Hi, I'm Helen

Bacon + rough nights

2011-12-12T06:35:00.000-08:00

Two WIPs: a tribute to bacon, using a google img ref (search for mohawk girl I think). and then a tribute to every time I've done something that makes me want to facepalm. Really enjoy drawing in interesting perspectives.

Aloha

2011-12-07T20:03:00.001-08:00

I like wave patterns.

Red riding hood wip

2011-11-26T17:33:00.000-08:00

wip2- still deciding on pants.

wip I started this weekend- I don't really like the placement of the basket and axe.. probably will change it.

trackpad art

2011-10-29T08:28:00.000-07:00

and i know how to move on.

"i keep myself on a strict diet of carrots and despair"

Sculptris bust

2011-08-18T22:07:00.000-07:00

paintover of 3D img

Pixologic released a free sculpting program called Sculptris: http://www.pixologic.com/sculptris/

Messed with it tonight since it's been forever since I actually touched Zbrush. My takeaway is that it's a really nice, light introduction to sculpting, though I think it has some limitations (I think starting from a single sphere and pushing/pulling it from there is the protocol- so creating a full body seems like it might be an adventue). She's got a bit of distortion, but I can't seem to increase her poly count without my computer wailing in dismay.

Will play with it some more later. I haven't really figured out everything yet - like I'm not sure if there's a way to render anything... So these are just screenshots (good enough, right?)

Definitely worth checking out, though!

A cool thing that my art director mentioned was using 3D as a jumping off point/shortcut in 2D work. That struck me as a really smart technique - I did a quick paintover of my screenshot and am pretty happy with how it looks! It also helps me imagine the 2D image in 3D, having already modeled it.

one more for good luck

Musings

2011-08-17T22:34:00.000-07:00

I WILL DANCE ON THE GRAVE OF ALL HUMANS

denial of service from the best thing you'll ever feel on your lips

I don't like putting a ton of visual effort into my comics because I think having shoddily-rendered images actually helps the viewer focus on the humor.

Plus it's more fun to occasionally not give a shit.

I'd like to get back into comicing regularly.

Night Sky

2011-08-15T22:27:00.000-07:00

I saw the most beautiful sky in the parking lot of my gym - I tried to recapture the colors from memory- fortunately i took a picture of it on my phone (though the color is completely off) for composition - i need to look up what the signs say though since the trees are obscuring them in the photo.

I was going to draw a car in the parking lot, but my experience with drawing vehicles usually ends in tragedy. NEXT TIME!

I also really need to practice my environments.

and as an aside, i can't seem to figure out what's going on with Safari/Photoshop's color correction. This looks totally different in my browser and it's sad. :'( Will investigate later.

edit: It has something to do with embedding an RGB profile and Safari's inherent color correction (which most other browsers don't have). Stupidly technical, but now I know.

Go the fuck to sleep

2011-08-13T22:54:00.000-07:00

Fueled by my bouts of occasional insomnia.

Cut you

2011-08-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

I wanted to try painting in a toony/exaggerated style; a quick project I started before bed last night.

I got some chopping to do!

lady demon wip round 2

2011-05-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

Almost done, I think!!! background needs some more work. Need to clean up in places, too. May have to do a color pass at the end.

Demoness wip

2011-04-24T21:15:00.001-07:00

My goodness, this thing has been in progress for ages. I found it on my hard drive and started messing with it today.

environment study

2011-04-24T16:23:00.000-07:00

Rooftops

My vision's getting bad, and this is the view I had from the couch through my patio window- being so limited on surface detail forced me to analyze silhouettes and color blobs, rather than getting obsessed with small stuff.

I also had no idea what some of those roof contraptions were.

Old stuff

2011-04-23T12:40:00.001-07:00

Found some stuff on my old computer's hard drive- circa 2008 probably. Lara Croft + old comic.

scifi girl revisited

2011-02-28T20:51:00.000-08:00

quick color study before bed.

Sketchnight

2011-02-09T20:37:00.000-08:00

very nice

WHERE'S MY BANANA?!

