the Amateur Zoologist

Whoah Physical Media! What is this nonsense?

2012-02-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

Since I spend so much of my time these days solving technical problems, I decided to enroll in a sculpting class once a week after work to help me keep my creative brain working. One reason I chose the sculpting class is because I haven't done any real sculpting before. I've dabbled, but usually just playing around, and not trying to actually to improve my craft or anything. The closest I've gotten to real sculpting has been in the form of digital detail sculpts and this thing. So this has been a relatively new and challenging experience for me. Hurray for learning!

We're about halfway through the class and in each session we just do gestural bust sculpts based on a model for about two hours. Here's what I ended up with today. Still incredibly rough, but I guess you can't be expected to be amazing at anything on your first go.

-Evan

BIRDSQUAD: A Retrospective

2012-02-11T23:56:00.000-08:00

Hello all! It's been far too long since I've posted. Been busy at my new job, but have also been trying to keep sketching when I can. Today's post actually consists of some older work, but is something that is incredibly personal. Some of you may have seen these guys before, but probably don't know a whole lot about where they come from. So I thought I'd give my first true online introduction to the world of BIRDSQUAD:

BIRDSQUAD is a passion project of mine, that has grown and evolved throughout my life. It started as a comic book that I started drawing in 4th grade (yes you read that correctly). I remember first creating this when I was in my basement in Virginia in 1996. I wanted to make a comic book hero that I really liked and felt motivated to draw. Instead of a typical superhero, I wanted to explore making a much more cartoony character. I wanted to combine superhero elements with the type of whimsical, sometimes nonsensical humor of a cartoon. So I drew upon my childhood fascination with the Galapagos Islands, and created the principle character of BIRDSQUAD: The Masked Booby. I continued to draw very short, very rough comics, and by the year 2000 I revamped the Masked Booby series, transforming it into BIRDSQUAD.

Throughout High School, I worked on a rough animatic about the origins of this group of characters. This was done in MS Paint (yes with a mouse) and crudely put together to music in Power Point. This "animatic" (as rough as it is) was my first true endeavor into digital art. It put me through my first true all-nighters (from the pure joy of creating the story), and was a major stepping stone in getting me started on the journey to where I am today. Despite having started these characters so long ago, I constantly return to them. I actually still have all of the original 12 Masked Booby comic books, as well as the three-part, half-hour long BIRDSQUAD Trilogy animatic.

And with that brief introduction, what I want to do with this post is a retrospective look at the members of the Galapagos fighting force known as BIRDSQUAD:

THE MASKED BOOBY

The Masked Booby is the "Leader" of the team. He was the original crime fighter in the Galapagos. This progression shows how he has changed throughout the years. He is a Masked Booby (Sula dactylatra), and that perfect pun opportunity was one of the main reasons I chose him for my hero. The top left is the very first drawing of him, ever. It doesn't look like much, (wow, is that what I thought guns looked like when I was a kid?) but that's actually from the cover of the first comic. The bottom left is the super pixelated version from the animatic I did in high school, and the rest of the bottom are from experiments I did throughout college. The last drawing in each of these progressions is from 3 or 4 years ago.

SUPER CORMORANT

Super Cormorant was the next to join. He was basically a Masked Booby fanboy who just followed him one day and eventually became his sidekick. He was always more of a loyal follower of The Masked Booby than anything else. He is a Flightless Cormorant (Phalacrocorax harrisi). The first drawing in the progression is from his 3rd appearance, on the cover of the first of two Time-Travel related stories.

DODO

And speaking of Time-Travel, in that story, they accidentally brought a Dodo Bird (Ralphus cucullatus) with them to the present. Despite being a dodo bird, Dodo is probably the most intelligent of the team. He only communicates through thought bubbles, and by "communicates" I mean he breaks the fourth wall to the reader/viewers. He has uncanny abilities that he only uses when they are most needed, and he mostly uses them when he's bored, to simply get the "scene" over with and move on to the next thing. He started out as more of a pet, but my love for this character soon made him an active participant in the team. The 3D model in the lower row is a low-poly game model I did for an interactivity class a couple years back.

GOOBER BOOBY

Goober Booby is actually The Masked Booby's younger brother, who one day showed up on his doorstep, since he was evicted from his home. He is a klutz and a little childish but means well. He joined the group after a second Time-Travel episode, where he proved to his older brother that he could keep up.

