Render By Hand

When I started this blog, I called it “Render By Hand” as I was at the time focusing on traditional media specifically for the Sketch Theatre competitions. I now see the irony that I am now posting CG work so often and traditional media has again fallen by the wayside.

Anyway, the theme for the Gnomon competition this month is Family Crypt.

Early work in progress showing the basic geometry

Done with Maya and Photoshop

My latest entry in the Gnomon Competition. The theme was sewer. My first thumbnail involved a curved tunnel since it’s a little foreboding (and easy to model). Once again the geometry is pretty simple and I spent most of my time lighting it.

Curved sewer tunneled done in Maya and Photoshop

This month’s Gnomon challenge was ‘factory’. I tried to do a darker scene where there was a lot of detail falling off the sides. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, but it was certainly frustrating. I’m using Maya 8 on Linux, which is incredibly buggy and tiresome to work with.

Rendered in Maya, touched up in photoshop

Sketch Theatre’s theme this month was “Freak on a Leash”, so I thought I’d try again.

Pigma Micron, Pencil, and a couple kinds of charcoal

I decided to do a different battle droid with a more exciting look and funkier design. Here it is…

The theme for Sketch Theatre this month was Battle Droid. I hope mine isn’t too Battle Suit looking…

The theme for the Gnomon competition this month was Mountain Temple, so I gave it my best shot. It took a lot of time getting the plants to look good without bringing my poor machine to its knees.

The Sketch Theatre Competition this month is Demon Lord. I instantly started brainstorming different character designs and gestures, but kept coming back to a person with horns. This seems a little generic to me, so I was trying to be somewhat original. I saw a picture by Ian Mccaig, where there was a cool looking monster, whose head was like a spiky cylinder. I tried mimicing something like that, but wasn’t liking it.

I was looking around for inspiration and found some pictures of Japanese demons and guardians. Feeling that this would be quite a bit different than the other submissions and especially different for me, I decided to go with it. It came out really smooth and I felt like I really wanted to do this style of character. I ended up using ballpoint pin on newsprint with a “Special Black” copic marker to fill in the background and touch up a couple spots the pen didn’t get quite dark enough. I don’t think I’ll ever win any of these competitions, but I feel like I’m getting better with each submission and that’s kind of the point, right?

Original uncropped. I had to make the background black because I had other doodles around the head. This started out as a doodle, but I ended up liking it too much to start over

Same image cropped to hide imcomplete wings and darkened to correct for scanner brightening

Colored with red and yello copic marker. Highlights done with wife's acrylics (I asked permission)

This is a render I did for a Gnomon competition. It took me a long time to light even though it’s not what I was originally going for. I had some happy accidents and some frustrations. Lots of area lights, spot lights, and a point light.

Took about two and a half hours to render