Matt Vogt: Life

Here are two paints I gifted my Sister and Father! Yeah Holidays!  Juno is the latest addition to the family, a 7 month old boxer pup….

Merry Christmas!

(Work in Progress)

Two depth studies: Peace and Desire.

My world’s been coloured:

Perspective Time!

Two point, three point and ended in a one point. The assignment was to feature a Futuristic Structure!

Into Value Studies!

 Assignment:  Create 3 pictures of a gothic interior, same area, different lighting solutions.

Following the educated approach, I studied some gothic goodness:

And the week’s result:

Composition contiues with additional types:

• Radii, 2, 3
• Triangle, 2
• L Comp, 2
• Cross, 2

        

Philip Straub has taken us under his wing hahaha!  Check out what’s in store:

http://workshops.cgsociety.org/courses/000089/

It’s pretty intensive (as I choose), but alas I will post everything I do here. I thank you for your viewing and I hope you learn things through my learning!

For starters we learned the first 3 composition types and find an example of each:

• Rule of Thirds (Fibbi Spiral), 2
• Iconic, 2
• Circular

Then it was time to create our own:

Thirds

Iconic

Circular

Painting this guy from outside my window yesterday morning.  Guess breakfast was serverd - I bet these guys are getting chilly…

This is the best online image viewer I’ve seen!  Check it out!

http://www.cooliris.com/

(Thanks to Laura for the recommendation!)

I took these photos while coming home from work today!  It was our first day at our studio’s new location and it is the most beautiful place I’ve been.

This time of year is awesome! Taking photos while driving is awesome!

An evening’s drawing and painting session. It’s a good place to be.  

Photo reference by Fedrico Erra.

For my amazing girlfriend, Charlotte Spafford, I made an 18th birthday present.  I thought it would mean more making something from scratch. It was really fun to do and I learnt lots so here’s an overview:

Ideas began to percolate.  I gave myself about 5 evenings.  This was perfect as Charlotte was working Wednesday through Friday so I could work in secret.  Initially, the idea was a 3D print from work.  Content was in the liquid state of mind.  I knew it had to be romantic, full of love and an 18 somewhere for the great occasion!  Such ideas came top me as I sketched both of us together in Photoshop.  Joy.  Love and art is peanut butter and jam.

The ol’ marble, romantic, renaissance styled statue came to the mind through sketches!  

(at this point it takes extreme faith in that you can pull your project off out of these gestural quickies…. it’s a proposed inner knowing about ability.  I’ve never really sculpted anything in Zbrush before.  It’s just a tool.)

Time to educate myself on the type of sculpture I was going to make. The trick is to refine a creative vision then do some background, targeted study. Scott Eaton mentioned it’s important to learn how to draw what you’re sculpting first.  To be able to produce a drawing of what you’re created from understanding (no reference)  requires hardcore drawing with reference.  I’ve been told to test such understanding by study drawing then reproduce without reference.  Here, I study knowing the vision and that every stroke brings me closer.

Quick ones to get balance, composition….. togetherness….

Also, collected reference imagery is important to have handy at all times. I return to such a beautiful collection to “get that feeling”, anatomical reference, ideas, textures, and real statue reference etc!

Below is the final sketch that carried me through the rest of the way. Although it’s quick and sketchy, I felt right about it.  Time to introduce 3D to my 2D friend.

I made the extremely simply, low polygon count basemesh in Wings3D.  All quads, identical for both me and Charlotte. I then tweaked higher densities to pull the male/female out of us in Zbrush….

Here I found something very useful in Z Brush.  You can actually pose your characters on a separate Tool Layer.  This enables us to pose our people, then have them return to the Jesus Pose for adding definition.  Or, in my case, to restore a botched pose job.

Below is my first attempt at posing something in ZBrush. I have to admit, once familiarized, it’s the most intuitive and creative body poser around!  Using the ctrl+click drag masks, I could easily rotate on joints with little deformation!  I did a paint over near the end of one night. I think that introduces a whole new avenue of creative brainstorming to bring 2D and 3D together. Here I painted the number, base and our mops!  The ideas just kept coming.  I thought nerd glasses would make sense….. I ctrl+clickdragged them too (nerd)….

The final pose process below (on a new Tool Layer).  Once again, I am really impressed with ZBrushed transform tools and masks

(The wrap around idea from the sketch is realized! Awesome!)

The final CG result with base:

And the result in Charlotte’s hand!  Thanks to my favorite place, http://OffloadStudios.com for making dreams come true - once again!  Oh and she really liked it hahaha

ps: I really like that hand.

Tonight was interesting.  I felt like I didn’t know what to do, but it was going to be artistic.  Sure I could have worked on my dino sculpture, posed tutorials, refined my ‘damaged’ entry but I had a feeling that something was missing from within.  I found a photo of some old autos and thought I’d do a focused study to get my hand back at the environment paints.  During, the lacking feeling persisted as if my worth or motivation was in question.  My mind was thinking damn hard.

