After a break, the local chapter of Dr. Sketchy's started back up and a very solid showing of local artists popped in. It was really great to meet more people outside of work. This past session was a risqué Alice in Wonderland, the two models were good and it was nice having a stage. Add the drinks, it made for a very good afternoon... hic

End boss challenge

Everyone at work are always working to improve their skills and some like to join in challenges from various websites. Hoover, a 3D character artist, and I talked about an end boss challenge online. Since characters are my current focus, how could I say no? So, after kicking ideas back and forth, from minotaurs to Street Fighter bosses, we came to one of our favorite games in Left4Dead. After a few iterations, we came up with the Grabber.

Despicable Me the game

Universal Studios released Despicable Me a little bit ago, and the videogame associated with the film was the latest project over at VCS. It was a fun project to work on, seeing the story and designs from the film was great. I worked on a lot of the environments and some props for the game. I gotta admit, the designers made the levels exceedingly hard. Reminded me of old NES games that I just raged on as a kid. I'm kinda hoping that kids these days have exceptional finger dexterity.  Anyway, here are some of the concepts I did...

Lunchtime

I thought I'd share with you the personal work from lunch time. Since work has been needing us to work overtime, I've had no motivation for personal art afterwards. I haven't even loaded ModernWarfare2 or any other FPS at all! So, my lunchtimes have become a good time to work on it. Different subjects and a good way to quicken my workflow since I've only got an hour, its been good.

First was a hoverbike, inspired by podracing. I've been thinking about buying a motorcyle and thought it would be cool to use one of the engines from a podracer into a hoverbike. Second was a industrial design of the week challenge, "near future tactical bomber". Due to overtime, I didn't finish in time to post for the challenge, but here it is anyway. It was fun to work on without getting scf-fi crazy.

SNOW!

Yes, I guess having 6 months since my last post isn't a good thing. Yet, I did remember having one, so here is some news! Since January, a few of us were talking about going snowboarding. We pushed the date back and back due to work or school. And its a good thing we did, the weekend we decided to go, a big snow storm that hit the southeast! Whoo hoo! When we planned the trip out, I was told to pull back my expectations from Heavenly, Steamboat, etc because snow out here is horrible. You'd walk on grass to iced runs, there was no need for gondolas... how do you get up the mountain, I thought? Kidding!

Anyway, we had to nag and convince people that leaving Friday night would be best. The 4.5hr drive was messy but manageable. In the morning, all the roads were a mess from NC to VA. I don't think we could have made it leaving Sat morning. We drove to the resort on un-plowed roads and our cars couldn't make it up the inclined roads. Luckily, fire chief Curtis was driving by and pulled one of our cars out a small ditch and took us all up to the resort. On the back of his cold cold truck, we passed many a stuck van or SUV trying to make it up!

Wintergreen was a nice resort. Great snow and nice runs, but they were all a little short. Luckily the black runs had much shorter lift lines and everyone had a great time, no matter the skill level. If it wasn't for the great snow, I dunno if it would have been as fun. It been sometime since I've hit any runs and I enjoyed every minute of it... man, I need to head back west of only for Tahoe.

Artwise, just been busy with work. Recently, the 360 game I was working on was released. Which I'll post again about it soon. Hey, I'm on overtime! Also, joined the local Dr.Sketchy's and been enjoying that a lot. I missed figure drawing and its been great to get back into it.

Niles and Ivan

Scott, Drew, Niles and me on top the hill. Yes, a hill.