Riste Sekuloski Art Blog

Merry Christmas!!!

2010-12-25T16:15:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

Those are characters from my upcoming short animation (it has been in limbo for several years) that I am hoping to be able to finish after my residency in Internal Medicine. So sometime 2011 expect to see the adventures of Einsteindwarf and his robotic companions!

2010-11-25T17:14:00.000-08:00

This is a little robot guy that I made tonight in my spare time between two sessions of studying as a little animation project with my son (he is seven and would love to know something about 3D animation). I love the simplicity of the character. It was rigged with 'rigify' addon for Blender in about 10 minutes (together with inserting correction bones to keep his belly rigid - he is a robot after all)

Many thanks to Nathan Weigdahl that develops 'rigify'

Grayface

2010-10-04T16:03:00.000-07:00

This is a little dabbling in mypaint. Mypaint is an excellent opensource painting tool - imho best natural media painter without the bloat that overwhelmed other painting apps like Painter...

About the painting: I think that this guy has character, and it is probably influenced by my re-reading of Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I have read Holmes in Croatian translation and i loved it (so much that I have read those books at least three times). However, I have to say that I loved Doyle's writing much more in its English form. Timeless, intelligent writing and above all, it sounds real...

I hope that I'll get some other comment besides usual spam messages in Chinese ;)

Madgorum

2010-07-29T23:16:00.000-07:00

Those are firs pages of a comic which I did with the script by Robert Burke Richardson.

It was supposed do be graphic novel of some 90 pages. An idea was a blast - Madgorum is a barbarian which gets to investigate devious plot and saves the world in the process. Barbarian detective! Wow - I love the idea, the world in which everything happens and most of all, the characters!

Unfortunately it didn't work out as I was unwilling to work for a percentage of the sales - in my book, wherever I worked that way, God did pay me for it, but people didn't ;)

Colors by Paul John Little.

Google for Robert, he has some amazing work published online, and some of the stories happen in the same world as "Madgorum".

2010-04-11T23:26:00.000-07:00

Is it possible that I posted my last blog that long ago... well it is ;-)

Anyway, here is my birthday card - I got so much happy birthday messages on facebook that I decided to make a little illustration to thank everyone... so I did!

Last year has been good to me - I've learned so many things and with God's help, this one will be even better.

This is a character that I plan to use in a short movie that has been cooking for years, but a real life seems to get in a way.

p.s. don't try to count the candles, there are way too many--- I guess I am THAT old ;)

Woo-hoo! I have been professional animator for a month!

2009-08-05T05:14:00.000-07:00

This is not much of news by itself, but I think that I learned some stuff that can be applicable in home studio / hobbyist environment, so here I go:

Due to some happy turn of events, I have been able to find a time (apart from my daytime job) and work for a while at “fx3x” (Macedonian fx company, have been doing fx for movies as: “Terminator: Salvation”, “Punisher: War Zone”, “Golden Compass”, “Aviator”, etc...)

They have 3D animation department, and were hiring at a time, so I applied with my Blender stuff and got hired. I was able to work afternoons during May and June and full time for a month during most of July. After that, reality rised its ugly face, and I had to return to my daytime job ;-)

They are using Maya (which I have never used before) but I was able to get up to speed in only couple days of tinkering with it (I did my animation test third day after I started, and they decided that I could do actual shot from the movie). I was very happy to find out that almost all of my Blender knowledge is applicable in Maya. Maya is very ugly app (it looks ugly), but make no mistake, it is animation and effect powerhouse, and (after some tweaking) has very animator friendly interface. I have to say that I was surprised that some things that I took for granted in Blender are strangely absent from Maya (for example, paste mirrored pose) which is very strange, having in mind that Maya has about zillion different tools and settings. Maya’s model referencing is a dream come true (proxies in Blender) and I wish that Blender had that robust system of referencing.

The studio was working on the outsorced direct – to – DVD movie project for a company from USA, and I was impressed by the quality and quantity of animation that was produced. During this time I animated 13 shots from the movie which result into about minute and a half of screen time.

Leasons learned:

I have noticed that there is an amazing number of 3D artists that aspire to became animators but most of them never move beyond rigging phase (me included). I have been thinking about the reasons for that and came to the conclusion that while everyone has strong feeling of control when modeling and rigging, that feeling just ebbs away when animating and we are loosing terra firma from beneath our feet. Animation has so many variables that it takes great leap of faith (and lot of work, LOL) to be able to pass that period of initial insecurity. So I think that I have learned few things which will enable me (and hopefully help someone that reads this) to work with greater confidence on projects of my (your) own.

