Today's post

I think this piece is done.....but you never know. Is anything ever really done? At least as far as "digital art" goes.
Anyhoo, I shot this in pieces with a Holga lens on a Canon 7D and pieced it together in Photoshop, added some lighting enhancements and texture and voila'!

Battlefield 3 Community Video Challenge

DICE has a challenge out to the Battlefield 3 Community to create a video showcasing your best "Only in Battlefield 3" moments. Here's my entry.

Adding blur to the image on my desktop.

This is what I'm working on currently, like right now. I've learned that adding blur to an image, be it here or like on The Jerry Springer Show, people wanna stare and know what it is that's being blurred.

Mystic, you know?

Mass Effect 2 and compositing a group shot.

 I finally got into Mass Effect 2. After hearing so many praises of being Awesome I got the game for Christmas this year (Thank you Kelbi!). I have a PS3, so I didn't get to play the first game. I still need to buy the Cerberus Network thing (used game) so I can see what the hell was going on in the first one. I've played many cinematic games in my time, MGS, GTA, Uncharted, Skyrim etc. Those games felt like great action adventure hero type movies, Mass Effect 2 feels like you're playing through a season of a television show. A really good season!
 I've been impressed with the voice acting and choices on what the main character can say. Even more impressed that they say everything fully. In some games when you have a conversation with another character it has your dialogue choice that you choose and the character you're talking too reacts to your choice rather than your character actually speaking your choice like in Mass Effect 2. So you end up with this great conversation between these characters and you direct how the conversation unfolds. The games reminds me a lot of Firefly. The captain of a ship, helping his crew come to terms with their issues, all the while a huge threat to the universe looms in the distance. Pretty cool.
SO, since I got the game used (don't worry EA/ Bioware, I intend to buy Mass Effect 3 day one!) I didn't have a cover for it. So I made one. It always good to practice and challenge yourself, so this was a good oppurtunity to do so. I used google images to grab the characters and composited a group shot to print out. I'm not finished with the game so I may have left someone out that should be in, but at this time I feel like I have the whole group. I think it turned out pretty good.
 Making composites is like building a puzzle. The challenge of this piece was finding similar angles and stances of the characters. Shepard (the Hero) was the hardest. I just couldn't find anything that I really liked and ended up settling for the "far away, a visionary" look he has here. There are a couple of head swaps that I did, Miranda in particular and some of the characters are just head and shoulders. It all about "Location, Location, Location"! And lighting. The image shows what I started with and my curves layer, aka lighting. Think of it in reverse, the black parts are where the light is the strongest and the white parts are the blackest. I desaturated and gave everyone a slight 70's glow and "KaBlamo" I've got a cover now. Not too shabby, huh?

"What I'm working on" or "on the burner"

"on my plate", "coming soon!", you get the picture. HA!

Vault of Science....finally!

Is this thing on?
Still?
It's been awhile, but after mulling over this image I think I'm finally ready to let it out.
I had many different color tones before I settled on this one. I'm back and forth with the hexagons. I like the way they frame up the "other stories"…..
I think the images work pretty well. I can't decide if I should break the image down and tell you what everything is, the elements that is, mainly the planets.
next post then.

I wanna do some Sci-Fi magazine covers.

In tandem with my W/W project I decided to do some "Heavy Metal/ Epic Magazine" type magazine covers. I came up with a bunch of ideas and started with myself as the subject so I'd have a finished product to show any potential models I would ask for the other covers. I show here my raw file (yea, I clear out my living room and shoot in there) and that same raw file placed into the sketch of the environment I want to create. I also came up with a title treatment, "Vault of Science". I enjoy laying out the elements for the cover and of course creating the strange worlds or situations for the imagery. I'll post the next step next week.