The ZBrush Sculpt-Off

Soooooo . . . I've been swamped for the past while and haven't been able to update on the things I had been working on for the sculpt off since before the competition I wasn't allowed to talk about it, and since the competition I've been trying to play catch up at work while also keeping up on grades and hopefully getting to spend time with my wife and kids . . . busy busy busy.

So without further ado, here's some stuff!

My first design sketch.

One of my more final preliminary design sketches. (I'll post more in another post).

My final design

A semi-finished result.  I hope to someday finish the entire sculpt complete with fish and all, print and assemble it.  Should be a lot of fun.

More Artz + Newz

Here's another update.  Not necessarily new stuff, and if you follow me on Instagram then it's all old news and whatnot.  Anyhoo, here goes something good.

On 30 September 2016 (my birthday!!), I'll be competing in the ZBrush Summit Live Sculpt-Off.  I feel so honored and privileged to be able to rub shoulders (and hopefully totally whoop up on, though not entirely likely) with some of the world's top ZBrush talent.  I'm super grateful for Paul Gaboury and his selecting me to participate in this competition.  It will be happening in Hollywood, CA at the Gnomon School campus at 4 pm PST.  I won't be allowed to post my image with my name until after the winner is announced on October 2nd, but if you tune in while I'm competing, you'll get to see the sculpts as they are being made and you will have the chance to vote for your favorite (it'll be mine, I promise.  lol)

Together with the competition, I'm being featured in a ZBrush gallery running 1 October through January 2017.  It'll be an AR gallery where you'll be able to go and see my nymph bust (pictured below) in 3D real space.  I'm so super excited!

However, if augmented reality (AR) isn't good enough for you, you can swing by the FormLabs booth and the MoonRay 3D booth and check it out in person along with my Yoda Buddha as depicted below.

I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to see these in physical space!

I have had a ton of support from some absolutely wonderful people whom I love very much: my wife, my family, my mentors, and other friends.  People like that make life a wonder.  Thank you.

Art Dump Up Date

Yeah.  Way behind on this one, guys.  Sorry.  Much has happened, yet nothing at all at the same time.  Still teaching ZBrush at Broadview Entertainment Arts University, and I've been digging around for job opportunities and have had many prestigious interviews with companies such as DreamWorks, PlayStation and MZ, but nothing has come up.  I'm pretty much just art-directing myself on some personal projects to get a portfolio of more full/complete characters.  You can see my WIPs below.  If you know anyone looking for a 3D modeler, send them my way!

Dracula Time Lapse

If you're interested in my process, I recorded the whole thing and created a time lapse for you to watch and it's available on my Gumroad account. I hope you find it helpful. 

If you would like to buy prints of this image, you can find it at inprnt.com/gallery/sanderson.  Hope you all dig it!

Cheers.

Update

Wow . . . . much has happened over the past short/not-so-short while.  Over the past few months I have been far too absent from home.  My pass-times include work, work, and more work.  lol . . . but seriously.

I've been working with the LDS church's animation group for three years now doing everything from concept and story boarding to finalized animation.  My latest projects include some videos for the Sao Paulo, Brazil temple and the Rome, Italy's visitors' centers as well as a concept animatic for a project proposal.  It turned out pretty sweet, and I can't wait to share it!  On Thursday we will be changing from our Salt Lake location on North Temple to the Provo studio location.  It's a bitter-sweet change (mostly bitter due to the need to commute plus the other work I do up in SLC . . . yeah), but it should be a good thing for the group in general even just from the stand-point of uniting the team.

My other job involved presenting with the Utah Film Center to schools around the Salt Lake Valley and surrounding areas.  That was a neat experience, and something I hope to be able to do again next school year.  I enjoy geeking out about animation with a group of 30-150 kids.  It's great.  On my very last presentation I got the privilege of presenting to my cousin's class.  What are the chances, right?

In other news, I will begin teaching at Broadview University come next term (within the next couple of weeks) as an intro to Maya teacher.  Super exciting.  I look forward to helping the students gain a hunger for learning and mastering Maya.  They'll pretty much be pro by the time next term starts up.

The most exciting bit of news is my absolute favorite!  I have been named art director over character design at a studio that I am helping to build from the ground up.  Currently I'm working on getting nice renders of the company logo that I built in Maya.  The fabulous design was done by my good friend Cameron Gardner, and though I can't show any of it yet, here is an image of a test render in Houdini (yeah, I thought I'd never use it again since I absolutely didn't get it in school.  Amazing what skills you'll need though you might never suspect it . . . ).  Good thing Seth Holladay was a good teacher.  I'm actually remembering more about Houdini than I thought I would.

Other than that, not much to report.  I've been enjoying every minute I can be at home.  We try to go out--just out. . . . out on walks, to Target, around Daybreak, anywhere.  Once we hit full funding for the Marley film (the current project I'm working on as art director), I will finally have a dependable schedule and will be able to enjoy blissful time with my girls at home.  I miss them.  We are still looking for investors, so if you know of anyone interested in investing, let me know and I'll connect you with the right people.

Speed Sculpt

Here's a screencap of a quick speed sculpt from this morning.  It was fun.  I was mostly just trying to test out ZBrush and the workflow on my laptop (had some issues--I'll have to figure those out).  Anyhoo, this isn't based off of anything in particular, just an iteration of whatever came out of my noggin.  ZBrush; roughly 10 minutes.  Cheers.

Time-Lapse

Here's a quick digital painting I did today while my girls were napping.  I'll have to try to do one of my wife next.

The Great White King

Here’s a quick redesign/color pass on the Polynesian man I designed the other day.  I will be exploring this character much more in-depth over the next little while.

I think I'm going to call him the Great White King for the great white shark draped over his head.  Maybe not.  We'll see.

Mama's Apron . . .

"You know things are getting serious when mama takes off her apron . . ."

And just for if you're interested . . . here's my process (more or less).

   

I start with the raw photo, adjust colors, refine linework, add color and SHA-BAAM!  On most of these from lately, I haven't cared to refine them too much, but I did want to add a bit more life to them.  I want to do a timelapse of the full process one of these days.  Sounds like fun.  Anyhoo . . . in the immortal words of my friend Mel Milton, "Keep on keepin on!"

Big Hero 6

Please note that when you read a review of a film, it may potentially contain some level of spoilers.  Proceed with caution.
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I was such a big fan of the movie and Disney did such a good job of making me feel like I was included in their world that I had to do myself as a BH6 character.  This was an enjoyable practice, and I'll likely do this for many of the movies I see.

Big Hero 6 is easily my favorite movie of the year, though I absolutely loved Mr. Peabody and Sherman, too.  My wife and I finally got to go out to see it in the Orem Cinemark on New Year's Day.  Every bit of the film was deliciously awesome!  I've never seen such beautiful lighting and the characters all had such amazing design to them.  I found myself constantly feeling enveloped by everything happening on the screen.

There are very few trailers that I feel do any justice to the film.  Either they're really good and the movie is horrible, or they're done incredibly poorly and the movie is amazing.  Every trailer for BH6 was exciting to me, and didn't quite do perfect justice to the film, it made it very clear that this was an exciting film to see, and not only did the film exceed my expectations and give me a ride the whole 105 minutes, but it surprised me and kept me laughing.

I wish Stan Lee had actually made it into the film.  That would have been excellent.  His character was SO spot on!

I absolutely loved the characters.  The aunt was a hoot, and I loved her personality character complexes (wanting a donut, etc).  GoGo was a fun character to me because she was constantly giving the reality check.  She was a tough personality with a tender heart.  Wasabi killed me!  He was so well thought out.  I thought it was funny that he was such a scaredy cat, you know?  Baymax was fun, especially since he was having to learn things as the film went along.  I kept expecting to see Yama and his crew more in the film later on because of the shlews of concept are that I saw of them.

Funny story, so my first idea as to who the villain was was Hiro's big brother Tadashi.  I thought it was an illusion that he was dead and he was coming back for one reason or another to do . . . something.  Yeah, not a solid theory, and it threw me through a loop when I saw who the villain really was.  Excellent reveal.  I really appreciated seeing Hiro's breakdown and momentary desire for absolute revenge.  I do feel that Hiro wasn't justified in blaming the professor for Tadashi's death because he didn't start the fire with the intent of killing Tadashi.  I see this, however, as a realistic reaction to what happened.  Hiro finds that his hero started the fire that killed his brother when he rushed in to save him.  He created the brother's cause of death, so Hiro's reaction, while not justified, is still natural and realistic.

My single complaint, besides not having been able to work on it (hint-hint), was that Hiro sounded and looked older than he was said to be.  A minor complaint.  It didn't bother me while I was watching the movie in general, but whenever it mentioned his age, it just didn't quite feel right.  Oh well.

Well done, Disney.  I applaud you and your amazing work.