pointpusher

Troll

2012-01-30T00:52:00.002-05:00

This week I'll be giving a talk about digital sculpting to people @ the Savanah College of Art and Design. The sculpt below is one of the sculpts I'll be showing them how to make.

A little update, some color testing.

New Zbrush UI

2012-01-30T00:48:00.000-05:00

I recently changed the way My Zbrush looks and feels you can download my version here:
or make your own by following the steps in the video.

Beauty and the Beast?

2012-01-22T19:24:00.002-05:00

Two recent speed sculpts:

Witch Boobies.

2012-01-16T21:56:00.002-05:00

Click for larger view

Timelapse here: The Music is by the Black Keys off the CD El Camino available on itunes, Spotify, and Amazon.

Livestreams from Jan. 5th and 6th.

2012-01-08T01:05:00.003-05:00

While on my holiday break, I had a chance to do some livestream sessions. The results of which can be seen below. I mixed up a little 2D and 3D, and had a great time with the people who tuned in.

Some photoshop fun from the two sessions.

The model made in the second hour of the Jan. 5th stream, and a turntable of the model below.

To see the streams, go to http://www.livestream.com/pointpusher

Dreamworks, it gets better

2011-12-22T15:19:00.002-05:00

I usually use this site to show whatever I'm working on and hopefully chart my progress as an artist. This post though is so much more important than that.

When word of people like Tyler Clementi committing suicide hit the news, it made me feel devastated as a parent and a human. Really though, that kind of thing happens to a LOT of kids we never hear about.

Knowing I work at a place that feels as terrible as I did about that, well. It's awesome. Watch this video.

Cluezo inspired bust

2011-12-22T02:43:00.001-05:00

This is a head I modeled after a design by the amazing concept artist Sandro Cluezo.

The model was done in Zbrush.

Toon Head sculpt

2011-11-20T15:53:00.000-05:00

This was a fun toon head I did after attending day 1 of CTN. I wanted to check out day 2 and 3, but I'm getting sick and feeling a little run down :-(

Free Download

2011-11-18T03:35:00.002-05:00

So, a friend asked if I would mind showing him a model I made a while back, and talk to him about some of the process involved in creating the model and textures. I uploaded it for him, and figured, why not share it. It is by no means perfect, but it was fun to make when I made it a while ago.

If you're a Maya user, there is a Maya 2009 .ma file that "should" see all the textures. Otherwise, you'll have to load the obj file in to your viewer of choice and hook up the textures yourself. There's also a PSD showing the texture layers I used and a couple of making-of time-lapse movies.

If you want to download it, go here:

Custom UI for Zbrush 4.2

2011-10-16T16:45:00.002-04:00

A coupe of weeks ago, I uploaded the custom UI I like to use for version 4.2. Apparently, there was a glitch in the way it was uploaded that caused the license file to reset. After some testing, I've re-uploaded the UI with new instruction on how to safely load the UI. If you want to give it a spin, grab it from here:
http://pointpusher.com/prefs/zBrush/ Apologies if you were adversely effected by the last upload.

Moning Monster Sketch

2011-10-04T13:51:00.000-04:00

Brink inspired head.

2011-09-30T10:23:00.004-04:00

R2 is just... well. Amazing. Not dynameshing it up yet, but loving wax preview! This is a Brink inspired head. I love the character design in this game. A little tribute to it. The music is by a composer named Lalo Schifrin. Check out hi amazing body of work. These songs are from the Soundtrack to the 1968 Steve Mcqueen film Bullit. You can snag the soundtrack on Amazon.

Hulkey

2011-09-17T03:42:00.000-04:00

The music is from Kanye West and Talib Kweli on the album The College Drop Out. You can purchase the album here: amazon.com/College-Dropout-Kanye-West/dp/B0001AP12G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1316244407&sr=8-3

late night sketch

2011-09-15T04:14:00.005-04:00

Just a fun sketch from tonight. The music is from the albulmSoundbombing III available for purchase here: amazon.com/Soundbombing-3-Various-Artists/dp/B000067CN0/ref=pd_sim_m_3

A tree I'm working on.

