THE ILLUSTRIUM

Robot corpse

2011-09-01T17:25:00.001-07:00

lunch sketch - Will Ferrell

2011-07-20T11:19:00.001-07:00

sortof looks like him. Based on a Phil Holland photo

Messing around in Mudbox

2011-07-11T14:52:00.000-07:00

Messing around in Mudbox today.

Black Ned vs the Arctic Blindness part 2 - Beyond the Cave.

new brush

2011-06-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

I keep suspecting there are really cool brushes in my pallette, I found this one called "big fuzzy gesture tool#1".

Thanks to whoever made it.

Sketched out this chick in an action bikini.

Ipad Artrage

2011-06-10T15:58:00.000-07:00

mecha chick

2011-06-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

Did this per request of a buddy at work. The mechanical design needs work but I am hoping since there is a chick in there no one will care!

Sample of the cinematic we did for Darkspore

2011-05-03T10:26:00.000-07:00

This is a quick compilation Brandon put together of some of the shots from our game cinematic. Total we did about 10 minutes of footage, me illustrating and Brandon animating the layered PSD's.

http://vimeo.com/23187322

BLAM!

2011-04-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

Seriously. Our game is good. If you want to hate on Spore.. remember most of us didn't even work on that game. Darkspore is solid..

Here is a poster I put together.

crust-ape

2011-04-08T16:58:00.000-07:00

Experimenting with Sculptris. Stuck with a classic wrinkled ape. I overworked this but like the medium a ton.

Alien sculpt in modeling clay

2011-04-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

I saw a great vid with Jordu Schell - that guy is awesome and a good teacher. He seems to be answering all the stuff you would ask and it's beginning techniques mixed with advanced stuff.

This alien sculpt is my first real maquette.

I have done two pretty generic smooth alien heads plus the big Zabrak dude so next up want to try realistic human or something more alien ambitious.

him from the bog

2011-04-05T01:39:00.000-07:00

Codex Innsmouthii

2011-04-05T00:20:00.000-07:00

My great great grand uncle Corvus O'Haeringtaun bequeathed this book to the first of his descendants to "growe to the hite of six foots tall and two palms again". Turns out that I am the first of the family to do so!

I scanned a couple pages here. Some weird stuff. I can't read the handwriting, old cursive and it is bleeding a little.

Can make out the words "Dagon" and "Innsmouth". A few others.

Challenge to Self 2K11

2011-03-28T12:38:00.000-07:00

Going to start training and see how long it takes.

Tiny sculptures!

2011-03-26T20:39:00.000-07:00

I bought a pack of sculpey for $1.25 and made this little head on the end of a sculpting tool.

My second alien head sculpture.

Rooster calling at the coming storm

2011-03-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

"Rooster calling at the coming storm"
Painted for Art Institute demo.

New website is up!

2011-03-22T11:25:00.000-07:00

http://darkspore.com

That's my painting as the site background and some creatures across the top.

We decided to postpone the game's launch a little but all for good reasons. We have some great additions and tuning stuff learned from the Darkspore beta test and want to get it all wrapped up nice for launch.

If you get the game you can also see the cutscene cinematics I made with our motion graphics artist Brandon Sugiyama. All illustrations taken into after effects. The best ones are in the end of the game when we figured out wtf we were doing.

Great process involving 6 months of storyboards, motion tests, painting painting painting, dailies and somehow we ended up with a bunch of short movies telling the story of the game. Thanks to our studio Maxis for having faith in us to tackle this! We had to step up our game to get this one done and we are proud of the result.

doodlebreak!!!

2011-03-21T17:16:00.000-07:00

Portrait montage!

2011-03-15T20:37:00.000-07:00

A variety of portraits I made being used as avatars in Darkspore.

Old Rhino

2011-03-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

an old rhino pic, don't think I've posted this here. Based the sky on an amazing photo I saw of a storm brewing in greenland.

Creature concepts from class

2011-03-15T14:48:00.000-07:00

Painted these as a demo at the Art Institute.

The game..

2011-03-14T14:38:00.000-07:00

Out super soon..

