Soa Lee - graphic artist

[Midway]

<3 AKAK

He cool. 

[Grayeagle]

Last interview I went to the CEO and Creative Director both told me
'I hope you don't have a portfolio full of girls . . everyone does their favorite girly-girl
..we want to see variety not pinup girls'

-just sayin (tm Pasha)

GE aka Frank

[Midway]

Last interview I went to the CEO and Creative Director both told me
'I hope you don't have a portfolio full of girls . . everyone does their favorite girly-girl
..we want to see variety not pinup girls'

-just sayin (tm Pasha)

GE aka Frank

Good point.  Nice work too.   

[ink]

for once I have to agree with midway


GrayEagle......I never really looked at your work before.....real nice 3dsmax work there

not just that but all of it was nice....was looking through your photobucket album....

hell man you shoulda pointed that to me before...I appreciate good art.

[Grayeagle]

Thanks

Even after all these years it still surprises me that you guys like what I was able to do.
What you are lookin mostly is stuff I was able to do in my spare time ..tuff to have a place, the tools, and the time all at once to jam.

Got asked recently to do some painting for commission ..oil on canvas .. I had to decline.
I am afraid that boat has sailed ..I just do not have the cabablility to work all day in front of an easel for days on end.

I am the guy who useda doodle all over his math homework .. played around with an airbrush a bit an next thing I know I was doin vans, bikes, boats ..all that.
Then I got asked to be part of a comic book venture ..ended up bein art director and doin most of the pencils for several issues.

When I submitted my portfolio to Kesmai I was told I had too much!! ..and it was all good! -grin-

I am lookin forward to gettin back into Max and Photoshop as soon as I can..
I love jammin even if it's just workin out a dynamite lookin chrome texture,
..much less buildin a kick bellybutton hot rod

-Frank aka GE

[ink]

Thanks

Even after all these years it still surprises me that you guys like what I was able to do.
What you are lookin mostly is stuff I was able to do in my spare time ..tuff to have a place, the tools, and the time all at once to jam.

Got asked recently to do some painting for commission ..oil on canvas .. I had to decline.
I am afraid that boat has sailed ..I just do not have the cabablility to work all day in front of an easel for days on end.

I am the guy who useda doodle all over his math homework .. played around with an airbrush a bit an next thing I know I was doin vans, bikes, boats ..all that.
Then I got asked to be part of a comic book venture ..ended up bein art director and doin most of the pencils for several issues.

When I submitted my portfolio to Kesmai I was told I had too much!! ..and it was all good! -grin-

I am lookin forward to gettin back into Max and Photoshop as soon as I can..
I love jammin even if it's just workin out a dynamite lookin chrome texture,
..much less buildin a kick bellybutton hot rod

-Frank aka GE

same here..... been drawing as long as I can remember, except at 18 I stated tattooing...nothing quite like living art...when I got into it there were very few "artists" mostly just flash artists that needed a picture to go by....at least that's how it was were I grew up...it was actually illegal to do tattoo's in my home town

I came along and did mostly freehand stuff, with no picture to go by, just off the cuff artwork.....

although it is huge business now I am very disappointed in what has happened to Tattooing, it has become a fad....except fads come and go...a tattoo is forever(well as long as your alive haha)....so after 25 years I basically quit tattooing the public and now just tat friends, family and old clients...I really wanna break into the 3D art world...who knows maybe one day.....although I aint gettin any younger

[Grayeagle]

I got hooked on 3dStudio - Photoshop during a CAD Engineering degree program.
They were part of the 'visualization 101' semester and I was blown away by what was possible.

The textbook for the course was 'ok' .. but I went quite a bit further than that,
researched - networked - told about New Riders Publishing and their huge book on how to do ..well .. everything ..in 3dStudio.

I have tried many others over the years.. even did evaluations for use for companies I worked for.

Nowadays, 3dMax (son of 3dStudio) does all an artist needs and well enough
that I can get lost in it for days just developing textures that look the way I want,
..among many other things
Tons of plugins to help with anything you venture into.

You can go to their site and get a 30 day full version to download and play with ..
..do the deed and get a good book on it first so you can jam thru some of the tools available.

If you decide you want a copy to learn on, sign up at a local college for a refresher in math or whatever..
..and get a student copy of Max and just jam on.
You cant use it professionally, but it is a full version with all the toys.. you can learn the tool

If you decide you want a full release version it runs about $3500 or so last I heard.

-Frank aka GE (using an airbrush is tougher, but math is a good skill to have in Max

[ink]

I got hooked on 3dStudio - Photoshop during a CAD Engineering degree program.
They were part of the 'visualization 101' semester and I was blown away by what was possible.

The textbook for the course was 'ok' .. but I went quite a bit further than that,
researched - networked - told about New Riders Publishing and their huge book on how to do ..well .. everything ..in 3dStudio.

I have tried many others over the years.. even did evaluations for use for companies I worked for.

Nowadays, 3dMax (son of 3dStudio) does all an artist needs and well enough
that I can get lost in it for days just developing textures that look the way I want,
..among many other things
Tons of plugins to help with anything you venture into.

You can go to their site and get a 30 day full version to download and play with ..
..do the deed and get a good book on it first so you can jam thru some of the tools available.

If you decide you want a copy to learn on, sign up at a local college for a refresher in math or whatever..
..and get a student copy of Max and just jam on.
You cant use it professionally, but it is a full version with all the toys.. you can learn the tool

If you decide you want a full release version it runs about $3500 or so last I heard.