2011-07-28T14:45:00.002-04:00

A tree I'm working on for a little project. The music is from "The Grind Date" by DeLaSoul. You can purcahse it here:

The music in this session is from the albulm "Internal Affairs" by Pharoahe Monch, available for purchase here:

Here is my first render test of the tree as is. Still quite a few things to fix in the sculpt.

Angry Dude

2011-07-24T07:54:00.000-04:00

Another quick sketch.

quick bust of old guy

2011-07-20T12:19:00.000-04:00

It's been a couple of weeks since I got to just sit and Zrush something, and man, I get rusty so fast! This was a little practice early this morning.

Troger.

2011-07-02T23:30:00.002-04:00

I had some free time, for the first time, in a loooooong time today, and wanted to make something. So, I made this guy. He's part of the same story with the girl I've been developing. I'm going to do a concept sculpt in Zbrush next. link to the livestream for a making-of for this dude here:

A witch of a good time...

2011-06-09T11:23:00.001-04:00

From a livestream session on June 8th 2011. It was pretty fun. It's real-time (about 1.5 hrs start to finish). The mic was on, and you can hear me chat with some livestream viewers and a bunch or distorted music. Sorry for the poor quality of the video.

old 4.0 beta creature.

2011-06-04T05:51:00.007-04:00

This image is from the Zbrush 4.0 beta. I thought I deleted these images, but I found some in an old email. It's not the most technically accomplished character, but I like him.

Coming to ya' live... ish...

2011-06-04T05:48:00.006-04:00

A coupleof people I know do these live stream or ustream videos. I've had some requests to make real time videos, and I figured this would be a decent way to accomplish this. I'll keep updating this post with my future live stream efforts. My livestream channel is in the links section to the left.

Some early sketching.

2011-05-27T10:04:00.002-04:00

Quick Bust. Concept by Alessandro Toccaceli

2011-05-27T09:21:00.000-04:00

young girl sketches

2011-05-18T10:47:00.001-04:00

Some sketching in 2d and 3d.

Bionic Commando WIP

2011-03-30T13:43:00.001-04:00

Over @ polycount, there is a challenge to create your own version of a video game character from a fighting game. I chose bionic commando. I usually don't do a lot of 3d design, but for this challenge, I figured it would be fun to try it, so here is where I am with 2D and 3d design on this char:

my initial sketch:

bionic commando sketch from pointpusher on Vimeo.

A refined version, a little more fleshed out:

bionic commando sketch 3 from pointpusher on Vimeo.

first pass @ 3D design:

bionic commando 3d design step 1. from pointpusher on Vimeo.

Second pass @ 3D design:

bionic commando 3d design step 2. from pointpusher on Vimeo.

Some Draw-overs for the arm and Gear.

Bionic Commando Draw-overs. from pointpusher on Vimeo.

C & C welcome and appreciated!

Mr. Lee Sketch

2011-03-02T01:23:00.002-05:00

@ some point, I'd like to carve out some time to get back to this and make it a more finished piece. Fun to sketch though for sure.

3D Dump... Some busts...

2011-02-25T12:29:00.007-05:00

Hey gang,

Here are a few busts that used to live in separate posts mushed together in a single post to tidy up the blog a bit.

A quick alien bust

My first official Zbrush sketch as a Cali resident

Curly mustache dude

Windswept dude with beard

Bishop

A Sculptris and Zbrush rough head sketch

A dude

Super simple Cyclops

And another old alien

Long Arm Player sketches

2011-01-18T23:50:00.008-05:00

Some blocking in of an older character. Used to learn sculptris mostly. Maybe I'll go back t him one day, but for now, he's on the "I learned and I'm moving on" pile.

Session 1: Finding Shapes I like... AKA Sculptris = fantastic!

Session 2: Refining the shapes a bit

Session 3: Trying some hard surface modeling

A turntable of the WIP model

New Adventures.

