone! This year is looking to be very awesome. The new game I'm working on should be announcing pretty soon, I'll let you know when it does because i'm excited about it myself.

    
     Lets start off with a painting I worked on last month. Yep I did art during the holiday! This was really fun to do. I've had this idea in my sketchbook for a long time coming about my Project Henshin series. Yes I know it's very Marko Djurdjević inspired. Big fan of his work. This was certainly challenging and ambitious and I ran into few snags and frustrations but kept at it and learned a bit about composition, lighting, edging and what does and doesn't work well for print media.
     
    Next up, I think I'm gonna try the Pulp Art challenge over at ArtOrder blog. I'm really excited about that one. Till next time friends!

Happy Holidays 2011

     Hey everyone, just wishing you all a happy holiday. It's been one of those life changing years again and I've been pretty busy with work. I got a quick chance to do this years card and from then on I've gotten back my art mojo it seems. I've got a work in progress piece for Project Henshin right now, I'm really digging it. It's a very Marko Djurdjevic and ambitious. Challenging in a good way. I will post my WIP soon or maybe wait and work on it during my holiday break.

Epic Update 5 months late *Echo Echo*

Good day to you. Wait that's a WoW npc saying isn't it? Anyways, it's certaily time for a blog update don't you think? Bunch of news. New job, new state? Whaaa?

Yep, I moved to Austin, Texas in May and started my new concept gig at Junction Point/Disney Interactive Studios. Really sad to leave Los Angeles and my friends but people do weird things when single, unemployed and running low on savings... So yes, I've met tons of radtastic talented people here, bbq is yum, and rent is...not like Los Angeles! Hoping to experience more adventures here for a while, I hope. 

Oh art stuff right, I draw. Some old things that I never put up, some new sketches. Hoping to paint more but work has been quite busy.  I've been doing a lot of sketching in my moleskin and at work on worky NDA stuff. My line art has certainly improved, maybe one day I'll post them but for now all I got is digital.

Some Henshin work

 Hey everyone! Exciting and hectic(but good) things are happening but I'll talk about that when I sign some papers :) For now here are some pieces I was working on while job hunting. I plan to do more key frame painting samples for Project Henshin and character/enemy designs catered for a more animated cartoon style which I think works well for the project.

Some more zbrush

Going through some interviews and art tests since my last post. Also getting back into some zbrush and watching the tutorials again. Hopefully I get farther than I did last time and learn how to start with a sphere with higher polys or start with a zsphere model for bigger things than a head? Did I even say that right? Bare with me, zbrush noob art incoming...

Evil Picard?

Paint over of a rough 3d sketch. Wanted to see if that would work and it did its job, i'm getting the hang of using it as a sketchup tool for certain things. Just another tool to get things done right?

Environment sketches

Just a quick update with some environment sketches I did last week. The job hunt continues and I just updated my carbonmade site with a ton of new work, too much to show on this blog type.

First post 2011. Txt fighter backgrounds

Happy Holidays and yearly roundup art

     Hello again and happy holidays everyone! Some of you guys may have received this postcard but for the rest of you guys here you go. If you follow WotC Art Director Jon Schindehette's twitter or art blog Art Order, He recently posted my postcard and was inspired to put up a holiday art challenge for his readers. Awesome Jon, glad you liked the card. I had fun making it! 

     I just finished up an art test with a company so wish me luck with that. In the meanwhile, i found some unfinished images from 2010 that I most definitely will get back to finishing since I have all this unemployed free time. Project Henshin may return in full force since I'll be needing new portfolio pieces. Oh and there's an environment concept I did for another art test way back in spring, which I didn't get but here it is anyways.

     And last but surely not least, Txt Fighter, an iphone/ipod/ipad project I worked on with Jason Hazelroth and a bunch of other talented guys is coming out this week. Please check it out. I did the background environment art. 

And here we are again

Haha, now did I say I got a job? Well I just got laid off from Killspace. Times are tough I guess. I don't want to get too into it, there were some management and money issues but I LOVED my time there working with some of the best guys I've ever known. We created a team that worked so well together without bullshit, it was amazing but we couldn't get that project signed.