24 dragons for lunch

2011-03-02T17:07:00.001-08:00

Lunchtime sketches

2011-02-23T15:34:00.001-08:00

Doodling in the park

Spiney head - turpenoid smoothing

2011-01-21T22:43:00.000-08:00

I used turpenoid to brush the skin smooth. I first tried turpenoid natural but that did NOT work. It took about a minute to soak into the clay and then just made it gummy. Regular turpenoid worked great, quick acting solvent and it didn't soak too deep into the sculpey.

I like how it smoothed it out. Hoping to wrap this guy and start on the next bust. I will cast this guy once I figure out how to make a nice base.

Progress on the monster guy bust

2011-01-19T09:16:00.000-08:00

Started adding details, perhaps too many. I don't want this to become Harryhausen Kraken mixed with the Creature FTBL.

Probably going to change the horns and stuff and looking forward to firmer clay next time. Still not sure how to keep my surfaces nice. Some details seem random but I would love to have all textures and marks feel "intentional"

creatures

2011-01-13T18:17:00.001-08:00

WIP my first clay bust

2011-01-11T23:29:00.000-08:00

My first clay bust. I had a good time building this armature and sculpting platform (scrap wood, lazy susan, pipes all cheap at the hardware store).

I'm using Sculpey classic recipe. It's really soft but I have it already and since this is my first attempt it's probably going to be ok..

Started out doing an "innsmouth look" guy but I want to do that right, this guy turned into a dragon man of sorts. Still not sure what his skis is made of but I do want to try some really fine details. Seems hard in the soft sculpey.

The initial take, just threw some nav'i ears on there to see what it could look like. Ears always seem far too fragile and impossible to sculpt so I really want to have them.

Added a twist to the neck, also some 3/8 inch ball bearings as eyes. I guess I could actually make eyes out of sculpey and fire them then have nice hard eyeballs to sculpt around but I didn't think about that before I got these. Looks cool - hope it fires ok. Might be hard to paint but I don't think I will paint this one.

His profile. Next up is really digging into the skin texture. I'd love to do the entire piece by hand and take it to 100% finished. I'm pretty happy with my first sculpt. His anatomy is decent (although alien is more forgiving than real life for sure)

Casting

2011-01-11T23:11:00.000-08:00

Making the frame again for the second half - I pulled off the plastelina and flipped him over (plastelina in this pic is just filler and I maintained a 1/2 inch between the wall and the figure)

Mixin' and pouring the second half. Kitchen counter.. drop cloth..

Separating the mold and pulling out the original, went pretty smooth but somehow I got a slight mechanical lock on the hand due to some silicone seeping over the edge, got it out anyways)

Two halves ! No clay!

So I realign, tape them together to get a nice tight seal. Tested the seal by blowing in the pour hole

Casting in plaster to test it out. realized my pour hole was too small and I need to strategically place some bleed holes.. Eventually cut his foot out and poured there. This mold is UGLY, need to remake it if I want a serious cast.

Final fellow. Notice how his finger tips didn't fill in. Air bubbles got trapped. Thinking about bleed holes or knocking the mold around a pit after pouring to get those out next time... Also he has a fat foot frrom the crude pour hole I had to make. Next up, a straight pour mold then a brush on mold with a 2 part support shell.

Concept for the next sculpture

2011-01-06T20:52:00.000-08:00

The spaceman casts came out ok but actually want to try a brush-on mold with support shell so I'm going to remold him.

In the meantime! I'm liking rhinos this year so I'm going to try a detailed rhino-thing head. This might not be the final design but it is sketch 1.

Pouring the first half of the mold

2011-01-01T23:36:00.000-08:00

Demolding the first half. I made a predicable error and didn't have enough silicone Oomoo 30 to create both halves of the mold so I decided to make one half for now. There is an iphone app for calculating how much you need - should have checked PLUS I had a small leak in the plastelina block so I lost about 15% of the silicone to the interior of the clay blocking.

I used plastelina to displace as much silicone as I could knowing that in the end I'm gonna have to wrangle with that when I cast - having each half made of nice solid silicone would have been great or even if I had used plaster as a support shell (I'm watching vids and tutorials as I go so I didn't have that technology when I started using plastelina.)

