Jeff Zugale Art Blog

3x5 Art Challenge, Day 4

2015-03-06T13:05:00.001-08:00

A few concepts from our original Wii game Six Flags Fun Park.

3X5 Challenge, Day 3

2015-03-06T12:45:00.000-08:00

More game environments, these from Fantastic 4 2.

3X5 Challenge, Day 2

2015-03-03T18:46:00.000-08:00

For day 2, here's 3 environment sketches from the PS2 game Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow:

Drawn on actual paper! With actual pens!

3X5 Art Challenge Day 1

2015-03-02T18:15:00.000-08:00

My pals Kevin Chin and Sonny Strait have thrown me the 3 arts per day for 5 days challenge, so here we go. Here's 3 environment concepts from the infamous Sopranos video game, warts and all:

Glamorous "real-world" environments from New Jersey! It's like you're really there. Hope you like.

More Speedpaint WIPs

2014-11-26T10:16:00.000-08:00

I've had to slow down a bit because I'm busy with other stuff, but here's some more custom shape paints I've been doing:

Behringer Colony WIP 2

Behringer Colony WIP 1

The Usual Welcome - Halo Fan Art

Underground Hangar WIP 2

Underground Hangar WIP 1

Untitled0014, WIP 2

Untitled0014, WIP 1

Wait For It...

2014-11-11T17:35:00.000-08:00

Same techniques, a little more time, about 6 hours for this one. The girl is based on a photo but completely painted over. Background is all paint, mostly done with PS custom shapes.

New Painting: Skywatch Katahdin

2014-11-10T12:21:00.000-08:00

This one looked like Maine to me, so I put in a moose. :)

About 2 hours of work. Snuck in a tiny bit of photo texture of Comet 67P because SPACE!

New Painting: Intrusion

2014-11-09T22:39:00.000-08:00

2 hours, 18 minutes work gets you this:

I've got another 4 in progress at the moment! Here's a sneak peek of a bit of one of them:

DING! Artist Level Up

2014-11-06T10:36:00.000-08:00

Apartment View

I learned a new thing on Monday, and suddenly I can do this, and I can do all this in 3 days. :)

Arrival at Argelia

Scout Flight Lambda

Move to the Country

Objective in Sight

Dawn Strike

Stay In Cover

Huge thanks to Sparth and Vyle, who showed me the way! Lots more to come, because these only take a couple hours each at most.

Heavy Drop fake book cover: Complete!

2014-10-29T22:25:00.000-07:00

I'm calling this one done. Hooray! Below, the full piece without title and bleed border:

Book Covers (fake): WIPs

2014-10-02T17:38:00.001-07:00

Hey! Been working on some personal art, some fake sci-fi book covers. Here's the first 2:

The dark area shows the bleed. "R.J. McCann" is a made-up author name; apologies to all the real folks with that name!

The Lost Zeppelin: Discovery

2014-03-17T12:36:00.002-07:00

Here's one I've been sitting on for a while, a client project for a friend pitching a screenplay. Had to wait until it was properly pitched out before posting. I built the zeppelin as a rough model in Blender (pre-modo days for me), rendered it with some lighting then brought it into Photoshop and painted the rest. Also used a Sketchup Library 3D model of a helicopter to paint over.

I'll update this post with progress images in a few days, don't have time today.

This iPad thing is pretty cool

2014-02-25T10:20:00.000-08:00

Super-fast sketch I did in Wacom's Bamboo Paper iPad app. Like, 10-15 minutes, maybe.

Spaceship Time, Berkey Style

2013-11-06T11:31:00.003-08:00

Hi to all the space nuts from @NASASocial! It was really great to meet everyone and hang out at JPL with real life rocket scientists.

Here's a spaceship painting I did earlier this year in Procreate on my old iPad. It's a rough "master copy" of a painting by the incredible John Berkey that appears on page 44/45 of his collection Painted Space. I was trying out Procreate while also trying to get a feel for Berkey's style and interesting, exciting color palette.