Two quickies at Kenji's place.

maneater

2011-01-21T22:06:00.000-08:00

yikes

WIP, I think; this started out so gross-looking because it was totally monochrome. I started playing with the colors to introduce some warmer tones in it, and it really made the rest of the piece pop. I apparently began this during lunch at work, many months ago! Attached the original sketch, too.

I like drawing Medusa figures, but I can't pinpoint why. Perhaps I like the idea of frighteningly powerful women.

fighter chick

2010-12-27T21:09:00.000-08:00

I don't know.

started doodling- maybe I'll finish this one. :o My favorite thing to paint is skin, which is why there's always so much of it. :D

Happy holidays

2010-12-14T20:45:00.000-08:00

A background I illustrated for one of our popups for a Cyber Monday sale. Somewhere between 2 and 4 hours. I can't even remember (and it wasn't that long ago! Funny how time passes when you're working for one of the fastest-paced studios ever). All I know is that this is one of my favorite things I've gotten to draw. :)

It's important to note that we have to work pretty quickly because we have such a short feature cadence.. You can't over-work or obsess over any one thing, or everything gets delayed and you don't ship a feature on time. I'm happy that I managed to wrap something up quickly that I was also satisfied with visually.

smokeout

2010-11-15T21:01:00.000-08:00

mm, smoke

I don't know what's going on here, just that I was GOING to start my pre-Dominance War challenge and this is what happened instead.

Pumpkin still life

2010-11-02T20:45:00.000-07:00

Man, I love still lives (lifes?). I've been meaning to do more observational paintings.

WIP dump

2010-10-31T00:13:00.000-07:00

One year at Zynga

2010-10-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

I've been at Zynga East for just over a year! I've been so busy here- it's why I haven't updated very frequently, but I've resolved to fix that. :D Before Zynga, I really hadn't done much with vector art. Now, it's almost all I do!

This is some stuff I did at work for FrontierVille. I made the fox and the background; bushes and flowers are assets I mashed together quickly. Vince Livings and Andrej Bevec made them.

Above is some in-game art I made. My biggest contribution to FrontierVille is probably the animals/varmints I've constructed. The majority are mine, though a few were made by fellow artists. Most of it is vector, with the exception of feed images (the charred varmints).

I will punch the shit out of your face

2010-07-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

I don't know - I wouldn't want her to punch OR kick me. WIP. Started off as a color test on top of a photo, but ended up a crazy, unrelated doodle.

Commander

2010-07-02T19:48:00.001-07:00

Work in progress :) I'm playing with a 21" Cintiq at work!!! They sent one! I'm so excited! It's so fun!

Frontierville

2010-06-16T19:48:00.001-07:00

Howdy!

It's been an extremely busy past few months, and I think it's only going to get more frantic! My first game was released last week. :)

FrontierVille for Facebook!

http://apps.facebook.com/frontierville

Check it out!

It's cool working on such a small art team, because you end up affecting such a huge percentage of the game's appearance. :D

Fedex bed

2010-01-23T22:27:00.000-08:00

This has been my project for the weekend. :D

Squirrel

2009-12-15T10:08:00.001-08:00

Squirrel animations from Tommy Truong on Vimeo.

Tommy rendered this guy out - he did the modeling/animations/UVs. Jenny Son concepted. Those are my textures/colors. Did this a while ago for my old job. :o

face, short intuos4 review

2009-10-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

lady face

Haven't had a lot of free time of late. Here are some speedpaints on the new tablet. Trying to get used to the Intuos4 from work. The buttons are totally different, and I'm having to retrain my muscle memory to stop reaching for the wrong side of the tablet.

My experience working on the Intuos4 versus Intuos3:
-The surface is a ton grippier, making it easier to ink stuff and make straight lines. Sadly, this also impedes my painting process, as I'm not used to this much resistance.
-The buttons have cool LED titles next to them to remind you what they are.
-The scroll wheel is kind of weird - I don't really like cycling through options. I think I'd rather just have a bunch of strips in line.
-The USB connection is separate, which is a HUGE upgrade from the Intuos3 line - the cable on my Intuos3 is wearing out, and once that's gone, it's going to be completely dead. Being able to unplug the cable completely from the tablet is huge, and should reduce a lot of the wear that happens to it in transportation.

