Magic Clam's Art Place

A Place to Showcase my Art

[magicclamarts-blog]

Here’s a surreal pinup I did of Taveen a while ago. I’m a big fan of Red/Black/White color schemes, and wanted to try something a bit different. If you look closely, you can see that her skin is just a super pale version of her regular skin tone...

Created in Vue, character from Poser.

[magicclamarts-blog]

Here’s another picture I created in Vue a while ago. Haven’t really done much in the way of new art recently due to holidays and such, but hopefully I’ll get back into it as the new year begins.

Hope you all had a great holiday season!

Thanks for following along with my art!

[magicclamarts-blog]

Quick render of the progress I’ve made on Brin’s bar, The Event Horizon.

Added some plants, changed up the labels on the bottles, added more objects to the display cabinet and tossed some coasters around the bar. 

Also did quite a bit more work on texturing. I worked with the UV maps on the wood so that it wasn’t repeating so much.

Thanks for looking!

[magicclamarts-blog]

Have had a cold for the past few days, so I haven’t been doing much, but I did make some progress on Brin’s bar. It’s called the Event Horizon, she’s been running it for a few years since she quit the full-time soldier business. 

I still have to add more details to the environment. My wife suggested some plants, and I’ll probably add some other nicknacks (is that how you spell that?) and whatnot to the shelves. I also need to model some plates and more glasses and stuff to fill things in. I have some additional texture work to do as well, there is some repetition in the wood that I’m going to get rid of.

Modelling in 3D really makes you keenly aware of how much random stuff exists in everyday spaces.

Bar interior purchased from DAZ3D and modified with some of my own textures. Rendered in Blender 2.79.

Thanks for looking!

[magicclamarts-blog]

This is an art blog... so here’s some art!

This image was created in Vue last year during a particularly productive time. There are some things I’d probably change about it today, but I’m still pretty happy with how it turned out.

The original caption on DA was “Sometimes you can see more with the lights out..”

Thanks for looking!

[magicclamarts-blog]

It’s Throwback Thursday (I realized)... so here’s an older image from 2015.

The image is called Giant’s Staircase. This was one of the first (and I think... only) time I tried playing around with rain in Vue. It’s not super visible, but I think it turned out ok.

The small robot from another picture is in here too... can you spot him doin’ his thing?

Thanks for looking!

[magicclamarts-blog]

Here’s a sci-fi corridor, because I don’t know...

This image was created using D880′s sci-fi corridor model, then editing some of the textures and doing some additional modelling to randomize it a bit.

You can find his stuff over on Sketchfab...

https://sketchfab.com/distance880

Thanks for looking!

[magicclamarts-blog]

Here’s a picture of Taveen and her neighbor Mr. Smith in a version of her apartment that I composed in Vue. This is an older picture from a few years ago, but I still like the character interaction.

Hopefully more new stuff coming soon!

Thanks for looking!

[magicclamarts-blog]

This is a very short comic I did in Vue. I’ve made many attempts in the past at comics, but have never had much luck. So for this project, I wanted something very simple that I could finish in 1 day. 

I had a pulling-away shot in mind, so I created the environment, then rendered multiple separate images and put the whole thing together in Corel Paint.

Overall, I’m happy with how this turned out, and even though it’s really simple, I think the visuals and the story blend well together.

Thanks for looking!

[magicclamarts-blog]

Two versions of the same image created a couple years apart. The picture is called Metallic Garden, though in retrospect, there really isn’t much metal in it except the spheres... 

Anyway... The second image expands on the first one, I wanted to make the garden seem more expansive. The first image looked to me like the character in the foreground was tiny in a normal sized garden...

Wanted to enhance the sense of scale with the second image. Also created a better ecosystem and added some small-ish shrubs for variety.

Image created in Vue, character from Poser.

Enjoy!

[magicclamarts-blog]

Here’s another throwback from ye olde year 2000. This one was created in Bryce3D and is an actual attempt at a landscape. I haven’t looked at this one for a VERY long time and I don’t remember the mountains being so crunchy... :)

This was an example of an accidental effect... I’m don’t remember how I achieved the dark halos around the sun, but I ended up zooming out and seeing them and thinking it looked really cool.

There were a lot of these types of pictures back then where I’d accidentally discover some weird effect and then build a picture around it... doesn’t happen as often these days... :\

Thanks for looking!