I just got a brand new iPad Air, which will let me work at much higher res than this image, and tomorrow my new Wacom Creative Stylus arrives. I'm hoping the new stylus lets me do production-level work on the iPad.

More to come soon, stay tuned!

Tyrant's Bride, Shot 01 (Personal) - Update 1

2013-08-21T18:33:00.000-07:00

Hi! Been a while, huh? Well, I got a new job doing concept art at Blind Squirrel Games, so I've been a little busy, but hey, only about 2 months since last update, so I'm 67% faster! (Riiiiiiight.)

Had some time to work on my own stuff, so here's an update. After leaving it for a while, when I opened the image the first thing that hit me was that the parked fighters were looking odd and flat. So, reworked 'em:

Here's a detail of the left one before:

Here's after. Quite an improvement!

Gotta add shadows under it, but it's looking way better than the sketch.

Because it's all about being a better painter, this is all just straight paint. I think I've unlocked the key to making my brain paint without freaking out (besides not using the word "paint"), which is to use only a 100% opacity brush almost all the time. Just lay in flat tone or color, and to detail uprez, zoom in, and use a smaller brush. Seems to be working, because I'm having fun.

More to come sooner than later!

The Tyrant's Bride, Shot 1 (Personal Project)

2013-07-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

I get some time to work on my own stuff for a change! This one started as the tiny sketch on the upper left of the image below, about 1x3 inches. As I was scribble-sketching the idea for a wedding procession popped into my head so I kept with that theme and did a few more little sketches...

There's a closer view of the throne in both wide (film) and tall (book cover) versions, and then a little scribble of the giant sky fortress where the wedding is being held, in its docking bay. Next I scanned in the tiny sketch and placed it in an Illustrator file, scaled up to 11x17, where I did a pretty rigorous perspective layout.

I'd meant to do more of the line work in Illustrator, but it was just taking too long, so I printed it out on 11x17 paper and hand-sketched the rest of it. Still feels better to use the pen - and it's far faster.

Then I scanned the drawing back in, brought it into Photoshop, and started laying in the values:

And now I'm defining values in more detail and slowly painting out the line art, which I copied and flattened down onto the background at about 40% opacity (top image). I'm keeping my layer count small and so far doing all the painting on the Background layer. The background sky is a placeholder made from a photo, I'll paint over it to shape the clouds in a graphic arrangement that works better with the foreground elements. I have a pretty solid idea for color palette, but I'll be adding that very late in the process.

A Bit O' Expansive Spaceship Love

2012-12-10T15:21:00.000-08:00

Got a nice link today from (multiply pseudonymous) SF author James S. A. Corey, writer of one of my favorite recent SF series "The Expanse":

http://www.danielabraham.com/2012/12/10/its-not-really-fan-art-when-youre-a-professional/

Since I love to draw spaceships, I sometimes draw ships from books that I like, and sometimes those drawings get to the writers! This fills me with the warms. :)

If you like SF, you really had better read Leviathan Wakes and Caliban's War before Corey releases Abaddon's Gate. I pretty much guarantee you will devour them and still be hungry for more! Find these fine tomes hither.

Walther P99 3D - Geo Complete 10/16

2012-10-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

Here's my 3D Walther P99 with geometry complete. I wanted to actually model the hand grip ridges on the rear of the slide (rather than using a displacement map) to learn how do do such an intricate geometry that's cutting into existing meshes and across existing curvature in a clean and efficient way.

This is a very hi-res model, intended as a hero prop usable in cinematic closeups. Before the ridges it ran about 17K polygons, whereas now it's a bit over 22K.

I imported the model over to modo601 using .FBX format to do these renders, replacing the Maya default material with modo's sort of whitish clay default. Here's a detail closeup of the rear left, showing the complex geometry where the slide, stock and striker mechanism come together.

Lots of great reference images out on the Internet helped me get the details very close to the real weapon. Use reference! Always!

Screenshots from Maya, where I built the model as my final project for the Gnomon Maya Fast Track; here's a clean side view:

And same view with wireframe-on-shaded to show the polygons.

