The Pawn - Armament

Johnny requested that there be weapons, so weapons he shall receive! Resisting the urge to equip the Pawn with high-end fancy weapons, the Pawn gets a crude and cheap (yet effective) cleaver to hack enemies up after closing in with their not-so-advanced-arm-embedded machine guns. Yes I know they're pretty small, but those guns aren't supposed to do s**t (sorry, Pawns) besides peppering enemies with low caliber ammo and trying to look intimidating.

Supposed to post this yesterday, but Merry Christmas anyway~ *Adds Santa Hat*

The Pawn - Concept Sheet 3

Decided that a pawn should look like it's mass-produced, thus gave it a dusty, heavy and metallic colour scheme. Also shaded it and slapped on some textures for a better idea of its materials. Had quite some fun doing this, albeit a little tiring.

P.S : I know I left out the side view. Oh well.

The Pawn - Concept Sheet 2

Kinda refined the concept, and made some tweaks to the head. A fun and refreshing break from 3D, and that dreadful experience with the corrupted file. Will try out several colour schemes later.

The Pawn - Concept

Out of frustration and to heal the pain of the loss of work while ZBrushing, I started to sketch again after a loooong time, and this is the result of around 30 minutes of doodling. Very much inspired by Taehoon's 'Bigun', the winner of last year's Dominance War 2. Staying away from 3D for a while now.

Project Rithias 3D Permanently Stopped

The unthinkable happened. The program crashed while I was saving the ztool file, and I can't reopen it. The previous version of the file is just... too far back. Time to move on.

Rithias 3D - WIP 7

Almost there! Now, the backplate, hands and feet are all that's left. Of course, there'll be the 2nd lvl sculpt where I add irregularities and such but that'll come later.

Division levels are left at 5, so the details are a lil' jagged.

P.S : I think it looks like a caramel/toffee sculpture. Yummy!

Rithias 3D - WIP 6

Update frenzy lol. Was using polygroups to hide the left lower leg but had the masking on and the sculpts didn't get mirrored. Ouch. But I think I'll leave it for tomorrow, I'll need a reason to wake up in the morning.

Rithias 3D - WIP 5

In the mood for some updates? Not much additional sculpting, but was tinkering with the materials and render options. Figuring out how to solve a mapping problem now.

Rithias 3D - WIP 4

Okay, finally packed those UVs, and exported all the pieces into ZBrush. There was this problem when dividing the lower arms and thighs, because SPIKES were flying around. Apparently there was a bug with the smoothing, and I eventually managed to solve the problem.

Out Of Commission

Sucks hard when there're no updates. Sucks harder when you have a high fever. Well, at least it's before the festive seasons. Worst downtime of 2008, this fever made me lose sensation of my limbs (and face lol), but was remedied with the consumption of isotonic drinks.

Enough ranting. UV work is almost done, and after stretch-checking, the UVs will have to be placed in a specific layout in order to be read properly by the Unreal 3 Engine.

I'm so phobic of my bed (and lying down) right now.

WIP 2 & 3

Ooops missed a post, so here's WIP 2 & 3. Blocked out the rough shapes, will continue by adding holding edges where they're needed, and after refining the base model in ZBrush, I'll export & re-import the mesh and UV them.

Rithias 3D - WIP 1

Started modelling Rithias some time ago, and after some tutorial spamming I've decided to pick it up and continue with the modelling. I intend to bring the completed model into UT3 as a playable character, so wish me luck!

Shades Of Black!

In response to Yam's comment that everything I make is in a shade of black (which is very much true now that I have browsed through my work), I came up with a logo for a mock company of mine, and later designed the contact card for it as well. Reaaal simple layout & design, and I still feel there's something wrong with the back of the card. Will revise if required.

What Presentation?

Went to the Autodesk Lucasfilm Tour, organized by ACA Pacific Technology Sdn. Bhd. (The company has been chosen as the Malaysian distributor for Autodesk's range of design products such as 3ds Max, AutoCAD & 3ds Max Design.)

Guest speaker, Lee Stringer (CG Supervisor for The Clone Wars TV series) was invited to give a presentation with the title of 'Animating Star Wars : The Clone Wars - From Script to TV'.

Like all other Lucas-related presentations, Mr. Stringer introduced Grandmaster Lucas' companies, locations and history. He then proceeded to 'presenting' the workflow involved in the creation of the animation series. There was so much confidentiality (the team didn't even provide proper concept art)to the point that Mr. Stringer's presentation didn't last more than 30 minutes. There was almost nothing to learn from the workflow, as most of the steps can be learnt from the net.

As a consolation, I managed to grab this mousepad and... bag.

