MindzleKiller Wabbit Painting
It is time to tell the full story of this painting.
This painting was created entirely digitally.
For more visit my site c-hammer.com
It began as a very rough "mock-up" in Blender. What is Blender? It is an Open Source 3d modeling, and animation tool. I used this software to change camera angles, perspective etc, until I found the rough version of this current format. It is a tool that is constantly improving at a very rapid rate. I have Maya, Blender and Z-Brush. I tend to begin all my models in either Z-Brush or Blender and then detail the bejeebus out of them in Z-Brush, texture, paint and create all the material maps in Z-Brush. Then either to Maya or Blender for rigging, animation and rendering. I find Blender to be far more intuitive, simpler to use and unless I am using muscle deformation, particle effects, or really fancy rendering, I tend to use Blender. It is rapidly becoming my default 3d tool.
Enough about Blender, in this image it was only used to create a reference image for the camera angle anyway. I belong to a private blog/forum of very talented professional illustrators that we call the Pillgroup. I think all the members would agree it is a great resource for critiquing work, and getting valuable ideas, design suggestions and generally good ideas for our various projects. This was he first time I created a painting that relied heavily on the Pillgroup as art directors for the project.
This painting is a personal piece, it was not painted for a commission or competition, but for fun. I have long thought rabbits were a bit monstrous. Their skulls are really the disturbing part. They look like something you'd see in a monster movie, with only the 4 long teeth, and narrow skull. of course it could also be because I have watched Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail a few too many times.
So, after the initial mock-up in blender I began the painting process, where I slathered the image in digital paint. My chosen tool for digital Painting is Adobe Photoshop. I have had a copy of Photoshop going back to the first release. And I have always had some form of computer drawing tablet. Way back when I had a Commodore 64 I had the Koala tablet. Today I rely on my large Wacom Intuos 3. I would not recommend any other brand, and at minimum an Intuos, but even better would be a Cintiq.
I treat digital painting very much the same way I would paint traditionally, the major difference is the availability of many more colors, brushes, layers, mixing modes, undo, and all the various digital effects you can use. I find I try new things without fear in digital, that I know I would never do traditionally, if for no other reason than the ability to undo it if it sucks.
So I could go into the whole story of this image, would you like that? I thought so.
My good friend Stephen Eide is always taking photos, and he loves taking reference photographs for me to use for paintings. He did a whole series of images with a very punk model on a motorcycle, from every conceivable angle. When I asked him to do these images I had a radically different image in mind, more tank girl versus an alien spaceship. Which I will probably also paint. The photos were perfect for the tank girl painting, but for this one I pretty much flew solo. nothing about her or the bike comes from the reference images. though I could not have arrived at this image without those photos as a guide.
Why a frog? Honestly I have no clear reason for adding the frog. I wanted a foreground element, and I wanted something funny, that would be really close to the ground because of the perspective I created, and a frog hopping out of the way seemed funny. Plus in an odd sort of way a frog and rabbit seem related. Because they hop... I don't know.
All in all this was a fairly slow painting that took a great many revisions to arrive at this final product. it was a great learning process. And as a bonus it was an Image of the Day for ImagineFX.com and along with the "Alien Laundry" and "Catacombs" paintings, was included in the ImagineFX Issue 43, May of 2009 accompanying DVD.
For more visit my site c-hammer.com
It began as a very rough "mock-up" in Blender. What is Blender? It is an Open Source 3d modeling, and animation tool. I used this software to change camera angles, perspective etc, until I found the rough version of this current format. It is a tool that is constantly improving at a very rapid rate. I have Maya, Blender and Z-Brush. I tend to begin all my models in either Z-Brush or Blender and then detail the bejeebus out of them in Z-Brush, texture, paint and create all the material maps in Z-Brush. Then either to Maya or Blender for rigging, animation and rendering. I find Blender to be far more intuitive, simpler to use and unless I am using muscle deformation, particle effects, or really fancy rendering, I tend to use Blender. It is rapidly becoming my default 3d tool.
Enough about Blender, in this image it was only used to create a reference image for the camera angle anyway. I belong to a private blog/forum of very talented professional illustrators that we call the Pillgroup. I think all the members would agree it is a great resource for critiquing work, and getting valuable ideas, design suggestions and generally good ideas for our various projects. This was he first time I created a painting that relied heavily on the Pillgroup as art directors for the project.
This painting is a personal piece, it was not painted for a commission or competition, but for fun. I have long thought rabbits were a bit monstrous. Their skulls are really the disturbing part. They look like something you'd see in a monster movie, with only the 4 long teeth, and narrow skull. of course it could also be because I have watched Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail a few too many times.
So, after the initial mock-up in blender I began the painting process, where I slathered the image in digital paint. My chosen tool for digital Painting is Adobe Photoshop. I have had a copy of Photoshop going back to the first release. And I have always had some form of computer drawing tablet. Way back when I had a Commodore 64 I had the Koala tablet. Today I rely on my large Wacom Intuos 3. I would not recommend any other brand, and at minimum an Intuos, but even better would be a Cintiq.
I treat digital painting very much the same way I would paint traditionally, the major difference is the availability of many more colors, brushes, layers, mixing modes, undo, and all the various digital effects you can use. I find I try new things without fear in digital, that I know I would never do traditionally, if for no other reason than the ability to undo it if it sucks.
So I could go into the whole story of this image, would you like that? I thought so.
My good friend Stephen Eide is always taking photos, and he loves taking reference photographs for me to use for paintings. He did a whole series of images with a very punk model on a motorcycle, from every conceivable angle. When I asked him to do these images I had a radically different image in mind, more tank girl versus an alien spaceship. Which I will probably also paint. The photos were perfect for the tank girl painting, but for this one I pretty much flew solo. nothing about her or the bike comes from the reference images. though I could not have arrived at this image without those photos as a guide.
Why a frog? Honestly I have no clear reason for adding the frog. I wanted a foreground element, and I wanted something funny, that would be really close to the ground because of the perspective I created, and a frog hopping out of the way seemed funny. Plus in an odd sort of way a frog and rabbit seem related. Because they hop... I don't know.
All in all this was a fairly slow painting that took a great many revisions to arrive at this final product. it was a great learning process. And as a bonus it was an Image of the Day for ImagineFX.com and along with the "Alien Laundry" and "Catacombs" paintings, was included in the ImagineFX Issue 43, May of 2009 accompanying DVD.
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