Overall I suspect that for this kind of figure - pourable silicone might not be the way to go. Brushable (thick paste) silicone like Rebound 25 with a plaster support shell is what I'll try next.

Building the box for the pourable silicone and using plastelina to block off the front - I might have gotten away with a flat pour but since I didn't have a good sense of how forgiving the Oomoo is when demolding an underhang like the hands would have created I tried it this way.

Cosmonaut in his coffin. My workspace on the back porch and after using sealant and release agent, pouring the silicone so it is 1/2 inch over the highest point of the figure.

Overnight curing and then demolding. You can see the plastelina I used to block off the bottom. The surface of the mold is VERY ROUGH, I guess that is ok but still pretty ugly compared to the nice clean mold halves I was dreaming of. This is due to the surface of the plastelina used to block off the front side.

Mold-making and casting step-by-step THE COSMONAUT UNDEAD

2011-01-01T22:31:00.000-08:00

First sketching out ideas and a concept painting.

Sculpting the pieces with Sculpey, I fire them and continue to sculpt the hardened pieces - sanding and gessoing to fill in small crevices until the surface is fairly smooth. I sculpted and fired the pieces separately for ease of sanding and because I didn't have a mold plan yet.

After attaching the head and arms by "gluing" with more Sculpey - spraying gesso and giving it a final sanding pass. The surface is fairly rough but since this is my first mold I'm not worrying too much, I'll clean the flash and bumps on the final if need be.

I've seen some truly inspiring designs in the urban vinyl community plus some drool-inducing stuff from ThreeAToys sooooooo, decided to try to translate my own character design into a physical sculpture and learn a bit about making my own vinyl figure in the process.

As a concept artist I've always wanted to do maquette work so this is a bit of a jumpstart - doing a physical sculpture and taking it a step further by creating a reusable mold and casting it in hard plastic/vinyl.

Starting conservatively, I decided to go with a pretty smooth cartoony cosmonaut character. I used Sculpey Original recipe 12 herbs and spices ( next time I'm going to use Premo which is firmer, original Sculpey gets pretty tacky when warm and conditioned).
I'm making the mold with "Oomoo 30" silicone rubber and Smooth-On hard white plastic casting material.

So.. I'm going to do a step-by-step of this project and future mold and casts.. Warts and all.

-Luke

It's a bird!

2010-12-17T12:19:00.000-08:00

Ipad drawing with Artstudio

2010-12-02T16:41:00.000-08:00

Little guy I designed for a project

ogre heads on brown paper

2010-11-10T18:55:00.001-08:00

crow sketches

2010-10-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

Some studies of a crow I did for art lunch here at Maxis.

lunchtime landscape

2010-10-20T14:36:00.000-07:00

I messed up in not blocking in the close mountains with a dark color so the pale blue comes through a bit but for a quick painting this came out ok.

Quick character doodle

2010-09-08T17:33:00.001-07:00

Got tired of what I was working on so took a few minutes to block this guy.

Black silhouette, carved the edges with the eraser, overlay color.

The new political party

2010-08-16T00:44:00.000-07:00

Trying out Painter as opposed to Photoshop. The mark making and textures are great but the control in fine details is less (trying to use artist's oils exclusively right now).

A Darkspore character.

2010-07-28T19:01:00.000-07:00

Auldrobot: Comic-Con 2010 pics

2010-07-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

Auldrobot: Comic-Con 2010 pics

Comissioned portrait of Atlas

2010-07-13T02:07:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to tell his story at www.twitter.com/auldrobot.

Follow it if you want to hear the prologue to my forthcoming comic.

-Luke

Most advanced humanoid robot on Twitter

2010-07-10T18:14:00.001-07:00

http://twitter.com/Auldrobot

Can't wait to see what this is all about.

:)

Quick comic based on a photo of a friend

2010-06-27T00:22:00.000-07:00

Saw cool pic of a friend on facebook and made this one shot comic page.

some sketches

2010-06-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

These above are studies of Phil Hale paintings

This is a montage of 10 minute value studies done at our art lunch thing at work.