"STUBBS" McGEE

"Stubbs" McGee was an ex-military officer who was recruited by Mayor Softshell as one of the two members of the Galapagos Secret Service - which later merged with The Masked Booby and company to form BIRDSQUAD. He's a fiery hot-head, but also has a great sense of pride and honor. It took him a while to warm up to The Masked Booby when they were first paired together. He was originally created by my brother Ian, who drew the first drawing in this progression. Stubbs is a Large Cactus Finch (Geospiza conirostris).

THE RED BOOBY

The Red Booby was the second member of the Galapagos Secret Service before the formation of BIRDSQUAD. She is a strategic genius, a tech wiz, and the most logical of the bunch. Although The Masked Booby is the official "leader" of BIRDSQUAD, The Red Booby is the brains behind the organization. She is a Red-Footed Booby (Sula sula).

This post became longer than I anticipated. I really just wanted to show these character progressions, as I think it's pretty cool to see the same character drawn from my elementary school years through my college years. It became longer as I figured it wouldn't be very interesting without some explanation of who these guys are. That's all you get from BIRDSQUAD for now. I don't want to give away too many plot details as I still hope to do something with these characters one day.

-Evan

Jack-O-Lantern Designs 2011

2011-10-15T15:11:00.000-07:00

Hey all! Last year I drafted up a contact sheet of jack-o-lantern designs. I enjoyed the process enough that I decided to make it an annual thing! So each year I'm going to post a new contact sheet of Jack-O-Lanterns to share with you all!

(click image for larger view)

And same deal goes as last year: if anybody actually decides to attempt to carve any of these (i'm not sure how well they would work in the real world), please send me pictures at evan.m.boucher@gmail.com and I'll post them up here! That goes for previous pumpkin designs as well.

Happy Halloween, all!

-Evan B.

Tupandactylus VI: Final Product

2011-09-21T18:38:00.000-07:00

Alas the time has arrived! Sorry it's been a while since I've posted on this guy. I think the difference between the last image posted and this finished animation will speak for itself!

I also decided to do this making-of video. Houdini's procedural nature allowed me to show off some of this process really easily, so I took the time to edit this together:

I hope you enjoy! I really had a lot of fun delving into Pterosaur anatomy. Unfortunately due to time and other obligations at work, I cut the shot in half. The second half would have showed some quadrupedal walking and launching. The motion is all blocked out, but that's where it must remain for now (sigh). I hope sometime in the future I get the chance to revisit it. I really want to play with such a bizarre animal walking. Despite the cut, I'm really excited about the project! Thanks for tuning in!

-Evan

I got my very own SOP!

2011-08-30T21:31:00.000-07:00

No new work in progress updates today. This is just something nice that happened at work. To give you some background, the last few months we had a couple of students from Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore doing projects with an industry mentor here at Side Effects. A bunch of us at work helped them answer questions when they ran into problems during their productions. They leave tonight to go back home, and one of them made thank you cards for everyone. It was really nice, and what was even cooler, was that he went all out and designed/printed the cards himself! They consisted of Houdini nodes with our names on them, along with a personal thank you message written inside. So with that, I introduce you my vary own node, the Evan SOP:

I have no idea what it does, but it looks like it takes 8 inputs to work. I'm keeping this on my desk because it is awesome. Thanks JB!

-Evan

Tupandactylus V

2011-08-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post. Been working on grooming the pycnofibers and lighting/rendering/shading. Here is a test composite:

(as always, click for larger view)

Things to continue to fix:
tweak lighting of the fur
adjust the ground texture
I'll probably add a matte painting to add to the environment as well.

But first I need to jump back into finishing the motion.

It's getting there...

-Evan

Tupandactylus IV

2011-08-12T17:34:00.000-07:00

I spent the past week taking the time to paint and sculpt the Tupandactylus model. I initially started by trying out 3D-Coat thanks to a recommendation I received. I painted the diffuse color map in 3D-Coat, and there is a lot about the program that I really like a lot. It's very easy to pick up, and there are a lot of nice tools. When it came to sculpting, I had so much trouble getting it to properly export a displacement map. It was also crashing constantly, which was incredibly surprising, because of the specs of the machine I was working on. After about a day of trying to get it to work, I then turned to ZBrush for the sculpting which worked spectacularly. It was like reuniting with an old friend in a way, considering it's been almost a year to the day since I've used it last.

For sculpting reference, I used a number of diagrams of proposed pterosaur musculature as a loose guide. I also threw in my own knowledge of crocodylian musculature to help sculpt in the major muscle masses. A lot of the fine detail was influenced by birds, a few minor details from bats, and even some influence from lizards. I looked at a lot of pelicans, cormorants, parrots, and condors to try to get some nice face wrinkles. There's a lot of detailed skin texture which is kind of difficult to see on the wider images (click for larger view).