After warming up into it, an un-pin-pointable feeling took me over.  I realized at that moment that creative process flows.  Barriers limiting such potential are the root of creative stagnation.  My initial sluggishness wore out as the logic was lessened by that right brain momentum!  I could feel it pour in as I was reminded of how awesome it feels to scribble and combine different sources.

As some relationship advisors recommend, less thought is best.  Sitting down to work on a piece must have silence.  Thought and planning is great for placement and goals, but let the “process” flow and happiness will find you no matter what you’re working on! 

Laters,
Matt

Robots need to relax…. this came after Sean McGraths’s photograph.  I’ve been thinking I need to refine my work, plan it out a tad more and attack every element with a splash of study.  Therefore, the image below is the groundwork for some areas my life will expand into….

Cheers!
Matt

For the ‘damaged’ challenge.

I think I might spend the rest of my life sharing what love is.  Think of this painting as a first of a many part series.  Next project might be a sculpture, poem, book, movie, picking up a piece of garbage or moving a caterpillar off a road….

A moutain study inspired by epic “Mt. Cheam” that rests outside my home town.  Coming home, the clouds cleared revealing freshly laid powder in the sun!

(seriously this is how I see it….)

I like robots!  Nothing beats machines having some inner workings (more than gears spinning)….

Love,
Matt

I like to share art reference related websites!  I find having beautiful imagery passing through your perseption makes everything better!  And I mean everything - your visual vocabulary, artist’s voices, attention and energy - you name it!  

FFFFOUND! has a wonderful interface for browsing lots extremely pleasant.  The trick is to use the “tiles” view (shortcut V), then bust the J shortcut for passing by hundreds of awesome images.  The database is fed via human preference so I promise you’ll see amazing things!

All the best,
Matt

I have the best job in the world.  

It’s tough to sleep knowing I’m awakening to limitless potential!

You’ve got to check us out at http://OffloadStudios.com! We’re pinoneering utter awesomeness when it comes to giving digital art the appriciation it deserves!  My life’s path seems to all add up creatively to fuel into this new workplace!  Fine Art Sculptures!  Toy Prototyping!  Player Created Game Content!  All outputing through our hands!  

A half hour blast of fun reminding me of why I showed up here….

(photoshop)

A Thursday evening chiller!

I paint lizards. (emotional charged statement I know…. can you feel it?) What are these for you ask? It’s a secret…. but it does have 3D lizards.

Whatever happens, make sure things flow. Rivers are spectacular teachers in relationships.

Did some “beforehand plans” of a digital painting for a close friend of mine ;)  Nothing feels closer to home than doing paintings for someone else.  Everything falls into place much easier and you learn some things about how you feel as it visually pops out of nowhere!  Nothing helps a coloured piece better than a solid black and white shot with an eye for composition, contrast and distinguishable shapes!

Thanks for viewing!

Love,
Matt

A random collection from different times and different places!

Hello,

The first thing in achieving what you want artistically is affirming the belief in yourself. Whatever you’re aiming for - feel it already there, here and now!

Try this when you set out to do something and you’ll feel great + the results will be there!

Love,
Matt

Yo! Stephan’s talking! This is awesome - about art direction at Midway Games, his history, his work on the Fifth Element etc! Oh my! Enjoy!

http://www.sidebarnation.com/my_weblog/2008/07/stephan-martini.html

This is my site and if I want to post a turtle I damn well will…. and I’m glad to actually communicate with you!

A good friend by the name of Ryan Yewell invited me to be a guest speaker on In the Lab with Leo (http://www.labwithleo.com)! Now that’s awesome! Ryan has his own segment called “Yewell’s Jewells” in which he shares free software with the rest of us. I grew up watching such shows as The Screensavers and I never imagined I’d be on a show with Leo Laporte. Being a guest speaker is awesome - the trick is to show up at lunch and you get free food….

[display_podcast]

[flv:http://mattvogt.com/media/leo-segment.flv 550 325]

Read the rest of this entry »

small update: I’ve begun storyboarding the cute girl film… I’ll keep you posted!

Filters > Render > Get off your ass and snap a real Lens Flare …

A rejuvenating painting session’s result as I wrap up my short script!
(This page needs more art)

I’ve been seriously studying the art of filmmaking and I can’t get enough of it!

I’m in the process of making another film. I’ll be flying solo this time though. My new film’s about obsession and how your inner world creates your outer world. I’ve been considering such a project for a solid couple of months. I was surprised by the overwhelming support fellow colleagues and strangers have given me so far. Currently, I’ve written and rewritten the script many times and it’s close to completition. The next months I will be transitioning from screenwriting into the arts of production design and cinematography.