From here, the next step is displacement maps for the Walther logo, a lot of type that appears all over the piece, the little traction bumps on the stock grip area, and the overall texture of the stock which is made of molded plastic with fiberglas reinforcement. It's got a very slight pebbling texture over most of it that alternates with slick flat areas. Bump map will probably be best for that, but the type and logos need to be displacement to "look right."

What I learned from building this is that I really enjoy building stuff like this, in the same way that I like drawing vehicles and other hard-surface stuff. That's good news, as I was worried that I wouldn't; 3D is the way everything's going even in concept art, so I feel like work will stay fun as I transition over!

New Website & Demo Reel!

2012-10-15T11:15:00.002-07:00

Welcome to the new JeffZugale.com! I've done a complete redesign of the site with the help of Skytemple, who did all the hard work so I could just make art. There's a lot of new stuff up there to look at, especially on the Portfolio page where you'll find most of the art.

While there is an Artblog section where I'm starting to mirror this blog, this will remain my primary Artblog for some time until all functions of the new site are set up properly.

I also did a new concept art video demo reel, which I put up on YouTube - here it is:

You'll probably notice that the comics and music stuff seem to have disappeared; this is also temporary, and if you have links to the old site they will still work (though some of the old scripts will not). It was really important to emphasize the new artwork first. Everything else will return over time.

Hope you like the new look and art. Please share with your art friends!

Concept Paints Update WIP, 10/4

2012-10-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

Got farther on these two but forgot to post them, been a little busy, heh. On the purple one, the sunset clouds background kindly provided photographically by the mighty John Scalzi.

Slowing down a bit on these because I'm looking for work, but will keep posting regularly.

Gnomon Live Sketches, 10/03

2012-10-03T11:14:00.000-07:00

I went to the awesome Gnomon Live workshop this past weekend to see some of the best concept people in the business talking about their work and doing live demos. So great. I take lots of notes at events like this, and between writing down choice bits of knowledge I doodle all over the notepad. Thought you might like to see some.

These are shown pretty much in the same way they appear on the pages, though I've done some scaling and flipping to here and there to make a nice graphical layout.

I can literally do this all day. Why yes, I am into muscle cars... how did you know? :)

More Painting WIPs, 9/28

2012-09-28T11:33:00.000-07:00

Keep going, keep going... I like this one above! I'm trying hard to get just a few more of these to a more finished state before this weekend's Gnomon Live event to have in my portfolio and demo reel to show around.

I think this train station needs a little greenery inside, hm? Seems a bit stark.

Environment Sketches > Color, 9/27

2012-09-27T13:16:00.000-07:00

Ah, you thought I went back to hibernating again? Not so! I've been working really hard on all those previous paintings, on redesigning my website, and on putting together a demo reel. Fun! In this post, I've taken a bunch of those pen-on-paper environment drawings from a while back (here's some) and done a quick, marker-style color and lighting pass on them.

These will be seen in the demo reel. I'll let you know when the site redesign beta is ready to look at, in just a few days, and the reel will be there.

A couple versions of the next one, tried a couple different ways:

Some more updates tomorrow with progress on the production paintings, so stay tuned...

Spaceport Night WIP 9/21

2012-09-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

Another continuation of the quickpaints. This one's fighting me, I'm getting frustrated with it, so I'm going to put it down and come back in a few days. Nice to have that luxury, instead of having an AD standing behind me waiting for it. :)

Good thing: got to see the Shuttle Endeavour and 747 carrier plane fly right over my house, with my little boy up on my shoulders. HUGE and close and loud and awesome!

Greening Installation WIP 9/20

2012-09-20T15:49:00.000-07:00

Here's the next uprezzed image I'm working on from the 4-ups, calling it "Greening Station". Not sure if that means it's some kind of terraforming thing or if it's a derelict station where nature is moving in. Works either way. I don't think I can get more detailed on this one in an efficient way with just painting - it would take a week to render out all these little bits and trees. I'll have to use photo texture and custom brushes to quickly get a tighter result.

I think I'll move on to the purple spaceship image next. More tomorrow...