walrus's CGPortoflio Gallery

Adorable Alien

Sun, 11 May 2008 14:27:18 +0000

Hi, all! This is my recently-finished entry for the latest CGChallenge, the theme for which was Alien/Human interaction. Much of the architecture was modeled loosely in 3DS Max but all of the detailing as well as all of the characters were done by hand, in pencil and then scanned in and colored in Photoshop. If you want to see the process of how I did this all, check out the Uplift link in my signature.

Sesslyth and Ezekiel

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:50:42 +0000

This was my entry Dominace War III game character design competition. It's a character design challenge with a bunch of rules and guidelines in the character briefs: Must not use technology, only magic, must have a magical artifact with specific rules about kinds of magic it can use, etcetera. We even had to incorporate the logo and colors of our "team," meaning the forum we're representing. I am, of course, on the CGSociety team, hence the modified CGSociety logo on his foot-pads and the forum's reds and greys on his outfit.

So Sesslyth here is a powerful mage whose magical Censer summons the souls of those who have died in the sea. Hanging out with him (literally) is his Ezekiel the Octopus, here hanging on for dear life.

We also had to include model sheets and character concept studies for our entries, so here are those:

This piece placed #14 in the Dominance War, out of over 250 entries.

Lockjaw

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:40:52 +0000

Hi, all! Some of you may have seen my series of space-military cats (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=588762)The Cataclysm cats need someone to fight and here's the first real contender to step into the ring: He's 'Lockjaw,' a German Shepherd Cyborg villain. I went a different route with this rendering than the other ones: While everything else was on a clean white background, Lockjaw really looked best in really dark armor, and it didn't show well on white. It looked nicer on a darker surface to let the subtleties pop out more.

This was done, like most of my pieces, as a pencil sketch, scanned in and painted in Photoshop, with just a little texture on the metal armor. Everything else was hand-painted.

Cataclysm

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 07:24:58 +0000

These are some character(and a ship) I've been designing just for the fun of it. They're not for a film, comic strip, t.v. show, or game... I just came up with one character first - Major Socks - and then the rest all sort of fell into existence as a result. Major Socks and Commander Muffin were designed as heroic characters, so Captain Woogums was designed to contrast with them by making him an officious, high-strung bureaucrat. Whiskers is the touch-as-nails Admiral, and Private Booboo is the green recruit ('cause you can't have a pile of officers without any enlisted men, right?) And the Fastpaw is their battleship.

At some point I'll also work on some enemy characters and such for them as well.

All work done as rough pencil sketches, scanned, and colored in Photoshop. The Fastpaw obviously started with the same sketching process, but I build a mock-up of the ship in 3DSMax to create my render from.

Mermaid

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:19:04 +0000

This was done as a holiday gift for a friend who happens to like mermaids.

Nothing too much to say about it. Photoshop colors over standard scanned pencils, and some custom brushes for the bubbles and chalky/cloudy brushes for most of the background.

9-Eyed Alien

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 21:40:44 +0000

This is my family's holiday card for 2007.

Line art was done in pencil, and then the colors were painted in Photoshop in a handful of hours: Most of the alien was painted with a hard round brush, while the sky and rocket-jets were painted with a custom brush made from the "render clouds" filter - it's the same brush I use to render clouds in more terrestrial paintings.

(references were used, but I've been asked by the Planetary Defense Council not to show them around. Sorry!)

Farewll Kiss

Tue, 30 May 2006 17:03:15 +0000

Hi, all! This is my finally-completed entry for the just-ended CG Challenge, the theme for which was 'The Journey Begins.' (But everyone knows that already, right? It's kind of hard to miss...)

If you're interested in process and close-up shots, you can see at least a few pages of the steps involved in the CG Challenge thread here:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=322580&page=1
But the short version is line art in pencil, a little 3D work to work out some of the shadow placement, and painting all in Photoshop. 10 weeks of sporadic work overall.

-mike

Wandering Monsters

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:55:37 +0000

This is my recently-completed entry for the latest CGSociety Challenge, the theme for which was "Strange Behavior." So there's a lot of strange behavior going on in this piece: If you ask the girls, they'd tell you that all the nerds engrossed in their role-playing games were the strange ones. But to me, it's the girls themselves, so judgmental and scornful of anyone with different interests, beliefs, or priorities who are the strange ones to be judging others.

The composition and line art was done in pencil : the final line art was 13x21 inches! I used 3DSMax to mock up the railing and the entire city in the background, because who wants to sketch out repeating patterns of intertwined ballustrades without guidelines? All of the painting was done in Photoshop. The entire piece took about three and a half months of sporadic work. If you've got a lot of time on your hands, you can see the entire process from start to finish at http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=225&t=510770&page=1&pp=50.
Enjoy!

