There has been some unhealthy long periods of silence between my posts lately. The usual reason, commissioned work has kept me a busy bee. CG artists need to make a living as well - bills, bills and bills - unfortunately.

Some of my paid gigs are interesting and challenging though - gives me opportunities to tune my skills and dive into creating pieces using all my arsenal of CG tools which I might not have gotten into if I only worked with my personal projects. But still, some of the things I have planned to do for myself I really long to do. I’m working on a solution to switch between gigs and personal projects more freely, which seems to actually work out and become reality.

Anyway, I’ll probably be able to get back into posting regularly again, at least a few times a week. Starting from today. So now I don’t have any choice to not post, do I?

Even though my postings have been sparse I’ve spent a lot of my free time working on my projects. One of my different short films and animation projects have progressed rapidly, and I registered a new domain name for it a few days back, so it’s getting ready to be revealed real soon. Just a few weeks away for the initial release.

I’ve also been working a lot with my CG character development. Updates to those will be posted shortly. Just a quickie to go with this post to not make it completely boring without any images. A CG chick I’ve been trying out some things with in the last days. Modeling and sculpting is finished, currently working with textures and some hair guide styling.

A quick screenshot from the OpenGL view in LightWave with a temporary texture I’ve painted and the beginning of my hair guide styling.

Posting to be continued in the next days….

There has been a serious lack of updates to the artstorm website for quite some time now. The reason is that I unexpectedly got hired by a company in mid January to do quite some work for them on a very interesting project. Things have been really hectic since then and I’ve had about no time at all left for my own projects during this time. Things will slow down with that project soon as it seems though, so then I’ll get back into art storming with all ideas I have had time to sketch down in my notebook the last weeks.
I’ll be back soon again with another update.
Until next time…

I’ve been experimenting with some atmosphere and cloud creations for my upcoming movie. While doing that I started to get quite happy with the techniques I’m using, so I made a still image of some other environment. Here is the backplate I’ve come up with.

The complete image with the foreground elements are rendering as I’m typing this, so I’ll hopefully have it posted to the portfolio tomorrow or the day after.

On another note, I added a software section to the website. I’ve been coding on a stats apps for some time, and it’s getting quite advanced and finished as well. So I’m tuning it for it’s release. So be sure to soon see the birth and appearance of Storm|Stats and it will be followed by some other apps I have in the pipeline when time permitting.

According to the very sad post about my dear friend Brent I posted yesterday, I’ve been talking with some of the other executives at IMA this night, and we won’t let Brent’s dreams and visions die with him, but we’ll make everything we can to make sure they will live on and let the show be a dedication to Brent’s memory.

I’ve been involved in the making of a 3D animated TV series for children for quite some time as the Art Director / Creative Director. The other week I did make the design for the website that will present the series. It’s mostly just the design at the moment. Actual content will be added with trailers, animated scenes from the series, character galleries and things like that as soon as all funding deals are in place and everything will be public.

Well, the site is there, and it will expand shortly, so it could be worth checking it out now and then, as some real cool and amazing 3D work will be available there.

Avery Smartcat - The Coolcats Animated TV Series for Children

You could almost think I’ve turned to the dark side of the force, becoming a web designer with all these sites popping up by me. But do not fear. My 3D projects are going forward as well, and the blog will get updated with them as well shortly. I DO keep myself busy. That I’ve realized.