Cause, you know...

It's been a while.

I REMEMBERED I HAVE A BLOG!!!

So there's this steam-tree thing I've been working on...all Maya, lots of branches, and twigs, and other things. I'm going to try and play around with adding texture layers in AfterEffects instead of mapping the whole tree in Maya because it would take a ridiculously long time I think it will look kinda neat.
I should also remember to re-size my images in the future, but that's an entirely other step, and I have tea waiting...

Someone's been playing in Illustrator...

"Shi-mon! Let's drink THAT!"

Yeah, I've been keeping myself busy this week.


They really shouldn't make it so easy to change text around.



Or maybe I am just that dedicated to bad, nerdy puns.


And my personal favorite (and phrase that kinda started it all):


PS: Beer snobs, I am aware it's a sin to serve a lager in a pint glass. But on the other hand, I guess it's not really a lager? Also, not actually a liquid of any kind.

Worm Ghost

Why do I feel like I do the best when I'm not really trying?

Shiny Pt. 1

Someone's been playing with caustics!

There's still a few issues that need to be hammered out, so I'm making this a work-in-progress. Like those flecks that won't go away, despite increasing various quality settings. Everything else I know just needs tweaking, so it doesn't look quite so much like red Kool-Aid™. But that's for another day. Today I visit my family pt. 1: So My Brother's A Home-Owner.

Haunted Car

This project started off where I wanted to model a car. But, being the way that I am, I didn't want to make the ultra slick 'n shiny Camborariri or whatever. I see those all over 3D and CG forums, and I think they're as boring as slutty/'roided-up character models and occlusion-happy architects. Because this is a portfolio piece, I wanted it to be fun! Eventually, I stumble across this image by Ilya Varlamov from EnglishRussia which is an amazing site for photography and, I presume, Russian culture. I based this off one of those, and changed the car to a 1937 Buick Coupe, as I wasn't sure what the car in the original picture was, and needed at least 180 reference.

Some technical stuff: The grass is all Maya Paint Effects, my first real time using them. If I were to go back, I'd like to vary it up a bit more, now that I'm more comfortable with it. I tried using Mental Ray's dielectric material for the windows, but tweaking that to give it a dirty, scratchy look was becoming a problem. Since the refractions weren't adding to the scene, I ended up swapping that for just a light gray Maya phong. Take away the transparency a bit and bam! Instant dirty glass, at least from this distance.

I guess I don't want to give away all my secrets, or bore anyone with details, so I'll leave it at that for now.