Jonathan L's Sketchbook


Thought I’d post some smaller stuff that I didn’t work on enough to put in the finished renders thread. Could include anything from models, lighting practice, sculpts, tutorial results (my own or following someone else’s), animation practice, etc…

I’ve started going through the book Digital Modeling by William Vaughan. One of the first exercises is to create this soccer ball on your own after he shows you how to make a different one. It’s actually pretty easy once you find the right platonic solid to start from.




Some random stuff:



This one’s not actually Blender, but a quick matte painting project in Gimp for school:

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/1430/rq19.jpg

You have a sketchbook now :slight_smile: Nice stuff.

Thanks man! Is it acceptable to post non-CG stuff in here? It would be cool to have a place to put all kinds of art, Blender or not.
I’m slowly learning how to draw…
Today I sketched a Lamborghini; perhaps it will turn into a model eventually. I’ll try to clean it up and shade it in tomorrow.

Sketchbooks are for everything, so keep it coming - very nice stuff!

Thanks Craig!

Here’s a quick intro animation that I used for my portfolio applications:

I finished shading the Lamborghini.
I wish I could draw better perspective and definitely better circles.

Attachments


Circles and ellipses can be drawn by first drawing a square, dividing it as if subdividing a plane, and then drawing diagonals as well. You can then better visualize the circle and the path it needs to take - for an ellipse, simple skew the square to fit the perspective you need to match. Check out two point and three point perspective online and see how they set up a horizon line and match everything to it - very much like box modeling, but on paper.

I like that idea! I’ll try that on my next drawing. I’m thinking that since I have trouble with perspective, I should do a simple landscape or something.

Maybe a cityscape would be more instructive - doesn’t take much for someone to fill an area with mountains and trees and still not work out perspective lines

I like this! :slight_smile:
Let me quess what its made out of. You started with one vert, extrude, and you keep going until you got a random looking shape> delete only faces > skin modif > subsurf Am I close? Im not sure how but I remember this weird shape. I think I did something like this when I was experimenting with modif.

Maybe a cityscape would be more instructive

Good idea, I’ll try that next.

I like this! :slight_smile:
Let me quess what its made out of. You started with one vert, extrude, and you keep going until you got a random looking shape> delete only faces > skin modif > subsurf Am I close? Im not sure how but I remember this weird shape. I think I did something like this when I was experimenting with modif.

To be honest, I don’t even remember, haha. I know it involved the wireframe operation in edit mode, and the subsurf modifier. I can’t recall what the shape was, but boy was it a mess. Which is what I wanted :slight_smile:

Here’s a WIP shot of the Earth that I put together in cycles for a project.


So I’m just now rendering the animation for the earth. But I also made these ultra-HD desktop and Iphone wallpapers just for fun:
Link to 4k desktop wallpaper.
Link to HD Iphone wallpaper.

Glad you started one of these, your work is always amazing and inspirational to me. I’m a big fan of abstract, so the first pic in #2 strikes a chord with me. :slight_smile: I made one similar, and from what you said, we actually used the same technique (not sure people are even aware of Wireframe to be honest, it kind of showed up in Blender one day out of the blue):


Looking forward to more, well done!

Here’s a quick bonsai tree I did for the Blender Nation weekend contest. It took about 4ish hours.


So I am really, really bad at characters. And sculpting. They are a big weak spot of mine, especially realistic faces. So of course I’m going to enter the new Blender Guru competition with an action portrait. I did a quick sculpt of the person and it turned out… bad. You can’t even recognize him at all. But I’ll keep trying, and I’ll get it eventually. I’ll do some sketching as well to get a better knowledge of his face. Then once I get it looking decent, I’ll do it again until it looks great. Hopefully. Wish me luck, because I will for sure need it!


just… blegh. ugly

I hear ya Jonathan:) Hang in there…sculpting in any form takes practice and knowing how to work the medium…as in clay or in this case electricity hehe. Watch a lot of online youtube videos. Look up Adam Fisher and watch all his videos. You’ll start to pick up tricks even from watching time laps videos.

Sculpting pretty much anything is all about anatomy and realistic forms. This doesn’t mean the rules can be bent or distorted but they must be in harmony with the rest of the sculpture. Lips for me a quite difficult as well as eyes. I think those two are what is hurting you the most right now. Worst case scenario you could box model the guy from a reference image in the background and then dynamesh once you have a solid base using the references anatomy. One last suggestion…don’t model just the head…model the head and neck and shoulders. This seams to always help me. This will also give you the ability to bounce around and not get stuck on one spot for too long. It’s to bounce around…it makes a more balanced piece and helps avoid frustration:)

Thanks for the encouragement and suggestions Derek! I’ll definitely be practicing.

Here is my quick sketching for today. You might even be able to tell who it is, and see how ridiculously far off my initial sculpt was.

Attachments


What this? I didn’t know he’s having a new one. I was wondering if he would, but hadn’t seen anything about it.
Good luck by the way, pactice and watching some timelapses is all I can suggest to get better with characters. Drawing would probably help also, and it looks like you are doing that. :wink: