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...

Ciel Environment Remix

The general consensus on the last landscape was that it was uninteresting, so I'm going at it again! Not done yet naturally but I wanted to get something up. I should really work on thesis someday.

Ciel Environment

I liked doing the color alternatives. This one is okay. Got frustrated with it, and still not quite sure, but that's alright!

Also, my canvas is a perfect square. Not quite sure how that happened. But now I can make coasters for Art Market next year!

Ciel Environment WIP

This underpainting was actually due Monday, but I didn't make a blog post because I wasn't really happy with the way it looked. Nothing wrong with it, but it wasn't working conceptually. This fictional culture is one obsessed with math and logical reason, and at the stage the underpainting was there wasn't enough architecture and repetition that represented that. I also have this really bad habit of painting in coral, ornage, and purple.

So, a lot of Shift+drag with the Brush tool and one Gradient Map later, something I don't feel as ashamed to put up. It still has a long way to go.

Architect, v. 2

Very happy to revisit this character's design, which is a bit less bizarre now but I think much stronger overall. Here are the main color palettes I'm considering, with the addition of this one which is really more of a less clashy alternative to #1.



And here are the rest of the automobile designs, which were all drawn and shaded before I started work again on the Architect. Now that the Architect is done, I want to go back to these and make 10 more designs -- but more 10 variations on the ideas posed here that I think work best. That five-wheeler, far left and one down, and the two motorcycles, are what appeals to me the most.