Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Daily Dinosaur Heads

 Gods. If you have ever felt the heart-rending truth that you will never see a living dinosaur, if you have ever fantasized about chucking it all to live in a natural history museum reading and doing studies of skeletons, or just wandering the desert looking for fossils, track this DVD down now: Dinosaur Drawing: Anatomy and Sketching. It almost brought tears to my eyes. Part of the Gnomon Workshop series, taught by the epically awesome David Krentz. Lovely stuff.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

A daily - an infestation

These things are all over my studio and in my office down at school. They're robust little suckers. I think they feed on squirrels and fungus. They're kind of nasty, but they're fun to snuggle up with at night when it's cold.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

The Three D's

What are they? Dick Bennett's, "Defense, Determination, & Dilettante'ry?" Or Mike Watt's, "No height, length, or width." Here's a crow-dog man I did last night. Or was it late December, back in '63? What a very special time for me. Minas Tirith, what a night.

Olden days - a punk-ass, Lisa Loeb-style post

 Francisco Pulpo in the Studio by a younger Miles, damnit. 1994/5!!!!!
So what the hell am I doing? Here's a mid 90's era drawing that I was thinking about tonight. I think I need to rebuild some concentration/focus and bring something bigger to the party. I did some drawing today (2010, people!)  and found myself rusty as all get out. Muse, I invoke thee. Let's get it on. I don't want to kick off without having raised a bigger ruckus. Why am I adding up to less than the sum of my parts?

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Arms & Ether - Number 55 - Invasion of the Women!

It has begun. . . And the Arms and Ether-verse will never be the same. The women are coming. And hapless Blue Max experiences first contact! What the ramifications are for our adolescent testosterone-charged crew, we have no way of knowing. Get a harbinger and ring in the first days of summer with today's Arms and Ether!

p.s. yes a massive site redesign is still scheduled for the summer

p.p.s. yes, still going to be rolling in 3D as well. . . aieeee!

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Polygon Girlfriend - Part Two


First stab at the head and did some more work on the arms. I need to do some refinement on the back and feet as well as more on the hands. If you compare yesterday's image, somehow her butt became Sponge Bob muscly. It's called the Smooth Brush, Miles. Look into it. Okay, I will. Tomorrow.
 Here's a close up of the face. The lips need smoothing and more form. Duh. I haven't worked much with super fine detail in ZBrush, so I'll do that tomorrow too. But first. . . the Drink and Draw!

Polygon Girlfriend - Part One


Here's girlfriend number one made today in ZBrush using BaseMeshBravo. I separated the head off, so that's why she looks like Maskatron1. I'll work something up for her Fem Bot2 face tomorrow. It'll be just great. I've been looking at some exaggerated female toys for inspiration hence the silly proportions. The arms and hands need some TLC.

End Notes
1. Maskatron. A powerful robot capable of mimicking the appearance of Oscar Goldman and others.
I, Maskatron
2. Fembots. A series of powerful and deadly life-like androids, designed and created by Dr. Franklin.
uh oh.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Grumble grumble

Zallinger-inspired self-portrait. Now if I can just paint the damn thing. . .
detail of the Age of Reptiles Mural by Rudolph Zallinger

Thursday, June 3, 2010

More ZBrushing

I've been continuing to work in ZBrush, inspired by the excellent Gnomon tutorial by Scott Patton. I've refined my base mesh a bit and have been experimenting with how far I can push it into different forms quickly (10-20 minutes). I'm finding that having relatively expressive hands and feet that are easy to pose is a good thing in a base mesh, so I plan on going back and refining those later. I've also made the mesh less bulky than in the first pass (see last post -- ed.).

Here's the latest, Base Mesh Bravo:
And here are a few quick character sketches starting from the above base mesh.
self-portrait as bulb-headed carnivore. still working on this one. . .