I'm hoping to get more used to this tablet as time goes on! I definitely feel a bit slower on this, just because i'm not used to it.

Briefcase Romanin

2009-09-22T19:36:00.000-07:00

Not my art this time, but something I'm VERY excited about. Check out two UMBC grads' (Andrej Bevec and Jamie Nola) insanely awesome indie game trailer! It's a 2D point-and-click adventure game. I loved the LucasArts games of old, and this really pays homage to the genre. I am passionate about adventure games as a genre, and admire any potential for its revival.

I'm also very proud of my fellow UMBC alumni for putting together something so incredible.

Squirrel WIP

2009-08-21T20:22:00.000-07:00

preview of the new squirrel redesign at work for a children's game. I'm in the process of texturing it. Notice the seam? That's Mudbox not being very good along uv edge. Tommy's model, Jenny's concept. The squirrels in our game are particularly adventurous, but also kind of scatterbrained and neurotic.

Texturing is particularly therapeutic for me. I turn to it whenever I'm frustrated with web design.

Squirrel ship illustration

2009-08-13T14:45:00.000-07:00

Quick illustration for work. It's a ship made by squirrels, who are kind of neurotic and not super careful about designing their ships.

Underworld Summoner

2009-08-12T22:32:00.001-07:00

here's some roughed out orthos with extra notes.

I'm pretty excited about modeling this! first I need to figure out the colors - I kind of like it grayscale though.

edit: messily colored test. I don't think I've ever designed a character wearing purple. it's an attractive, yet strangely noxious color.. which I guess is appropriate.
for some reason I always want to pair a teal blue with that shade of orange, but i couldn't get it to work for the character.

Demoness concept wip

2009-08-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

hopefully making some progress on this.

Light Guard model

2009-08-10T22:19:00.000-07:00

I was messing around in Mudbox after realizing I haven't rendered the Light Guard model that I finished several months back, while still in school... and by "render," I mean hacking together some screenshots.

It's crazy how much lighting affects the mood of your model! I'm used to just painting straight diffuse, but wanted to see what'd happen if I actually lit a model properly. And by "proper lighting," I mean some of Mudbox's default lights/materials. Looks pretty snazzy!

Unlit version below for comparison. The spec/normal doesn't show up, of course.

Concepted, modeled and textured by me! Added the concept as a refresher.

Gnomes!

2009-08-10T17:50:00.000-07:00

This cute fellow concepted by Jenny and modeled by Tommy.

I did the texturing/color choices, and am in the process of concepting some hair for him. He's going to have some customizable hair and eye choices.

We wanted a young, hip, slightly hairy, very handy, short dude to be our gnome.. Most importantly, he had to be appealing to children. Most gnomes from my memory are really creepy and super unappealing. It was quite challenging to come up with an original concept that somehow tied in gnome-y traits, yet resemble a plain garden or terrifying WoW gnome.

Our answer was to mess with his proportions- we gave him a wide head and huge eyes. His clothes hopefully make him look pretty crafty/tinkery. The glowing things are made from the crystals he mines from dark caverns. The illumination helps him navigate through the caves to harvest more crystals. His belt buckle also doubles as a pocket watch and compass~

Since the player sees the character from the back, it was necessary to add some visual interest. I chose to add some basic stitching to his apron for contrast.

PS these are screenshots in Mudbox, and I can't seem to get the alpha to render properly. It displays as pink along the chain. :O

Mudbox 2009 – and texturing workflow

2009-08-07T17:23:00.001-07:00

I was pretty delighted to play with Mudbox for Mac. Here's a gnome I've been texturing for work. I'm enjoying the ease of use... if you already know Maya, for instance, picking up Mudbox should be a snap; unlike Zbrush's UI/navigation, which has a fairly steep learning curve. Projective painting was pretty cool.

Interesting differences between Mudbox, Zbrush, and Photoshop CS4: Mudbox and Photoshop require UVs to texture properly. This means that your UVs need to overlap in a meaningful way.

Zbrush allows you to Polypaint, without first using a UV set– but your final texture resolution seems dependent on how many divisions/verts/etc you have, as a result. I'm not a huge fan of Zbrush's colors.