New beast for Project X

2010-05-11T20:01:00.000-07:00

This is the first concept for a new monster that Team 3D Strikeforce 5000 is going to incorporate into the forthcoming awesomeness.

weak-day

2010-05-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

My 4 month old laptop died yesterday and took with it all of my art from that time. Al I have is the images I've posted online various places.

I want to get it replaced under warranty but that prevents me from opening the case to get at the hard drive to download the files.. Conundrum.

p.s. Iron Man 2 at the Castro theater = very good. Best theater in SF.

show stuff

2010-04-26T13:49:00.000-07:00

The show was interesting. Lots of people came through and there was a ton of good feedback. I had to figure out on the fly how to price stuff and sortof failed because I wasn't ready to sell work for the first few hours. Not really my goal to sell anything but it's great to have someone appreciate something you made.

6 months 'til the next event - time enough to cull the crap from my herd of artwork and have a really strong set.

Starting soon - after taking some time to chill out and do some no-deadline work.

Open Gallery this weekend in San Francisco

2010-04-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

This Friday opening.

Through this weekend.

Free wine and snacks! Tons of art, tons of people.

I'll have some horrors up on the walls and a bunch of sketches inside my gallery. Come say hello!

-Luke

My uncles

2010-04-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

Drew this picture of my uncles at the most recent family gathering. No one could see them but me. I love my uncles.

Some concept art

2010-04-06T15:28:00.000-07:00

Warrior angel concepts. Personally I'm tempted to make any known traditional figures into inhuman monsters (who knew they were actually hideous?!) but for these guys I kept them humanoid but with a bit of malevolvence.

Not peaceful and mild but more ancient and dangerous.

Goth dragon - for sketchaholic challenge

2010-03-31T20:35:00.001-07:00

2010-03-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

Done on an Ipod with Sketchbook Mobile. It can do a lot but the brush size switching is pretty slow. hard to use it without all the shortcuts I have set in Photoshop.

Thoughts with no art

2010-03-01T14:09:00.000-08:00

I'd love to be the guy who updates his blog every day but the only stuff that I'm proud of is under NDA so I have no idea when I can show any of it. 2011?

My portoflio looks like I made it in 1998 and my blog is a ghost town! My resolution for the year is to get this frankenstein rolling and update more instead of having to make excuses for this archive of doodles from my months of unemployment.

The challenge this year will be to do my best work on the TBA game AND develop my personal project in time for Comi-Con.

I also really want to do some concept work for a film. "Design a badass crate" would be cool as long as my concept gets on screen. For that, I need a living portfolio.. Waiting for lightning so I can shock this corpse into a villager-eating monster.

side face

2010-01-10T03:04:00.000-08:00

Revised this one a bit once I got better reference.

Brenda in profile

big face

2010-01-09T02:12:00.001-08:00

Carrion jiggler and a vinegar bottle

2010-01-07T01:36:00.001-08:00

Auncient One

2009-12-09T11:00:00.000-08:00

At work we did a "giant monster" themed sketch session.

A day of thanks

2009-11-24T19:33:00.001-08:00

Thanks for the fingers, Santa. Without which I could not tickle the harpstrings.

Zomb

2009-11-19T10:52:00.001-08:00

A quick zombie gunslinger offering meat

The birth and death of Supershitty Comics

2009-10-17T23:54:00.000-07:00

At a cafe today I decided to write a comic. No planning. No "good" art. Just get that shit done!

I drew three square cells and then put some super simple characters in random poses then added dialogue without knowing what they were going to say next.

The first and last 3 issues of GEIST, here for you now.

Taking the tank out for a spin

2009-09-30T22:46:00.001-07:00

Guy in the shadows

2009-09-23T00:07:00.000-07:00

A skin tone sketch.

Ronald

2009-09-17T23:01:00.001-07:00

Baby summoner

2009-09-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

kid head - octopus body

2009-08-31T17:23:00.001-07:00

a new face. Trying to get some skin tones down. Angry boarding schooler.