2011-01-06T20:03:00.001-05:00

After nearly 3 years of working with some of the most skilled artists (and coolest people) I've ever met, I've decided to leave ArenaNet and accept a position with a new group of incredibly skilled artists at Dreamworks Animation in Glendale California.

Saying goodbye to the many great friends I've made at ArenaNet, and around Seattle is going to be tough, but I'm looking forward to the new challenges that await me in Southern California. I hope the warm weather won't be too shabby either :-)

2D Dump....

2011-01-03T06:00:00.011-05:00

In an effort to tidy up around here, I've consolidated some old posts in these 2d and 3d "dumps." Here are a bunch of 2D sketch sessions from the past.

Headless Creature

2010-12-27T05:09:00.009-05:00

This was a weird but fun sculpt. Learned a lot. The last two videos are tutorials for making chains and chainmail.

Part One: Trying to find some shapes I like

Part Two: Still exploring shapes

Part Three: Posing

Part Four: Some finishing touches

A turntable of the finished sculpt

Tutorial: How I made the chainmail

Tutorial: How I made the chains

Flying Monkey Sketch.

2010-12-23T03:20:00.003-05:00

Another fun character exploration. He's loosely based on a design by Mr. Adam Hughes. I might like to go back and pick this one up one day. The last video is a tutorial showing some stuff I do in Maya.

Part One: Finding some shapes I like

Part Two: Fleshing out the character a bit more

Part Three:Costume exploration

Part Four: Adding somedetails

Part Five: Re-doing the face and head

Part Six: Adding the parachute

Tutorial: Extruding on curves in Maya

Head Sculpting Tutorials

2010-12-21T14:15:00.003-05:00

Done mostly for my ZBC sketchbook thread.

Zbrush Head sculpting Demo part I of II from pointpusher on Vimeo.

Zbrush Head sculpting Demo part II of II from pointpusher on Vimeo.

top row = wow.

2010-12-02T01:26:00.001-05:00

Tonight I was honored and humbled to see I was added to the top row over at Zbrush central. There are lots of artists more skilled than myself who have graced top row there, so now, I have to work harder to be worthy of being in their company.

Also, I was top row on CG Hub. Pretty cool!

Pub Baddy sketch

2010-12-01T14:01:00.004-05:00

After seeing Tangled, I really wanted to make a pub thug. This was my attempt at sketching one out over the course of several hours.

Session One: Finding shapes I like

Session Two: Refining the shapes and Silhouette

Session Three: Adding a hand from Maya

Session Four: Adjusting the costume

Session Five: Details

Session Six: Some hard surface modeling in Maya

A turntable of the WIP model

Demon

2010-11-28T02:52:00.003-05:00

Could mess with this thing forever, but it's time to move on to something new. He was fun while he lasted. The last video is a tutorial for working with multiple pieces on a single character in Zbrush.

Session One: Blocking in shapes

Session Two: Adjusting the silhouette

Session Three: More Silhouette adjustments

Session Four: Adding some Details

Session Five: Retopo for final detail sculpting

Session Six: A texture session in Bodypaint

A turntable for the high-res sculpt

The textured, game res model.

A tutorial about working with multiple pieces on a single character in Zbrush

Some old freelance.

2010-08-31T03:47:00.003-04:00

A while back I did some sculpting, modeling and texturing for Hornet animation for a British McDonald's ad. It was a really fun job because I got to do some design sculpting based on sketches by the amazing Peter de Sève. Below are a few sessions for a couple of the design sculpts, followed by a quick look at a couple of the textured models.

A guy with glasses

A chubby guy

A Short, old monk

A tall, old monk

Hair Sculpting

One of the texture tests I sent to the client

Super cliché

2010-08-27T12:23:00.002-04:00

This week I had a little more free time than usual, so I've been sketching some really cliché stuff (hulks and demons in Zbrush!?!). The hulk is really loosely based on the silhouette of a much cooler sketch by the amazing Mel Milton (click here to see it). The other two heads and weird polypaint experiments are from my head (as much as demons with horns ad big heads can be at this point). Hey, sometimes, cliché stuff can be fun to make!

