Modern Day Shaman

For the past month I've been really rethinking what it means to be a digital artist. Obviously it means that one creates art using digital tools or manipulates their art with the aid of these computer tools. But what have these tools done to artists? What does the artist do with the tools? How has it affected us as a community?

I believe that to be an artist in the truest sense is to share a "gift." This gift can be an idea, a thought, a feeling about something the artist has experienced in their own life and shares with others. It should be personal; something of deep truth the artist has realized about their time on Earth.

Most digital art I see lacks a gift. It simply does not have a truth to pass on. I think their are many factors in this. Perhaps one fact is that most artists have turned into commerical artists, and create art based on someone elses gift. Have we passed the gift creation on to others and allowed ourselves to only become crafters?

Maybe in the mass migration to digital tools we left behind the human element. Maybe we are so busy creating art containing another's truth that we forgotten what our role is. Artists are not just storytellers, we are modern shaman. It is our job to experience dreams, dive into the spirit world, and communicate these universal truths to anyone willing to listen.

I don't think that being a digital artist means any more or less then a traditional artist. To me, it's just another medium. I feel that we as digital artists are just wrapped up with making the next great piece for a showpiece, so we can secure a job and thus, survive. Digital tools help this process go much faster. But I think we really have to ask ourselves, why are we artists to begin with? Do you really want to SAY something or do you just want to MAKE something? I believe there's a monumental different here.

I've had a bit of an awakening. I myself am guilty of falling to the category of making art for art's sake. I have made things because they simply "look cool." Although I put my soul into the character, illustration, or design...am I really communicating an idea from deep inside me? Not all the time, but I try.

Now that I've completed a new demo reel (it's being scored this week). I'm taking some time out to better myself as an artist. I want to pass on something deeper then a character model. I realized that I have so much to say, that's not being say. You as a reader probably have no real idea of who I am and what I have to say about this world. That is something that I want to fix. That's what I feel I should be doing.

Demo Reel -Title Screen

Still tweaking but I think this works. A little more then 1 week of work left.

Reel Rough Cut

I'm please to announce that my 2010 Demo Reel is completely rendered and has a rough cut. At the moment this is coming in at about 3 Minutes and 45 seconds. That seems much longer then I originally intended, however this is a specialized character reel showing off three specific characters.

I'm in a stage of reviewing what I have in the reel and trying my hardest to objectionably cut entire shots. I feel at this point that every shot I rendered is critical to the reel, so its difficult. My other option is increasing the speed of the shot to 1.5x or 2x it's base speed. I fear that if I do this, I will have to over compensate the speed in other areas. This whole editing process is a juggling act. However, editing is one of my favorite things to do.

I have a few more shots in there that are temporary placeholders for pacing. It's not much work, but it's presentation work. It's all vital in the end. I am hoping to show this cut to other artists and get feedback.

My personal deadline for the reel is Thanksgiving. I should be able to achieve this with few set backs.

I'm very please to say that Joe Parisi (http://www.joeparisiaudio.com/), my company's Art Director, has agreed to score the reel. I think his efforts will increase the professionalism of the end result. I couldn't be more thrilled to work with him on this!

I hope within a few weeks to report that this reel is complete.

Character Intro Layouts

After some playing around with layout, I think I've settled on these final looks for the reel. It's all coming together. I think I may even present the characters in this order as well.

Mad Mario Backdrop

I think I'm pretty much finished up on the background matte painting. I toyed around with add more detail and structures to the landscape, but I felt it was distracting from the character. For now, I'll leave this as it is at the moment. I'm going to move on to adjusting some of the chracter lighting in 3D. I should begin rendering the final segments for Mario tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to being finished with the reel. I'm ready to move on to something else....

Mad Mario: Getting Warmer

I've been playing around with the materials and lighting a little more. I settled on more a an glowy ink feel rather then realistic. I created several subsurface scatter tests and I wasn't pleased with any of the results. It doesn't fit with the overall design aesthetic. SSS feels very obvious, even if it's effects are tuned way down.

