art&soul

[Amaruuk]

Thank you, Ana!

That bird there is a phoenix whose origin I've written up and may post somewhere at some point. Basically it involves a dawnbringer calling the sun in this dead valley that never saw light, and the energy from the sun was so potent there that it soaked into the ground and erupted out a dead volcano in the middle of the valley and turned into a pure white tree, which bore a fruit which was the egg from which she was born. Horrible run-on sentence there, but that's the gist of it. I have indeed been toying with the idea of giving her some accent color somewhere, and this is by no means her final design. I haven't totally worked her out yet at all actually, but she needed to be the star of this piece :3

 

[Amaruuk]

Here's a new illustration. Look at that happy face! Doesn't he just make you want to type up a comment? /brick'd

See here for more info on him!​

 

[Amaruuk]

Thought I'd share a still render of a 3D animation project I'm working on called Pencil Love - also known as How to Tell a Fellow CG Artist You Love Him. X3

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[Amaruuk]

Here's some more dawnbringers I drew tonight. Still working on the design.

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What's a non-fanartist gotta do to get some comments around here? >.>

 

[Miaka]

IT'S AWESOME AMAZING ALL OF THEM ARE AMAZING

 

[Amaruuk]

Had a bad day so I drew something pretty to try and cheer myself up. :3

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[Trent_Jayir]

Aw, sorry you were having a bad day, Kina. mine was pretty lame too but that picture cheered me right up! It's so delicately handled, the colour scheme, the sense of depth.... Its all really lovely to look at and makes me feel like Im there :)

 

[Watertownronin]

I like your pokemon characters here but I feel that you'd get ahead more of you vary the shapes your using to create these characters. Most of the pokemon I see here are all very elongated characters and while that's good I feel it would make your selection of pokemon more diverse.

 

[Amaruuk]

@Miaka - Thanks!

@Trent - Thank you so much! Glad I could cheer you up, too, lol :3

@Watertownronin - You must be in the wrong thread because there isn't a single Pokemon (or Fakemon) here. Also the lack of 'diversity' is mainly due to the fact that most of these pictures are of the same creature.

 

[Amaruuk]

Here's a new digital painting I did today:

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[Amaruuk]

Felt like drawing a fruit bat yesterday:

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[Amaruuk]

I painted this random gift art for someone yesterday:

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[Amaruuk]

These are refined design concept drawings of the white phoenix (and a little bit about her):

Here is a creature who is unique in her world. She is known as the Bird of Life, the White Phoenix, or even the Daughter of Ourana. The bird was born from the fruit of the white tree which spawned when a dawnbringer called the sun to a land cursed with darkness. In gratitude, she blessed the lone dawnbringer with eternal youth (not immortality), which remains in effect so long as she is alive. She also has the ability to heal the sick or wounded.

The phoenix herself can die or be killed, but so long as the tree lives, it will bear another fruit from which she will be reborn. The only way to destroy the tree is to take away the sun - to kill the dawnbringer who dwells here and calls it each morning, or otherwise prevent him from carrying out his task.

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[Signomi]

Very beautiful work, Kinarii.

Not only are your realistic drawings always inspiring to look at, but the story about the Bird of Life really emphasises how majestic of a creature it truly is and how imaginative you are.

 

[Kura]

Great work! I especially love the concept stuff. If you wanna explore it you could also try your hand at doing "studies" like of how the wings are built or bones studies.. or like the texture of the feet or something :3 I just remember looking at pages of some encyclopedias and thinking it was super interesting to explore the animals in that sense.

Either way keep at it, you have a beautiful style :3 I'd love to see more!

 

[Amaruuk]

Oh, thank you so much, guys! Your comments mean a lot ♥

@Kura - Yeah, studies are wonderful (and essential) things. My school sucks at having a lot of animal anatomy (or anatomy in general) instruction in classes but they encourage drawing from life and from photos. There is usually a trip to the zoo headed by one of the teachers each quarter, too. Getting more specific with studies is a good idea though - I need to do that more for sure.

Here's a model I started yesterday - made in Maya. Details will be done in ZBrush, then he'll get his fur and mane using a Maya plugin I taught myself recently, and of course texture will be painted probably in Photoshop unless I find time to learn Mari.

 

[Kura]

Oh, thank you so much, guys! Your comments mean a lot ♥

@Kura - Yeah, studies are wonderful (and essential) things. My school sucks at having a lot of animal anatomy (or anatomy in general) instruction in classes but they encourage drawing from life and from photos. There is usually a trip to the zoo headed by one of the teachers each quarter, too. Getting more specific with studies is a good idea though - I need to do that more for sure.

Here's a model I started yesterday - made in Maya. Details will be done in ZBrush, then he'll get his fur and mane using a Maya plugin I taught myself recently, and of course texture will be painted probably in Photoshop unless I find time to learn Mari.

Zoo trips are great!! Take advantage of those!!! ANd yeah definitely :3 Glad you know your stuff!

Nice model! I might actually bend the arms the other way because as an animator, (right now they'd be tucking forward) this sort of anatomy kind of confuses me a little as to how the wings would flap to hold the body weight. Otherwise gorgeous and very nice silhouette. Though if you were to show sketches of how the wings would fold up, it'd totally help and make it more believable. Or maybe just bend the arms back? I dunno.. there's something about it that breaks the amazing streamlined body that it has. By the way, the paws are great. Beautiful! And the anatomy of the legs are spot on :3 Perfect!!