Photoshop CS4 can be a bit clunky in terms of painting directly on top of a model (On a latest-gen entry model iMac, and an older Macbook Pro), and the workflow between 3D-and-2D/UV sets are a bit ... quirky, at least on the Mac. It's hard to explain exactly, but you'll have to repeatedly open up the working texture, which starts a new "temp" file for you, if you plan on going back and forth between your flattened UV set and 3D space.

Since it tends to be a bit slow in 3D, I usually work mostly in 2D, while using the 3D mode to cover up seams. On that note, Photoshop tends to struggle on top of UV seams, leaving some artifacting behind.

The benefit of using Photoshop is that your texture will update on the model on-the-fly, reducing the time you spend refreshing the material in Maya. Also, you have access to a more robust brush system.

Mudbox was very responsive on the iMac I used it on. Apparently you can use it to paint not only the diffuse, but also spec maps (and other stuff).. Generating a normal map seems to be a lot simpler than doing it in ZBrush, too, though I haven't messed around with sculpting.. I can really only speak for it as a diffuse-color texturing tool.

The one thing I WISH I could do is paint in 2D space within the program, but I wasn't able to figure out how to do this (or if it's an option). Interestingly, there is a UV view, but, as far as I can tell, you can't paint on top of it. :'(

The brushes are limited, but you can make do with the options. Most of the hotkeys parallel Photoshop or Maya's, and are totally customizable. I'm not a fan of Mudbox's color selection system, either. Well, really, I'm not a fan of ANY of the three programs' color selectors since I prefer Painter's wheel. That's a rant for another time, though. Of the three programs, Mudbox handles seams probably the least intelligently. It doesn't really leave "buffer" room around your UVs, so you'll have to do a lot of fixing in Photoshop. The outputs are also kind of limited. I think you can only export tifs/pngs/jpgs and other flattened images from it, which means you'll have to spend an extra 10 seconds every time you want to save out your psd from Photoshop to a png (or whatever format you're using in Mudbox). Those ten seconds add up since you'll probably be back and forth between programs several times in the course of modeling a character.

Projective painting is a lot easier to do in Mudbox, as far as I have any experience with. I didn't have to watch a tutorial on it (like with Zbrush - and I still don't think I figured it out, hah) to figure out how to get it to work.

tl:dr

Zbrush:

Pros :

- Poly painting without UVs

- Ability to work in 3D space

Cons:

-Steep learning curve. It'll take you a while to get used to zooming in (which is actually just scaling up, but..)

-Dependency on # of verts for texture resolution

-Limited brush selection

-Drawing a straight line = lol.

-You'll need to deal with Zbrush's propensity for flipping your UVs.

Photoshop CS4:

Pros:

-Most efficient workflow between seeing your 2D texture and 3D object

-Option to work in 2D, if you need to

-Access to the most brushes, and the least irritating selection system.. Also, I assume that most texture artists are already very familiar with Photoshop, so there's not much of a learning curve.

-Access to layer effects/transformation/and other nifty image editing tools.

Cons:

-My computer can't deal with CS4's hardware acceleration, and painting directly on the 3D object is laggy.

-Need a UV first

-Quirky/annoying behavior when moving from 2D and 3D space

-Navigation in 3D was kind of unintuitive to me, since I had to use the little graphic to rotate/scale/etc.

Mudbox:

Pros:

-Intuitive navigation/interface

-Ability to paint not only diffuse maps, but also spec maps

-Very snappy

-Projective painting is easy and saves a lot of time if you have a polished concept you're working from

-Creating an occlusion map is very fast and easy

Cons:

-Layer system is a little bizarre to get used to.

-Limited brush selection

-Annoying color selector

-Limited export options

-Handles seams poorly and doesn't offer much buffer by default (maybe there are settings you can adjust)

-Can't work in 2D

-Showing both sides of a face seems to be a busted feature right now (it will make texturing a one-sided plane a pain in the ass)

Overall, I really prefer working back and forth between Mudbox and Photoshop. It helps out a great deal to be able to paint on top of a character to reduce the amount of headache that getting seams to align properly in 2D can cause. But I still need to go back into Photoshop a great deal to clean up artifacting and use more precise brushes.

