Holy smokes! Almost forgot this weeks thing! Right, well let's just get right to it!

Tron! I'm really taken with the world of Tron. Even when I was a kid and didn't know anything about it, I was fascinated by it's visual style. It saw the limitations of computer-generated visuals and fearlessly embraced them. It's iconic glowing lines and sleek surfaces were merely the best results you could get at the time.

But what would the original Tron look like with today's awesome 3D software? I don't mean update and change all the designs like the sequel did, just add some realism to the classic. Maybe bridge the gap between the two films a bit.

This was a lot of fun. It's interesting to see what you can do with such simple shapes and just leave it up to the lighting and materials to make it work. That being said, I know that I have a lot to learn about lighting something properly and tastefully but I'll get there. I did learn a LOT more about Blender's rendering and compositing this week. That headlight is way more complicated than you think! I hadn't previously tried the techniques involved and it turned out just how I wanted so that was pretty satisfying.

I've actually had a few of these jazzed-up retro Tron pieces in the works for a while so hopefully I'll have more to show in the coming weeks.

Until next time!

Well, well! Another week already! What is this, week #7? Goodness. I suppose this is a good time to explain my thing-a-week initiative. Well there I've already half-explained it. We're making good time! I found myself getting bogged down in big projects. Big projects that I spend too much time on and eventually lose enthusiasm for. Looking at folders full of unfinished projects I needed a change. Thus began THING-A-WEEK. The premise is simple; start and finish a CG project each week. Doesn't have to be anything mind-blowing, just revel in the satisfaction of actually finishing something. So far it's worked out pretty good! My good buddy Cougan has joined me in this endeavor and his relentless success helps keep me focused!
Anyway, here's this week's:

Right away I'm cheating because this was one of those big projects but this week I wanted it done. Hey, thing-a-week was my idea. I can bend the rules. So this, for the uninitiated is a corridor aboard the Enterprise D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The series' amazing blu-ray debut inspired me to create something from the 80's icon. Us CG artists can get swept up in the grittiness of the world so I also wanted to do something clean and elegant. People have called the Enterprise D the 'luxury hotel of spaceships' so it seemed like a good choice.
This was a good opportunity to get to know Blender's new Cycles renderer; see what it could and couldn't do. It handles light really well! I was surprised at how good it could make a scene look with minimal setup. There are some things I'm going to improve in the future but for my first big Cycles render, not bad. Tune in next week for another exciting image!

What a week! Really nothing to show for my efforts but it was very educational! My journey into matte painting had really hit a wall but I've managed to solve all of the technical problems that were impeding me. Should be seeing some neat stuff in the coming weeks! In the meantime I thought I'd share something I put together a little while ago.

So this is a fun little thing I put together for an online photo contest. The rules were simple; take a picture of the Omega Supreme figure you see above. I guess there was only one rule. This guy here is the mighty Omega Supreme of Transformers fame and I'm gonna have to talk about this incredibly epic action figure sometime. I took this opportunity to practice my matte painting and put him in a crazy action scene. The layout is actually a bit of an homage to this comic book cover.

It's made up of about 17 different photographic elements, jazzed up with some extra smoke, dust, and lighting effects. I rather like how his red glowy bits turned out. Overall it's not as fine-tuned as I would have liked (the city wasn't nearly as damaged as I would have liked) but the contest had been already going a while and I wanted to get my entry in. That and it's a picture of action figures so how good is it supposed to be, right? Also big shout-out to my good friend Cass who took the original photo of Omega.

Well, this is it. The first post.
 . . . feels good.