There are some amazingly talented artists out there on the net. Fortunately, many of them are more than willing to share their secret jutsus. Believe it!
Backyard FX (BFX) demonstrates how you can throw a knife into someone’s head without the aid of CG. It’s safe, it’s fun, and it’ll cost less than $20! I foresee random effects testing in the future.
[Via Indy Mogul]
Been a while since I’ve posted a tutorial. Scott Spencer demonstrates how to paint a texture directly on a 3D mesh in ZBrush.
He starts off with some very saturated basic colors, red, yellow, and blue. The red is used for the nose, cheeks, lips, eyelids, ears, and other parts of the skin where light would absorb into the epidermal surface and scatter. The yellow is used for areas that might reflect more light like the forehead and clavicles. The blue is for areas where shadows would collect in places like the inner eye socket, the neck, and parts of the neck. He then goes over the entire mesh with a small white brush with low opacity to sort of vein it all up. Then he blends it all together using a flesh tone again at a low opacity to blend the colors into the skin to give it color variation, depth, and the illusion of light bouncing off muscle tissue and veins.
As I was watching this truly inspiring time lapse video, I thought it might be fun to try this same technique on a 2D digital painting. I’ll have to give this a try sometime. Even if you’re not a 3D artist, this is a great video tutorial.
[Via Scott Spencer]
It’s an exceedingly good thing that I didn’t discover this before I got married. I’ve gotta go get some supplies!
In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight! Let those who worship evil’s might, beware my power, Green Lantern’s light!
[Via Instructables]
Adi Granov is one of those artists whose work makes me both want to quit and strive harder. He’s probably most well known for his Iron Man work and even designed the Iron Man movie armor.
Like all artists, Granov has spent years tweaking and perfecting a work flow that enables him to create vivid and dynamic illustration. He shares some of his techniques, a combination of traditional pencil and ink drawing and digital painting, with Imagine FX. You can download the pdf of his tutorial for free and spend the countless hours learning his jutsu.
Truly inspirational and most awesome!
[Via ImagineFX]
If there was any doubt about the power of Onezumi Studios, bow down and bear witness to the might of AWSOM.ORG! AWSOM (Artist Website Setup Options Markup) is dedicated to helping artists, web comic creators, and bloggers set up their sites with the least brain damage possible (dammit! Should have bothered Harknell when I upgraded AZM). AWSOM offers a number of Wordpress plugins and tutorials to walk you through the steps to webcomic domination! This is an absolutely tremendous resource for anyone interested in arting or comicing on the web.
Onezumi and Harknell have always impressed me with how much they give back to the webcomics and art community. This is an amazing project and I hope it continues to grow.
I found this place a while back and have rediscovered it now that I’ve got my screen and my emulsion spreader. The DIY Screenprinting Tribe is a message board where users can posts questions and suggestions about screen printing. Looks like there’s a whole network of these Tribes. I’ll let you all know how my first attempt goes and post some pictures if there’s anything to post. I might have something to show at the end of the week or not. We’ll see how it goes.
Identity Works is a tremendous resource for anyone interested in corporate branding. Infinitely useful for those of us tasked with designing logos now and then. The site present case-studies that analyze the design process of a number of corporate brands from 1998 to today. Even if you’re not an artist or a designer, it’s still quite interesting to see the history of some of our most recognizable brands.
Don’t talk about Battlestar Galactica much on AZM, but you should know that Audrey and I are very much addicted to the show. I love the fact that we can catch up with On Demand on our cable box. The producers of the show have just released a Battlestar Galactica Videomaker Toolkit to aid fans in creating four minute Galactica movies. You get access to dozens of effects shots and music clips from the show. Upload your videos for the world to see. There are two sample videos up there right now. Executive producer David Eick will choose one video that will air during an episode of Battlestar Galactica! So get your cameras rolling and let us know when you upload so we can pimp you out here at AZM!
Last year I bought myself a screen printing kit from the art store. I wanted to design my own shirts and I wanted the flexibility to experiment with designs without investing too much money for small runs. The kit is still in the box.
To be quite honest, most of the stuff I make to sell at cons hardly sells. Last year’s Otakon was the first year I actually made some amount of money on something I made. The Hello Ninja and Instant Ninja shirts sold fairly well. My prints have never sold. I still have a large bag of buttons left. The jury is still out on the sketchbooks because I haven’t hit the con circuit with them yet (however, you can purchase one online right now!).
It’s obvious that the shirts do well. I’m interested in printing them myself just to see if I can do it. So I broke out the kit last night and looked around for some help. I’m probably going to start with a revamped version of the Hello Ninja shirts. I’ll try to document my progress as I go along.
I have found some good stuff on the net for screen printing. Artist Shannon Gerard provides No Media Kings with a very helpful screen printing tutorial.
Aesthetic Apparatus screams their way through their screen printing process for their posters.
Little Oscar’s show us how they print their shirts.
And this last bit isn’t very helpful. It’s actually kind of disturbing. You can’t really make running a squeegee sexy.
Yes, this is a full episode. So sit back, relax, and paint some happy trees. Dude must have been sooooo high. And how’d he get his afro so puffy!
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