Influence Map

2010-08-27T11:32:00.006-04:00

So, over on Deviant Art, people have been creating these "Influence maps" for a while. I became aware of these earlier this week, and figured I'd goof off and try to make one while having a nice adult beverage. Boy was I wrong.

My real pool of influences is super crowded, and always growing. So, how does one choose who to put on the map? It's not that I Like the work of someone who made the list (J.C. Leyendecker for example) is "better" in my mind that someone who didn't (like maybe Norman Rockwell).

Ultimately, the fun part was, looking internally and asking "what kind of artist would I like to be one day?" For me, the answer is someone well rounded in two and three dimensions who can work physically and digitally. I'd like to have a better sense of color and a better sense of representing volumes. Along with all of that, I'd also like to to have just enough "style" to be distinctive, but not so much that I pigeonhole myself in a single creative direction.

I know, lot's of artists have similar goals, but once I defined those ideals as targets for which I could shoot, I could narrow down the list more by really looking at people I thought exemplified those attributes. Anyway, it's easy to take this as some kind of cerebral artist masturbation, but really, I think it was a cool way to ask myself questions I might not have otherwise, and I certainly feel a little more focused now.

Some Guild Wars 2 Zbrush models

2010-08-17T20:45:00.008-04:00

These are some creatures I worked on which were featured in the Guild Wars 2 Manifesto video. We usually get a concept from the concept art team, but many times it's more related to the "feeling of the thing" than a specific outline or orthographic drawings. So, a fair amount of design work is executed by the creature artists. Things we try to consider are the silhouette, overall visual impact and readability from a distance, what environments the creature is likely to be spawned in etc. From a technical standpoint, we fit the models on to existing rigs (usually). So the one thing we can't adjust are the proportions (which drives me a little nuts).

Zbrush Tutorials

2010-08-14T01:45:00.006-04:00

This little tutorial covers how to adjust the Zbrush 4.0 UI. These steps also work for previous versions of Zbrush. Feel free to download my custom UI here: pointpusher.com/prefs/zBrush/ZStartup.zip

If you used the old Alpha and Texture loaders from Zbrush 3.5, here is a way to load them in 4.0

CG Roundup interview

2010-07-20T03:27:00.004-04:00

Recently, I was honored to be interviewed by the amazing Andrew Browne for the website CG roundup. It was fun to chat with a fellow art-nerd (meant with the utmost respect Andrew!): Check out Part One and Part two here or at CGroundup.com. Thanks Andrew!

New Post, Old Script

2010-06-04T05:50:00.007-04:00

This week two people were interested in a really old script I used in a couple of videos a while back. The script helps with retopo in Maya. Since those days, topogun has become available, and is a vastly superior way to work with topology. If you don't have access to topogun, this method does work well (I think) in Maya, but if you do have topo-gun... well, I'd use that.

Click here to get the script (1.4 KB):

Usage video below (21:09 min.):

Untitled from pointpusher on Vimeo.

Ashli

2010-05-01T01:45:00.003-04:00

Last week my family and I welcomed a new edition in to te world. Her name is Ashli, and I am smitten.

Above: Our older kids, Gabe and Tori. Ashli is the end of the trilogy.

Above: In the car seat, ready to go home.

Above: We thought she would be a bigger baby.

Above: My lovely other half, Hazel, sees the baby for the first time.

Above: When she first popped out. I almost sis't take tis pic I was so amazed to see her, and Hazel started yelling "take the picture, take it."

Been busy...

2010-04-02T02:37:00.004-04:00

I've been super busy the last few weeks, but last night got through the major time-eater in my life thee days and I rummaged through an old drive. I found an old image from when I was an instructor at SVA. Hope it helps someone out there. I should be posting new work soon.

Luddite

2010-03-01T04:22:00.013-05:00

This is my first attempt at narrative in a project. This one is about people who get stuck in their ways. For as much as most people like to think games and film are moving at light speed, the truth is, it's a usually a bunch of old ass men stuck doing things the way they did them 10 or 15 years ago.

