Photo Illustration: Idea farm

I've created a new photo illustration called "Idea Farm" that's about cultivating that one idea that can turn into something. I used paper mache, light bulbs and a somewhat successful attempt using baby powder for atmosphere/dust with a long exposure. All together, the final image was a composite of 4 different shots.   Here's some behind the scenes of how it was made:

Night Shift Painting

This is a painting I did back in December based off the med-bay area in the USS Hornet Ship down in Alameda CA. I threw in some surreal robot elements to add some mystery hinting that something strange is going on in this ship... Software: Photoshop.

Zbrush Speed Sculpt

It's been a while since an update, so let's get back into this with a quick Zbrush sculpt of a guy dressing the Javier Bardem No Country For Old Men hair-do (mainly because I suck at ears!) I had more fun getting the render set up in 3dsmax with V-Ray 1.5. 

Photo Illustration

Here's a new piece I did called "The Creative Journey" primarily for the LucasFilm holiday party art show this year. It was created by cutting up a bunch of metal, hot-gluing it all together, throwing a cardboard cut out of a kid running, some real balloons and a fog machine. The story I was attempting to tell is the creative one.. carrying an image (represented by the RGB balloons) through your mind, often times trying to pop and change the idea. Overall it was a fun project and I'm going to attempt some more in the future. It was also nice stepping away from the computer and getting physical.. even if it meant fogging up my apartment for a few hours and endless metal cuts. Below are a few behind the scenes images from the project.

Destruction Site

Here's another speed painting based on some photos from SF's city dump. I'm going to keep on hammering out a few of these a week but fairly soon I'll be diving back into creating some 3D scenes/elements.

Forgotten Factory

I love dystopian locations and this piece gave into that guilty pleasure. Created from a few photos I took around SF and Photoshop.

Jungle Cave

Created with Photoshop and personal photographs.

I'm Back

I finally decided to dust off my brush, and create a new concept piece based on several photos I took around the bay area. I'm going to attempt a few more like this just to get back into the swing of things.

TIE Fighter Mighty Mugg

A bunch of us from Lucas made a series of custom Star Wars Mighty Muggs for the Make-A-Wish Foundation Auction. I decided to make the little dude into a Tie Fighter :) The wings were sculpted out of Magic Sculpt then attatched with a drill through the head, added some paint and then voilà!

They will be on display at Comicon so if your attending please keep an eye out!

You can check out the info here:

http://starwars.com/vault/collecting/20090713.html

When Lawn Gnomes Attack

So here is this week's challenge: "When Lawn Gnomes Attack". I wanted to portray a serene suburbia scene where an angry lawn gnome got his revenge on pink flamingos. It was a fun quick piece out of my comfort zone which felt refreshing. Stay tuned for next week's challenge: "Prehistoric Time Travel".

Microcosm Challenge

For this week's challenge, we went with "Microcosm" - a minature/microscopic civilization. I decided to try a more photo-based concept this time by inserting this bio-mech bug city in a photograph I took by the Palace of Fine Arts here in San Francisco. The bug was modeled and rendered in 3dsmax with a little help from zbrush. The comp and DOF work were done with photoshop and DOF generator Pro. Next week's assignment is "When Lawn Gnomes attack".

Valentine's Gondala

Created with 3dsmax and Photoshop.

Scrap Scraper challenge

Some friends and I are starting weekly challenges in order to do more personal work. This week's challenge was to illustrate a Scrap Scaper... a city, structure or colony made entirely of scraps. Next week's challenge is going to be "Micro Blvd."

Garbage dump Photography

These were taken a while back during a Lucas trip to a garbage dump for texture reference. I finally got around to processing some of these ugly beasts.

Sudden Life WIP

I've been brewing on this idea for a long time... A sudden explosion of plant life through a street, plowing through a truck. The original idea came from a good friend Mike Bear. I'm not happy with this one very much so expect future versions of this illustration.

Lost Trinity

An older render from 2006, but definitely representative of where I want to take my personal work for the future.

Some concepts

Here's some more older concept work I did for 3DTotal.com last year

Photography

So I'm slightly conflicted about my photography.. I have flickr, facebook, picassa, me.com, and 100's of other accounts to distribute photos with... So I'll save my blog for my more "artsy" ones I suppose.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed work

Since the game is out, here are a few screen shots of the environments I built/helped built for the game. I'll add some screen shots of the cinematics as well

Digimattes from SCAD

Here are few digimattes from back in the day at SCAD. I have a feeling I'll be doing more of these in the future.