Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine Sculpture Process

I thought I'd show you guys part of the process I went through with Michael Defeo when creating the valentine girl sculpture. Mike works in Z-Brush which is a digital sculpting tool, first he made an initial rough pass based on this art of mine. However, he made her in a neutral standing pose because we want to make a few different pose variations down the line, and it'll be easier for him just to pose one model a few times than sculpt from scratch each time.
So I drew over images of Mike's first pass and made notes on how I'd like him to change it. This first one was done in a pretty strict "turn around" method as this made clear most of the important information.







There was certainly a good amount of back and forth of notes and revisions but always to the progressing improvement of the piece. There were plenty of surprises for me, sometimes something looks great in a 2D drawing but when you bring it into 3D it doesn't work or it breaks something else. Definitely a great learning experience.





This video shows the final standing version, the fruit of the notes and revisions.

valentineFinalDefault from michael defeo on Vimeo.

Then Mike posed her and we continued the revision process a little longer.




And very soon we called her done.

valentineFinal from michael defeo on Vimeo.

You can see a bunch more of Mike's process videos here.

Valentine's Day at Wonder-Con

I'll be attending Wondercon at the Moscone Center in San Francisco April 1st to 3rd. You can find me at the Imaginism Studios table (AA86-87) with my good friends Kei Acedera and Bobby Chiu.
I'll be displaying this beautiful prototype of the Valentine Candy Girl statuette sculpted by Michael Defeo. Michael also hand painted this 3D print out of his Z-brush file. Check out this nifty video he made on his painting process for the piece on his blog.







Photos are by my good pal Juan Hernandez.
Thanks Juan!

Happy Valentine's Day!

As an extra special Valentine treat, I thought I'd give a sneak peak at a statuette I'm planning to produce. I worked very closely with digital sculptor extraordinaire Michael Defeo, and I think he did a pretty bang up job. She's based on this Valentine piece I did last year . Right now she only exists as a ZBrush file. Whether she'll be cast in vinyl or resin, at this point I don't know. There is no release date in sight as well. So hold on tight, time will tell.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Candy Girl

My wife and I received some awesome wedding gifts, but this one from Kei Acedera takes the cake. Or "dessert" may be more appropriate. Based on this piece I painted as a Valentine gift for my wife. Hand sculpted (with sculpey I believe) by the ridiculously talented Kei, who has bravely ventured into the realm of three dimensional pin up. A place I have not yet dared to tread. I'm awed, inspired and jealous even. It makes me want to mass produce this cutie.
Once again an enormous thank you from us both to Kei. Wow.





Photos by Fer Juaristi.

Technique

A lot of people have been asking how I paint this stuff, so for this latest piece I photographed the progression.














Also, here is an older progression I photographed a while back using the same technique only on a white watercolor paper.

And here is another, before and after concentrated water color application.

Happy Valentine's Day

...to all you crazy love birds out there.

(with a dash of Toriyama)