New project: The shopping mall environment scene

After telling myself enough times that concept art is nothing to be afraid of, I finally tried my own hand at it. Having made these small isolated clothing mannequins all week long, I suddenly felt the urge to go big with it. To not take the easy and fast one session exercises, but to see how far I can push it with my current skill set with no time limit.

Moving onto a complex concept scene like this was a major victory from all the old demons in my head, telling me not to grab that pen because I probably can’t handle it. I’m figuring this is a fairly common and simple scenery here, but I’m honestly really happy with it. I’ve decided to work it further; put on some color and lighting, finally topping it off by making it a full 3D pbr model using substance painter and substance designer. It’ll be cool to see how it evolves from an a lineart to a realtime piece. I’ll be posting an update from every stage!

Daily scrubbles: common clothing designs rehearsal 2

More daily scrubbles: A set of colorful dresses

A friend of mine lent me a thorough book on clothing styles yesterday. Decided to put it to good use. These designs are mostly from the book, although all the sketching and coloring is still mine. I feel like getting bit more confident with this. I hope these designs are starting to stick to my head, so that in the future I could start mix and matching them.

Booting up the drawing habit again

So, the fall is here. As the raindrops are drumming the window sill, it’s time to adopt back to some routines.  I’m trying to pick up the habit of drawing/painting daily again.  Here is a fast mock-up of some everyday clothes. I’m trying to learn to memorize some of the most common clothing so that it could be later drawn on the fly without thinking too much. The materials are still bit vague and I really need to work on my folds. Still figuring out so many things. But it feels really good to paint again. More eyesores– I mean dailies coming later.

Volunteering at Ropecon: Come say hi if you are in town!

Starting this friday, I’ll be volunteering at Ropecon, the massive roleplaying hobbyist event taking place each year at the end of July. The fair has everything ranging from table top games to cosplay and it even has show wrestling. This is my second year volunteering. I am sort of a borderline almost-hobbyist, my bridge being my trade as a 3D-artist and my love for games. I do also have actually quite a long history about customer service, so a friend who is involved in organizing the event, said he would be very happy to have me on board. He is probably also taking this chance to try and convert me into a full time hobbyist! 🙂

Ropecon is actually a really cool event, with an ever expanding spectrum of game-related interests on display. I warmly recommend it to anyone who is even little bit interested in fantastical subjects and game playing in any form. Also, it’s a good chance to come and say hi to me! I’d love to meet old friends and even more to make new ones! Most of my shifts are taking place at the miniature desk and table top game area of the show. It’s not a super tight schedule, so having a beer or two during the show is definitely an option. I also have been bestowed upon the magical power of giving away candy at the visitors! And if this not enough, I can also tell you where the toilets are, or sign you up for the table top game tables. 🙂 So what are you waiting for, see you at Ropecon, folks!

When a mere card won’t do: 3D-printing unique gifts for friends

Recently a friend of mine invited me to his doctoral thesis completion party. I wanted to congratulate him, and just bringing a flower or two felt like it would not emphasize the event enough. After giving it a bit of thought, I decided to model and 3D print a small statue for him. In Finland, and possibly some other nordic countries, it is a custom that the individuals who reach the doctorate level in their studies will receive the right to wear a specific type of sword and a top hat. According to the lore, the sword symbolizes the strength of knowledge against ignorance. Never the less, these items were found to be rather pricey. As they are always handmade by request, my friend thought he may not bother. That’s when I saw my chance: he earned that sword and that hat and he should absolutely have those.

I quickly started prototyping a small statue which would feature those items. At first, I really wanted the items to be removable, so they could be taken of the pedestal and put back. Unfortunately, this proved to be highly difficult with such a small scale (12cm), where an error of only 0,5mm would be enough to break the system. I didn’t want the system to dominate too strongly where I could place the items on the pedestal, and with the pedestal being hollow for budget reasons and the pillar rather narrow for aesthetic reasons, it was just impossible to lay the sword on the pedestal in any more relaxed manner. In the end, after multiple complicated tests, I decided to drop the functionality and go with a solid statue.

The statue was printed with a Formlabs 2 at the library of Iso omena, Espoo. The base material was black resin. The print took about 10 hours and the machine was set at the best possible resolution. The figurine was then spray-painted with miniature colors, first grey and then finally warm white. This was to prevent the black base color from having a distorting shade on the white. A final touch of darker color for little bit of ambient effect for the crevices was added. I’m quite happy how this turned out. I am not really a miniature hobbyist, so the painting job is somewhat inaccurate at places, but the Formlabs is an incredible printer when it comes to precision. The result: The fresh doctor was delighted by his newfound office decor and promised to place it so that it would invoke envy among colleagues. 😉

The finished statue

A ruler for scale. The height is about 12cm.

Putting on the first light grey layer of paint

Substance Painter, it’s one hell of a drug

A little update on my rocket project. The hull is now about textured; time to move on making some befitting scenery!

Would you fly this to the moon -The steampunk rocket project

Hi there! How is spring going for you guys? Having the busiest work season of my up to date life, I rejoice for finally having the time and energy to work on a personal project. Looking at this terribly unsafe looking steampunk rocket, you can probably tell that I adored the Dr. Snuggles cartoon series as a kid. Not having had a hardsurface project in a while, it really felt like it would be a breath of fresh air to do one. The hull below is the highpoly, which is around 10, 000 tris. The lowpoly is around 7,000 tris. I am going to take a bit deeper look at Substance Painter, which has been on the task list for almost forever (and I feel guilty like hell about it!). So the focus would be to make a nice looking medium poly-ish, all mapped up and lavishly textured with all the particle sprays in the world, pc- quality asset. My commercial experience has gotten over the years more and more mobile-oriented, which is cool, but you know, you just gotta have little bit of that “what if the grass actually is greener over there”- healthy curiosity! So let’s fire up Substance Painter and put some color on this buddy!

Hot Doggety! scores 10 000 downloads on playstore

Hot Doggety has reached 10 000 downloads on google play. Who’s a good boy!  =) That makes us devs so delighted, that we felt like sharing these donuts with you. Thank you everyone who supported us and gave incredibly positive feedback. We want you to know the game is still being developed further and new content is on the works. Go dachsie!

More 2D stuff, fresh out of the oven!

So, I came across this cool homework at ctrl+paint, where I should take two animals and mix them up for creature creation practice. It sounded like it could be amusing, so I decided to give it a try. To make it bit more difficult, I wanted someone else to pick the animals, so I wouldn’t subconsciously choose easy targets. The given animals were a hippo and a camel. Below is the final painting. What a “majestic” looking steed. 😀 Overall I’m mostly happy how it turned out, only the hair fell bit below expectations (really need to work on how to express fluffyness!) Maybe the feet have somewhat a floating feeling too. The platform and the grass worked out surprisingly nice too. Sure, this is no way the kind of quality I would put to my gallery yet and try to sell it of as high quality concept art, but I feel like there is a good thing going. Besides having the feeling that the tutorials are really starting to sink in, I feel that the inner spark to draw has finally genuinely caught fire.

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My sketches are still bit blurry by nature…

All colored up in his wobbly glory. 🙂

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