Another stitched panorama from last Winter’s cold snap. Shot on a 5mp Sony Cybershot and stitched with Microsoft ICE.
Cold snap…
•October 23, 2011 • Leave a Comment
Winter is coming…
•October 18, 2011 • 3 CommentsOr is it already here? The past few days in Dublin have been pretty cold, which reminded me of some pictures I took last winter when we had that “cold snap”. I used the appropriately named Microsoft ICE to stitch together several 5 megapixel images and then cropped/graded in Photoshop. I don’t take a lot of photographs but I do carry a cheap point-and-shoot with me most places for note taking and video reference.
Strolling pastel…
•October 5, 2011 • Leave a CommentTisn’t often I stray from my comfort zone of pencil work but I have tried chalks, paints and pastels in the past. In fact, I took a portfolio course in Mixed Media studies when I was fresh out of school. This artichoke in pastel on brown scrapbook paper and was stuffed in the back of a college sketchbook where I also found some chalk work that I’ll post up soon.
Trained tracks…
•September 29, 2011 • 7 CommentsFollowing on from my earlier Photofly work I decided to knock out a quick test to see how the model would fare fare when composited onto a live action backplate. I took to the back yard once again on a day that had similar weather and lighting (dull and grey – the Irish summer) and shot some footage handheld on an old JVC Everio camcorder. I chose this over my HD camera because it has a CCD image sensor that eliminates any rolling shutter artifacts, making it more suitable for tracking/matching. The downside is that it records to interlaced mpeg in standard definition, so I took it through virtualDub to remove the interlacing then converted to mp4 for ease of use. Matchmoving was then done in SynthEyes to generate a camera for the 3D scene that would match that of the backplate, I didn’t bother setting up markers or measuring as this was a quick test.
Here is the backplate:
And this is the Photofly tunnel model composited into the shot:
The model just uses the diffuse textures created through photofly with no lighting except for a simple ambient occlusion pass, which hasn’t properly darkened the underside of the model, so it doesn’t fit in perfectly but as a simple test I think it holds up OK. Further work could be done on the model shaders, colour correction and motion blur.
A hint of colour…
•September 24, 2011 • Leave a CommentThese are some warm up tests I did to break in a new set of Polychromo coloured pencils, by far my favourite media for drawing with. I remember feeling very rusty when I started drawing again after a break of about two years when I returned to college to study Media Special Effects in Southbank University in London. The first proper art assignment was to design a suit of armour, a part of which had to be constructed and when I started sketching I just couldn’t get into it, so I started doodling over a few evenings and it started to come back to me. there is no theme or subject, just shapes and colours 🙂
Lost in translation…
•September 20, 2011 • Leave a CommentI’m pretty sure that both of these notebook sketches were Visual Language assignments but what the connection is I haven’t the foggiest. I know I drew that rhino at the Natural History Museum mentioned in a former post but I’m pretty sure I didn’t run into Tom Berenger in Platoon there. It makes sense that the Platoon image may have been used in a Film Studies module but beyond that I’m stumped! Both are Faber Castell polychromo coloured pencil on heavy grain paper.
Day at the museum…
•September 14, 2011 • 4 CommentsThese are some sketches from a notebook from college. One dismal November day we made a field trip to Dublin’s Natural History Museum to sketch the preserved animals. There is an interesting lustre to the skin on some of the larger animals due to the preservative applied which caught my eye from the balcony above the ground floor where I sketched these fellas.
Hanging out II…
•September 9, 2011 • Leave a CommentThese are some more drawings from the school blazer drapery study series. Pencil on paper scanned from my sketchbooks.
Crash tested…
•September 6, 2011 • 9 CommentsToday, a little more 3D art to clear the palette of all the 2D stuff of late. This character was the high poly version of a character used in a demo I worked on at Torc Interactive for GDC in 2004. You can see the low poly version in spine-breaking action below.
The images below were rendered in 3dsmax with Mental Ray with DOF in post.
Hanging out…
•August 31, 2011 • 4 CommentsA sketch and a cloth drapery study featuring a dressmaker’s mannequin and my old school blazer! Pencil on heavy paper taken from an old sketchbook from about ’96.
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