Keeping that momentum going

Here's what I did with my superbowl weekend:

A Yeti and a Wendigo, respectively.  Both in progress -- I'll post the finishes when they're done.

... and some more finished stuff

See, I told you I'd have some new stuff up!  This is a character I have been developing for my second independent study with my good friend Bryan Wynia.  An "Atlantian Prince": basically an undiscovered race of fishlike people that lives deep in the ocean.

I tried to actually sculpt out the transparent brain cavity (and brain -- went through several iterations of that) instead of just painting it.  Here's the color turnaround without all of the flashy materials and paintover:

Since this process is still kind of new to me, I thought I'd share some development.  Here's an earlier sculpt of the still unposed character:

And some early pose/expression testing:

Some paintovers to figure out some more subtle aspects of my design:

Thanks for looking!  New(er) work on the way!

The Work in Progress Post

Been having a little bit of difficulty balancing my time between a full-time job and part time school, but it has been waaaay too long since I put anything up here.  No, I'm not dead.  While I have a bunch of stuff laying around on my hard drive, none of its really finished to my satisfaction (or good enough for my standards...) .

Since it has been so long -- and I have been doing newer stuff -- here are a few things from the relatively recent past that I feel comfortable enough to show.  Please consider everything in this post a major WIP:

A "world map" environment from my Odyssey project.  Damn, this thing is old--

Some character sketches for Odysseus--

Some "key scene" studies for a couple of illustrations--

One of the illustrations from said key scene studies: the Cyclops encounter!--

I've been trying to get better at these "pitch illustration" type things: characters interacting in environments and whatnot, but man do I have a long way to go.

Oh, and I guess I was in ImagineFX relatively recently, too!  I'll have to scan that and get it up.  Thanks for everyone who bought my issue and read my little spread.  Hopefully more of that type of thing to come in the future.

New work (for reals) up very soon.  Thanks for looking!

Finally!

I got a job!  I am humbled and flattered to join the world-class concept art team over at Sony Santa Monica!!

I love my job, and can honestly say that there is no place I would rather be.  It is an honor and a privilege to work with such a talented, passionate group of people.  Being asked to work here makes all of the years of blood, sweat, and tears (and all-nighters!) worth it!

Getting to this point has not been easy.  Without trying to sound too corny: I would like to give a hearty thank you to everyone who gave me support and believed in me through some of the most difficult years of my life.  I could not have done this without the help of all of my incredible friends and family.  Thanks everyone!

I will still be finishing up school, so expect some art-related updates from my remaining school-work in the months to come, but unfortunately I will not be able to show most of what I do at work for several years.  I'll have to do some personal work now and then to try and keep from falling off the face of the earth!

2011 Intern Show Postmortem

Wow!  It sure has been a while since I put anything up here.  Bad Zach!  I'll try and be better about that in the future!

So another intern show at Art Center has come and gone, and once again the bar has definitely been raised.  The turnout was great this year, and the student work was spectacular!  I had a great time and got to meet a lot of very cool and interesting people.  Here are a couple of pieces I worked on for the show...

A new piece for my senior project -- the goddess Athena from my Greek/Steampunk/Fantasy version of "The Odyssey":

(She's sitting on her "steamthrone" :] -- I'm such a nerd!)

Here's a piece I reworked a little bit from my "Dead Space" redesign -- I think it makes for a more interesting narrative:

A 6-headed sea monster I'm designing for my "Odyssey" project:

Some more work on my cyclops zbrush maquette that I'm doing with Bryan Wynia.  Still a work in progress, but its certainly coming along:

Oh, and I got published!  Kevin Chen over at Concept Design Academy submitted my work -- as well as that of a few other students --to an article that 3D Artist Magazine was doing on the Zbrush character creation class that Bryan teaches:

I would definitely like to thank Kevin Chen, Bryan Wynia, Josh Herman and everyone else at CDA -- it was an honor to be selected and represent the school!

I have a lot more stuff in the works that I will be sure to post up here soon!  Thanks, as always, for taking a look.

One Hour Zbrush Sketches

I'm taking an independent study with the amazing Bryan Wynia, whose class you should take if you haven't already.  We're developing a "cyclops" character for a project I'm working on.

Did a bunch of Zbrush head sketches yesterday, each one was timed for an hour:

I apologize for the corny names -- I was tired and it seemed hilarious at the time. ;)

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*EDIT: So I did one today at school for the open house we were having in front of a bunch of people on the projector!  It was super intimidating!  Here's what I came up with:

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*EDIT: Took one of the more successful designs further, and toned down the "pornographic" nature of it, as per the request of one of my instructors:

Thanks for looking!

End of Fall 2010

Term just finished -- here's a few things I've been working on recently.

More on my Dead Space redesign.  I've only got a couple of pieces up to the level of polish I'm happy with -- more to come after I get some sleep:

A couple of pieces from my "Originality in Design" class taught by Nick Pugh.  I was initially a little bit apprehensive about taking the class because of the "abstract" subject matter it deals with, but was actually pleasantly surprised and got a lot out of it.

I developed a design language out of an abstract scanning technique that turned out to be pretty successful. For the final, I had to build one of my designs in 3D, which was a little bit of a struggle due to my limitations with the software.  Had to learn how to use Sketchup and Modo in two weeks, so given the time limit and my limited 3D knowledge, I think it came out okay:

Modo is really fun (Sketchup is not)!  I expect to be using it more often in the future.

Thanks for looking, more coming!