I don’t have a title yet, although the idea spawned from a CG Talk filmmaking contest’s topic “cute girl”.

Synopsis:

In the nearby future, a robot designed to feel emotion has lost his human companion, owner and lover. Struck by loneliness, the robot created his own reality of desolation. Sinking lower into depression, he finds a picture of his previous owner which sends him into an out of control spiral of obsession. Thinking he’s solved his problem by building an equivalent lover, his inner and outer worlds grow darker as his creation falls apart in his hands. Looking for a fix, he becomes haunted by her. Fueled by his obsession, the hauntings lead to his demise.

[flv:http://mattvogt.com/media/oldMan02.flv 550 300]

Half hour at 500% speed = a 6 minute glimpse into my process!

During my evening reading session, I found an interesting interview with a concept artist at EA:

CGC: Your current work is very unique. Where do you find the inspiration?

Gustavo Mendonca: This may sound really silly but I believe my inspiration comes primarily from having my spirit well centered within myself or simply by being HAPPY!

I know, that may sound like space man talk. But when you think about it, every artistic expression is moved by energy. Being happy and in peace allows me to reach that “child” state of mind and sense of freedom.

Remember when you were a kid and the word impossible meant nothing to you? So there you go!

Like every artist out there I also have my favorite artists, favorite movies, books, cartoons, music. I also carry a camera with me, but I think the energy for the piece I’m designing has to come from my “guts”. I always try to foresee the finished image in my head before I start, even if just for a split second.

If a piece of artwork has a strong energy, the site of it will bridge the gap between the artist and the viewer. In the best cases the viewer will feel like he knows the artist in some way.

I couldn’t agree more! However, I’ve heard character designers purposely getting pissed off to inject attitude in their work. For example, Kratos from Gods of War was designed by some workplace “temporary assholes” at Sony Entertainment. In contrast, anger could be considered a energizing tool for creative development but what’s the point if you’re not enjoying what you do?

Most produce art because they like it, not because they’re forced to (my kind of slavery). Recently viewing some “emo styled” art commonly found at Devient Art, you can’t help it beg the question if these people are happy artists. I believe they’re expressing their negative feelings through the pleasure of art which helps them feel better.

Mentally, I get into my happy place before working on any creative en devours. This is because ideas flow easier as “passages are unblocked” due to downsizing the constant noise frustration, jealousy, and anger fill the mind with. That’s a personal note there… see, I get excited when I walk my office, I’m sure Frankenstein was gitty with excitement strutting down to his laboratory…. If where I’m sitting isn’t enriched with positive energy, I don’t think this website would be here…. Going deeper, what if some tragic event occurred in my life? Would I still paint?

My answer is simple: Nothing would change as I choose my thoughts and before sitting down to paint, I would be clear on how I feel and change focus accordingly beforehand. Even considering that question I posed to myself, I felt on the edge of feeling good. As soon as became aware of feeling down I instantly changed focus to something more constructive so I could commit my final thoughts. Indeed,nothing changed.

And look at that! I just wrote another roundabout way of taking responsibility for your life - started with a quote, some art questions, an emotional rollercoaster then BAM back to feeling good and writing helpful stuff.

Check out the whole thing here: interview

What Daniel Dociu has been trying to do in his work is convey an emotion or a high-level, sometimes abstract, idea, rather than a technique-driven process. As an industrial designer over many years, honed his ability to design complex systems entirely in his head, he finds himself losing interest in the subject because he’s figured it all out before starting to draw. “So lately,” he explains, “I allow myself a bit of searching for shapes and connections in the drawing phase to keep myself entertained with the occasional surprise.”

Daniel has solid ideas about where style belongs in the design process. He says it should “happen” naturally over a long period of growth, as an evolution towards finding the means of expression that best resonate with one’s sensibility. He remembers struggling as a young art student to find a style of his own, only to fall into one trap or another. He was lucky enough to find a mentor who prompted him to dig deeper.

“You have to get yourself genuinely charged emotionally and/or intellectually, depending on how you are wired, regarding your subject,” explains Dociu. “You need to take a stance and have the urge to share. Manifesting that position through direct, raw forms of expression you will find yourself ‘stylistically’”.“In my opinion, technique should be an extension of your thought processes and sensibility,” explains Daniel.

“What I mean is that it should be a natural fit that best serves your own communication needs. Mechanically learning and adopting someone else’s technique usually leads to a partial match at best. It’s the reason I find tutorials and how-to books and workshops of limited relevance. They are an insight into another mind’s thinking patterns, where connections, choices and creative decisions happen differently. Exposure to as many other ideas as possible is important, but it is just as important to filter what resonates and works for the way you are wired.”

CG Society with Daniel Dociu

http://www.tinfoilgames.com/

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life…the remarkable thing is we have a choice each day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.”