[magicclamarts-blog]

Hey everyone!

So, I’ve mentioned in previous posts that for years Vue by E-On Software was my tool of choice for rendering. And how recently, I’ve switched over to Blender since the current version of Vue was giving me trouble...

Well, Vue is highly specialized for creating outdoor scenes, but since I’m mostly using Blender now, I wanted to see how hard it would be to create a decent outdoor environment in Blender.

The above picture is the result of my first attempt.

~Narrative part~

Taveen stands in the Broken Fields next to the Heart of Kef. Never in the same place, the rock drifts throughout the fields. Sometimes crashing into other rocks, chipping away at the crystals that keep it afloat. Though years ago, efforts were made to protect it, it had proven too difficult or impractical to contain it without destroying the surrounding fields which are a sacred site. So it was decided that it should be left as it is, to last however long it lasts.

Resources:

Rocks thanks to - Yughues

Particle system tutorial (for the grass) from Andrew Price over at Blenderguru

Background tree textures and HDR sky from Poliigon

I also used one of my own pastel drawings as the texture for the dress. :)

Thanks for looking!

[magicclamarts-blog]

Hi everyone. 

This is my first ‘Behind the Scene’ post. Decided to do the request piece I did for my friend Professor Buffalo.

The first image is the original picture I rendered a few years ago in Vue (just for comparison).

When I decided to re-do this image in Blender, I wanted to try out the Compositing Node. I figured it made sense to render the exterior in Vue (which specializes in that), then render the interior in Blender.

So the second picture is the setup in Vue for rendering the outside scene. I imported a model of the apartment so I could get my camera angle roughly correct, then rendered the exterior scene w/o the apartment visible. Fourth picture shows that result.

Then I setup the interior scene in Blender. Once the scene was complete, I used the composite node to combine the background image with the foreground Blender scene, then rendered.

The final image is the result.

Hope you enjoyed this, thanks for looking!

[magicclamarts-blog]

Here’s another image progression for Throwback Thursday. I’ve always liked this one, though it never got much attention over on DeviantArt.

A picture of a cyborg taking in the wonder of a bright blue sky for the first time. 

The first image was done in Vue in 2013, the second in 2015. At the time I really liked the first picture’s concept, but later felt that there were a lot of problems with the execution/composition. I wasn’t too happy with the blurry background people, or the texture on the stone railing.

I did really like the deep blue color of the sky though, something which I failed to replicate in the second version. However, I felt like the second version had more of the mood I was going for, so... trade offs...

More to come!

[magicclamarts-blog]

In addition to creating random scenes when I’m directionless with art, I also like creating random objects. Here’s an example WIP. No idea what this is, but it’ll probably end up in a sci-fi scene at some point. 

When I first started with Blender, one of my followers on my other blog 

( https://magicclam.tumblr.com ) 

suggested I try the HardOPS add on for Blender. It’s a hard-surface modelling add on that makes creating sci-fi objects quick and easy. I picked it up and have been enjoying it ever since.

It’s a lot of fun to mindlessly slice, cut and create little sci-fi doodads. :)

I think I’ll be adding more controls to this one, maybe an LCD display or something... who knows. Right now it just has a power button and maybe a reset button. The last picture shows the device powered up with a few lights on.

[magicclamarts-blog]

Here’s another image from the ancient days. I created this one in Bryce3D back in 2007.

I think the buildings were just a height-mapped terrain, though from a distance they’re not too terrible... :)

The original picture was titled ‘Nature’

[magicclamarts-blog]

Sometimes when I have no idea what to do, I just start putting random stuff together. This exterior scene is the result of one of these mindless sessions.

For some reason I’m calling this place Symphonia Citidel. 

Not sure what I’m going to do with it, I wanted to put a character in here (either Taveen or Brin) but wasn’t sure what I’d have them doing, so for now it’s just an empty scene.

This scene was composed and rendered in Blender 2.78c. The scene is lit by an HDRI image downloaded from Poliigon.

The basic assets (floor panels, barriers, bridge panels and floating structure) were created by one of my favorite artists over on Sketchfab...  https://sketchfab.com/distance880

Did a small upgrade to my PC recently where I added a second GPU to speed up render times, so this scene is partially the result of wanting to test out render times with the new GPU. :)

Thanks for looking!