Zbrush is cool, but still a bit buggy on Mac, and the workflow between Zbrush and Photoshop is unnatural to me. It's probably the part where you need to rotate your UV sheet all the time. :(

Underworld

2009-08-05T20:50:00.000-07:00

Some silhouettes I was working on the other day to help me with that illustration I was doing.

Thinking of doing a 3D model of this chick. She's a necromancer/summoner.

Still life speed paint

2009-08-03T21:49:00.001-07:00

90 minutes? before bed.
it's occurred to me that i look like a work-out freak. kettlebell, adjustable weights, 10 lbs weighs, etc within three feet of each other. My room is also really messy.
An experiment with colors, and Painter, which I finally reinstalled. Trying to make black and beige (the color of my carpet) look interesting together. need to do more work from observation.

doodles

2009-07-13T20:31:00.001-07:00

Found these on my harddrive. I guess I was working on them a few days ago. First pic is just a small exercise in using negative space.
second is that wip i was working on -still very much in progress. I have no idea what she's going to wear, really.

demoness wip

2009-07-07T21:29:00.000-07:00

started working full time and freelancing.. Hardly any time to myself. Started doodling aimlessly. There's more to this pic :O but only the face is developed.

Deluge of comics

2009-06-23T14:38:00.000-07:00

Took me a while to get around to updating these. Some may not make sense if you didn't go to UMBC. Also, I have more, but they didn't seem that appropriate to upload.

Senior thesis project!

2009-06-08T12:21:00.000-07:00

To play high res, click the video.

This is our senior thesis project. Jumper is a first person shooter/stealth game in which you have the ability to jump into and possess others. The government has been holding you, frozen in a cryotube in a secret lab, but the machine has malfunctioned and you're able to jump into an unsuspecting guard. Each guard (heavy, light, medium) has its own specialty, and allows for different styles of gameplay.

We made it in a semester between five artists, four programmers, and an audio guru.
I was art lead. My main tasks production side was concepting/modeling/texturing the female light guard, and texturing many of the environmental assets (including the adorable orange biohazard cube. Cute!). We used the Gamebryo engine, which was definitely an interesting learning experience.

I learned a lot about delegating responsibilities and scheduling as art lead, and the importance of keeping open communication between artists and programmers to reduce blocking issues. Knowing my artists' specialties and knowledge of certain techniques was vital, as I ended up redirecting my teammates to artists with the most experience in specific areas. Sharing information became absolutely crucial to the timely completion of our game.

More BHG environments

2009-04-02T15:18:00.000-07:00

I made the model and texture on that flower thing, and did the roofs/windows and a lot of those trim textures; Neal Jany also worked on this environment.

environment art

2009-04-01T12:54:00.000-07:00

some stuff I've been doing that's copyright THQ 2009 - may upload more.

i did lots of the textures~

Light guard texture preview

2009-03-25T21:23:00.000-07:00

Couple hours into my texture :) prob like 2.5 hours of work (i keep getting interrupted so my numbers might be off) - for just the diffuse. I spent yesterday working on the normal. Nmap generation in the Mac version of Zbrush is a little bit buggy - i gotta go and tweak some of those normals later. Still have the legs/arms and some other stuff to do.

occurs to me that I need to enlarge those knee pads - new texture coupled with unflattering camera angle makes them look sooo little.

I'm texturing in Photoshop CS4- I kind of want to write a brief tutorial on this process since CS4 allows you to paint directly on a model (which my computer can't handle) - but being able to see the model refresh quickly is speeding up my workflow significantly. I encourage anyone interested in texturing to check out CS4 - and push your studio to invest in the program if they haven't already. :O

Light guard model :D

2009-03-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

This time with an ambient occlusion map that took forever to render. I gotta find a quicker way to do these in Maya. :'( They're a lot faster to render in 3DSMax.
I adjusted the legs and dropped the arms to a 45 degree angle. I also learned some sweet ways to UV stuff using Unfold in Maya - it's a lot more efficient and clean.

Concepts

2009-03-18T17:50:00.000-07:00

Some concepts I've been working on this week.
Vampire mermaid and light guard.