Now I need to work on getting the diffuse, displacement, and normal maps to properly transfer to Houdini so I can move on from texturing.

-Evan

Tupandactylus III

2011-08-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

A lot of cool stuff going on with this guy. I've done the first round of blocking animation, and then moved on to some visual development. I've been working on lighting/shading/rendering as a break from animation. Primarily, I've been playing a lot with subsurface scattering. I set up the shot featuring this guy so that he will be lit extensively from behind. I want to do this so that I can play with the subsurface on the wing membranes, exposing tints of the subdermal layers and blood vessels underneath.

Here is a test image of the subsurface:

I was able to control the subsurface scattering through texture maps, where I painted in the veins and arteries that will subtly shine through the skin in certain areas:

Keep in mind the shading in the top image is from the subsurface alone. That's the tint that's going to shine through. There is just a plain brownish shader (with no displacement) applied to the model at this time. The reason for this is I had a lot of look-development to do in order to figure out what I want this guy to actually look like before texture painting can begin.

I did some visual development by painting over a black and white render of the Tupandactylus with the brush mode set to overlay. After doing a couple of concept paintings, I mixed and matched the various layers to get many more variations. I'm not yet sure which one I'm going to pick, but here are the concept paintings (click to enlarge):

I looked at a lot of reference imagery of everything from parrots to frogs to butterflies. I often see a lot of pterosaur restorations with the exact color patterns of various types of birds. I wanted to avoid this trend, by attempting to find something that feels like it could have appeared in nature while also feeling unique to this type of animal. I was also trying to make sure the crest stands out as a display device, while also having the entire animal's color palette feel homogeneous.

Now that this has been done, I need to decide on a design, and get to painting. I think this next week I'm going to jump back to animation again, as well as hopefully get those pycnofibers started.

-Evan

Tupandactylus II

2011-07-22T19:08:00.000-07:00

Continuing on my Tupandactylus, I fixed up the model, created some UV's, rigged, and skinned the critter. The key for the rig was making it so it would be able to work both in the air, and in the pterosaur quadrupedal stance. I think it works rather well.

Next I'm going to do some animation to test the rig further, and make any minor adjustments I may need in the skin weighting before I get to texturing and 'pycnofiber' generation (via the fur tools).

-Evan

Tupandactylus I

2011-07-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

For an individual portfolio-building project at work, I've decided to build a full creature in Houdini; doing everything from modeling to animating to rendering. I've also taken this opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for quite some time: build a pterosaur. More specifically, the tapejarid, Tupandactylus imperator.

To prep, I've been doing a lot of reading about pterosaur anatomy; mostly Dr. David Unwin's Pterosaurs: from Deep Time, as well as from other sources such as http://pterosaur.net/ and portions of various papers and websites. Due to the lack of time I have to complete this, I'm obviously not going to hit the books nearly as hard as I did for my Master's Thesis. I just have been casually reading and using my modeling sessions as a way of testing my understanding. It's been fun so far. I want it to be authentic enough, and true to the animal without killing myself over every minor anatomical detail.

Here are some images of what I have thus far. So far I've completed the base model (much more detail will eventually be sculpted in), and I've laid out the bones which will be used for the control rig.

First the model:

...and the bone layout:

I took my time with the model to try to make sure I was able to create it in a way that would work for both the flying and walking motions. Being conscious of this, before spending the time in connecting the model to the bones, I first adjusted the skeleton into a quadrupedal stance to make sure the dimensions of the animal would work.

This has been a fun project so far, and I'm excited to get a working rig. Painting the skin texture and adding the "pycnofibres" should be fun as well :P

As always, comments, suggestions, feedback, etc. are welcome!

-Evan

Houdini Modeling II

2011-06-09T17:15:00.000-07:00

Welp, I finished that guy. I discovered a bunch of options and little tricks that helped make the rest of this go so much quicker. Very exciting to know that I can model a full character in Houdini now.

-Evan

Houdini Modeling

2011-06-08T11:30:00.000-07:00

This is what I do when work gets slow...experiment/learn.

I decided to take a break from rigging and tackle organic modeling in Houdini... it's not nearly as bad as I was expecting, but I am still much quicker in other packages.

Here is a hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius):

-Evan

Golden-Maned Ostrungul

2011-06-05T21:41:00.000-07:00

Slow Sunday = creature designs.

This is the Golden-Maned Ostrungul (Ostrungula aurocapillis). This is a male showing off his crest, which floods with blood during the rutting season; giving it it's pinkish hue. These animals are about 9 ft tall at the shoulder, and use their claw-like hooves to dig up invertebrates, mollusks, and crustaceans hiding in the riverbeds.

