Interview on ZBrush Central

I was interviewed by Pixologic on behalf of Image Engine about the use of ZBrush for the work we did on Tarsem Singh's "Immortals".

You can check it out at:

http://www.pixologic.com/interview/image-engine/immortals/1/

StudioDaily on "Immortals"

More on Image Engine's work on "Immortals".

This time, an article from StudioDaily.

Image Engine Immortals

FX Guide talks to Image Engine about the work on Immortals. Mike chats to vfx supervisor Simon Hughes and Executive Producer Shawn Walsh about the film, which was shot in Montreal.

Direct link HERE.

Immortals Trailer

A new trailer is available for "Immortals", Tarsem Singh's vision of the Greek myth of Theseus and the Titans.
I was senior digital artist on this project for a good chunk of 2010 and early 2011.
"Immortals" will be in theaters November 11, 2011.
Link HERE.

"District 9" - Lighting Reel

In lieu of a full demo reel with shots from most of my work for the past 3 to 4 years, I have included a lighting reel with the shots I worked on for "District 9".

Sorry, it's the only edited reel I have at this point. But I am working hard to finalize a proper demo within the next couple of months!

You can hop straight to the D9 Reel page HERE.

Image Engine Designs

I have been flexing my rusty graphic design muscles at Image Engine, creating pieces for our marketing department over the last months.
Worked on some banners, promo posters and crew t-shirts for "Disctrict 9", "The Thing", "The Twilight Saga" among others.
You can see a few that are available at the Personal Works area of the website. Direct link HERE.

ZBrushing...

Posted a new ZBrush personal work at the Pixologic forum.
I've been wanting to go back to ZBrush full on for quite some time...
This was an exercise in detail and some of the new brush options and texture painting capabilities.
Still, there's SO MUCH MORE to be learned!... :P

Hope I can keep up the rhythm...

Here are some images of the exercise in progress:

Late posting... "Suburbia"!

Ok, this should have been posted a while ago.
"Suburbia" is a large chain of clothing stores in Mexico. They asked for a commercial saying "this Christmas, Santa would deliver more gifts than ever because he found better prices at Suburbia"...

The team effort was tremendous in this project because of the extremely tight schedule: we had less than 30 days to all of the CG production.
I was honored by everyone's commitment and concern for quality.
I believe we achieved something remarkable with such an aggressive deadline!

Thanks guys! You all ROCK! :D

MOVIE

At Last!...

True. I have been sloppy...
It's been quite a while since I last posted something here... Year's End, Christmas, New Year's, Back to Work... All these events took their toll on my blogging.

I've been working on a model on my spare time for a while.
I started it in Mudbox, but I'm doing all the detailing and finishing work in ZBrush before I go into Maya for final rendering.
Did some tests with the nice (and fast) fake skin shader in ZB, just so I could be able to see it look a little bit nicer than with the boring gray shader.






I'll post some updates as it progresses... stay tuned! ;)

From clay, to clay...

Yeah!... After too long a while I've decided to get back to sculpting!
Since I was a kid, modeling with plastiline or clay has always been great fun, and a way to ease my mind of anything other than the tips of my fingers. :)

I've been wishing to get back to it after I took a brief course at Israel Kislansky's atelier here in São Paulo.
So we set up a group of 6 friends from work, taking one four-hour class a week with Israel. Those four hours FLY! Heheh
It's amazing how we get immersed in the work!

We are currently focusing on blocking and structuring the pose. Specially the torso and legs.
There's a model (Denise) who poses for us during the classes, and we average 3 to 4 different poses each day.
We use Israel's techniques for blocking and establishing the initial volumes and go from there. He follows each one's progress, bringing our attention to the details we tend to miss - especially in this initial stage were we tend to "loose our minds" on the details and sometimes forget the "big picture". Hehe...

I strongly suggest everyone should try this. I fing it quite therapeutic, and for those who work with animation, 3D and all these sorts of things, it's great for training your eyes and sense of space and volumetry.

DuPont showcased

Motionographer.com is one of the best sources of information about the subject of motion design on the internet today.
Countless articles, interviews and in-depth, behind-the-scenes articles on the top motion design projects and houses on the planet.

They are currently showcasing an interview and "behind-the-scenes" article on the making of the DuPont ad produced by Lobo earlier this year.
I'm glad to have had the opportunity to join the production early on, and work along with both Lobo and Vetor Zero teams on this challenging, abstract project.

The whole spot can be viewed from my website through this link. And the whole article can be found here.

The article is quite thorough and features some examples of early visual development and production tests.
This project was quite a challenge because of the extremelly abstract concepts and sheer ammount of elements that represented DuPont's reach over many areas of research and production. These elements had to be portrayed in a flowing visual "dance" that was brilliantly developed by our design team at Lobo, collaborating with our 3D and R&D departments at Vetor Zero.

A great example that team-work cannot be beaten!

Chipicao redesign!

Chipicao is a popular brand from Chipita - a subsidiary of Vivartia S.A. - that produces various pastry products sold throughout Europe and a few Eastern countries like Egypt, Lebanon and Kazakhstan.
Chipicao is a chocolate-filled croissant targeted to kids, and "Chipi" is the brand's mascot.

We were approached by a Portuguese ad agency that was participating in a bid to get the whole Chipicao account for all Europe. They wanted a full redesign of the character to aim towards a more pre-adolescent audience.
This is our first version of that, and it helped the agency to nail the account right away!

The 3D model, and character rig were done by my good friend Alex Liki. I handled art direction, shading and lighting.
I'll post a new version soon that has the final features of the character, plus a few other angles.
Stay tuned!

Still drawing!

Gotta keep drawing!...
I feel like I'm getting rusty... you spend too much time with a computer, and you end up loosing some of your "analog skills"... Heheh

I miss drawing more, I miss photographing, sculpting, acting, singing...
Gotta find myself some time to get back to these things, get back to doing art!

I'll slip some pages of my sketchbook here once in a while... maybe just as a reminder to me that I've gotta keep filling those pages more frequently!

And hopefully, in time, I'll brush most of the rust off!! ;)

Yeap! We've been beta testing Mudbox too! :)
It is Beta and I can't say anything about it apart from showing some of the work I'm doing with it...

This is my very first Mudbox model, and it is NOT finished...
Actually, I am not sure if I'll finish it or not. I might just keep on doing more and doing different things to push my skills with the software.

I'll keep posting new tests as I progress...

Cheers!