Pope Innocent x master study - portrait

2009-08-13T19:38:00.001-07:00

she knows how to use 'em

2009-05-04T18:36:00.001-07:00

new stuff

2009-04-21T23:42:00.001-07:00

Character concept

2009-03-17T14:09:00.000-07:00

Somewhat deformed character concept (minus some text and titling)

Little Hawk

2009-03-06T17:57:00.001-08:00

2009-02-16T14:47:00.000-08:00

cafe doodle

a naked old man

2008-12-10T12:08:00.001-08:00

Neptune with a shark bite.

magician poster

2008-12-08T13:09:00.000-08:00

I was looking for something to do yesterday and saw a post on craigslist from a dude who needed a business card. He was a magician with a crappy website so I emailed him and made this (had to be b/w due to the card stock he was using.) Basically worked pro bono.

I tried to capture some of the old style classic magic posters and practice a little graphic design which I usually avoid. Came out pretty cool and he was happy.

The final size is business card but this is 1/4 work size. The text is all his request (he really wanted to show how "green" his Magic biz was)

Parambulator

2008-11-21T11:09:00.000-08:00

I felt the need to do something with more than 2 legs so here it is. Still trying to keep it in control during the transition from scanned pencil sketch to painted. There are so many unintentional marks and textures that gradually get painted over even if they are cool. Hmm. I think ultimately the way to go is with a simpler sketch then paint in the base through details so there isn't the remorse of painting over something that could stand alone but that doesn't work in the final piece.
On to storyboards..

some new stuff I posted on my portfolio

2008-11-10T13:37:00.000-08:00

YAK!

2008-10-23T21:47:00.001-07:00

Keith Thompson has a cool look, sortof like Wayne Barlowe but not as good. Here is me trying to do a quadruped in that style

a soldier and a beast of burden

2008-10-16T02:09:00.000-07:00

done!

my first device

2008-10-10T12:33:00.001-07:00

I guess it is just a flashlight but it looke much more complicated

an angry turk?

2008-10-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

Some parts of this guy came out as intended but there are some glaring bad perspective parts that really bother me. Values and contrast are 80% of what I wanted, on to the next I guess.

the original sketch

pencil drawings on Sunday

2008-09-21T22:03:00.000-07:00

square brush quick concept

2008-09-14T19:34:00.000-07:00

3D based city with Titan

2008-09-08T00:58:00.000-07:00

I made a simple 3D model in Maya - then textured it and drew details in photoshop.

This was meant to be a period architecture piece but I had to throw in a Titan protecting the city from some huge blast. We can never understand their motives..

Getting a bit tired of this color scheme now..

realistic environments

2008-09-06T03:53:00.000-07:00

Trying out some more realistic textures. Less stylized. The guy in this is a bit more painterly but I accidentally saved the flattened image so he is in there permanently.

Outside the city speedpainting

2008-09-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

Lunchtime quick street scene numero 2.

No perspective fussing here. Bricks lit by the fire!

defiant/bashful/insane russian cosmonaut

2008-09-04T02:08:00.001-07:00

nebulas

2008-08-24T21:08:00.000-07:00

Nebula+ship=future

Quick character - comfy

2008-08-18T17:12:00.000-07:00

This character is just a fast concept in a comfortable style for me. Cartoony, not too finished. From a sketch, Scanned and given a steampunk color theme. I'd like to do some more realistic people when I can put more than a few minutes into a personal drawing. Soon!

Cliff castle with some concept sketches

2008-08-18T04:16:00.000-07:00

I was about to go to sleep and had this idea pop in my head of a cliff with animal headed cylinders extending over the edge. After a few sketches I worked up this idea. I like it but got too mired in the messy middle phases. The values work desaturated though so I know they are good:) * If it looks good in black and white then the shadow to light balance is correct.

I wish the architecture was designed better - it is really bland and not to scale (windows are too big by far) but I didn't work on a detailed sketch so had to make it up as I went along. Next time I will definitely use real perspective and map out a tight sketch for architecture before painting.

Space crap

2008-08-04T23:52:00.000-07:00

Space town
Moon Burg Quadrant
Star-ville Region of the Kentucky Nebula
U.S.A.

speed painting

2008-08-02T16:53:00.001-07:00

10 minute mountain

blue junkland

2008-08-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

I wanted to do another pice with the same blue night, industrial theme color scheme as the last one. This one was little more planned out to begin with. Took maybe 2.5 hours?

I started with perspective lines. Added junkland shapes and went from there, adding the miner/traveler and the working forge area last.

City scape

2008-08-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

Next attempt at landscaping with the brush set. To be clear, I'm using someone elses brushes. Huge time saver if the project needs loose and gritty. Going to try something naturalistic next.

new brushes

2008-08-01T00:55:00.000-07:00

I am trying out a new set of brushes. Makes loose and fast landscapes pretty easy. Compared to the soft brush I used on the last one, this landscape has way more detail and took about an hour.

some faces

2008-07-29T02:58:00.001-07:00

I've been working on skin tones and faces in general a bit. Here are my first few. The mohawk girl has jelly bean of a head and her ear is in the wrong place but the skin is passable. I like how the guy came out, took a bit longer on him.

Viola

2008-07-07T01:11:00.001-07:00

Not a huge backstory on this. Just trying some stuff without doing a sketch first.

Space woman beating a low charisma fuzzball.
Some surly guy with patterned skin brands.

the alchemists

2008-06-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

These are the alchemists. Not your typical wisened european chemists but men who are following the Great Work in various ways. This guy is more of a blacksmith, with protective leathers due to explosive endeavors. He has already lost a leg but still gazes deeply into his creations.
This fellow below is inseparable from his bopkin. He is selfish and dangerous.

This one is just a blue sky attempt - alchemy on an alien scale. Human ingredients are needed. His pose is reminiscent of giant buddhist statue, perhaps they used his form as a model. He has humanoid anatomy on the outside but his pose has no counterbalancing, inside he is boneless. His clothes are perhaps a crabs casing. Giant voodoo alien alchemist?

Needs a ride

2008-06-25T02:12:00.001-07:00

Just a quick black and white undead bandleader patriot gunslinger looking for a ride.. A bit sloppy but I'm proud of how the tree branches came out - just made a crappy brush and threw em down in 5 seconds. Economy!

the dreamer

2008-06-16T03:33:00.000-07:00

I tried some new stuff with this guy. Didn't take him to the level of finish I would have liked but my hand is hurting from the day of painting.

I do like how his face is hard to focus on, with an upper face it's almost like your eyes are crossed for a second when you look at him. His posture recalls hindu statues, double limbs and multiple eyes pimple his body. Two cherubim souls help unfurl his "wings" as he meditates.

I did paint over a sketch on this, it is showing through. Needs more work but I'll probably move on. The lighting came out ok but not as intentional as it could have been.

portraits

2008-06-15T23:21:00.001-07:00

Creepy pin eyed priest, some surly snail-like alien smoking and an overjoyed undead fellow looking for love.

These potraits are taken from a scanned pencil sketch and colored with an overlay layer underneath the spencil set as a multiply layer. It's a pretty good way to do a fast coloration with value but still needs to be painted over if these are going to be taken to the next step of polish. A finished piece in this technique would have no pencil marks showing.

paintings and sketches of the inferno

2008-06-08T23:27:00.000-07:00

Some demon types. The first cannot be reasoned with at all. it is all fury and smoke. It bends the air around it, pressure and shockwaves. the second demon might listen to you for a minute, if only to find out how to torture you more effectively. His skirt is leather made of souls, only the eyeholes are recognizeable, it is seamless.

The pit that forms the ninth circle of Hell. Traitors are frozen in a lake of ice called Cocytus. They enter this circle through the chest of Antaeus - a giant frozen into the firmament of the pit.

This rightmost image is inspired by the idea that Hell has fauna that predates the angels' fall. These industrious creatures work the billows in a smoky landscape.

A doorway. Escaping hell is not easy. This door doesn't go out anyways. It goes someplace bad, and it's not easy to get through the door. Sometimes anywhere else is better than where you are.

Various folks. Didn't shade them just took em close to final lines.