Playing with GIMP

2011-05-18T19:06:00.000-07:00

The Perpetually-Projectile-Vomiting Dinosaurs of Santa Monica

2011-05-10T23:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I've been busy with relocating to Los Angeles, and settling in with a new job. I'm currently working at Side Effects Software, as a Character Animation Intern; working on a short film that is being produced internally. I do have more drawings and even an animation test to eventually post, but first things first...

The office I'm working on is right on the Promenade in Santa Monica, and right outside, there are two Ornithischian dinosaur fountains, which I absolutely adore.*

I have always found it peculiar that there are a plethora of fountains in the world where the water spout emerges from the depicted animal's mouth. Every time I see this, I just can't help but laugh to myself. Here is another image.

The reason I find this so humorous, is because, if these figures were indeed alive....they would be in a horrifically uncomfortable state of perpetually-projectile-vomiting, which is hilariously ridiculous. The above Stegosaurus fountain therefore inspired me to realize this bizarre concept with the following digital painting (click for higher resolution):

I'm glad I got that off my chest! Now I hope every time you see an animal fountain, you imagine what it would look like if it were alive, and puking all over the place.

-Evan

* Down the street there are two sauropods as well; both a Brachiosaur and Diplodocid - and they almost look like they're about to beat the crap out of each other

More Sketching

2011-03-21T16:57:00.000-07:00

A couple things in this post. Apologies ahead of time...digitizing these images didn't work quite as well as in previous posts. I've been drawing on a large format sketch paper lately, which doesn't scan too well... considering the paper's at least 4 times larger than the scanner's surface area. These images were photographed and touched up instead...

First a few faces:

Next Up: Hadrosaurs! - a Cartoon Parasaurolophus and a Saurolophus Sketch:

I've also been doing some boarding and character studies for an animation idea that I've been thinking about recently...there are still a lot of story issues to address...as there are some elements that I really want to include but might ultimately have to get cut. It's also looking too similar to some previous work from a structural standpoint, so I'm going to try and rework that as well.

It's also unfortunate that I can't really get an animatic going just yet since my Wacom pen is dead... I'll have to wait until a later time when I can find some money to get a new one...

-Evan B.

Random

2011-02-28T13:01:00.000-08:00

Look what I dug up...I completely forgot about this...

-Evan B.

Backlog of Sketches

2011-02-14T14:43:00.000-08:00

I've done a lot of scanning today so I can post a bunch of sketches I haven't yet had the chance to.

This first group is a bunch of images I sketched while in Washington D.C. last fall. Most of them were sketched at the National Museum of Natural History:

Coyote (Canis latrans)...

Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus) from the National Zoo...

Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos horribilis)...

African Bush Elephant (Loxodonta africana)...

Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius)

Bull Moose (Alces alces), and a quick Restoration of Dimetrodon grandis

Candid people sketching at a local D.C. Cafe...

And here are some misc. sketches I've also come across.

Life figure drawing from a long time ago:

Continued creature concepts from an independent passion project...

Dragon-like creature thing...

Cycloptic creature...

Vulture...

Frog...

Old-Man Blocky...

Hand Study...

Last summer I drew this because I randomly remembered the book, The Whingdingdilly, which I loved as a child. It inspired me to draw all sorts of strange chimeras when I was young...

My dog, Teddy, in his famous "Walrus" pose. He does this so much that we've started using walrus as a verb...

Furry Rhino-Monkey Creature. Don't ask...because I don't have an explanation.

Experimenting with drawing different styles of "cartoony" people...

More critters...a crocodylian and some sort of giant worm-thing...

Skeletal creature...not based on any specific animal...

Yet another creature design...

Aliens of sorts...

A Lamenting Pig...

-Evan B.

Stock Rig Part 3

2011-02-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

The Stock Rig I've been working on in my free time is "complete!" I got the motivation I needed this past weekend, and finished a full face/full body rig in much less time than I ever have before.

It required 30 blendshapes for the face and has IK/FK switching on all the limbs. Pretty basic stuff really...

I want to continually update this rig with more features as I go. I already know I'm going to add in a great deal of Squash and Stretch controls that I didn't get the chance to do just yet. If anyone has any suggestions for cool features they'd like to see, let me know.

I've also done some animation tests to see how it holds up. I want to keep doing short lip-sync/acting exercises like this regularly to help improve my animation skills.

And feel free to guess where the audio clip comes from.