Have you learned how to rig yet? I'm actually kinda the other way around as in.. I'm not too great with modeling (I was never taught how to do so properly/ don't know how to place edgeloops properly etc..) but rigging and animation are a forte of mine. Your modeling is pretty fantastic from what I can tell.. so I'd be curious to see how you animate :3

What version of Maya are you using btw? I may have a good plugin for you for fur that works a million times better than the regular fur dynamics that Maya comes with.It's called shave and haircut and although I haven't personally used it (I've had friends who have) from what I can understand it's a lot easier and more realistic especially with shaping fur direction.
http://www.joealter.com/
Unfortunately there's no plugin for 2012 yet.

Anyways good luck! I'd love to see it when it's finished.

 

[Amaruuk]

Thanks! He's actually a glider as opposed to actual powered flight. Those wing arms are mainly a climbing aid and not used for flapping. The anatomy of them probably could use work (they might stand to be longer, too) as this is my first real venture into believable animal design. I think it would also look better if I'd spread them out more laterally than vertically. I do have an older sketch of how a previous version of the wings fold (the principle is the same, I've just omitted the other limbs).

I will indeed be rigging him as well as at least two other things I plan to model (the phoenix and another creature I'm still designing). I just learned how to rig last quarter and it's fun! Also there's a whole tutorial series I found on rigging a feline body like this, as well as one about rigging bird wings (for the phoenix later). These critters are my babies, and whether I end up having time to do so by portfolio or not, I'm going to do animations with them, too. I'm also teaching myself Vue right now to do all the environments.

Actually, Shave and a Haircut is exactly what I plan to use for all his fur. I learned for myself that Maya hair and fur sucks (even my Mastering Maya book says use SaaH instead lol), so I found a Digital Tutors series and taught it to myself. As for Maya I still have 2011. The school hasn't shifted to 2012 and there's other stuff that's not updated to it yet so I'm hanging onto it for a while longer.

 

[Kura]

Thanks! He's actually a glider as opposed to actual powered flight. Those wing arms are mainly a climbing aid and not used for flapping. The anatomy of them probably could use work (they might stand to be longer, too) as this is my first real venture into believable animal design. I think it would also look better if I'd spread them out more laterally than vertically. I do have an older sketch of how a previous version of the wings fold (the principle is the same, I've just omitted the other limbs).

I will indeed be rigging him as well as at least two other things I plan to model (the phoenix and another creature I'm still designing). I just learned how to rig last quarter and it's fun! Also there's a whole tutorial series I found on rigging a feline body like this, as well as one about rigging bird wings (for the phoenix later). These critters are my babies, and whether I end up having time to do so by portfolio or not, I'm going to do animations with them, too. I'm also teaching myself Vue right now to do all the environments.

Actually, Shave and a Haircut is exactly what I plan to use for all his fur. I learned for myself that Maya hair and fur sucks (even my Mastering Maya book says use SaaH instead lol), so I found a Digital Tutors series and taught it to myself. As for Maya I still have 2011. The school hasn't shifted to 2012 and there's other stuff that's not updated to it yet so I'm hanging onto it for a while longer.

Ahhh totally! I see it now! Kinda like how a bat climbs rocks he can climb the side of cliffs :3 That's a very cool concept. I take back what I said about them because I see now how they're used :33 If you wanna improve them.. do it after you rig it up and try to add stretchy IK/FK on them so you can explore poses and making them "longer" and etc. If you find something you like better you can always reset the bind pose.. though save it as more than one file before you do because you wouldn't want it to mess up @_@

You're on a great path right now. I love that you know what you're talking about. :3 Are you taking a 3D course at school? CGSociety is great and so is CGPersia for resources so check those out. I graduated last spring and I finally bought a PC about a month ago. I just got through downloading some Maya cracks (I got 2012 and 2011) and I have to install them soon. :/ I wish I could buy the full version but it's so expensive.. and I wouldn't be using it for profit anyways (just personal stuff) so for that reason I think a crack is fine. But yeah Digital Tutors is great :33 Glad you're using it!!

If you plan on getting your own PC for it.. watch out for ATI and Geforce 400 series graphics cards.. as they make maya crash when you're handling a lot of geometry. .__. They aren't optimized for openGL.

Either way.. like I said :3 Good luck with everything and I can't wait to see what it looks like when you've finished!

 

[Amaruuk]

Yeah, exactly! I envisioned his climbing motion like that of a leopard with a big bat sitting on his shoulders. They roost in the highest places in the area during the night and glide down to the ground where they spend the day once the sun is called in the morning.

Oh, yes, I'm in school for this stuff period, lol. And CGSociety is wonderful. I have an account but still haven't posted. I joined originally to follow my muse (a wonderful CG artist who graduated from my school last December) while he was working on a piece for that Dominance War V thing. I want to try and enter the next one if I'm not too swamped, but right now I have a bit more work to do before I feel ready to show my face there. I mostly lurk and ogle the pretty stuff the professionals make lol.

Autodesk has Maya and stuff up for download and you can have it free for 3 years if you're a student. I've got Maya, Max, and Mudbox (though I haven't gotten a chance to play with the latter two). Vue I couldn't afford so I have a cracked one for now but I did finally get money for ZBrush so I can't wait to master it. My muse is all about some ZBrush, lol. He's totally a sculptor and isn't fond of Maya at all. Also I do indeed have an epic desktop computer that I got this past January specifically so I can work at home. The school computers are a joke anyway. You almost need your own to get anything done on time.

Yeah, I update my sketch blog with everything I'm working on (my blogs are the source of the image hotlinks I use here) plus I always write more details there about my projects along with the images rather than just 'here's a pretty picture I made' lol. I've got a massive text wall about the dawnbringer species in one of the posts. I've changed some things since, but yeah. I like being insanely thorough.