Speeeeed!

67 words

Speedtest

 
You type 356 characters per minute
You have 67 correct words and
you have 0 wrong words

272 points, so you achieved position 159,425 of 1,006,318 on the ranking list

*Lol I suck.

Go For Gold

Random title. Inspired by Tadao Ando's 'Lee House', I made this interior scene using both Maya (modelling, UV) & Max (lighting, rendering). Been messing around with VRay's guts, learning it inside out. The lights and materials are wonderful, as well as its physical camera which works just like a real SLR (ISO, shutter speed, aperture etc.)

Still sticking to Maya for speed in modelling, I'm just too familiar it. Very clumsy when working in Max due to the differences in hotkeys but with some practice, I should get better at it.

Render time : 35 mins 47 secs (Autodesk Maya 2008, 3dsMax 9, VRay, Photoshop CS3)

So Shoot Me

Call me a cheapskate for re-using the headphone bot model, but as a friend said, it's called 'putting it to better use'. Rotation Hip Hop DVD cover for bigfishaudio.com.

Get It Right!

An entry for a magazine ad. French company I think. Tak syiok sebab klien tak tau apa tu design. Zzzz angry.

Imma Chargin' Mah Lazer!

Made a modification to the previous design to answer the problems of wrist-twisting. A rotatable head enables the user to direct the light to a higher/lower angle as required.

Tuff Enuf?

Sorry guys, I know It's been a while since the last post. Finished a concept LED solar flashlight at 3am yesterday, with 3 LEDs and a solar panel (has rechargeable batteries) . 15 minutes at the board, and many many hours in Maya. Rendered with Mental Ray. (All polygons, lol. Maybe I should learn to use NURBS.)

Rrrrrrr

All Logos Belong To Their Respective Owners.

Blender mania! This time it's a poster ad with a blender.

Titan Down! Final

All Rights Reserved, Calvin Kam | 2008

***WARNING - Ultra Large Image (approx. 1.75MB)***

Okay, I'm stopping further work on this illustration. I've spent far too much time, and it's not really satisfactory. I admit, I was a little too ambitious when I first started, and now, I'm getting tired of it.

So there you go, a Rithias in a more mobile suit of armor, equipped with the Fang of Goros (made that up, an anti-matter blade that separates the molecular structure of any material). Poor Taeron, (the metallic but rusty titan) he gets cut up for running amuck in Videan territory, near a military base.

Titan Down! 13/09/08 Update

Shrunk the giant's head to make him look bigger, and pointier as well. Background's a mess of fractals and outer-space stuff. Glows on Rithias are just a test, will turn them into gems that look like demon eyes or somethin.

Ok I need a nap.

Mirror Mirror On The Ball

OMG 3D work! Since... forever! Whipped this up, from ideation to post work in 3 hours or so. It's for a DVD cover contest, so I might have to take this down when the winner is announced. 

Frankly, it feels quite good to do some 3D again. I actually looked for mirrorballs (aka discoballs) online, and there are no free models at all. Angered by this fact, I took it upon myself to create my own mirrorball! And it worked!

Yeah I know there are many imperfections (or perfections) to this interior scene, but I don't think i'll revise it in the future. I'll just make another!

Titan Down! - 5/8/08 Update

Got shot down by 5 planes playing Ace Combat Zero. Don't play chicken against five fighters. It's not good for your health.

*Large image warning*

Titan Down! WIP

Here's the composition for what I'm working on right now. On the left is what I started with, and the progress is on the right. Will need to spend more time on this.

Rithias, The Giant Slayer

I know, you must be thinking, "What's with this Rithias character? Why're you drawing him again? Why don't you draw something else? Noob."

Maybe without the noob part.  Well, I'm sure you would have noticed that my screen name is similar to this current character, and as a matter of fact Rithias IS my character! Surprise! Weeee!

........

Okay, I've done the lineart (80%) for this one, and will show you the composition for the piece next time. Will do the lineart for the background as well, for I am not experienced enough to do anything 'speedpainting' style.

404

All Rights Reserved © Calvin Kam

Time to finalize the random humanoid I came up with this week. Thought I'd finish up before the week ends and start on another piece (with more thought put into it).


All Rights Reserved © Calvin Kam


Everyone's rushing to get jobs, and here I am bumming around. Sigh.

Distractions

Took a quick break from drawing, and came up with a random logo for myself.


And slapped it onto today's update! Lol.

Been replaying Crysis, and it definitely looks much better on my current rig. Didn't bother trying it with DX10, for I am playing it with mere 2x anti-aliasing. (I somehow prefer performance over quality)

Rith out.