So I have a pretty complex shader tree that is utilizing several falloff maps for things like self-illumination, specular levels, specular color, glossiness, among several others. I'm really happy with the outcome so far. I am playing around with the lighting to get the right contrast balance. Ultimately I'll play a lot with the final images in post, but they are getting close.

I also created a quick background comp, just to arrive at an understanding of the mood I'm going for. Initially my thoughts were to go with an underground sewer feel, similar to the 2nd level in Super Mario Brothers. The level uses blues and aquas, with lots of piping in the background. After playing a bit, I'm thinking about going for more of a toxic surface feel. I think it would be fun to see what a brick desert would look like from the game. The sickly yellow-green really makes Mario stand out, in a positive way.

I was shying away from this because Togo is using the same sort of color scheme, but I think I can pull off enough differences that it won't look completely similar. I also want to toon the feel up a little, so that Mario's section of the demo reel will be a nice transition into the Secret Agent segment (see older posts).

Mad Mario: Lighting and Materials

Currently I'm playing around with lighting and material tests. I feel like the material really needs to look like a cartoon without being cartoony. The point of Mad Mario, is that it studies the darker nature of Mario's actions. It's a deep character study.

I want to convey this message completely through visual means for the reel. The lighting and materials reflect this best. Because of this, I have to come up with some creative solutions. At the moment I'm using a custom falloff map as a specular map. This way the character will always very bright rim light on the edges. This makes him pop from the environment a little more then normal.

At the same time I want to create some high contrast with the shadows. Really dark areas of the character that I would normally want to see, such as the face. It creates mood, but also lets the rim light on the edges of the hat and head be the focus.

I'm looking at several pieces of illustration as inspiration right now. Comic books are extremely helpful. Frank Millar's Sin City is particularly helpful when working out contrast.

I still have a long road ahead, but I think it's coming along.

Mad Mario-Turntable

Finally worked in a few hours to work on the base and lighting for Mario this weekend. I'm juggling around a few approaches for the shaders, which ultimately will make everything "pop" more. I'm very interested in working on a backdrop painting for this one.

I initally went very moody with the lighting, but I need to lighten up the scene since this is for a demo reel. Otherwise we won't be able to see the character.

Mad Mario Character Pose

Currently I'm working with posing and building the stand of this character. This is a ton of fun to work on!

Presentation Shot

I ended up with two different versions of the "presentation opening" for Togo. This is the format in which you will be introduced to each character in the demo reel. I initially wanted to give each character a different screen, but I wanted a unity to the reel that I was lacking the first time around. I might slightly alter the look, but the Agents and Mario's page should look very similar.

I have two variations. The one is more of the early 1930's deco feel. Sepia tone throughout. The second is almost identical accept for color palette. Here I wanted to introduce more black and white contrast, as well as subtle sickly green. I felt that I wanted something on tone to match the classic Universal Pictures monsters. I was going for Frankenstein. I've been looking at them so long that I've lost my artist eye. I'll sleep on the decision.

Demo Reel- Still Image Preview

After about two weeks of solid rendering I finally have 4 shots completed for my demo reel. Here's a little preview below. I'll upload some video previews later this week.

Togo Posed

I'm a little bit closer to being finished. Right now the character is posed and I'm working on the base and materials. I have a tiny bit of tweaking yet to finish on the main character, but it's on it's way.

Always Time For Personal Projects

I've been very busy the past couple weeks, however I have carved out some time for personal projects. I have several things updated.

First I'll direct you to my online portfolio on Cgsociety:
http://dcflath.cgsociety.org

There you will find some new and updated renders.

In the mean time, I've highlighted a few new ones for you. Most of the time has been spent on the Mad Mario project. I'm very close to finishing the model. The boots still need to me textured, then I'll need to be cleaver about the type of shader I use.

Togo Shader Update

I realized that I haven't posted any progress on Togo in a while. I finally have a specular map on him now. It's a very subtle effect but makes a tremendous difference to the overall appearance. I almost made some tweaks to the anatomy. The feet were a little too boxy. And eye sockets never felt right either. So I shifted those verts around.

