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I set a challenge for myself that I would create a new piece of artwork every day for five days back in Early December. Here are my results in order. A couple of great new portfolio pieces happened.
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A little background. I listened to a fantastic podcast by Andrew Price (a prominent member of the Blender Community) about motivation to do art. One way he said is to set a negative consequence inside of a timeframe. So this year, I have to finish two short films, and two feature length screenplays. The first screenplay is almost finished, and I've been working on a short script I wrote about a year ago. I've started storyboarding it, and I'm very pleased with the results thus far. Here are some of my favorites. I discovered from Gleb Alexandrov an awesome application (open source like Blender. Yay!) called Mandelbulber. It's a ton of fun, and this is what I've made with it. I highly recommend this application. It's a ton of fun. Working inside of it is a lot like dreaming. It's pretty psychedelic.
For the first time ever, I entered a blender guru contest. I like my entry, but it is poorly constructed and I do not expect to win. Slight possibility of an honorable mention. Slight. This is the image I entered. It's okay, but it could have been a lot better. *shrug*  I got to do something pretty cool last night. I got to go to the international premier of Freetown! It's an independent film by Garret Batty, filmed in Ghana about a group of missionaries incredible story fleeing a civil war so they can preach the gospel. Here are some pictures from the premier: If you haven't heard of the movie, here is a trailer. I'd like to give a full review of the film that I'll put on the various movie websites on the internet. Here goes:
I really liked this movie. A lot. It was awesome to hear the story of it's production at the premier as well as parts of the story that were left out. The crew had a total of five people fly to Ghana for two months during principle photography. As far as production elements go, I wasn't distracted away from the story of the film. There weren't technical or editing issues that pulled me away from the story. Maybe I only say this because I've spent so long inside of theater. The story was incredibly well structured. Even though I knew the missionaries survived (I saw two of them last night) I had no idea what miracle would come next to pull these men closer to freedom. The film is listed as a "Dramatic Thriller" and it is. The acting in the film is also good. Henry Adofo carries the film VERY well. He plays the situation very honestly and fully. He did a great job. All of the missionaries in the car portrayed very real and full characters. In closing, there are two kinds of films. Those that feel like a waste of time, and those that don't. This film was in the latter category. It is a movie I would love to watch again, and I probably will in theaters. It's opening all around the world, so there are many opportunities to see this great movie about miracles and men. I recommend this movie. Go watch it in theaters, it's that good. Blender Guru's Andrew Price started a competition a while ago with the theme of "Another Planet." I've never entered into one of his contests, even though I have wanted to in the past. His themes are always fun, and the entries are breath taking and awesome sometimes. I wanted to take the idea of colonizing and establishing a presence on a new planet. This is the image (at about 5 hours of work, much of that conceptual): 
Often times I spend a whole sunday afternoon in Blender just playing around. This is the result of today's play.
For those unfamiliar with the AP art portfolio, there are three parts. Breadth, Quality, and Concentration. They each showcase different abilities and attributes of the artist. The breadth and quality are both 12 unique pieces of art. The breadth showcases the ability of an artist to work in different mediums, different subjects, and just general breadth in the ability of the artist. The concentration is my favourite portion. It showcases the artist' ability to move a single idea through twelve pieces of art. I've noticed in my sketching that I tend to experiment a lot, but what I seem to go back to is cityscapes. Lots and lots of cityscapes. Abstract, realistic, futuristic, grunge, you name it. For my concentration this year I've selected a certain sort of abstract cityscape. It's based off of low-poly designs, but with my own abstract little twist. For example, This is a rough I made tonight for a painting I plan to do later: 
I love the small amount of detail it takes to create such complex, unrealistic forms. I love the idea, I know it's one I can get behind for 12 works, so here I go. I just need a more comprehensive idea of what I'm doing.
The Wizard of Oz opens next week at Pleasant Grove High School. You can purchase tickets online at Showtix4u.com. It's an excellent show and even though my projection mapping project isn't going to be a part of it, it's still a show I love. You will too. I finished my Banana phone. I decided just to put half a headphone in there for compositional reasons. 
It still doesn't look wonderful. (Now that I think about it the composition does suck). I also made my dream speaker set up. I have no idea how it would sound, but I think the angles of the different speakers would fill a room with sound effectively. 
Both projects were fun, and I learned a lot from both of them.
I do a fair bit of sketching in my spare time, and I realized that a big part of what I do in blender is an equivalent of doodling. A lot of experimenting, fleshing out ideas, and generally "mucking about." It's fun to not have serious projects, and I can still use Blender for fun. I really hope that if I ever end up connected to a major animation house or film studio I can still retain the fun and exploration. 
A cyborg banana. I'll finish this image and put it in my portfolio. Mainly just finishing texturing the banana, and adding in more cyborg elements. I think it's a solid concept. 
On CgCookie there was a tutorial about modelling a sci-fi helmet. I don't have a membership there, but the overview video was essentially only tips about what to do. I decided to try my hand at it. I've already put it in my portfolio.
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AuthorI'm Brian Whetten, and I'm very interested in Animation and Visual Effects. This is my blog where I write about my current projects, current events, as well as the software and techniques I use. Archives
September 2018
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