Painter 11 and Fall out boy trail

2009-03-03T20:26:00.000-08:00

Two interesting things I've discovered.

Painter 11 is out.

Interesting new features include faster performance, better transformation support, and A POLYGONAL LASSO TOOL. I don't know why I find this so funny. I'm playing with the trial right now, but I'm still getting adjusted. The interface looks.. better? I guess? I really wish Photoshop would adopt Painter's color picker!

Fall out boy trail is a hilarious game that you should play if you like Oregon Trail + guitar hero/ddr/etc + zombies... you don't even have to like the band. Just play this game.
I chose this screenshot because i found it hilarious.

I FINISHED THE GAME IN THE TOP 200. I am #184!!!!!!!!! wow!

Barbarian wireframes

2009-03-02T19:02:00.001-08:00

Finally got around to figuring out how to render wireframes in Maya. This is from late last year, realized I had to put it in my portfolio for real! I'm really happy with how it turned out; I would like to rig it better in the future... But I'll probably have to redo the skeleton and repaint a ton of weights... ONE DAY.

Helen's date-o-meter

2009-03-01T22:00:00.000-08:00

List of acceptable suitors, and ones who I will not consider. For the newspaper~

More Jumper concepts

2009-02-26T07:40:00.001-08:00

note: i stole the cryolab composition (roughly), so apologies to the original artist. This is just for the purpose of visualizing the room and getting a sense of the color scheme. It should feel cold and sterile, with colorful visual cues to guide the player.

Proposed heavy/medium silhouettes. Heavy guy has a lot of bulky armor. Medium has a grenade launcher, a lot of eye and ear protection, and not a ton of protection on the extremities. Colors will probably read 10-15 yrs in the future when i get to them.

The Scholar

2009-02-24T14:59:00.000-08:00

It could happen.
I would like to turn my current games projects course into a reality TV show, if only for the hilarious potential for confessionals.

Sci-fi concepts

2009-02-22T10:58:00.000-08:00

These are for a game I'm working on this semester.

Here are the light and heavy guards - there's a medium class as well. I'm going to probably do more variations on them. It's a sci-fi, futuristic (10 yrs in the future maybe) feeling, where the guards are very impersonal... and have obviously different abilities.

Light class is quick, nimble, and relies on accuracy and stealth to get by a level. This class can crouch, jump, and run faster than any other class, but it also has the lowest armor value and health. It uses an accurate pistol, good at mid-range.

Heavy class is slow, big, heavily armored, and great in close combat. Lacks the ability to jump or crouch, but can bash you with his reinforced bracers or blow off your face with a high-powered shotgun. Also has the greatest HPs of al classes.

I'll describe medium class later.

bw face study #2

2009-02-17T17:51:00.000-08:00

Another study. pulled out an old concept. I like drawing faces! Might put color on it later, but I kind of like it as is. Another Photoshop piece.. I'm really starting to enjoy working in PS, weird. Thought I'd be using Painter forever.

King of the Sea

2009-02-15T21:28:00.001-08:00

This week's comic, out on Tuesday. I don't know what prompted this. Guess I'm feeling especially fond of sea life recently. :) My comic has gotten less UMBC-related as I've grown up. Guess you run out of things to whine about around campus, especially when you drop the meal plan and move out of the dorms.

I'm also not sure why I shaded this. It wasn't necessary, but I guess I've been doing so much flat coloring lately I wanted a change.

Oh my! Loss is on sale

2009-02-14T22:44:00.000-08:00

Remember this guy? This shirt is on sale on shirt.woot.com! :) The first day it's featured, it's $10 and free shipping. Every day after that it's $15.

Thanks for your support!

Oh Apple

2009-02-14T18:03:00.000-08:00

Apple is releasing "the world's thinnest and lightest 17-inch notebook," available soonish (3-4 weeks). What's interesting about it is its unibody enclosure and built-in 8-hour battery. That's fairly ridiculous in the notebook world, considering that the laptop is only .98 inches and 6.6 lbs. I question the portability of a 17-inch laptop, nonetheless, so I don't quite see how thickness and weight really matter here. It seems like a desktop replacement that you can occasionally take with you if the need strikes.

