Jon's sketchbook, part one

If there's one thing I love doing, it's doodling. Stick a piece of paper in front of my nose when I'm holding a pencil, and before you know it it'll be covered in artwork! Thankfully, to stop me from enthusiastically scrawling all over, say, a mint-condition copy of Fantastic Four #1, the powers-that-be ensure I always carry a sketchbook and a fully-loaded pencil case with me at all times (because they are rightly concerned about the public's safety). As such, I now have a collection of those beasts lurking on my bookshelf - many chained down to stop them from escaping - packed cover to cover with characters, logos and typography, environments, props and weapons, clothing.....

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Whoa! Sorry, drifted off into a drawing fugue there. Ooh, and look at this - I seem to have sketched up a whole bunch of character / design material, apparently for some kind of alien shaman-type-thing who freaks out settlers on his planet with all sorts of freaky spirit-summoning rituals. I was thinking about centipedes and pangolins while I was in there, for some reason.... Let's have a look, shall we?

Maya, part two

Okay, my little temple-ka-jigg looked nice before - but now it's got shadows and lighting! How's that for an exponential improvement?

Do you do 3D? I do 3D!

For those of you who don't know (which would be, ohhh, most of you at this point), I am currently working my way through various diplomas at Yoobee School of Design in Auckland - Graphic Design in 2012, Digital Media Advanced in 2013; and now, in 2014, Digital Animation and Video. Part of this has involved getting to know a little program called Maya: at the moment, it's a bit of a love-hate realtionship - it's a nifty program, no bout adoubt it, and the prospect of rendering some of my characters in 3D is almost overwhelming (next week, Jon, next week); but at times, we've all had to fight an uphill battle against maneuvering the camera properly..... and the 'extrude' function.... and lining things up properly.... and making sure the freakin' thing doesn't crash on us.....

Nevertheless, we have got as far as attaching funky patterns onto our models (a basic temple-type-thing with columns and steps and so forth) via the venerable - and also frustrating at times - UV map system. Provided you do it properly, the results are truly fantastic.... and quite satisfying, if you've just spent nearly an entire day figuring out what part of the intricate process you may have missed out (or Maya has secretly forgotten to tell you about).

But five minutes or so ago.... Success! I now have a nifty mini-temple with appropriate rock-textures sourced from cgtextures.com, all ready to wave in people's faces and go "Aren't I clever?" It may not look like much to a more experienced Maya-phile, but as far as I'm concerned, the program is well and truly owned....

 

There goes the neighbourhood....

Uh oh - it's finally happened. I've discovered the wonderful world of blogging, and everything that goes with it.... Brace yourselves, ladies and gents,  for an All-Jon extravaganza of science, pop-culture-saturated diatribes and, most importantly, cartoons, sketches and other miscellaneous artistic nonsense.....

You have my sympathies. You really do.