No It's Not Ironman

I'm trying to draw everyday, and came up with... this. Will try to make it quick and move on to another piece so that it won't be so boring as I suffer from an extremely short attention span.

The Red Guy

Watched Wall-E with part of the gang, and loved it. A real 3D artist's dream. Even with the lack of dialogue, the story unfolded pretty well, albeit a little predictable.

And here's today's quick drawing, in about half an hour's time. Inspired by a Comicon Challenge entry, featuring Omega Red from the Marvel Universe. 

Before I forget, I had the chance to kill a child today, but my foot just had to hit the brakes. Oh well.

Rithias, The Dark Lord Complete

Ok, the darklord piece is officially complete, despite a slight protest from Yam who urged me to create a background. I'm lazy, really. Sorry for the disappointment, I did say that I would include dead ppl in the scene... but I'm just too lazy. Lazy lazy lazy lazy.

Go here to view the piece, I'm too lazy to add watermarks for posting here on the blog. Heh.

Another Darklord Update

Finally done with the polearm, the handle's not too large anymore. Kinda tired, I don't know if I should go on with the environment and stuff. What do you think? Sorry about the watermark. XD

Not-So-Daily Update

Been feeling too down to do anything productive last week, hence the slow progress of any work. Snecx wanted an update, so here it is.

Blood Test Results

The doctor just called. The blood test results are out, and Coco is having a slight kidney problem. She needs to drink more water. Her heart has no problems though.

And then he said Jojo's heart had an unusual growth on it, and it might be the cause for the heart failure. He added that he has seen such cases in the past, and the dogs rarely live longer than 2 years...

Looking Forward

The mood around the house is getting a little better now... Coco's cheering up as well. But then again, the image of her sister on the table, those final strokes... they still stick around. Sometimes I even see Jojo around her usual spots, looking back at me with her silly expression.

Bathed Coco today, I had to brawl with her after the bath in Jojo's place... and I think she needs a new ball to play with.

I'll never forget Jojo.

Despair

They say writing sorts out your thoughts. I hope they're right.

Jojo's no longer around. The fat girl left us today. There she was, lying on the table, cold and motionless. I stroked her fur, that short, shiny coat I loved so much. But she's gone.

The doctor explained that her heart failed during the final stages of surgery (spaying),  that her heartbeat got weaker and weaker.  It seems that it's not an external factor, but a problem with her heart.

This is so sudden. I was sleeping when mom woke me up crying. I even had an anxiety attack when I first closed my eyes this afternoon. I just can't stop thinking that I actually felt it coming.

Jojo didn't eat much this morning. But she was her usual self, running out as soon as the gates opened. Then it was time to bring them to the vet. Jojo was especially reluctant to get out of the car, and she even struggled a bit. She looked so scared in the cage at the back of the vet. I kept saying that it's okay, and I'll get her tomorrow morning. It's okay.

And she's gone. My precious girl is gone.

FA Showcase 2008

The Film & Animation Showcase's main event was a blast, thanks to Haze Long, the director of it all, and the high comittee who were absolutely dedicated to the whole thing. Big players of the industry attended the showcase and were clearly impressed with it. Oh yeah, it was held at KL Tower on the 11th of July, with public exhibitions on both the 12th and 13th.

Not being the official photographer, I don't have many shots to show, but I'll put up some of them soon. Btw, no updates for the darklord piece for now, getting some stuff sorted out.

Call Me!

Whipped up a quick card design for myself today.

Darklord Daily Update 9/7/2008

It's 1.44 am... i'm too hyped up to sleep. So many things to learn, so many things to do. But I must force myself to rest... Here's the update.

Big Bad Weapon

I wonder if it's big enough XD. Was aiming for an elegant weapon fit for a lord, a symbol of authority that also strikes fear into enemies on the battlefield. Yam suggested a polearm, and here it is. He also stated that a piece of cloth (like a horsetail on spears) with the lord's emblem would give more impact to the weapon. Will revise the design later.

Dude In Shiny Black Suit

Here's an initial concept of the darklord to fill up this barren wasteland. Always wanted to design something that I really like, and that is :

- A dark dark dude in shiny black armor holding a big, badass mutha****** weapon that can cut a swath of destruction and strike fear into any weakling that lay their eyes on him wooooot.

There you go. XD

Hello, World. WTF.

Being a total nerd nowadays. The only physical activity I do is cleaning the porch everyday. For the sake of my girls I'm okay with that.

The darklord piece is being stalled at the moment, but the lineart's ready now. This'll be my first digital painting, complete with an action pose and dead people being cut up and blown apart.

Back to photoshop.