josema

Here’s the color layout that I did in Adobe Illustrator. Ethan, I owe you the pre-PS image. I’ll try to post it as soon as I can. Thanks to all, for the comments.

Congrats on an Excellent job. I love the color scheme you used. I love the proportions. Very nice style too.

Thank you for the explanation. Very insightful. I guess the most difficult part for me in modelling, is to figure out how the splines should run (or flow). So I too, would be interested in seeing a wireframe of the model. I forgot to comment about the texturing. Simply great skin tones and the lighting is also phenomenal. Could you comment a little bit on this. Any advice you can give us when lighting a scene and when doing skin tones? Thanx again.

Fantastic! I'm trully without words! You really know your anatomy. I also like your style, very clean. Do you model from rotoscopes? Also, if I may, what is your thought process in modeling something like this? Do you draw the splines first on paper to figure them out, or do you work things out as you go?

Thank you all for your comments. To tell you a little more about the project, this was comissioned for a book cover illustration. Because it was for a Mathematics first grade textbook, the publishers wanted something that was about making math fun for kids. The art director was crazy about, yep you guessed it, "Finding Nemo", and so he along with the editor, decided they wanted an underwater scene with playful characters. After a few character sketches and a couple of Adobe Illustrator color layouts, this little character came about. Gotta tell ya the truth though, one thing is to do a character in 2D and another is to bring to life in 3D. So really, I should be thanking you guys for the help, because in all honesty, I've learned almost everything about AM here in the forums studying and learning from all of you. For all interested in how I got the job, it was really a matter of being in the right place at the right time combined with a little persistance. I say this, because a few years ago, I decided to pursue a little more aggresively my illustration career. Being a full time graphic designer, I thought something was missing, after all illustrating was, and still is, my first love. So I put a mini HTML slide show together showing off some of the work I had done previously using "Ray Dream Studio". Among the piesces was an underwater scene I had done. I sent it to every email I could find, targeting specially book publishers (since this is where I had the most experience with). Out of dozens of emails, only one called me up, but it was the right one, and I've been busy ever since. I hope this answers your questions. By the way, thank you William for the compliment. Cute is good (I think).

Hi Guys (and galls): Let me introduce you to the 1st grade Math teacher of the reefs. Done mostly in Hash, I gotta admit that there is a lot of Photoshop in here. However it is a "still", and sometimes it is faster to work on something directly in PS, than to model it and mold it into a pose. At least for me it is anyway. I hope you like it, and as usual critiques and comments welcomed. Hope to hear from all of you soon, Jose (aprentice)

Raf: I gotta tell ya, the poses are what need to be talked about here. They're SICK man (truly exceptional). I mean, look at images 3 and 6. Talkin' about framing, awesome, and the perspective on image 6 is outstanding. I could talk about all of 'em, but what else could I say? Outstanding. Now, where can aspiring artists, like me, find info on all the fundamentals and principles you showed here. I think we get a little lost in the technical side of things, and tend to overlook something just as important, and that is the basic principles of design and composition, that've been laid for us through out the centuries. I don't wanna get to philosophical here (believe me, I'm scaring myself here)... anyway could you enlighten us. Maybe tell us a little bet about your thinking process in doing this character. What determines the poses? Ya know, stuff like that. Give us the goods, man!!!

Thanks Doug. To answer your question. Nothing here moves as of yet. It is as still as it gets. But once the texturing and lighting is completely done, I plan on animating a few things like the ripples in the water and the leaves on trees, etc. But this would be just for fun.

Hi again! Just wanna let ya’ll know about the progress of the scene I’m making. In case you’re wondering, I used Bryce 5 for all textures and materials, and it’s actually rendered in Bryce. I can do this, do to the fact that this scene is for a “still” that will be used as a cover illustration, so I don’t have to worry much about animation, although Bryce has animation capabilities, but very limited as far as I can tell. The thing that caught my attention about Bryce, was that this particular scene calls for lots of trees. Something that the “tree lab” in Bryce can really help with. Back in AM, I was using the new hair system in version 11 for this job, but my computer was slowing down to a halt everytime I applied the hair materials to all the trees I originally had in the scene. Another thing worth mentioning is that Bryce has, in my opinion, an excelent materials editor and of course, lots of presets. You can tweak these to your hearts content, very similar to how you can tweak the “darktrees”. It would be fantastic if we could have a plug-in similar to “simbiont” were we could bring these procedurals to AM. Sure you could use “darktree”, but you’d have to spend twice as much money buying it, and being a Mac user, I‘m up the creek with Darktree. Or is it down the creek? Anyway, I think you get my message. All models were imported into Bryce from AM in 3ds format. I was pleasantly surprised on how well they imported (some meshes were smoothed out in Bryce). Oh yeah, almost forgot, to render in Bryce is to develop an ulser, because it is extremely s-l-o-w. Even if you have the latest and badest machine, Bryce does not care. The only positive thing about it’s render is that it includes a netrender. So all you need now is a render farm.!!!

It's a Storybook of a collection of short stories. These are children's stories that are tipical of Puerto Rican literature. So of course, the cover will reflect the palette and flavor of Puerto Rico, but for children. Thanks for asking.

Ooops! Sorry guys, I'm using my friend's computer and forgot he was logged in using his username. So the thread before this is one is really mine.

Hi all! I'm currently working on this landscape illustration for a book cover. There are a couple of problems I'm encountering. First of all, I'm using a hair material for the leaves on the trees, but when I render it out, A:M simply crashes. I think the problem is that I don't have enough system resources. I'm running v11c on a 2.4 Pentium 4 with 512mb of RAM. Anyway, there's still a lot of texture work to be done, and details to be added. The biggest challenge for me thus far, is the leaves for the trees. I must say, I'm struggling with this. The water texture is also another challenge that I must tackle pretty soon. Please let me know what you guys think. All suggestions welcomed. Thanks.

Thank you guys for the replies, I gotta say that, yes I was influenced by Finding nemo. But than again, what 3d artist hasn't, and specially when you have a 2 yr. old that has watched it over 50 times. As far as, the positioning of the eyes, John, you're right in that he gets crossed eyed when looking straight ahead. I've been struggling with this issue and haven't found the perfect blend between the actual references of a turtle and my stylized one. I'm working on the bones and the rigging part, and I'm not having much fun. I posted on the anzovin section asking how to use the TSM for rigging this model. Suggestions are welcomed. Here's a snapshot of what I have thus far.

A clouple of weeks ago I posted the head for this model. I was having serious probs. trying to figure out the spline arrangement. Thanks to the input (specially Jim's), I'm almost done with the modelling part. Or at least, I think I am. Any how, I just want to let you guys in on the progress. And as always your comments are welcomed.

Hi: Thanks for your help Jim, I will do just that. I'm sure it'll help to lessen the wrinkles, among other things. Then again, I don't think that you'd want a perfectly smooth turtle. Thanks again.

Hi folks: Been trying to model this cartoon sea turtle, but I don't have a clue as to what I'm doing. I bought the "Model a face" video from Anzovin, and I have to say it is very good. However, I'm having a hard time adapting it to a cartoon character such as this one. Especially since this one doesn't have a nose. I'll appreciate any feedback. Thanks. front.jpg.zip

Hi again! I think you guys are right, more detail is in order here, specially for the ground and where it meets the water. Not to make excuses for myself, as most of you know, it's hard to get everything just right specially when you're up against a deadline. But I do plan to tweak it a bit more. Thanks again! P.S. By the way John, it is a gradient on the roof. Thanks for asking.

Hey that looks pretty good! Looks like you had a lot of fun making them, and that's what it's all about. If I may, I think that the one thing that takes away from the piece is the fact that is too symmetrical. In other words, everything seems to be perfectly centered. And although, that may have been your objective, in most cases it becomes a little stale. The solution would be to incorporate more diagonal lines and elements to break the symmetry. Maybe even a different camera angle, etc.. But hey, keep up the good work.

Thank you guys for your comments. You've been very helpful in giving me some idea in terms of the things I should be thinking about and resolving even before I start using A.M.. I still have a lot to learn about the program, but that's just the technical side, and in time we'll get there. By the way, I should be getting my upgrade to 10.5 today, so I'll have plenty to play around with.

Hi! This is my first time posting in this section, or any section for that matter. Anyway I thought I share one of my most recent illustrations using A.M.. Please let me know what you think, and any suggestions ya'll might have. Thanx for your interest.