Most CG artists find their professional legs in their early to mid twenties, before families and other time commitments make their craft feel more like work. Once you've settled in to a routine, it's easy to let go of the drive to be a better artist in favor of being a good enough artist to make a living. Digital sculpting is a great example of the clash of newer technology and older thinking.

It's hard to abandon your preferred work-flow in favor of something new every few years, but in the age of computers, it might be necessary. Oddly, people who have attained skill using the older ways of doing things, while embracing the speed of newer tools are usually the most adept at creating compelling pieces. Those are the people I'd like to learn from the most.

Brownstones to Red Dirt

2010-02-09T03:00:00.005-05:00

The Image below is my meager contribution to a charity postcard benefit auction for children in Brooklyn and Africa. There are lots of really skilled artists adding work to this cause, check out thier amazing work here!
http://btorpostcards.blogspot.com/

To learn more about the charity, check out the offical website here: http://www.brownstonestoreddirt.com/

The best picture I ever made...

2009-10-31T11:35:00.001-04:00

Testing, testing, 1,2,3...

2009-08-25T22:22:00.003-04:00

This little lady is the result of some recent sketching at home.

CG con demos

2009-07-20T12:36:00.013-04:00

In 2009, I was honored to be able to present a couple of workshops for a conference called CG-con.

The first presentation focused on using 3d concept design (Zbrush) before starting a production model. The entire process takes less than 2 work days (about 10 hours), including basic texture work, and is enough to show a creative director to obtain feedback. Since this is done in 3D, it can be evaluated from multiple angles and deformed to test for deformation volumes. Since it's not a real production asset, you can feel free to change it. The short editing and turnaround time make this an ideal production choice.

The changes in proportion are meant to reflect art-direction you might get at various stages of pre-production. This is meant to illustrate the flexibility of this process.

This image shows the basic pipeline discussed in the talk. It's based on work I did at Blue Sky Studios on digital Marquette making for pre-production and my limited experience working in games.

The second demonstration was just about sculpting in Zbrush to see how far we could get in a couple of hours. Here is where we started and finished:

The model is for demo and is not a finished piece but illustrates three of the key points of the talk (I hope).

Point A: Not every muscle needs to be 100% flexed at all times for something to feel strong.
Point B: You can describe a relatively complex set of forms without having to use millions and millions of polys, lots of wrinkles/pores etc.
Point C: You can "sketch" a creature to the point where the major forms are described in very little time.

Carlos Huante W.I.P

2009-01-13T05:20:00.039-05:00

So I've been trying to carve out a little time in the evenings to work on a full piece, and I've always been a fan of the work of Mr. Carlos Huante. If you're not familiar with his work, prepare to be dazzled when you go to his website here: He also has two amazing books published you should check out as well. They can be found here: and here:

***Edit... So I finally finished this guy (or at least I'm putting him down for now)...***

Who said Halloween was over?

2008-11-20T02:14:00.003-05:00

A quick sketch today.

A quick sketch today.

Old dude WIP

2008-11-12T01:50:00.016-05:00

I've been wanting to work on more than a head for a while now and to learn more about integrating different work flows using Zbrush. This dude is still WIP, but I probably wont go too much further before getting bored and moving on to something else. He's been fun so far though.

Another floating head....

2008-11-04T14:25:00.010-05:00

I promise, I'll do some bodies soon. A friend went to the Joru Schell exhibit at the Gnomon Gallery in Southern California and took some pictures(thanks Juan). Some of the pictures from the exhibit inspired me so much, I sketched out this guy this morning.

quickie relief

2008-09-26T23:23:00.005-04:00

These were fun. I was inspired by my friend Mike Defeo who did an AMAZING relief piece for the Totorro Forrest Project. Each quickly sculpted from a plane in Zbrush with no idea where I was headed.

GO WEST YOUNG MAN, GO WEST...