 The fight ahead of me isn't if or when I'll find a new gig but rather it's keeping myself pumped and inspired to jobhunt. I promise I wont lose steam like I did 2 years ago and fall into a funk.

Best wishes to everyone
-Kev

New job, cintiq and freelance game cover!

Hey everyone, sorry for the long delay in posts. Been a crazy long 2 months since trying to learn Zbrush and finally getting a cintiq at home. After a year and a half since the layoff, I've finally found a new gig at Killspace Entertainment as Senior Concept Artist (lead?). The projects are awesome and the peeps are great. This is going to be a blast. Thank you to everyone who stuck with and supported me during some very dark days after the layoff and struggling through this economy. You guys are the best.

As for freelance, I did a box cover illustration for an Ubisoft title "Voodoo Dice" via Jeff Zugale and Famous Frames. Heres the illustration and the trailer they did with my art. 

 

First dabbles in Zbrush

Hello everyone, hope you all are doing great! OK, don't laugh. I've decided to start teaching myself Zbrush(well with help of some training dvds) I haven't gotten so far into the dvd yet, just introductions to some basics, I'll work along side whenever they introduce something new. So far this is my first model/tool or whatever they call it, only like 3 hours in. Just from a sphere, no zspheres or bone armatures yet though. It's um...a Martian Manhunter/Piccolo/Spock person?

Jordu Schell class recap: Mask molds and Maquette update

Hey everyone, just posting some pics from my adventures into sculpting. Jordu's 5 week class ended this week but it gave me a great insight into the world of 3d and sculpting. That weekend we poured latex into our molds and the next day pulled them out. That whole night felt like Christmas eve lol, excited for sure. The mask came out OK, the latex seemed to pick up some of the plaster dust and there's some retouching to be done with air bubbles but I'll need to pick up a dremel tool to smooth out imperfections and eventually I'd be awesome if i could pick up some airbrush or PAX paint to give my mask some life. But my current budget and situation says different. One day.

As for my maquette last week we started our armatures and began adding super sculpey to them. At first using sculpey was a bit rough, lots of finger prints. But as the week went by it started shaping up. Even though class is over i'm still working it and hopefully be able to bake it when im done. No pics of the current version but I've started to add skin wrinkles and textures. Probably need to find some finer detail tools for the head but so far I'm feeling very good about it than a week ago. Confidence in sculpey medium definitely up. More to come...

Eh, maybe I'll stick with 2D :-p

Creature sculpting Day 3 and Vandal Hearts

Hey everyone, just posting some pics from Day 3 of Jordu Schell's class. We finished up our head sculpts before lunch. Here are some pics of my clay sculpt...

Here's Mindy Lee's.

 

And some pics of the rest of the class. Thanks to Elise Choo for some of these pics.

Next we plastered over the clay and after cooling off we began digging out the clay. Having never done a mold, sad to see that clay go bye bye.

 

To be continued next week with latex masks!

Oh yeah, I totally forgot to post this last week. About a year ago I did some contract work at Technicolor Interactive on the cinematics for the newly released Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment game out on XBLA and PSN. They never did let me keep the artwork but you can see the trailer with a lot of the cinematics. Hard to really say what was mine because it was a team effort, everyone working on different parts like characters and environments, props for the motion graphic cinematics. I met some great friends working there and I would love work with them again someday.

Video Games | Vandal Hearts: FJ | Daldren Grey Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Jordu Schell Sculpture Class and ImagineFX issue 52

Hey everyone, January flew by pretty fast thanks to freelance, job interviews and this creature sculpture class instructed by Jordu Schell, you may have seen a small indie movie he worked on lately, they call it "Avatar". Pretty stunning to see his sculptures and maquettes in his workshop. I'm taking the class with my friend Mindy, check out her work it's gorgeous. First project is a mask mold. This is a work in progress, should be done next week but I took some photos while working on it first day and during the homework week.

And finally, I'm featured in the FXpose section of issue 52 of ImagineFX. If you havent seen it already, check it out. A friend of mine, Brian Yam, is also featured doing a step by step environment as well.