-Frank aka GE (using an airbrush is tougher, but math is a good skill to have in Max

I have been using Blender an open source 3D program...people complain about the interface but I find it for the most part easy to use....I have heard good things about 3dmax, just no way I could afford it, and besides so far Blender seems to work pretty damn good....although when I get up in the millions of tri's it crashes on me, but that is my system not Blender....I really enjoy working in Blender, once the model is done, you can Paint on the model itself, using solid colors or any texture....its pretty crazy how far you can go.....the one part that is taking me longer to learn is the animation part...although I have built a walk cycle for the spider...

couple screenies of what I am doing now
almost ready to build the armature for this guy


this guy is still in the very early stages....


the spider I made.....holy crap creating the armature for this and then getting it to walk was not easy....I think I have more time into that then actually modeling the thing ......I started with a spider....for anamation... I figured anything else was gonna be a cake walk.....compared to a 8 legged creature.





I really like the Hot rod you did with the 51...did you model and texture...those both?   I am working on modeling a KI84...I am finding the inanimate objects harder to model then organic for some reason....guessing it is the hard lines that need to be perfect....when I was looking through your stuff...I saw the pic I am guessing is you....that's hilarious...I started the same exact thing, I am doing my wife and I as Caveman for the game Skyrim....


you do really good work man....kinda inspirational to me.

[Grayeagle]

Everything you see on the images posted was done by myself.. textures, lighting, models, animations ..the works.
Even the color of the 'sun'

They don't call it a project file for nuthin

Your spider is awesome

In Max there is a tool to do reverse kinetics (move the hand and it pulls the arm, shoulder, etc)
and a grid tool to make organic 'bounces' (like ..ohh .. perky boobs when a lady walks, or dinosaur muscles when they run or jump, an such)

When you do a plane, good to start with a decent 3-view (top, side, front) with accurate dimensions.
I scan a top view, set it as background, create a line template over it.. then scale it to exact dimensions (wingspan etc)
Then I scan front view, do a line template, scale it to match my top template (for dihedral, fuse cross sections, etc)
..then side view ..

Once I have my templates showing location of everything I can get off the 3-views,
I start building the actual plane.. ie:
I decide how many sides the tube is gonna need for the fuselage.
The renders you see start with a 16 sided tube ..I add or take away what isn't needed, moving, scaling, slicing until it matches all 3 templates.

It's a process .. takes awhile ..amazin when it begins to come alive tho.

-Frank aka GE

[Midway]

Those look nice, Ink.... Your artistic skills brought to life in 3D have a lot of potential to be great.  I agree with you on grayeagle's hotrod/pony image.   Very very nice.   

[ink]

Everything you see on the images posted was done by myself.. textures, lighting, models, animations ..the works.
Even the color of the 'sun'

They don't call it a project file for nuthin

Your spider is awesome

In Max there is a tool to do reverse kinetics (move the hand and it pulls the arm, shoulder, etc)
and a grid tool to make organic 'bounces' (like ..ohh .. perky boobs when a lady walks, or dinosaur muscles when they run or jump, an such)

When you do a plane, good to start with a decent 3-view (top, side, front) with accurate dimensions.
I scan a top view, set it as background, create a line template over it.. then scale it to exact dimensions (wingspan etc)
Then I scan front view, do a line template, scale it to match my top template (for dihedral, fuse cross sections, etc)
..then side view ..

Once I have my templates showing location of everything I can get off the 3-views,
I start building the actual plane.. ie:
I decide how many sides the tube is gonna need for the fuselage.
The renders you see start with a 16 sided tube ..I add or take away what isn't needed, moving, scaling, slicing until it matches all 3 templates.

It's a process .. takes awhile ..amazin when it begins to come alive tho.

-Frank aka GE

Thank You

Blender has I would guess the same thing, it does 2 types of kinetics "inverse" and "direct" (think that's what they call it ) also  you can set it up so it has both types on any part of the armature, which can be turned off or on to use one or the other....I still don't have 100% knowledge on the armature building/animating  part of it,(although doing the spider helped me understand it more) its extremely in depth, a massive amount of info to remember..... I gotta start doing that more now actually... the velociraptor is ready for it, plus I have a Trex and a bunch of other Dino's in different stages of progress.


ya I figured you did most of it.....very nice work.....I am trying to remember which one I thought was awesomely textured...(they are all great) but one of the shots stood out.......

good tips on doing planes...I will most definitely keep those in mind.



found it...this is the one I like the most...could be because its the same squadron of the P40 I got ingame...one of the baddest looking WW2 birds there is.


my ingame shot....I like this one the best that I did...I put a lot of work into it, there is a lot of small detail that I think most just wont see, like the fact that this was a repainted plane and you can see the original paint where the top layer has chipped off....

Those look nice, Ink.... Your artistic skills brought to life in 3D have a lot of potential to be great.  I agree with you on grayeagle's hotrod/pony image.   Very very nice.  

Thanx

[morfiend]

 Wow GE some nice stuff in your portfolio!

   I envy both you,I wish I could draw but have trouble making a straight line with a ruler and pencil,fugi did tell me to use the pointy end but that really didnt help!

  I have a cuz who does animation,as a kid he would draw me comic book caracters like hulk and the rest.  Wish I would have hung on to them. He works for disney these days but he also did afew movies for other studios. My fav of his was Roger Rabbit,he personally did the seen with roger in the coat of actor,cant remember his name,Bob something.

   Great stuff from all you guys.