I started to model a fishing rod and backpack for him. The thought was that he would hang out in swamps and go "fishing" for humans. He would put money, jewelry, and baby toys on the hook as bait catch people. Although I still am quite fond of that idea, it visually changes his whole character. So I'm going back to my original idea, which was more of a Charles Manson/Batman villain. A psychopath with a knife, that just so happens to be 10% amphibian. It grounds him a little more in reality this way. The fishing rod was a little silly and made him feel more like a "creature" and less a "character." He's certainly not something that I could want to run into in a swamp.

"Art Through Adversity"

This posting is something that I speak to my students about in my Advance Animation Course, but I thought I would share it here, because I think it applies to everyone that creates something as an artist.

I've been at digital art for several years now. Every couple years I learn something monumental about the artistic process. It ultimately changes me; I feel like I can see the world much more clearly, or in some cases I see complexity where once it was simplistic.

In the last couple years I think that overall thing that sticks with me the most is this statement:

"Art Through Adversity"

This idea speaks volumes to me. I mean in college and in studios you know that art is a collaborative process. You'll have to work with people from all different walks of life, and you have to be respectful to people's opinions. Especially if they sign your pay check! So collaborating it can be like walking on egg shells. It can be down right frightening at times. At some jobs, maybe the art isn't all that important to the people around you. Especially working as a commercial artist, where usually the art itself is really just to support another idea or product.

Taking video games for example: Art is usually the least important aspect of a game. I'm told this constantly, and it's very apparent that code, game design, level design, and game play are paramount. A game needs to be fun. Even with little to no art, you can still enjoy a game. Look back to the 8-bit games of the 80's. The original Mario Brothers is actually a very ugly game. The colors compete, too much contrast, and character design is pretty awful. But Mario Brothers is almost perfect from a game play viewpoint.

On the other hand, you have art for art's sake. Something that works on an archetypal level; it speaks in symbols and dreams. For something like this, art is the MOST important aspect. Logic and reason, frankly, need not apply.

From my experiences though art is not created for the artist. Quite the contrary:
Art is created for the audience. Our role as artists in this society is to give the audience a way to see archetypes. To transport them to another state of consciousness.

We must also give the audience member a gift. What I mean by this, is that the audience member invests time in us. For this time, we owe them an IDEA that will change how they view the world, people, or their own lives. This applies to every artistic medium. Books, film, tv, video games, paintings, sculpture, drawings, etc. In some cases, the more time that the audience member spends with you, the larger this gift must be.

I believe in some cases, like epic films, the gift must apply universally to all peoples. If you take "The Lord of the Rings," for instance, the gift applies to males, females, adults, children, American, Japanese, Indian, gay, straight. Essentially every person globally. It also is a gift that is deeply personal and can make the world a better place, if we follow it's example. "Star Wars" is probably the best film example I can think of.

Back to adversity.

Artists are also audience members. We can create but we can also be the viewer. The best artists are ones that can tap into this duality; those that can see the creation through the eyes of the audience. I think this is the problem with some.

Some artists can not tap into this. Some will only view art from the artists perspective. That is where you get art for art's sake. In some regards it is like someone saying that a particular actor is, "An actor's actor." There isn't anything wrong with that, however you limit your audience to other actors for example. Again there isn't anything wrong with this, but it does take away from your role as an artist.

This is where adversity comes in to play. If you are the sole creator on something, you immediately lose perspective of the piece. You see with your vision and your truth as a person. Which at times is important. In fact, the gift that you give the audience should be something personal that you find within yourself. What have you experienced in your life that you find to be true? This is what people pay you for as an artist. But in the same token, you will have to find a universal way of expressing that. Finding a universal thread that everyone can connect to.

That is the essence of adversity from my perspective. We all share the same emotions. Fear, Anger, Love, Sadness, Joy. We as humans (and animals to a point) share these common threads. But how we come to experience them is completely different.