Wage Slave

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 15:18:48 +0000

Hi, all! I was assuming everyone had seen this by now, but people are still saying I should submit it to this gallery too so, um, here it is. At least this is a larger version than some people have seen, so there are a lot of details you can pick out now.
This was my entry for the CGTalk Master and Servant Challenge, and proud recipient of an Honourable Mention. Thanks to all who added such helpful insight and input into its creation.
-mike

Brain-bots

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 00:04:03 +0000

I realized recently that I didn't have any finished robot pictures in my portfolio, and what kind of a science fiction portfolio is missing robots?! I had these sketches of robots with brains in tanks lying around for a while and was trying to think of what to do with them. But once you've got your brains showing, what could be worse than a pack of zombies, armed with a can opener? (Actually, the can opened was a late addition.)

If you'd like to see the progress of this piece, the thread is here:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=359166

-mike

Troll Crossing

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:27:30 +0000

I actually finished this piece before my recently-posted CGChallenge entry 'Wandering Monsters,' but wanted to wait 'til it was okay to make it public: It was done for an article in 'ImagineFX' on using Photoshop to do palette composition. Now that the article is out (December 2007, Issue #024) I can finally post this... but if you want to see the entire process of how this came to be, check out IFX!

Diablo versus WoW

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 16:05:28 +0000

I keep seeing this image popping up all overt CGSociety in banner ads for Blizzard at Siggraph, Blizzard's Art Contest, yadda yadda... So I thought I'd post the whole image for folks to see. It should go without saying that this image is copyright Blizzard Entertainment. I think one of the reasons they're having an art contest is so they can find something better with Diablo on it so they don't have to keep using this! :lol:

This was done a couple of years ago for a promotion at Blizzard. It was some sort of Diablo ladder contest where the winner would get a spot on the WoW beta test. You can find desktop versions of this picture over on Blizzard.com.

-mike

Gypsy (nudity)

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 17:24:44 +0000

This is a finished image for the Aphrodesia contest. It's based on a photoref that was posted over at the Drawing Board a couple of years back. All done in pencil and Photoshop. I still have some time to enter it, so if you notice anything glaring that I've missed... But it's pretty much finished. Hope you like!
-mike

Blackwatch 2048

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:19:04 +0000

A cover for a science fiction role playing game.
A combination of pencils, 3D background work, and a lot of Photoshop work.

Herd of Opportunity

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 15:56:30 +0000

Hi, all! I finished this piece months ago, but am only now allowed to post it here. I'ts the cover for the May 2006 issue of "Fantasy and Science Fiction" which just hit the stands. The picture is for the cover story by Matthew Hughes, "Herd of Opportunity."

To proactively answer the question that I always get asked: Yes, I get to read the story before I do the cover. In this case it's the story of a planet where the aliens act out plays from Terran mythology... and a bunch of other stuff happens too, but I won't include any spoilers! There are humans in the story also, but it was implicit that the aliens should be the focus... i.e. I wouldn't have been asked to do the cover if they just wanted the humans! :-)

Mostly pencil and Photoshop, with a little help from 3DSMax for the hovercar. F&SF likes their cover art to be an inch taller than the magazine size so that they can shift it up or down as the need fits, so that's why it's such a tall image. Some of the sides also got cropped on the final cover too.

-mike

Mummy Attack

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 05:58:36 +0000

An image down as a Halloween Desktop for Blizzard Entertainment. This has got to be my most complicated layout ever, and easily my largest pencil sketch (several feet on a side.) At one point I counted over 50 mummies in this shot.

Image and characters copyright Blizzard Entertainment.

Andariel

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 06:01:13 +0000

Hi, all! I created this image for Blizzard Entertainment as a promotional image for the Diablo 1.11 patch. The new functionality added by this patch included some new adventures involving some old nemeses, and I was asked specifically to come up with a fun picture of Andariel, a boss from the original Diablo II game. I had to make some adjustments to her wardrobe to cover her up a bit more then she was in the game.
The piece was first sketched in pencil and then colored in Photoshop.
This image was made available as a desktop on the Blizzard web site, so you can go there to find larger or smaller versions of this image. Enjoy!
-mike
>> Hi resolution image <<

Socks

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 17:49:13 +0000

I did this is a pencil sketch from some photoreference ('though not, obviously too strictly from the photoref!) over a year ago. I'd thrown in some quick splashes of color after that. But only just recently, now that the latest CGTalk Challenge is over, have I had time to go in and really finish it off.
Hope you like it!
-mike

Impromptu First Contact

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:25:23 +0000

I do non-digital work too. I'm such a rebel for posting this here!
This is watercolors.

Olympic Games

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:23:19 +0000

Zeus and Hera in the modern age. A cover for the novel by Leslie What, published by Tachyon Publications.

Corinna (nudity)

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 22:18:07 +0000

Hey, all. Did this as part of a Drawing Jam (everyone works based on a handful of shared photoreferences) over at the Drawing Boar, but I thought I'd share it here too. Hope you like it...
-mike