So, you can change the background in windows 7 starter. Some saint of a hacker made a little program that alters the hash code of a jpg and applies the image to the desktop.

Well, not really new.  Several months old, but I couldn’t post them untill the game was released.   They are in the gallery now, I’ll throw a few up front though.

I really enjoyed making these.  It’s unfortunate that I don’t get a chance to do art anymore at work :/

I think my power supply went kuput. The question is now, replace the power supply- or tell the girl that the computer is busted and I need to buy a new one…. ;)

cant sleep so i made some boots and ears.  Gloves and neck piece are next. I’ll need to fix the hands for that probably…

Builing armor bits.  Easier than I expected.  Im using zspheres/topology to make the armor meshes.

inspired by FF’s bunny girl race.  Those tactics and ffxii were some of the better story lines and character designs.  I’ll miss them.  XIII looks too much like X for me.  I say get your jocks and angst outa my video games.  ;)

I’m done for now I think.  This was just an excercise to get me refamiliar with zbrush modeling.  I ran into alot of technical issues at the end. Mostly ram limitations- which is why there isnt a lot of ‘fine’ detail.  But, it was fun. Lessons learned.  Time to move forward.

making a bit of progress. Hopefully I’ll finish it this weekend.

I’ve had this ghost in the shell figure sititing on my desk for years. Needed to play in Zbrush so I thought I’d do a replica. Hopefully I’ll finish this one before I run out time.

Been awhile, but it’s not dead.  Just have been busy making art work that I’m not allowed to publish yet.  The game I’m working on should be released in a few months, at which point I can drop a huge art dump all over the blog.

great little piece on Hyung Tae Kim’s workflow: http://www.guupress.com/magazine/features/htk-runaway/1.asp

finished.. i think. Went ’sans’ tattoo.  I liked the white cracked flesh too much.  I took out a lot of the red… but now I’m thinking I might add it back in later.  But, done for now.  Need to play with something else for a bit.

-sgw

Found a few hours to play with the image this evening.  modeled out some books, shelves, chair, and lectern.  Rendered a low rez out and threw that rough of the zbrush model to play around with color composition.

I’m liking the red/blue highlights here.  Its a fairly static piece, and the reds help some with the flow.  I’m going to need to really get teh lighting right in order to make this thing pop in the final and not look like some static art piece that belongs on a jr. high paper folder. Though now that I think of it, some of those were kinda cool.

just noticed my crop is a bit wider here too.. I’ll lprobably slim it back down in final.

-sgw

I only had an hour to work tonight. The day job is getting demanding. This will probably be the last update on this piece for awhile.  The next step is modeling the various accutraments that I dont want to paint by hand and replace the ‘blocks’ in the scene. Render that out in maya/mental ray.  Then finish up the devil in zbrush and render that out. Composit the two and then paint the scene.

There are people that know how to render the dense zbrush models out in Mental ray- which would be awesome because I wouldn’t have to composite it in post.  I, however, don’t have the voodoo skills to make that work.  The only way i know how is using displacement maps, and getting those to work correctly take so many ‘magic’ numbers and dead chickens that its not worth my time.

-sgw

Did’nt get as much time as I would have liked to today to spend on this.  But, had enough time to play around with textures and see what I’m getting myself into.

This is not the final- but i do like the palette alot.  I’m going to change the patterns around, in the final version they wont be overlapping and stuff.  She is turning out much more ‘pin-uppy’ than i had intended.  The oringal concept was much more childish/impish in nature. I lost that in the model i think, gave her more of an adult body.  Spiking out the hair might help too, then again- maybe the pin up look is the way to go.

Ack.. its 2:30 in the morning.  Not good.  I did throw a pair of wings together.  Tomorrow I’ll get to start the detail hopefully.

-sgw

made some progress today.  I think I’m going to start on the wings before I jump back to tweaking th emain body.

-sgw

went ahead and decided to try a 3D version of the sketch.  I’ll try to finish it before I lose intrest ;)

-sgw

wow, wordpress continues to impress me.  Found an LJ cross poster plug in that automatically copies post to livejournal from here.  It looks like its working from the LJ side. Aint technology grand? At least until it consumes as all.

-sgw

Exited about the new site. Had some time to kill today and threw a little mess together.  Hopefully I can use it for some inspiration for a future piece.

-sgw

"a devil of insperation"