Sketches and a Job

Greetings! It's been way too long since I've posted - I was engrossed in job hunting. And it finally paid off - I'm a week into a full time position as a designer at Capt Jerry's, a screenprinting company that focuses in promotional T shirts, apparel, and products, local to Baltimore. I'm haven't lost sight of my goal to get into production and game art, but this quickly out of college I'm just relieved to not have to work any longer as a barista!

I don't yet have any shirt designs that I'm able to show, but I'm planning on doing some personal projects in addition to the concept art portfolio building. So here are some weird sketches instead! I've been trying to draw more creatures as well as people.

3D Modeling - Hobbithole

This was the second successful model I did. I tried to do something a little more organic and with different textures. Not sure how successful my maps were here, but c'est la vie. I also learned a lot about Scatter and other tools that I would proceed to not actually use for the final model. C'est la other vie.







Not really intended to be 'THE' Baggins' house from the Lord of the Rings films - just something from my head / what I remembered.

3D Modeling - Stilthouse

I haven't had a chance to revisit 3DS Max since the Game Art class I took last summer. I wasn't really that pleased with that model, and I wanted to learn more about concepting from a modeler's point of view - or anyone who would have to be looking at my drawings for information, for that matter. You may remember the environment sketches I did in August; I've been picking the best of those and producing them as 3D models.

The stilthouse was the first model I was actually a little satisfied with! It was based on this sketch:


You may remember it!



Kind of Myst-y? Maybe?



The untextured images are up at my website - samgauss.com - as well as the most recent model I did (under Concept Art), which I'll be posting up later this week.

Things have been very busy. Been sending out applications and resumes like mad. But I wanted to make sure I got a chance to put these up, it's already been a while but my blog's been looking dusty lately!

Spectacle Obscura Posters

Cleaned up jpegs of each of the five posters I designed for "Spectacle Obscura." The last one is a bit of an easter egg for those in the company - we all love Tarsem Singh's work.

You can see all of these at my website which has also gotten a little cleaned up. Check it out!

The Wall

The posters I designed will be reuploaded to my website as soon as I can make some adequately 'distressed' versions in Photoshop.

Last night to see "Spectacle Obscura," today at 5 PM in MICA's BBOX.

"Spectacle Obscura" Performing Now!

Opening night was great last night with DNA Theatre and Boister! Tonight we again have two performances of "Spectacle Obscura" in MICA's BBOX Theatre in the Gateway. "Spectacle Obscura" is a circus arts show, with aerial trapeze, silks, straps, harness and more! The posters I've been posting WIP photos of are all part of the set, in addition to more made by Hope Meyers.

Buy tickets online here or at the door! Two shows: 8pm, considered PG-13, and 10pm, a naughty 18+! The show is only about 70 minutes, so please come show your support!

Spectacle Obscura, part 3

Almost finished.

Come see "Spectacle Obscura," an aerial show October 13-16 in MICA's BBOX."

Spectacle Obscura, part 2

They continue to progress nicely, but have I mentioned these are huge?

Buy tickets online for my aerial show, "Spectacle Obscura."

Spectacle Obscura

For the set of DNA Theatre's upcoming show, "Spectacle Obscura," I was asked to create five old fashioned circus posters to decorate the set with. Rather than print them out full and in color, we would print them ourselves, on 11x17 sheets of paper, b/w, to be painted afterward. I vectorized all of my drawings so that they could be indefinitely scaled to fit Kel's needs. The posters you see here are in the process of being painted, and are very large - that first one being 4.25'x4.5.' It's a time consuming process, but cheaper, and the end result has a nice quality.

I have other work of a completely different nature, but I'll save it for the next blog post. :)

Pam

Kristin Bauer van Straten as Pam from HBO's "True Blood." Haven't worked with ink and more-or-less flat color in a long time, so I wanted to revisit.

I have a lot of work I'll be sure to put up soon, some stuff for DNA Theatre's new show, "Spectacle Obscura." I'm in it, so if you're in Baltimore you should check it out!

More Environment Sketches

I did these a while back and never got around to scanning them in. Naturally as soon as I set a deadline I get caught up with other things! I'm currently working on some things for DNA Theatre's new production opening in October, which I'll be able to start showing as soon as I have some finished work.

Things have been busy, hopefully soon I'll be able to show more of it!

Environment Sketches

Taking a break from the epic painting thing and working on some more practical environment/landmark sketches. My buddy Nick Iluzada challenged me to 500 of these. My goal is 100 by the end of this week and 500 in a month. :)

Game of Thrones: Daenerys WIP

Been so long since I posted! I actually have been working, but it's all stuff I can't show - what's nice about having an influx of work is that it motivates you to make your own. I've recently been watching Game of Thrones on HBO, which I love - have never read the books, but I bought the first one to read as soon as the show ends. I can't help it if I love being surprised while watching!



I'm planning a triptych of the Targaryan/Dothraki: currently I'm working on Daenerys. I'm not sure if she's my favorite character, but I'm having fun with it all the same. I haven't decided yet if I'm going with the show's interpretation of her with green eyes, or the book's where the Targaryans have violet eyes.

Hope everyone's having a great summer! I'm moving at the end of the month to my new apartment which I'll hopefully be staying in for a good long time, I'm so done with packing and unpacking!

City Landscape and Commencement

City Landscape, originally uploaded by Ntkufreak.

Wow! It's been a long time since I posted!

Commencement was last week, and it was awesome! Everyone had amazing work. I didn't post up any pictures since they were on my parents' camera, which is now back in KY, but a friend did take a picture of my show, which is here so you get an idea -

All three pieces are from my thesis. The book on the shelf is essentially my print portfolio for interviews!

I've had an awesome time at MICA and now I'm looking forward to the summer, to get this blog more straightened out, touch up the website a little, and I've got time now to really promote myself. I've also gotten a freelance offer which is pretty exciting already. :)

Stay tuned!

Ciel Main Characters

I've been trying a different way of thumbnailing that is less gestural and more specific. I'm not sure yet how I feel about it as a process, though I like these characters. While it simplifies the process of going to the next step (a single or a few colored finishes), I'm concerned about diversity. But these are designs for a character that has to fit in a world that's already pretty defined; it might be useful to try this approach when making a character completely out of context.

Sorry about my lack of posting last week. On April 1 we had the Internship Fair, where a lot of great Baltimore companies came to talk to students about local opportunities for work. It was great, but I think it took a lot out of me!

There was a great panel on the game industry given by a few friends of mine. Colin Campbell of Big Huge Games was my professor for Advanced Photoshop Techniques, one of the best classes I took here at MICA, and Taylor Fischer of ZeniMax Online is a friend of mine who happened to TA that class. Go check out their work!

Colored Characters

Played with Dermot Power's approach in doing these. From now on I'm only going to upload 'finished' pieces to Flickr, and used Blogger's image uploader for WIPs or uncritiqued pieces.

Portfolio Website is Live!

I haven't posted much this week because I've been swamped with work for senior presentations and commencement. But I'm happy to say my portfolio site is now live!

SamGauss.Com

It's a little bare while I try to get all my work organized, but all the concept art is now up :)

Hopefully soon I'll be able to revise this blog to look a little nicer!

Ciel Character Designs!

Sorry I've been gone, I didn't want to fill up the blog with WIPs - while I like the habit of posting 3 times a week, I think I'd rather post something fresh or skip a day than post something that's in progress. It also saves me the trouble of uploading it to flickr when I'm just going to want to delete it later.

So here we have something - this is Ciel for Advanced Concept Art, finally we're moving to character designs, where I'm more comfortable as opposed to landscapes. These are 20 assorted 'villagers,' based loosely off of Mongolian attire and styles. Expect 20 more within the week, and I have to take at least 3 of these to a more finished look. But they were really fun to do and I'm happy with how cohesive they look.

Okamiden Fanart

Just a little something for fun. Don't actually have the game (yet?), but still excited for it.

Hope everyone's having a good spring break!

Orochimaru / 'Zine Submission

I've never seen Naruto, but the illustration seniors were organizing a 'zine for Naruto fanart. A few years ago I might have gotten all uppity about the idea, but at the moment I was grateful for a) an excuse to reignite my love affair with sumi, and b) a break from thesis!

Also, in researching the characters to decide which one to do, I was like, I'll watch one scene with Orochu-whoever and see what he's like! It turned out to be the scene where he and Sasuke fight. In trying to describe exactly what this first impression was like, I've told people that it's like wanting to see some hot lesbian sex, so going to see this movie you heard someone talking about called "Black Swan."

Thesis: Architect!

He's finally finished now, too! It's satisfying hahaha. The rest of thesis is going to be a few narrative pieces and as many pages of concept sketches as I can muster!

Thesis: Queen DONE

Well.. she still has to receive my midterm critique's blessing, but for the most part... done and done. Whew! I'm not quite sure about this presentation format, but I wanted to get something ready for Tuesday. Also lacking are notes on materials/purpose, but I wasn't quite sure what to put other than what metals and fabrics inspired her clothes. I can do metals, but frankly the fabrics will require a bit more research.

The Architect will be posted tomorrow :)

Thesis Work! Characters!

This is going to be done by Monday!



So will this!

Hooray!

Ciel: "Nook and Cranny" Landscape

Hoping to get some more time to work on this tomorrow, but I think it's at a good stopping point for now...

Spaceship Design

An in-class assignment for Advanced Concept Art was to take another student's spaceship silhouette, and without altering the silhouette use their design to make our own styled spaceship. Here was mine - a quick orthoishthing and what it might look like in space. I was looking at bioluminescent fish, if that wasn't obvious.

Also! SamGauss.com is online! There's nothing there yet, but there will be in the near future! I'm very pleased I managed to get this far, really! Haha.

Figure Sculpture: 2/21

This is a really great class. I have to say, though... tearing the sculptures down at the end of each class is perhaps as much fun as sculpting them... and cathartic, too!


There's something satisfying about working diligently on a project for several hours, just to completely destroy it afterward.

In two weeks will be thesis midterms! I promise that my Friday post will be of thesis material. I wish I could post more complete work instead of just WIPs all the time. I need to split up my time a little better between projects. So hopefully in the future, my updates will be a little more varied. More appealing that way I think. :)

More Ciel

This piece has been fun and came a long way, I was hoping to put up some thesis stuff tonight, but that's going to have to wait for Wednesday I think. This still isn't finished: I want to define the buildings more, right now they're just value and color placeholders... and per Sean's suggestions, go ahead and pump up the height/scale of that big building, because why not? It's fantasy art, go for it.

But even just as it is here, I think it's a big improvement on the last piece. And I didn't even mind the last piece too terribly. But this one's better!



And here are some thumbnails to do some more intimate environments for Ciel. I know I'm going to do #4 and #9, but I'm also looking at #2 and #8. And #7. I super dig #7...

Figure Sculpture!

Sculpting is hard...