-Evan

Spark of Inspiration

2011-02-01T21:26:00.000-08:00

I've had a couple ideas in my head from watching various nature documentaries over the last couple months, and realized that concepts from some of them were similar enough to put together into a single story. This idea I have in mind continues the strategy of dramatizing a messed-up real world situation from nature, similar to what I did with First Step.

I would like to develop this idea into an animated short, hopefully when I have some better resources available, so it can be polished. Anyway, here's a concept sketch from it to keep you wondering. Some of you will probably see where this is going:

Inspiration:

Concept Sketch:

I have some great ideas in mind for this, and am excited to mold them into something great.

-Evan B.

3D Modeling Project of the Day

2011-01-27T11:47:00.000-08:00

So today I decided to play with something different. With the big snow that's been hitting the east coast, I decided if and when I move to California, I may never get the chance to do a fun snow sculpture for a very long time. So with that in mind, I took a shovel, an ice cream scoop, and two and a half hours and built this in my yard. Some of the photos have been manipulated a bit so I could show off the details on the sculpt. Click the images for a high-res view. Enjoy!

Stock Rig Part 2

2011-01-05T17:18:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I posted anything, but that doesn't mean I haven't been up to anything. Most of my time recently has been spent travelling (for the Holidays), sending out job applications, and undergoing some independent study to help improve my understanding of higher-level mathematics, as well as programming (related to the job search).

Last post I mentioned the stock rig I've started to push my cartoony character rigging skills, as well as to have a custom rig to do acting exercises with. Overall, it's been incredibly nice to work on a cartoon again, as I'm still sort of recovering from the Thoracosaurus. Below you can see the full model of the stock rig. I decided to give him polygonal hair, to match an early sketch I did before I started building the guy. The hair is on a separate layer though, so different hairstyles can be swapped in and out as desired. This character doesn't have a name yet, so feel free to make suggestions if you wish.

I also have about an entire book and a half of sketches I still need to post, but the logistics of where my computer is compared to my scanner has been preventing me from doing it. Lots of cool things to come when I finally get them posted, though...everything from creatures and cartoon characters, to candid sketches of people as well as animals. Hopefully one of these days I can bring myself to post them.

Stock Rig

2010-11-28T15:15:00.000-08:00

In the midst of waiting to hear back from my advisor regarding my thesis document, and while searching for employment, I've decided to stay busy. I don't want to get rusty, and want to keep pushing my abilities. Lately I've really been in the mood to do some animation acting work. I was tempted to pull out one of the many stock rigs floating around the internet, but was reluctant to do so. I've become jaded of seeing the same rigs in countless work online, so I decided to also push my rigging chops and build a stock rig of my own.

The idea is to have a simple character that I can use to practice animation. With this exercise, I also want to push my modeling and rigging techniques to the extreme, by adding a lot of functionality (especially extreme squash and stretch abilities).

I am also pushing my limits by trying to make this character as close to my cartoony drawing style as possible. I'll periodically update my progress on here, and if I deem the final result worthy enough, I'll even make the rig available for free download.

So far I've built the head, and have been undergoing RnD on more efficient ways to set up the functionality of the dorsal-ventrally elongated eyes that are commonly found in my characters.

-Evan B.

Canis lupus familiaris

2010-11-26T15:28:00.000-08:00

this one's self explanatory...

A Note on Paleoart Compositing

2010-10-24T20:25:00.000-07:00

This is something that has bugged me for a long time now, and only realized what the problem was in the last few years...so here we go.

Over the past decade and a half there has been a major surge in paleo-themed educational programming on networks such as the Discovery Channel. Despite all of the advancements in the technology behind these sorts of programs, there is one aspect of them that never seemed to catch up... despite it being a simple fix that any trained compositor should know how to do.

Many of these programs like to simplify the production process, as well as enhance the believability of the images by filming background plates, and compositing the animated extinct beasties into the shots. This is a great technique, which provides photo-real environments (since, well, they are real) without requiring digital artists to recreate entire paleo-environments from scratch.

Putting aside any problems and inaccuracies in modeling, shading, or animation of the creatures, these programs almost never seem to be well composited into the environments. Sure lighting is taken into account, secondary effects like footprints, splashes, or rustling of plants are added, and everything is done correctly when rendering the images out of whatever package they may be using. But what needs to be realized, is that simply rendering the thing out and slapping it on a background isn't all it takes to sell these things. It is only the first step.

The images need to be tweaked and tweaked and tweaked, then watched, and re-tweaked until they are as integrated as they can be for the given production timeline and budget. Most of the time, the images are very close to being final, but there is always one part that the people working on these programs somehow always miss.

Film has artifacts. There is film grain, motion blur, depth of field, lens flares, noise, lens distortions and film scratches that happen as a result of shooting live plates. When images are rendered out of CG software, they have a tendency to look too clean. These clean, sharply high resolution images layered on top of filmed footage (with plenty of grime and artifacts) simply look wrong. It takes the viewer out of it. The fix to this is to dirty up the rendered frames in the composite. It is way easier to dirty up clean, sharp, unnaturally perfect renders than it is to clean up dirty film. I understand that a lot of time is put into the textures and shading of the animals, and one might not want to dirty up his or her images because of all that time put into making everything beautiful, but these renders are only one element of the final image. If the composites aren't convincing, the viewer will have a hard time believing they are looking into the past, no matter how good everything else is.

It is a very simple fix that not enough people seem to take the time to do. Adding and adjusting grain, noise, and defocus nodes to a comp, as well as simply grading them properly, is a relatively simple final step to making these things feel fully integrated.

Here's an example to help illustrate this from a personal school project of mine (click image for larger view):

This post was inspired by the fact that I just finished watching David Attenborough's "First Life" on discovery channel in full HD. It was gorgeous, and the animation, and shading in particular, of the critters was truly top notch...possibly even the best I've seen on the Discovery Channel to date (the rendering of Opabinia was particularly inspiring).

This being said, the final step in compositing mentioned above wasn't taken into account as much as it should have been. It was way better than a lot of these types of programs, but some things still seemed just too sharp. It took me out of the informative narrative and encouraged me to write this post.

Sorry for the length...I really didn't mean for it to go this long. Moral of the story, we need better (or at least more attentive) compositors in the realm of paleoart programming. The end.

-Evan B.

Halloween Fun

2010-10-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

This is different from a lot of what's been on here lately. A good friend of mine asked me to draft up some designs of Jack-O-Lanterns for Halloween. I thought this was an excellent opportunity, considering I haven't carved a pumpkin in years. I ended up going into Photoshop and building a contact sheet full of sketches of unique ideas. I'm tired of the standard jack-o-lanterns and decided to put my own style into it. This only took me about an hour, and made me realize that this is a great way of picking out a face for anybody's next pumpkin. Always start on paper! :)

I hope you enjoy them, and if anybody actually decides to attempt to carve any of these (i'm not sure how well they would work in the real world), please send me pictures at evan.m.boucher@gmail.com and I'll post them up here! Special thanks to Susan for inspiring this idea.

(click image for larger view)

Anyway, Happy Halloween All!

-Evan

Some Recent Paleo Work

2010-10-18T17:29:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted....and it's NOT because I haven't been drawing or creating. I've simply haven't had the chance to scan any of the plethora of sketches I've done since last post.

I have a couple things for you here. First off, is my completed Master's Thesis. I figured I'd share it on here for anyone who's yet to see it. The project was a heavily researched restoration of the extinct crocodylian, Thoracosaurus neocesariensis. The fossil source (NJSM NH 2005.2) was digitized in order to help the project stay authentic in its attempt at realism. For more about the process of the project, see here.

Also, just to keep me occupied I've been trying out my new Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet as well as playing with Autodesk Maya 2011. Here are some work-in-progress images of a Camarasaurus I've been modeling. This differs from the above project in that I skipped building the skeleton and muscles and went right for the skin. I did, however, use skeletal photographs as image planes to get the correct proportions and make intelligent decisions while modeling, so its not like the result is completely invented. I also did some light background reading on the discovery, features, and phylogeny of Camarasaurus to keep this exercise somewhat informed.

There are still teeth and toes to be modeled, and overall cleanup. I'll post the final images once this guy is completed. I definitely would like to take the time to sculpt and texture him. Depending on how much time I have I may even rig him up and do some experiments with animation.

-Evan

Shovel Man

2010-08-18T11:37:00.001-07:00

Concepts for a stereotypical fictitious murderer, Shovel Man. This is a character me and my brother barely made up in order to scare our cousins... I posted a really rough sketch a couple posts back from when we first made him up, but I felt compelled to flush him out a bit more...

Enchodus aka "Sabor-Toothed Herring"

2010-08-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

Here are the renders of the fish I created for my Thesis. It's the genus Enchodus and it's from the same location and strata as the Thoracosaurus. This was a lot of fun. You can see the texture map at the bottom. Software: Modeled, Rigged, UV Layout: Autodesk Maya. Texture Painting and Sculpting: Pixologic ZBrush and Adobe Photoshop. Rendered with Renderman for Maya.

What happens while I wait for sims to complete...

2010-08-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

I've been working on water simulation for my Thesis, and as we all know....simming takes a lot of time....so sometimes I decide to sketch while I wait for stuff to calculate.

First some Amphibians:

Here's a devious Cane Toad (Bufo marinus). He looks so evil, because of the nature of the animal, being introduced as an invasive species and killing everything it can.

When I first read about this my mind was blown. This is the Ribbed Newt (Pleurodeles waltl). These guys are like the Wolverine of the amphibian world (Wolverine as in the X-Men Character, not Gulo gulo). When threatened, these guys actually push the pointed tips of their ribs through poison glands and then THROUGH THEIR SKIN, to stab/poison whatever it is that is attacking it. I'm not even kidding about this. you can look it up for yourself!

Now we have a Commando Manatee....or a Comanatee, whichever you prefer. I know he should probably be in the Navy, and not a paratrooper, but I have a special connection to paratroopers. I drew another version of this guy on a whiteboard with parachute and an 82nd Airborne Patch, but this one is simplified a bit for visual clarity.

And here's a generic Rock Monster sketch I did as a quick concept for a friend of mine, who may be trying to build an army of them for a project.

And finally, we have another experiment of mine, continuing to test myself in creating completely original creatures that don't look like anything that currently exists. The idea behind this guy is that in its evolutionary history, it lost its limbs, and instead strengthened and lengthened millions of hairlike flagelli, that sweep under and around its body. There are a large number underneath the animal to support it, while there are also these tentacle-like things all over the body that constantly touch/sense/grab onto surrounding objects to inspect, as well as to propel forward. This thing is a little creepy, and I'm curious to see how it would look in motion.

Sketches from Maine

2010-08-04T06:28:00.000-07:00

So I'm back from my week long family reunion/anniversary party in Maine. I got a lot of quality time with my Mom, brothers, as well as various cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Everything went perfectly. One highlight was getting to see a bald eagle fly right past the house on lake Maranacook where we were staying. This was a first for me, and I was very excited about it. Also got tons of fresh seafood which is always a plus...anyway enough reminiscing about last week, here are the sketches I did while up there. I didn't really take the time to do any candid life sketching, but I enjoyed these little beasties I concocted:

This first guy, i started drawing some sort of dinosaur, then decided to make it more interesting by adding in human features in it....I then kept that for my theme and created this human-dino hybrid creature. It's a little eerie to look at, but it was fun to do.

Next we have this little guy. I have no idea what he is...I just thought he was cute :)

Next we have this canid. I really liked the pose I put him in, and thought the expression was too good to not add something for him to be reacting to.

Now we have a graphic approach to a barn owl (Tyto alba). I started with the outlined shape on the left side, and tried to finish the form without disrupting the simplicity of the outline. I tried to contain as much of the character as I could inside that shape.

And finally, I got bored while waiting for my dinner at the Chick-A-Dee restaurant in Turner, Maine with some couple dozens of family members. I drew this creature trying to keep the idea in mind that I wanted to create a monster that didn't resemble any living animal. It's really tough to do, and it's something I'm always trying to practice here and there. I particularly liked the idea of having suction-cup like legs, and a pair that sprout from the tail.

Misc. Sketches

2010-07-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

So I have some various sketches to post before I forget. The first couple are people I sketched in Maine when visiting family.

Here, on the left we have a man playing with his cell phone while waiting for someone in Freeport. The right is a character my brother and I created to scare our cousins, named Shovelman. They got too scared before we even had the chance to give him a backstory....drat. Well he posed very nicely for this sketch, anyway.

Next we have one of those cousins, sitting at a fire pit. What I learned from this? Apparently when I draw people outside at night with only the light of the fire to aid me, they end up looking older than they are.

Now we have some fun little critters that I sketched while waiting for things to process. First, there's an alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), then we have a three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus), and then a koala (Phascolarctos cinereus). Notice how freakishly strange koala's front paws are....you can't make that stuff up!

I'm going back to Maine for all of next week, and there should be plenty of down time for sketching! I even bought a new sketchbook for the occasion. I know I'm excited.

Sketchbook Backlog

2010-06-28T12:50:00.000-07:00

So I'm just about finished with my current sketchbook, and there are a lot of misc. things in there. This sketchbook spans the time from last fall until now. so here's a bunch of random things:

So where to start? There's another concept for my evolution animation idea, as well as some dino sketches, including an extremely inaccurate/unrealistic Edmontosaurus. We also have a pig demon riding a babirusa for some reason. Then a sweet imaginary bird-like thing, a stylized turtle, and mechanical Frigatebird (Fregata magnificens mechanicaliensis).

Here are a couple more strange critters.