2008-07-23T17:32:00.007-04:00

This week has been bitter sweet. I've been at Blue Sky for eleven and a half years and I've had the opportunity to learn from a lot of amazing people there. Now, I'm off to Seattle to join an intimidatingly skilled group of artists at a company called arenaNet. They made a fantastic game called guild wars a few years ago, and are working on even more amazing stuff now. To all my ex Blue Sky peeps, I'll miss ya!

tf2 fan art

2008-06-09T20:38:00.022-04:00

So, I've been a fan of the art style of Team Fortress 2 since the game's debut. I recently created a little fan art of a new character class; The Aviator. This was a really fun project, and I learned a lot about creating full characters for real-time (I still have a lot more to learn though). The music, background and font are all lifted from the game, so they are property of Valve.

Here are some concept sketches I did prior to modeling:

And here are some screen shots of the model I ended up with:

And here is a progression reel for the modeling and texturing process:

Sketches from life and Magazines

2008-04-30T21:58:00.002-04:00

Sitting in Starbucks, sketching strangers...

Messing with an old dude... Um.... So to speak...

2008-04-16T18:11:00.005-04:00

A while ago I worked on a bust from a very phallic looking base mesh. I went back to that mesh today and reposed it, added some eyes, cleaned it up and added super quick paint job. I'm going to use this model for a Zbrush demonstration this summer.

I love the speed of Zbrush. There is no way I could have visualized this guy this quickly in three dimensions. Oh, also, I totally looked at Jose Fernandez' wonderful sculpt here (Jose is amazing check him out if you have not yet):

***EDIT***

So, my good friend and mentor Mike Defeo has introduced me to the world of 3d printing and rapid prototyping. This is my first 3d print, and although the quality is not the highest (yet) it's great to have a physical model at the end. I'll take better pics soon.

Consolidation...

2008-04-09T14:32:00.013-04:00

So, I've been doing some housekeeping on my website and blogs, and decided to pack up my 2-d blog and make this my only little blogging homestead on the web. Below are some images from posts from my old 2d blog I wanted to move here.

This first image is painted by me in photoshop, but designed by the amazing Mel Milton.
These next couple were more photoshop painting experiments:

These next ones were from a series I called "stuff I sketch in meetings." I'll be updating more sketches soon from this series.

quickie bust...

2007-09-11T16:17:00.001-04:00

Ok, so I've been spending a lot of time in 2-d land lately and it felt good to mess with this guy in mudbox for a few hours. We are going to be doing a project based on a bust in class this weekend, and it's been a while since I did one.

Skull

2007-09-07T23:38:00.000-04:00

Well, school starts at SVA again tomorrow (man summer went tooooooo fast!) and for the modeling class I'm teaching, I'll be demonstrating how to turn a cube into something that resembles a skull. It's by no means perfect, but I think it's good enough for demonstration purposes.

Mo' betta beta...

2007-05-17T23:33:00.000-04:00

Now that I'm getting the hang of ZB3 more, I'm starting to have some fun. This weeks challenge at work was to create a member of the modeling crew in caricature form starting with only a poly sphere. I worked on my office-mate, Sal, and myself (Sal is the one with no eyes, and I'm the... um.... "husky" one. These are no where near "finished" but good enough as a quick, couple of hour exercise.

Zbrush beta

2007-05-03T17:18:00.001-04:00

So I've been on the Zbrush beta for a few weeks and mostly learning, but not doing much. Today I made this guy from a sphere as part of a learning exercise at work (thanks for the suggestion Tony). The head of the sculpting dept. @ work (And one of, if not the, best sculptors I've ever known) did one that blows this one out of the water... and he did it in only 1/2 an hour.... sigh. So much to learn...

2007-04-25T16:51:00.001-04:00

Insomnia and an old model:

I created a bust of a big brained creature a few years back(something like a Martian from Mars Attacks, but really inspired by a sketch from Miles Teves’ site). Anyway, after not being able to sleep a few nights ago, I started to revisit this guy using Maya and Mudbox.

The whole experience got me thinking, there are a few models I started a while ago, and want to take further. So, here is how the brain guy looks right now: