new illustrations

So I've been at it again, adding more illustrations to the web and more content to my online store. Here's a sample.

It's a digital painting done in photoshop I've been working on.
If you like it or other pieces that I've done you can pick it up at my online store at www.cafepress.com/Aspore
Remember to tell you friends and family. This stuff makes great gifts for Christmas or any other holiday you might be celebrating.

Opened a Shop!

Yup that's right I opened my own little shop at cafepress. It has bits of my work on assorted clothing. Here is an example of what I have up there so far.

With Christmas coming up it's the perfect time to go shopping. Here's a link for you. Please go check it out and tell me what you think. I'd love to hear from you.

Reactor Bedroom render

So here is the final render of a bedroom using reactor to simulated the physics of the cloth of the curtains and how the wind effects them.

I had to turn the wind effect down to .5 or else the wind curtains were blowing everywhere across the room. To make them stay put I fixed the top two rows of vertex. The wind is to have a variance speed of 2 and the ripple is set to left/right. this creates more movement of the curtains to make make it look a little more realistic. In order to let the wind threw the wall after I put the windows in, I changed the wall from the actual wall object to an editable poly. It keeps the holes made from the window objects and now lets the wind blow threw them.

I've also uploaded this to my youtube channel at www.youtube.com/aspore116 along with past videos I've done. Please feel free to comment, or ask questions, I look for forward to them.

family room with lights

So after awhile fighting with the lighting I decided to go with the scene without using mental ray render and sticking with the default one.  The lights use ray traced shadows and I'm using the advanced light setting of Radiosity. Radiosity is a way of calculating indirect lighting.

I don't think it works as well as mental ray, but it renders a million times faster and still looks pretty good. An important thing about all rendering and light calculations is to remember dimensions. If your scene doesn't have realistic dimensions no advanced lighting solutions will have realistic lighting.

Reactor, mmmmmm physics

Reactor, yes it's time to enter the wonderful world of simulated physics. I've loved playing around with reactor ever since I took class teaching it years ago.

So where does simulated physics come into play with 3d modeling? Well reactor doesn't just show things falling, but simulates cloth, water, vehicles, wind, and dozens of other things. I find that while modeling rooms leaving a door or window open in the scene and letting wind blow threw it moving the curtains helps bring the room to life. Also if your trying to make that sheet look real on that bed you made, making it cloth and letting reactor play with it a little really helps bring that sense of realism to it. I have here a brief little movie I've made showing off some of the reactor features and hope to have a room built with it working in a more practical way soon.

places to post your work

Regardless to if your a professional, trying to become a professional, your looking for critics, or you just want a place to post your work online for the world to see their are a couple sites, that for free, will post your work. The internet has become a key way for artists to get their names out to the public and can lead to commissioned worked, or even better permanent jobs. So where are some good places to post?

• deviantart.com/

• artwanted.com/

Ok so I don't know a lot of them, but I post on both of them, and they've exposed my work to a lot of people and let me make contacts inside the art world. If you'd like to take a peek at my work on please do at http://misled-youth11683.deviantart.com/ please feel free to tell me what you think, or friend me. After all the key to success in the artistic community is networking, networking, networking. Also free free to leave comments on this blog, I always look forward to hearing what other have to say.

Art, was it worth it?

So I was at the end of high school trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I didn't enjoy school and found that the only things I excelled at were art, and video games. Since I didn't think anybody was going to pay me to sit around playing games and college was mandatory, although others say it never was really it was. In the end I decided to go with art. I ended up at the Art Institute of Colorado studying Media Arts and Animation and graduated in 2006.

So fast forward to the present. Currently unemployed, I find myself with the masses throwing my resume and portfolio at anybody and everybody that will take it. I start to wonder was it worth spending a fortune on an education to do art?  The simple answer is yes. I enjoyed every second of it.  I  still find myself, no matter how frustrated I am with life, working on my Portfolio. Zoning out with endless hours of building,  rendering, playing with lights, digital painting or even just sitting around with a pad of paper doodling makes me feel better about every. No matter how many time I get turned down or just plain ignored art makes it all worth while. So for all the fellow artists, illustrators, animators or others that are unemployed and feeling down, don't let the world drag you down. Find something you love and stick with it.

3d Family Room Furnished

So there it is. The family room is furnished and textured. I get the ideas for the furniture from different designing magazines and catalogs. Catalogs like Crate and Barrel give realistic room settings and pieces that work well in 3d designs and add a sense of realism to what your doing.

3d family room starting texture

OK so here's the same family room with the start of textures. I've added skirting board around the floor, ceiling molding along the ceiling and molding around the door on the far left. I've also adjusted to the ceiling over the mantle so when the ceiling for the rest of the room is added it will create more of a step in. I'm having trouble deciding if I should go with a wood floor or a tiled, so for now wood it is but that could change as I go along. Also the ceiling along with lighting, and to make the room seem more like something people would live in, furniture and assorted "stuff" to you the technical term, will be added.

As always please feel free to comment and tell me what you think or what you would change.

Beginning living room 3d rendering

So I've started a new 3d model of what's going to be a living room. I'm using an ancient version of 3d studio max, just applied a bland nothing texture, left the ceiling off, put in a skylight and in the advanced lighting turned on Light Tracer. The skylight and light tracer just add some shadows and give me a general idea on how the shadows could look later and tells me if  I need to move anything. Neither will probably be in the final rendering. Also as textures and extra pieces appear in the room the camera angle might change. All of this is just a rough start and gives me something to build from.

So keeping in mind that this is just a rough beginning what do you think? Let me know with a comment.

In the Beginning...

I'm an artist that lost his way I guess. I spend most of my time looking for work. I thought a quick blog showing off my work as I complete it would be a good way to get my name out and around. What I'd really like to do is visualization. for those that don't know what that is, it's when a computer made 3d models of a room or building is made to show  what they'll look like once they've been built or redecorated. I also do more traditional illustration, and photo manipulation. If you want to check it out please feel free just click here. I'd love to hear what you think so please feel free to leave comments. If you're in the artistic field and have tips on how to scare of up or get noticed I'd love to hear as well. In later posts I'll hopefully be able to share that kind of information and help others as well.