But I own a 15-inch Macbook Pro (previous generation), so I probably don't know what I'm talking about. My biggest gripe about it is its aluminum housing, which is very susceptible to dings and scratches. The new "brick"-style unibody enclosure seems to be more durable than the previous generation - and justifies the insane prices on the new Apple laptops.

The 17-inch Macbook Pro seems kind of cool, I guess. If you want to drop $2.8k + tax on a laptop that you realistically will only use for 3-4 years before you break it/it becomes slow and obsolete. What's nice and annoying about it is that you can optionally replace the disgusting glossy screen that comes standard with all the new MBPs with the anti-glare screen graphics professionals prefer to use... for any extra $50. And this feature isn't available on the 15-inches. So annoying! Also scary is the fact that the battery is built in to the computer. That means, once it loses capacity, you're going to have to take it in to the store... I don't even know how they replace it. :o

Realistically, in the game industry of today, you're probably going to be doing most of your work on the PC anyways. I still prefer Apple's superior construction, OS (which includes color management, nice fonts, integration and ease-of-use), but I'd like to play games and futz around in 3D Studio Max/Crazybump/etc without having to open up a separate partition.

My next computer will probably be a desktop with two graphics cards; I have a ton of monitors floating around that need to be put to better use. And honestly, I can't even fathom shelling out $2-3k for an Apple desktop, when it's for something that's going to sit at home on the ground (where durability and style don't really matter). Also, the ridiculous profit margins on the desktops are a huge turn off for me. I love their laptops, but their desktops don't do it for me. They're impossible to move (I have an old one - it's like 50 lbs and has no sane way to carry it), and very power thirsty.

This became a huge rant somehow. Anyways, that's the end of it. :)

Smartasaurus Rex

2009-02-13T17:48:00.000-08:00

This week's derby theme is "individuality." I can't stop drawing cute things.

He's reading a prehistoric version of The Origin of Species while his dinosaur friends do dinosaur-like things. You can vote on it if you have a woot account with at least one purchase, and feel like signing in. :)

Valentine's day

2009-02-11T21:00:00.000-08:00

And then my boyfriend bought me a box of chocolates several days in advance. :)

I've never received a box of chocolates in my life until yesterday. I am not permitted to open it until v-day. Exciting!

I'm not sure why neither character is wearing clothes. Guess it was just easier to draw. Also, I'm bad at prioritizing the important things in life. Also, no, he did not propose, it was just for the sake of the comic. :O

Recent comics

2009-02-08T08:28:00.000-08:00

These are the past two week's comics for The Retriever Weekly, UMBC's weekly newspaper for which I've been illustrating for over two and a half years. That means I must have a mind boggling archive of past comics... Probably around 70 just for my strip that are floating around on various hard drives. I should really wrangle them all together.

You'll need to click on them to actually see the full size.

The second comic is inspired by Arrested Development.

Under the sea!

2009-02-08T08:14:00.001-08:00

A speedpaint with insane colors. :o i'm really into bright, saturated colors. was going to stick a mermaid in there somewhere, but no matter how hard I tried, she looked dumb. Loosely referenced a coral pic I found on google images.

I'm getting very accustomed to Photoshop after working with eight hours a day for a couple months. I actually haven't touched Painter for a while. One thing that annoys me about photoshop is that two of my monitors have very different calibrations, and ps goes NUTS when I try to switch a picture between the two before resetting the color profiles. :(

Heartbreak

2009-02-06T21:54:00.000-08:00

Here are my entries for Woot's shirt derby theme "Heartbreak." If you like them, have a woot account, and have bought something previously, you can vote! just sign in and then click "i'd want one." :) Your support is appreciated.

Glass

2009-02-06T14:53:00.000-08:00

I'm an idiot, hahaha. I tried to hand paint frosted glass. Until I realized there's a pretty good filter for doing this for the purpose of texturing.

Learning experiences, yay.

A bunch of tshirt designs

2009-01-24T19:43:00.000-08:00

A bunch of my shirt designs for the shirt.woot.com derbies. The current derby is Legends/myths. If you feel like voting for any of my current designs (top three), click on them, sign into Woot, and then hit "I'd want this" at the top left corner. You need to have purchased at least one item from Woot in the past to vote.

Assassin's Creed

2009-01-16T16:31:00.000-08:00

Started playing Assassin's Creed. I'm like a year late. Had fun for the first couple hours. The missions are so repetitive I almost feel like it's not worth advancing in the game. On the other hand, it's visually beautiful; and on the other, other hand, everything looks the same. I doubt I'll be able to finish.

In a way, it reminds me of Mirror's Edge (well, not exactly). Stuff is beautiful, white-ish, and there's a ton of acrobatics involved. However, Assassin's Creed feels too... easy. Buildings are perfectly placed so you'll almost never fall. What I'm trying to say is, playing the game feels super mechanical. 1.) Find a watchtower. Climb. 2.) Do some investigations. 3.) Go to assassin HQ. 4.) Kill some dude. 5.) Rinse, repeat. Maybe my attention span in my older years is dwindling, but stuff like World of Warcraft, Fallout 3, and a bunch of the blockbuster games this season aren't capable of keeping me playing.

Why you should be a game developer

2008-12-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

... Because your job is recession-proof. Videogames are counter-cyclical. As individuals decide to stay in versus going out to the mall, the movies, or dinner, they'll splurge a little on home entertainment.
http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12815694&source=hptextfeature
I say this now, but, who knows~! Could be a very different story in half a year.

omg

2008-12-18T19:50:00.000-08:00

whoa, Photoshop CS4 has support for 3D... You can paint your textures in 3D........ @_@_@_@@ This is like SUPER Polypaint (Zbrush) with fantastic brush support. I encourage anyone interested in texturing to upgrade ASAP. Will help your workflows SO much.

Doesn't run that well on my computer, but it still runs. :O

-You can import OBJs!

-You can control some basic material information, like specularity

-You can control the lighting to an extent. I like to turn them off.

Few quirks that I'm not sure if I can get around: my texture map, when I'm using a preexisting one, doesn't update as I paint on the object... I have to close it, and reopen it to see the changes that I've made. But if I make any changes directly to the diffuse map, I'll see it immediately on the object. Not the other way around though?

Still playing around with it. Would like to see if you can render shadows in the diffuse.

The other thing I like about it: if you change layers, draw something on the layer, and hit undo, it doesn't immediately bump you to the previous layer until you hit undo again. Yay! ALSO, TABS.

2008-12-16T21:51:00.000-08:00

Yay, I'm so happy you are finally done, model! :O I wanted to show off my texturing skills. I don't consider myself a very strong modeler or rigger, but I'm trying to get better. This is a very temporary rig for the purposes of posing. Not sure when I'll get around to fixing the skeleton.

Little skeptical about the spec map. It may need some adjustment so that her hair's not blown out. Feel like some parts are TOO low poly, but I'm not going to worry about it right now.

Texturing!

2008-12-15T12:57:00.001-08:00

Hey, is it really bad that I think normal maps are gross? :'(

Some WIPs of a model I'm working on.

-Still need to refine textures in most areas. Finished a base coat in Zbrush, beginning to adjust everything in Photoshop.

-Would like to rig before this is due, but I'm feeling dubious about my ability to texture this in time.

-Only her face and chest are mostly finished, hah.

Last image is BEFORE I fixed her face after texturing and realizing that I had accidentally made an alien. The grossness is just exaggerated because I tweaked the texture again after I fixed her face. Weird hair stuff is where there's going to be an alpha. Not entirely convinced that the hair won't look stupid.

Tonal obstruction

2008-12-06T09:58:00.000-08:00

I was supposed to be playing video games at work, but I decided to draw something instead. Looks like a weird combination between Faith from Mirror's Edge and Daphne, the super-fast girl from Heroes. Unintentional! It's actually a character I like to draw in different styles (Qynine) whose only permanent features are her white hair and red eyes. :o

About two hours in Photoshop and two in Painter.

When I look at this, all I hear is that crazy falling/dizzy noise from Mirror's edge. It's like an atonal smattering of notes that make you feel like you're on the brink of death.