Here we have a crocodile, some sort of strange Parasaurolophus-humanoid alien thing, and a giant angry rodent.

This here is the result of misc. people-watching excursions around the city this year. When I'm waiting for a train or if I'm early to an event of some sort, I'll usually take the time to practice drawing and get ideas from the people around me. All of these are sketches of random people, or are characters inspired by real people that I spotted. They are all from various places in Philadelphia.

Here we have an exaggerated, cartoony amphibian of some sort, along with a creature, combining influences from sauropods and fish.

Yet another creature concept

A sketch test for the header banner of this blog.

A strange alien thing that I drew the night I decided to start blogging. I haven't spent so much time on a single still image in a while, so this was refreshing. There are lots of different influences in this. I didn't give this guy any sort of back-story or name yet. This is just the result of me sitting down and letting my mind wander.

...and here's a quick sketch of the skull of a Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla beringei). That's all for now, Now that this collection of images is up I can continue to just post things as I draw them, opposed to posting mass collections of stuff every couple months.

Animal Rotoscope Motion Studies

2010-06-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

I did a number of rotoscope tests last year in order to help me better understand animal locomotion. I drew on top of footage found at bbcmotiongallery.com of a number of different animals. I made sure to simplify the drawings down to simple stick-figures to really focus on pure movement. I find it interesting how much of the motion comes through with such simple drawings. This was done in Flash, and the 3D Rotos were done in Maya. The animals are in the following order: fish, secretary bird, crocodile, white rhinoceros, bald eagle, double-crested cormorant (not a rotoscope).

The Blumblour

2010-06-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

This is the Blumblour...a creature first developed for a CG project years ago. Here is the rundown on these massive fictional creatures:

A full grown male blumblour can get up to 10 ft tall. They live in patriarchal herds, which travel long distances together on yearly migration routes. Blumblours sometimes develop symbiotic bonds with various types of vegetation, which grow directly on their bodies. The plants protect the blumblour from various pests and parasites, through various methods. Some carnivorous plants will eat these parasites, while other plants will secrete chemicals that repel them.

Blumblours are herbivorous and use their tentacle-like arms to stretch out and grab plant material - mostly mosses and lichens. The tentacles are also used in locomotion. They slowly pull themselves along the ground, while using their tails as rudders to help propel forward.

Creature Concepts

2010-06-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

Last summer I came up with an idea of an animated piece revolving around evolution. That is all I'm at mercy to tell you all...as I still plan on making it one day. I'm not sure what form it will ultimately take, but there are lots of plot elements that need ironing out. As of now it's only in a conceptual stage. I also don't know if I want to try to cram something of this complexity into a short, or do a series of episodes, or wait until I have the chance to try and turn it into a feature. I think there are so many possibilities with this idea... Anyway, here are some various creature concepts for this thing. I'm sure as time goes by you'll see some more concepts popping up similar to these guys, as I continue to mull things over in my head.

Reptiles

2010-06-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

Misc. Reptile sketches:

Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas) concepts from last Fall:

A generic large theropod dinosaur:

...and of course a Gharial (Gavialis gangeticus). I sketched this before embarking the incredible journey that is my Master's Thesis.

Aves

2010-06-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to get some miscellaneous stuff up here to fill it out a bit, before I start adding new content. This post is misc. bird sketches from last summer, when I created a cormorant to help me learn Houdini. The bird was modeled in Maya, textured in Photoshop, sculpted in Mudbox, and then the feather instancing was all done through SOPs in Houdini. It was also rendered in Mantra. On the left are various Double-Crested Cormorant Sketches (Phalacrocorax auritus). At the time I wasn't sure which bird I should create, so I was also thinking of the Secretary Bird (Sagittarius serpentarius).

After the deciding on, and modeling the cormorant, I rigged him and re-purposed him to act as the antagonist of my short First Step from last Fall.

Here's the full turntable:

Launch!

2010-06-19T23:14:00.000-07:00

Hello World!

...sorry I couldn't resist.

So to kick this puppy off, I will elaborate a bit on the purpose of this blog. This is where I will continue to update various (primarily) character and creature design sketches. I hope to push my limits and test out different drawing styles as I go. I will also update the blog with posts of various video/animation work as it comes in.

It's an open pallet to keep the creativity going. So some weeks you may see lots of sketches, and others you may see various animation or rigging demos. To start, the first couple of posts will be of older things I've worked on, just because they fit the theme of this blog so very well.

So let's start with the Serpiiken (Serpenpullus brachioflagelli). This creature first appears as a mount in a museum in this matte painting compositing project from a class last winter...

Here is the original concept art for the Serpiiken: