ORIANART

014 - Pose Practice

2012-02-22T04:08:00.000-08:00

Pose practice tonight! Some drawn from posemaniacs random pose viewer, some from imagination.Tool/SAI

013 - Sunset Study

2011-09-21T02:20:00.000-07:00

Quick study!

Photoshop, Cintiq, 25 minutes.

Quick review of the Wacom Intuos4 Wireless - Odds n' ends

2011-08-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

Man I've sure owned a lot of Wacom products over the last few years. Anyway, I picked up a super cheap ACAD version of the Int4 Wireless for my laptop, since my Cintiq isn't exactly portable, and I liked the prospect of not having to always use a cable.

There are lots of reviews of the Intuos4 Medium Wireless out there, but they don't talk about a few key points that I'm sure a number of prospective buyers would like to know about. So, this isn't going to be a full-on review -- we are talking about an Intuos4 here so EVERYTHING about it is standard fare intuos4ness. I'll just talk about some of the notable differences between this and the standard wired medium version that I haven't exactly seen talked about elsewhere.

Points of discussion after the jump:

1) The Wireless version's active area is smaller than the Medium's, and smaller than the drawing surface indicates. The ACTUAL detectable area on the tablet is inset about a quarter inch on each side from the edge of the drawing surface, on top of the surface already being a bit smaller than the Medium already. It's a very particular little problem. You can feel the perimeter of the drawing surface with your wrist or the pen nib when you hit it. Yet, the cursor hits the edge of your screen far sooner than the pen will. I'm still not fully adjusted to how odd this is in actual use. (On all prior Intuos tablets I've owned, the detectable area was always slightly LARGER than the drawing surface, which made using scroll bars really easy since if your pen passed over the surface perimeter, you know you're at the edge of the screen.) This isn't a problem for drawing, really. It's more annoying for navigating menus and things related to the edges of the screen. It feels like I'm always overshooting everything because I'm STILL expecting to have to move the pen just the little bit more to click "File" for example. What's strange is that the pen continues to be tracked even as far as a half-inch away from the OUTSIDE of the drawing surface. So the cursor just glides around the edges of the screen for what feels like a pretty substantial portion of the active area. It's not a deal-breaker or anything, it'll just take some getting used to. After all, I measured the actual working area of the tablet, and it IS what Wacom advertises.

2) The wireless mode works -- really well in fact. And on the first try! It's worth noting that the only machine I've used it with is my MacBook Pro, but I can't imagine it being any less reliable in Windows. A lot of people voice concern over weather or not the wireless mode exhibits more lag compared to wired mode -- and the answer is not at all. The only thing that changes in wireless mode is the refresh rate of the cursor. It drops to about half as quickly updated than wired. (Like, 30 fps for wireless, 60 fps for wired.) This doesn't add any lag, though, seriously. (Unless you try to wake it from sleep if you leave it alone for like 5 minutes.) I believe the reduction in refresh rate is just some power-saving method.

3) It's a better option if you're looking for power efficiency on a laptop. So when I unplug my MacBook Pro, wireless on, 3/4 brightness, I always start off with about 6:20 on the battery clock. When I plug in a normal wired Intuos4, (or the wireless one here over USB,) that time immediately plummets to around 4:30 and never gets higher than that after several refreshes. Indeed, over USB, a tablet eats quite a bit of power. However, I was interested to see that wireless fares MUCH better. Your bluetooth radio consumes far less energy than a powered USB connection, so while your Bluetooth is turned on -- Intuos4 connected or not -- your laptop's battery life will remain constant. After all, wirelessly the Intuos4 has its own on-board power source to consume. Just keep it charged, and you can see as much as an entire extra hour of use on a MacBook Pro. (Indeed, the battery clock reports 5:50 after unplugging the USB cable and flipping on the bluetooth radio.) Also it's interesting to note that the Intuos4 literally uses something similar to a cellphone battery. It sure lasts a hell of a long time, and charges pretty quick too.

That's all I got on this. Look up other reviews online if you want to find out more about the other usual stuff!

Where are you CYAN Worlds? A criticism of sorts.

2011-07-25T22:05:00.000-07:00

CYAN Worlds, Inc is the company responsible for creating the classic best-selling game titles MYST and RIVEN in the early-mid 1990's. These games are my leading defense in the argument of "Video Games Are Art."

But you know what's disappointing? I feel bad I have to say this..

The fact that it feels as though CYAN has been resting on their laurels for over 10 years after creating some of the most extraordinary gaming experiences known to PC history. MYST, Riven, and Exile were some of the most intriguing PC games I've ever played -- and I played through them many times, even speed-ran them just to prove I've memorized the puzzles. Back in 1992, 1995, 1999 with the three titles respectively, they were pioneers of their craft. Top notch conceptual designers. Incredible, rich sound design and direction. They were the first EVER truly immersive experience you ever had in a game. CYAN was to gaming back then what Pixar is to animation today. Myst and Riven especially really were that important in pushing the boundaries to what we thought a game could be. The want to explore and experiment -- not hunt and gather and then game over.

What's CYAN up to now? Developing bite-size iOS casual games that don't even look at all very original. Really CYAN? iOS casual titles? That's what you've come to? I shake my head in dismay. You created worlds. You made me BELIEVE there was another world out there when I was a kid I could explore. The immense talent you guys had was not squandered in the least. Now... you're making games that two college students could make in their apartment in their spare time? Where did all the ambition go, you guys? I can't even credit Myst IV and V to you guys since they were technically UBI-Soft's doing, (and they subsequently weren't as good,) but all the other games were your doing -- and they were great! It's heart wrenching to see the completely lackluster things you're putting out right now. --- Maybe I don't know your companies current situation, but still... where's your old magic? Bring it back. We miss it. Show us what you REALLY got.

Hell, hire me if you need some help. I'll work hard for you guys because, (while I've never gone to a MYST convention,) I'm your biggest fan. Ever. Since 1993.

This little rant comes from the poll I just recently put up on deviantART.

012 Decomissioned WIP

2011-07-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

Sketching a scene where some kids are salvaging the working parts from an old Antonov in a decommission yard. Poor thing lost its rear rudder entirely.

Sketch that ended up giving me the idea.

011 Maia Revival 2 & Video

2011-07-25T20:15:00.000-07:00

This is a stylistic mix-mash of an older picture I did in 2009, seen here: http://fav.me/d22534u

Quite a bit evolved to the one I did last year, too: http://fav.me/d2w2x90

I wanted to take the same feel from that older drawing and apply it to a much newer developed Maia. I wasn't going for anything fancy here, just trying to find a balance in consistency for drawing faces. The rest was just a formality XD

In the video, you'll see I had some fun trying on a few different outfits on Maia, eventually settling on the hoodie approach. The coloring phase is not included in the video because I forgot to unpause the recorder for most of it. Oops :X

Enjoy!

010 Ulrich Schnauss + Star Trek (2009)

2011-07-04T22:55:00.000-07:00

So one day I was watching Star Trek on my computer, and I had to pause the film for a moment, (at the exact moment when this video starts.) My music player was open as well, so when I came back, I hit the Play button on my keyboard. It began playing both the movie and my music, which happened to pick Ulrich Schauss' "Momnday Paracetamol" from shuffle. Instead of pausing the music, I let it play, because I noticed very quickly that the music seemed to fit the following scenes more than just a little well -- it feels like the song was made specifically for this sequence of the film.

I didn't cut the video at all, or edit the song, (except to halve its length.) It just kinda fell together like this by total chance. After you watch it like this a couple times, the original unedited scene from the movie just sounds weak in comparison.

Enjoy!

009 Commercial Room Process + PSD File

2011-06-21T21:20:00.000-07:00

Architectural type artwork I did today from imagination for fun (just HAD to after a trip to IKEA the other day.) Nothing too complex, here, I'm just really obsessed with yellow painted poured concrete walls. I also don't do enough work WITHOUT line art. I kinda focused on some areas more than others -- the handrail up front is notably unfinished, but I sorta didn't feel like finishing it either. I only spent about 5 hours on it -- I didn't really want to spend too much more than that on it for a quickie.

Also available for you to download by clicking the image above is a (low resolution) PSD file with all original layers intact, so that you can pick apart this artwork to your hearts content.

Enjoy!

Today at IKEA

2011-06-19T21:17:00.000-07:00

I like highly efficient use of space. Someday I'll have the appropriate situation to get one of these loft beds from IKEA and create my own little work-cove. Let this image be a visual for everyone that there's a LOT more space under those things than it looks like on the product page.

Sorry for the blurry photo, my brother handled the camera. I blame him.

008 Now Arriving 2

2011-06-11T00:44:00.000-07:00

This originally was a revisit to "Now Arriving" which I originally made way back in 2008. This is about as far as I got with it until I decided to just go ahead and do everything over, differently anyway.

This is sorta where it's going now, as of yesterday. I always wanted to do a composition like this, where most of the image is dominated by a large window close to the camera, at an angle. It's interesting because it's technically 1-point perspective!

I have an unhealthy obsession with train travel.

My final thoughts on my experience with a tablet PC for art.

2011-06-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

I did a big review on the ThinkPad X201T, (a tablet PC,) last year when I got it. The original review I gave it was pretty positive, my impressions were pretty high. Then again, I was also only getting acquainted with the machine, so I was wondering if I was saying all of those things too early without any real field-usage?

Sure enough, as time went on, big, gaping issues became more apparent the longer I used it. My biggest problem with the X201T, (with ANY Tablet PC for that matter,) is that they all truly have crap digitizers inside. They work fine for some handwriting or some light sketching, but you can absolutely forget about doing ANY serious work like coloring/painting on one. You want pen accuracy? Forget it. The farther you move the pen away from the center of the screen, accuracy and sensor fidelity dive-bombs to the point of uselessness. The pressure on the pens are impossible to hold steady and go from 10% pressure to 100% in too short of a distance. The erasers are spring-loaded. Try doing some light-feathering with one of those -- you'll pull your hair out. Then there's the cursor lag. It exists. And it's nasty. (While with a client one day, I tried to erase the white space from a drawing and found myself having to concentrate completely on JUST keeping the eraser ON THE LINE. I've never had to do that with any other traditional tablet / cintiq. I've never had to undo so many mistakes from JUST ERASING -- AND I was using the eraser tool with the ink-nib side!) Whenever I went back to my Cintiq / Intuos4, I noticed immediately just how much better everything was. Which brings up the other nail-in-the-coffin -- a complete lack of ergonomic shortcut keys. I rely HEAVILY on shortcut keys for my tablet workflow. Alt, Shift, Zoom+/-, Undo, these are dedicated buttons I need. And just about no tablet PC on the market has them. I tried to find other devices to assist with the lack of shortcut keys, but they ended up all being either too clunky to be practical, or too unreliable in implementation. It eventually came down to the fact that all I could do with my X201T was JUST sketching at what felt like an experience just slightly better than drawing on an iPad. I wanted SO MUCH MORE than that from it, so I realized it had to go since it would be incapable of delivering. -- so out the door it went to eBay.

Today, taking its place is a new 2011 model 15" MacBook Pro. I had a few issues with Apple over the past few years, but whatever, I got over it recently when I realized that taking sides on technology/branding is a pretty stupid and useless thing to do. I'm a lot happier with this machine over the X201T. Using my Intuos4 with it is a far greater pleasure, and allows me to perform serious large-scale work. There are other reasons that I went back to an Apple laptop, but those aren't related to art so I'll leave that for another day.

Long story short here, I won't be available for any other consultation on the operation of the X201T. My impressions here are still my own, and a tablet PC may still work well for you. But for what its worth, I think just getting a regular laptop + a Bamboo is WAY better than a crippled tablet stuck inside a mediocre laptop.

007 War Factory

2011-05-31T20:16:00.000-07:00

Working on some sketches for some RTS-style structures. This one was a quickie for a War Factory, quite obviously. Follow-ups will be for a power plant, command center, barracks, refinery, and a tech center.

Photoshop, 2px round only!

iPad

2011-05-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

As much as I've written about my ThinkPad X201T in the past, I'll be honest -- I just don't use the damn thing. The wacom digitizer it has is just too slow, too cumbersome to be actually useful. My Cintiq has spoiled me in this regard with it's much more sensitive, much more responsive pen/cursor. So why have such an expensive laptop if all I ever do on it is just browse the web, do some email, maybe show my work once in a while?

Walked into the Apple Store on Boylston St last week and walked out with a white iPad 2 32GB. I honestly didn't think that would've happened, really, what with shipping times listed as "2 weeks" on Apple's website. Poor someone ordered one, has to wait two weeks -- I waltz right in 4 hours after the store opens and they got a bunch in the back. I guess that's why you buy local...?

Anyway, I've been more than pleased with it so far. It's about 1/3 the cost of my laptop, and handles everything I expected from it just fine. Browsing the web, doing some script writing, reading some comics, showing my work, sendin' some emails, not bad for something about the size and weight of a magazine. At least they really weren't lying when they rated the battery for 10 hours.

(I tried some other tablets before I settled on the iPad. The PlayBook and Xoom, actually. Playbook: awesome hardware, software's in it's infancy. Right now, the only thing it's good for is web browsing, but damn does it show potential for the future. The Xoom, same sentiments go for the software. Hardware half-sucked, though. Screen is crap on it -- terrible color rendition.)

Here's a photo Yanyu took of me with it's horrible built-in cameras after I brought it home:

Stuffing something into my face, as usual. Eating is one of my best abilities.

(Sidenote: I don't care that the iPad's cameras suck -- they were built for video purposes only. Plus seriously? Who'd use this thing (or any tablet for that matter) to take photos? You end up just looking like a moron. Plus you probably have a phone on you that's far more practical to use, anyway. An iPad isn't exactly what I'd call ideal for capturing those "spontaneous" moments -- not very subtle.)

006 More Maia's Apartment (WIPs)

2011-05-01T02:09:00.000-07:00

Finished the sketch of the apartment! That's as far as the coloring is going on that -- no need for anything more.

005 Designing Maia's Apartment (WIPs)

2011-04-29T01:38:00.000-07:00

Some homework I gave myself tonight. I felt like making a sheet detailing much of the things around Maia's apartment, since it's a bit of an important place within Synthesis. To the left, a detail of the design of the sliding doors within her apartment. To the right, the whole apartment itself and how it nestles in near the top of this building. Other drawings will include a pulled back shot of the building in its entirety to show where exactly her place is, her couch, a view of the entrance stairwell with the small mudroom at the base, interior drawings of the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom, and maybe some smaller knick-knacks that popular the space.

Remember that her apartment used to be a greenhouse that the landlord tended to. It was converted into a living space to maximize profits on the building, which made the landlord sad.

Relevant prior work to this:
Rooftop entrance detail: http://fox-orian.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d1pczqw
Inside the sun room: http://fox-orian.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d23es8i

004 Grace & Noah

2011-04-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

Some sketches of the main characters of an upcoming comic I'm working in collaboration with writer Joshua Jones.

Not much I can say about it at the moment. It's the kind of story I would do, without sounding completely like something you'd expect from me. (Post-apocalyptic setting?!) True, I usually hate post-apoc stories because they're typically a little stale, but I like this one. It doesn't focus so much on the ugly downtrodden aspects of society after all structure collapses.

Expect to see a few tidbits from the development of the comic here every now and then.
I'm just waiting for some time off from my job so I can really dive into working on it.

003 Maia Incredible

2011-04-21T23:06:00.000-07:00

For a while now, I've been interested in learning more simplistic / graphic / expressive illustration styles such as those of Lou Romano, Don Shank, and Scott Wills (check out their blogs if you haven't, by the way,) who do artwork for Pixar, Cartoon Network, etc. The image you see above is from 2007 on the left, and 2011 on the right. These were just sort of quick experiments at this style.I do hope to do more serious studies into this soon. There's just so much other stuff I want to do (and have to do) that I haven't experimented more with it than I'd like. (I hope to someday do a comic in this style of illustration.)

Some of you may remember [Mood Board 1] and [Samurai Jack BG Study] from my DA gallery, and these were attempts at learning how to design environments that would suit this kind of character style.

I need to pick myself up some Pixar art books. I don't own any, and I really, really should.

002 Aricee One Classic Wallpaper

2011-04-18T03:19:00.000-07:00

[1920x1080 edition for 16:9 screens]

[1920x1200 edition for 16:10 screens]

New work done in collaboration between me and Yanyu. She helped me out with the pose / anatomy on this particular piece.

"The Aricee One Classic: a piece of engineering from a generation long passed with almost no working models left on the known world.

Maia is determined to restore this vintage piece of junk to its former glory. She doesn't care that it's older than three times her age, as with a little care, time, and hard work, it will be hers. It's a deeper level of satisfaction she just can't get from buying the flashy new models with extraneous features.

Also she's flat broke."

Cintiq 21UX, Photoshop

001 ORIANART

2011-04-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, so here's my own blogger art blog "ORIANART."

I'll be posting WIP's, sketches, process how-to's, and even final works here as a primary news source about my work, as well as secondary source from my main website plasticshards.com.

Keep tuned, stuff will show up here over time. I might not update excessively often, or even just very often, but things will get rolling in time.