Charles Swindoll

Hope everyone had a merry Christmas. Boxing day today eh? I picked up a 500gb hard drive for 200 bucks!

Anyways, using Firefox’s stumble upon plugin, Jon found a site that will breakdown the loading times per asset of site! This will help me and my crazy 10second load up time….

http://tools.itscales.com/cgi-bin/pma-dl

good luck on the draw!

Great for environment maps or matte paintings. Composed of nine images and around an hour in photoshop!

• “Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him.”
• “All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts”
• “Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts will inevitably bring about right results.”
• “The outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs”

-James Allen (1855-1942)

The top one caught my attention. Did you “get dealt a bad hand” in life? When people don’t take responsibility for their lives they “hand the reins” over to someone or something else - giving up the naturally good feeling of being in control… sure they’re easy to make fun of, granted such external insults determine their internal state of happyness, but the complaining or their nonacceptance of “what is” becomes common ground. The first point seriously forced me to grow within in order to produce the circumstances I wanted - love those fundamental truths.

Reference Image Sites ordered by awesomness:

• http://mattvogt.com/blog/photography/
• http://google.com/images
• http://flickr.com
• http://corbis.com
• http://gettyimages.com
• http://photogateway.com
• http://ditto.com

(sorry for the shameless plug at the top)

Bruno Gentile, an inspirational concept artist/illustrator has shared with us a couple video tutorials showing how he made the following images:

Processes can be found at:

http://www.hydropix.com/tutorial.htm

Thank him too

Being unaware of the potential Wordpress had to offer, I simply installed it to /blog of the root of “mattvogt.com”. Most people’s portfolio/tutorialio sites have a blog that they share their news and thoughts etc… My entire site is my blog (without the complaining).

Doing this spawned an issue: How do I get people to go from mattvogt.com to mattvogt.com/blog ?

For your information, Google doesn’t index URLs that use 301 redirects by writing a htaccess file in the root (oops).

For the time being, my site isn’t listing in Google because of the above experiment (Read why here). I’m currently trying php forward that can be found at the bottom in the link below:

http://www.seocompany.ca/seo/url-redirect.html

The ball’s in Google’s court now….

The best time of the year is upon us. Nature varies her colors and I get excited to go snowboarding.

I finished a painting using the Fibonacci spiral as a composition tool. The ratio used for creating such a spiral is one of those “found everywhere” ratios that even the greeks used in there building plans. Flowers, our finger’s porportions and the way people increase mentally show signs of this spiral/ratio. Reminds me of a shell, nevertheless you can get the files here:

http://mattvogt.com/images/Fibonacci_spiral.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fibonacci_spiral.svg

Looking for an open source vector program? Try Inkscape

Also if you want to impress ladies walking by your desk, you can read some interesting things about how it works and where else it’s found in nature here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

This link, thanks to Jon (http://surrient.com), has some amazing discoveries as well:
http://www.miqel.com/fractals_math_patterns/visual-math-phi-golden.html

The final!

I blew off the dust of my old art archive!  My photoshop artwork from grade 12 (2003) is now online!  This definitely deserves front page:

The last month I’ve been getting up a couple hours before work and painting some art which will be auctioned off. This was great - I commited myself to submitting art which resulting in strong a focus and all proceeds go to help the youth!

A day away from drawing, you’ll notice the difference. Two days away from drawing, everyone notices a difference!

-John Delaney

What do you have to do? If you asked me at the start of April I would probably pull out a massive list. The list would have around 50 thoughts on it, scribbles, coffee stains, easy tasks crossed out… and difficult tasked darkened with ink from me doing multiple pen passes pondering when I’d get these terrible tasks out of the way…

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Did this for May’s ten second club challenge.

Design Journal:
I thought about what the speaker didn’t have. In this case the first couple of things that came to mind I ran with (thanks intuition!) comfort, attention, understanding. I then thought how would I feel in his shoes? Yes, I did some acting, bearing the office’s laughter, keeping in mind how bad I want what he’s lacking. Did some stick/box man gestures and broke down the energy of the voice track. (modeled stuff, rigged characters) Keyed (linear) poses holds/inbetweens and kept smoothing and adding details all the while posting on forums. I found, after I blocked and knew where she was going, if I focused on 100 frames at a time, looping & taking notes I stayed focused on the details (chunk at a time). Lit scene and did a speedypaint, added gong and dusted off hands.

http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/

Thanks to Jon (of Surrient) finding out about this handy tool, I now have a spell check on any editable text on any website, even a search box! Although nothing beats dictionary dot com, this does save time checking in browser opposed to copying and pasting into openoffice! Simple setup, just make sure you download your language pack(s) by using the bottom right drop down menu.

Photography page is up and looking good!

Sample: