My Blog

The Pipe

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:52:00 -0500

Just finished up taking the time render a self promotion image featuring my oldest son Joshua. This represents the kind of image that I truly enjoy creating...high energy, very detailed, and presented from a unique and distorted perspective.

Per most of my figure work, Josh is based on several photographs. To get the perspective, I had Josh stand on a table while I photographed from below using a 12-24mm lens. The photos are cut up and assembled in photoshop and I “paint” on top of them. The rest of the imagery was generated in Modo.

The skateboard not only was rendered using a very wide lens, but also further distorted using a transform effector giving it some twist and scale distortion. A couple of point lights simulated the fire from the wheels. I needed to get more glow wrapping around the closest wheel and accomplished this by surrounding it with a luminated cylinder. I had a bit of fun with the image underneath the board itself, but giving the point of view, not much of that is revealed.

The pipe was rendered twice, once with the fire trail and once without, giving me control in photoshop just how much I wanted to reveal a glow left by the fire trail. The shape of the glow was simulated using a glowing twisted cylinder. Once in photoshop I used a layer mask to reveal the “fire.”

All elements were merged together in photoshop. Rendering the fire and smoke was the last step giving the image a real fun dynamic.

Mixing Margaritas

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:14:37 -0600

Found myself with some free time and took advantage by updating my high end food skills. I wanted to combine a commercial object with some organic elements to really showcase my range. Didn’t take me long to narrow in on Jose Cuervo’s Margarita Mix. Except for the indents and ridges on the bottle’s side, the bottle itself was a pretty easy build. Perhaps the most time consuming aspect of the project was rebuilding the label. I didn’t have access to the files used for printing the labels so I had to recreate those in photoshop which is a pain as the fonts and logos need to be cleaned up. I’m super thrilled with the results and hope the image inspires some interest from new clients.

Snow assignment

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:15:41 -0600

Living here in Wisconsin its really unusual not to get any significant snowfall until January. Ironic we should get dumped on shortly after I rendered this image for the magazine Up Here Business in Canada.

Steampunked

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:15:36 -0600

I was given the assignment a few weeks ago of creating “tools of artistic creation” in the vision of steampunk. I’ve unknowingly been a fan of the genre as I was unaware that the retro/techno look had a name. Had a lot of fun with this one.

Happy New Year

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:37:30 -0600

Happy New Year everyone! Like many creatives in the digital era, I love my mac. It makes everything seem pretty simple. Unfortunately, the disadvantage to Apple’s automative system is that when things go bad, they can be really annoying and impossible to fix. Take this web site for example. For simplicity reasons, I use iWeb to create and maintain my web site. But somewhere in June, iWeb decided not to read the file it created, thus I’ve been unable to update my site or my blog. Very annoying. Today I took the time to rebuild the site so I can start updating it again. Call it my New Year’s Resolution to rededicating myself to my craft and business.

It’s our family tradition to take a formal family portrait. This year I was inspired by the movie “Cat in the Hat.” I wanted to capture some of the bright color I saw in the movie. So I asked my mother to knit the boys some orange sweater vests and built the set around a green base. I’m really psyched how well the photos turned out. Like no other family portrait I’ve seen.

Best of luck to everyone in 2012!