For example: Luke Skywalker in Star Wars is a desert farmer. He collects moisture from the atmosphere on the desert planet of Tattooine. It has two suns. He never knew his parents, because they both died. He dreams of getting off the the planet to join the Rebellion against the Galatic Empire.

Now, I have never been to Tatooine. I have never farmed moisture. I know my family. I have never really wanted to enlist in the army. But I have felt that yerning to find my destiny in the world. That is the gift in those early scenes in Star Wars. We all yern to do something important in this world. How Luke gets to this emotion is every personal, but the emotion itself is universal.

When we work with other people (artists, programmers, directors, producers, instructors, etc.) we have to take into account their perspectives. If you truly want your "gift" to be successful, you need to listen to others for all the reasons I mentioned above.

1. They each bring a fresh perspective to the art. They have been through many different paths in life, but they have experienced the same emotions. Where are they common, where are they different? Listen to these differences, because your audience also will have been on different paths in life.

2. They are audience members as well. Since we have a duality to our nature, perhaps they can tap into their audience nature better then you can. Their is literally no room for ego in this regard. You should respect their suggestions and advice, because they are quite literally your audience. For every suggestion they give you, there will be hundreds of audience memeber that think the same thing. So respect their words as you would the audience.

3. Their ideas are sometimes better then yours. Some people can tap into the artist nature better then you. Maybe you can see what the audience member needs to feel, but you are not good at working out the journey. You have a truth you want to tell, but your personal journey to that truth lacks. I find with happens often with some films. It's story so boring or used to often that you will bore your audience and by then your gift means nothing. They have to come with you the WHOLE journey. I think that is some people's real problem with "Avatar." The journey to the gift was a familiar one. Although visually different, story wise, it was not. James Cameron could have made a more dynamic journey to all the emotional parts, and might have had more people following. I'm leaving my personal opinions of the film out of this discussion.

Listening to others and also fighting for your view are important. Perhaps you are not the soul creator, and you are just a "grunt" in the production. Maybe you are just play a small role next to the person in a lead role. As an artist, if you have truthfully without ego thought through your idea, and it is better then the one at hand, you should offer it to the lead. It must come from a place that will help the audience member. It must enrich their experience with the piece. And remember that your ideas are just as important to the director, because in the end you are the audience just as much as s/he is.

Without adveristy, without difference of opinion, the art can lack depth and lose the audience. Even if this is something as simple as a logo design or as complex as the next epic film from Legendary Pictures, adversity is vital. You as an artist should seek out opinions from others, respectfully. There should be a reverence between you as the creator and others as the audience. This is the same unwritten contract between actor and audience. You will lead, they will follow and suspend disbelief. But they MUST respect one other.

So my "gift" to you in this posting, is to listen to everyone's opinions, and give your own, because we are all one and the same. Both artist and audience. One voice and many.

I wanted to just quickly update with one of the renders from this weekend. No background yet...and still a little more work for the final look. But it's getting close.

Demo Reel 2010 Thoughts

As I type I'm rendering out the first shot for my new demo reel. It's been 3 years since I've put out one. My instructors recommended in college that we should put one out every 6 months. I'm wondering how that's even possible if you're working as much as I am.

Regardless I do have time now and this is long over due. It feels great to finally be creating some renders. I decided for this reel that I work just concentrate on a characters. My original reel is very general and shows a little bit of everything. I think coming out of college you need that. At this stage in my career though, I want to get away from that and really show what I am capable of as a character artist.

I'm doing three character sections: Togo-Next Gen Character (High & Low Poly), Secret Agents (Low Poly), and Creature (Have not narrowed down this slot yet).

I want to be able to show off not only the models but the variation of styles, shaders, texturing, and workflow. What hurt me with my original reel is that I was thinking of it too cinematically. I naturally want everything to feel like a film. It wasn't until after I made it that I realized it should feel more like a tech demo. This is what I was missing. Showing potential employers how I think and how I put the characters together. So I aim to fix that this time around.

I still have plenty to create and assemble for this, but I should be done this month if I don't catch too many snags along the way.

Once I'm finished I will either move on to an environment/prop reel or go on to finishing up one of the various shorts I started. I'd like to do the latter of the two, but that all depends on my current state of employment.

Ah, also I'm working in HD for the first time with the reel. It's taking up a HUGE amount of space on my hard drive, but the resolution is well worth it. I can't wait for this 22 hour render to finish so I can begin to composite the first shot!

Medieval Character Designs

Just a quick update since it's getting late. I'm working on a team project at the moment. I'm working as the lead artist, creating around 20 characters in total. Here is a quick glimpse at two of the finished characters.

Snowed In

Nothing says "blizzard" like a fallen frosty tree outside your bedroom window.

Shaken, Not Stirred

These are a couple characters I created for a canceled Wii title called "Secret Agent."

I was extremely excited about this game's art style. It was inspired by the original Casino Royale film, James Bond, and The Incredibles. These were some of the most challenging models I've work on because they are so low poly. Each one is around 3,000 tris...which isn't very much. A lot of the detail had to be created with the texture maps. But I'm really happy with the way they came out. It's a shame that you won't be able to play the game, but you can take a look at what would have been.

Eye Candy

I am finally happy with Togo's eyes. After a lot of research and some trial and error I think I've arrived with a result that looks good. I had this moment when I thought, "If I do any more tweaking I'll lose his character." I ended up re-modeling the eye completely. Cornea, iris, pupils, whites...all over again to really get the correct shape. Then I also modeled tear ducts, which I completely over looked. It made a huge improvement.

I'll never forget to do that again!

But after this, the character really came to life. It ended up being more of a modeling issue then a texture issue. I kept changing the textures but realized after a while that I was not getting the right highlights in the right areas.

The whites of the eye ended up as a SSS material. The iris was a little tricky. For that I used a falloff map (with texture bitmaps) and found that if I added a slight self illumination gradually increasing is it gets further away from the camera...it made for a good effect. It makes Togo look real.

I also created a rig for the eyes so I could move them around and make the pupils dilate as well. I find that this helps because a character never keeps their eyes stationary anyway. You can see the light play on different surfaces of the eye.

So for now, I'm happy with it. I'm going back for one more "grit" pass on the his body texture map. He's still a little too clean and not aged enough. After this I have a couple props to make for him. Hopefully I'll be animating and rendering him for the new demo reel next week.

"Some Where, Beyond The Sea..."

...I present to you, my new Art Deco Jelly Logo.

Eyes Are The Window....

We've all heard that before, and continue to hear that throughout our lives, applied to many different things. Poetry, photographs, watching other humans to see if they are lying, or to see the truth in their words.

I have to to realize just how important this sentence is to an artist. There is something there, behind eyes, that tells us a soul is within. A light. A glow. A burning desire to live. Our bodies are really just shells, and our eyes are no different. Yet the thing that fills them is so intangible. It is hard to grasp exactly what makes us look human.

In 3D space, I can not simply click a button that says, "Add Soul" ,although imagine how wonderful that would be! Instead I have to study and analyze everything in the eyes. The pupils, cornea, iris, the small beads of liquid tears hiding within the eye's duct. The way in which light plays off of each anatomical surface. Reflecting and refracting. But yet sometimes after all those things are done, we still miss the point. We can not quite grab that element that breathes life into the puppet.

I am in that stage right now. Togo as a character is very complex. And his eyes will tell many things about him. All the struggles and pain, his own selfishness to be accepted, yet his monstrous nature that he is unable to contain. The task ahead of me is large. How do I show all of these things? An eye is an eye. We have all seen them illustrated in anatomy books. By themselves they are mostly all similar. Yet when that eye is in a persons head, it completely changes.

Togo is also not completely human. He is slightly frog like. And so that complicates this further. Changing the eye to become more frog-like makes him more into a monster, when the point is only to make him vaguely frog like.

So I will continue to experiment and analyze, over and over. Trying to find that which makes us look alive.