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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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

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. . .

Miles Make Base Mesh

Me make base mesh in Maya for use in ZBrush. Me make characters, polygonal girlfriend next. Me not know for what deeper purpose me do this.

Making of Arms & Ether - Learning/Stealing From The Best - Dan Clowes

Shower Power: Arms & Ether (left) as cribbed from Dan Clowes' Ghost World (right).

In my first Arms and Ether comic I needed to draw a shower scene. To get a clue, I looked back at Dan Clowes' Ghost World. Ooh steamy. Here are a few of the many things I got from Clowes:

a. The tile pattern is not carried through the entire wall. If it did so, the tile would interfere with the shower curtain pattern.

b. That's a big expansive shower that they're in, and it's probably not a "realistic" depiction of what the shower in Enid's place would look like. The audience, however, won't notice this, and the bigger shower makes the shot easier to stage and "read." Clowes creates a shower that suits his visual narrative purpose without being distracting or cluttered.

c. The shower curtain reads very clearly as a shower curtain without being painstakingly rendered as a distracting, overly realistic shower curtain.

d. The water coming out of the shower head and onto the bodies is also very clearly and cleanly stylized.

e. If you look at the man's hands in Clowes' shot, they're surprisingly cartoony.  I've looked at this panel hundreds of times and only notice it when I'm analyzing his drawing method. I didn't notice the goofy hands when I was reading the book straight through. It's a great example of economy and method in drawing comics--staging and clarity first. No need to go all Albrecht Durer on us!

If you look closely (Highlights magazine!) you'll see I left out several Clowes details in my version -- the shower curtain rings, the shading on the shower head, the left hand wall, etc. I did this because my panel was smaller and was feeling cluttered. Since I have a looser, rougher style than Clowes, I scuffed my drawing up a bit to match my overall approach.

Assignment 1: Self-Portrait

Aye, mates. Avast. Etc.

A Couple of Interactive Items

I've been playing around with ideas for doing some "interactive" drawings. Here are a couple of small tests. I'm trying to beat some programming logic (Flash ActionScript 3.0) into my fuzzy brain. Ow. It hurts. I've been learning the code for this stuff from Foundation Game Design With Flash, by Rex van der Spuy.

Click on the image below and cruise around with Steak using the cursor keys.
Wow, it's parallax scrolling.

Steak appears courtesy of Sam D. Inada.


This is just an idiotic game where the computer guesses a number that you input. Hours of fun. See if you can fool the machine!

Har Har Tharsday (local edition) - Casey Pyke's Puppets

Was well amused by this short puppet video that SOU students Casey Pyke and Alex Britton put together for the ArtH 330 Art, Culture, and Technology class. Check it out! Starring freakishly gifted cartoonist Ezra Butt in the human role!

Get Big

A big person I started making in ZBrush. I done made me the base mesh in Maya.

Arms & Ether - Day 25 - The End Of The Trail (sure it is)

 

Look at Molo in the midst of all that green! He must be idly unwinding in the wide-open possibilities of March! Better go and see if that's the case in today's Arms and Ether. Thanks to all of you who read and suffered through the 25-day Arms and Ether Marathon plus one. Hopefully we don't all regret it.

Arms & Ether - Day 24 - When Drawing Glands Deplete

 Weak tea? Sure, we've got that in abundance. And bugs. All in today's Arms and Ether!

Arms & Ether - Day 23 - Staggering To The Finish Line

Grumble, grumble. Today's Arms & Ether. Grumble, grumble.

Arms & Ether - Day 22 - The Cent-ur Cain't Holde None!

Look, you can eat a whole bag of Cool Ranch Doritos at midnight or go see today's Arms & Ether. It's really up to you. Either way, trust it'll be an insightful experience.

Arms & Ether - Day 21 - Historical Insignificance

No words, no colors, no calories, just 100% of the great taste and satisfaction you've come to expect from today's Arms & Ether. Like the Vollard Suite. Yeah. Just like it. So cool. So good.