Me, me, me

After some advice from a friend (thanks, Toke!), I have changed my alien design slightly:

Note how the top of the neck is now thicker, and the angle of the head has changed. This makes the neck look more attached, and causes the brain to be stuck to the back of the neck (why I left it hanging out in the first place is anyone's guess!). I also made some of the babies in the eggs a lot more obvious, hopefully you can tell.
I also received a critique on an older piece of art yesterday (thank you to my DA friends for this!), and I thought I should put up the revised version of my painting here:

The right arm was far to short before... Can't believe I didn't notice it! Just goes to show, there's always more to learn! I usually feel defeated or have a rebellious attitude when somebody recommends I go back and improve my work (I believe it's natural), but I'm thoroughly pleased I did :) Anyway, I did do more than that today, but unfortunately, it's super duper, top secret, need to know stuff that I can't expose until the 26th, which is a shame, because it's coming along well!

I also found out that I've managed to nab an interview with one of the producers of 'Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit' for my dissertation! How cool is that? I just wish I knew what to ask them!

On a more serious note, this week, important climate change talks are happening in Copenhagen. if these talks fail, this could result in serious ramifications for us and our planet. I urge whoever might be reading this to follow this link and sign the petition. I know it's not a lot, but every little helps :)
http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_copenhagen/97.php?cl_tta_sign=320030e984fb89cf9f3acdb66e39ea70
(Thanks to Kat Nicholson for the link)

Blogspot: My new arch nemesis

Once again, blogspot has thwarted my blog's design plans... Everytime I try and change the design, posting comments is disabled. And this time, it was one of the default designs that I had chosen! Also, it seems that getting new followers is next to impossible (unlike say, twitter, or deviantart, where it is merely a matter of self-advertising and friendliness). Anyone have any tips?
If you tried to leave a comment before and couldn't, I apologise, and invite you to do so now. Go on, you know you want to...

Back to the Reality

Looks like my alien has finalised itself. The next image is my final design thus far:

If anyone is reading this, please, give me your opinions and suggestions on her look. The more impractical and psychotic  they are, the better received they will be.
Speaking of psychotic, Isn't it strange that we can delve into our work so much, that we start to live and breath it? Even when not working on my designs, I often find myself daydreaming about them, or stumbling across amazing ideas when I least expect to. It would be nice to break away sometimes, but after a while you can't help it... I'm sure many other people must feel the same.

Space worms!

Electronic Demise

My idea is that this alien, some kind of 'space worm', is carrying her eggs to the hatching grounds, when tragedy strikes, and she crashes to Earth. Her and her eggs are killed, and bring a disturbing, morbid atmosphere to the environment. The alien will be modelled in CG, and will be composited onto a high definition still to create a photo realistic image. My main inspirations were sea creatures, and the work of H.R. Giger.

And here is my submission for the Lady Gaga 'Monster Ball' tour. I couldn't include sound because of copyright, but if you look here you should be able to find the version with sound quite easily:
http://www.showstudio.com/project/ladygagasubmit/gallery
I highly recommend you find the version with sound, it's much better. If not, watch while listening to 'Bad Romance' to get some of the effect.



It turned out ok... Not as well as I'd have hoped, but it's not a professional contest or anything, so that's fine. If you're confused and it seems incoherent, then I achieved what I set out to do.

Lastly, animators, check this out!:
http://vimeo.com/user1609528

Game Character - Lion-O!

Work Upload time!

(I HATE this shameless self-promotion, I'm sorry!)

Here's the project I've been working on for the last three weeks. It's been Hell. At the start of the project, I established that I was utterly disappointed and bitter about the mark I had for my environment, and I felt I had something to prove. In my usual rebellious and industrious fashion, I strove to stay one step ahead, and this is the result:

Although I'm quite happy with the outcome on a personal level, I wouldn't like to predict what marks I'd be given for it. And I don't really care. I learned a lot making this character, and it has prepared me for more to come, and that's what is important.

If you're reading this, thanks for looking!

P.S. I found this hilarious blog: http://yahoowackjobs.blogspot.com/ Please take a look if yu're feeling down, it really deserves more attention.

Patience is a Virtue

I am totally itching to put some new work up... Though I'm not sure why, as this blog probably remains completely unnoticed by the outside world and exists only to humour my ramblings and self-obsession...

Nevertheless! I have a few pieces of work on the go, which will probably all end up being completed at the same time, and which I would love to place up here as part of my humble collection. Until then, here's a piece from the vault:

Ooh! And a very interesting tour of Pixar, if you're interested:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2009/12/02/hyde.pixar.studio.tour.cnn

What inspires us?

 

A week or so ago, I saw the story of a little girl called Elena Desserich on 'Russel Howards Good News'...

Elena was a 6 year old girl diagnosed with terminal cancer.

During her illness, she turned to drawing for comfort. In this time, she became a renowned artist, and even had her work put in galleries! However, her most poignant achievement were the hundreds of notes she left her family, to comfort them after her death. They were still being found months, years after her death.

It's hard to believe a 6 year old could be so strong, selfless and courageous. She is a true inspiration to us all, and a reminder of what our work can achieve, if we can stop being self-absorbed, and pour our heart and souls into it.

If you haven't heard her story, I invite you to watch this video:

A Hard Days Work

I have no energy left right now, so I'm going to let my painting do the talking:

The Dreamer

'Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?'

- George Bernard Shaw

Say what?

Just a random sketch I came up with in uni yesterday... She needs a name.

Major Project: E.J Expression Sheets

Here's some expression sheets for my Character. I had a lot of fun trying to capture her personality. I imagined her as very fiesty, domineering and hard to be argued with. Getting this across though... was very hard! In fact, it was so hard I had to fill up almost an entire sketchbook with failed drawings before I came anywhere close, and it's still not perfect. I changed costume midway too and got rid of the criss crosses on her corset as they looked a bit too 'fru fru'. Apologies for the woeful cleanup, I try and embrace smudges wherever possible... I might have to fix some of them though.

'All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them. '

-Walt Disney

Major Project: Character

So... This is how I want my major project to work. I'm going for an old-fashioned painterly kind of look. My character and environment are going to work together and hopefully I will end up with some very nice still images and visual themes. Since my motivation has always been to work in features, I felt that by mixing the two projects together I could develop and showcase my lighting and compositional skills.

Anyway, whilst I was in the process of designing my projects, I started to wonder... Is there such a thing as a 'perfect' idea or design? Is it better to pull off an amazing concept, or create an amazing piece from a rushed idea? In the grand scheme of things, my ideas at this time weren't that important. I noticed a lot of my peers spending days thinking over ideas and wasting valuable 'doing' time by perfecting their concepts and convincing themselves how terrible their ideas were. I just had a single image in my head, so I drew it out (albeit very crudely) and went from there.

                                      

Not the best works of art ever... But the colour information was quite useful... Now, less explaining, more doing!

'Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner'

-Walt Disney

Major Project: Parasite - Concept Art

So here we go... My final University major! I'm very excited to be starting this! My project will consist of three parts: my female character, her period environment (but more on those later :P), and this, my crash site.

The story is this: an alien spaceship is attacked by a parasitic creature in space and is driven by the creature into the Earth's atmosphere, crashing into the Egyptian desert. Pyramids are ruined, and the creature begins breeding into, and infecting the environment. How this is going to be conveyed in my final show reel... Isn't something I'm at liberty to divulge at the moment. For now, enjoy these concept images from the project:

Not bad for my first ever attempts at 'proper' concept art, I hope! Anyway, this project is actually still at the very first stages of design, so nothing is decided yet. My character, however, is almost done, and I will hopefully be in a position to upload some lovely artwork of her next week, as long as I can stick to my schedule.

Please comment and let me know what you think about these images. Any constructive advice would be greatly appreciated!

NOTE: All brushes used can be found here: http://olivera-h.deviantart.com/favourites/#Brushes

Art Retrospective

As I've just started my final year at uni, and am getting more and more into my art every day, I thought it might be nice to show you all my roots. The following is a small collection of work from my school days, which you might not get to see otherwise. Enjoy!

Sorry if some of you have seen these before... But they had to go on here eventually! I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I did making them :) Hopefully I'll have some of my new concept stuff on here soon for you all to look at but until then... Adios!

University Project 001: Introduction to Maya: Environment Modelling

So here it is... My first finished 3rd year uni project. I'm pretty happy with the outcome... Would have been nice to have more time to perfect, but I guess that's the way the industry goes. Have a look:

I think the atmosphere and the church texturing are definitely my strong points here... There are weaknesses also, but I'm not at liberty to mention them until after i's marked :P

If you want, check out a full turnaround/flythrough video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv3px2oFb80

(Don't forget to add me and subscribe on your way out ;))

I hope you enjoyed seeing this as much as I enjoyed making it. Until next time, here's a sneak peak at a concept sketch for part of my major.

Peace out.