You don’t need to have complete mastery of your 3D app to be able to animate! It came to a great surprise to me that at least two of the animators that were working on the movie (and me as third) had only superficial knowlege of Maya and were actually only versed in its animation tools (they had no idea about my questions about modeling, texturing or rigging in Maya, but were able to give detailed answers about some problems regarding animation)
Do your homework! If you have idea for an animation, first make sure that you have script, storyboards and layouts ready before starting animating. If possible, record the dialog! Make an animatic! It is an amazing help when you can have an overview how things will look when put together. You may save yourself a lot of grief! When looking to the layouts you can decide what needs to be modeled, and what left out. Also, having animatic and dialogue is great help when making decisions about timing of the animation. This is valid even when you animate something for practice! If you have clear idea about the structure of the animation and camera angles beforehand, you may concentrate on the performance for the camera. Nothing frustrates more than this: you make excellent piece of animation and than decide upon a camera angle, and you have to tweak every keyframe, beacuse they don’t loook quite right from the camera! Grrr!
Respect the workflow: Modeling, Rigging, Layout, Animation and then Lighting of the scene, postproduction etc... I have learned this the hard way with my own projects: I animate something, make preview, but then I decide that I sould check out how the final render should look... and then I decide to tweak the lights, touch up the material of the bakground object... and all of the sudden, I have been working for a day and have nothing to show for it!

When animating, make a rule not to make final renders (this was made even easier for a simple reason: workstations were not able to make final renders, you needed to run a script to be able to use custom shaders... and this was a relief)
Try to finish your blocking before you make first animation preview (unless you absolutely have to)
Try to note all things that need to be corrected in the preview (playblast in Mayaspeak), write them down and make sure you correct them all before making another one – I couldn’t believe how much time I saved when I came to this conclusion!
Have someone to give you an honest oppinion (having supervising animator and director at hand helps, but you cannot carry them everywhere ;-)). Ask someone, or just watch the previews enough times, and ask yourelf: “How would Lasseter animate this?”

Animate a lot! I couldn’t believe how much my animation improved after just several days of doing it full – time (and that is not just me, there was at least one other novice that made very visible progress in a matter of days.
When you get “in the zone” you’ll be able to produce a lot of footage with quality beyond your wildest expectations. But have this in mind: you’ll need at least an hour of concentrated effort to be able to be “in the zone”. So, animating for 15 minutes today and 17 tomorrow just woudn’t do the trick.

Thank you for your attention. There was a bunch of other things that I consider important, but this is a condensed (and a bit too long) gist of it. If I have time, I’ll expand this a bit in a next couple of days.

Best regards,

Riste

Some new drawings

2009-04-21T13:06:00.001-07:00

Those are some assorted drawings done in the meanwhile:
Hellboy as a boy: my all time favourite character! I plan to color this little guy.

Vampire charging! This guy is thirsty & nasty! I would run if I were you!

Troll! Character design. I will color him an post him soon!

Balor! Giant from the celtic mythology

Character design for the national park Galicica. There is intention to have educational comic book with this guy. We'll see what will come out of him.

Here he is in a more sinister version!

This little guy is ringwraith from the "Lord of the Rings". He was done for mini-competition on "GameArtisans". Theme was "Baby villains". Pencil sketch.

Basic shading.

I have started adding the colors.

All of the sudden, I was here! No intermediate files saved (I am not sure that I clicked Ctrl+S in the meanwhile)

Final composition: I have added burning Barad - Dur in the background.

That's all folks! See ya soon!

Einsteindwarf free model and rig

2008-12-06T04:20:00.000-08:00

This spring I published an article in Blenderart #15 (www.blenderart.org) about development and rigging of my "Einsteindwarf" character. I decided to share the mesh and rig with Blender community.

Here is my post at the Blenderartists forum:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1271798#post1271798
(you can download the rig from there)

and I have been featured at Blendernation:
http://www.blendernation.com/2008/12/06/einsteindwarf-free-rig/

So, if you use Blender for 3D animation, here is a new toy to play with (some limitations apply, read the post at Blendernation)

SumoKnight: low polygon character model

2008-11-20T12:57:00.000-08:00

WOO HOO! It has been almost a year since my last post! Lot of things happened in a meanwhile, I have been to United States, I returned to Macedonia, had interviews in the game industry... so I haven't posted anything in a while.

This is Sumoknight, my pet project in a meanwhile. Concept art:

Finished 3D model, less than 1200 polygons!

Textured model: Color, normal and specularity map

Render in Game Engine: SumoKnight: low polygon character model (1105 polygons) fully textured, viewed in the game engine with Axe (152 polygons) and shield (64 polygons). This is “idle” action, so that he can move and not appear totally zombified.

Short animations with idle action can be seen on Vimeo:

http://www.vimeo.com/1937794
http://www.vimeo.com/1937633

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2007-12-25T02:01:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Riste

BLAST FROM THE PAST part three !!!

2007-10-23T07:56:00.001-07:00

This is one of my favorite projects, my wife Marina wrote wonderful lyrics in Macedonian and I have drawn the illustrations. Pages one to five for your viewing pleasure!

BLAST FROM THE PAST part two !!!

2007-10-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

Those are series of illustrations made for ALLCOOP (Alliance for Lake Cooperation of Ohrid and Prespa region). They published lovely booklet with which children are to learn basics of ecology while playing in nature. Of course it was made even better by me drawing its illustrations ;o)

BLAST FROM THE PAST !!!

2007-10-23T07:32:00.000-07:00

Rummaging through my CD archive, I have found those pieces! Previously unpublished on the web, those are series of cartoons made for the Lake Ohrid Conservation Project.

BunnyRider! Igor Knows!

2007-05-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

Some more art for your viewing pleasure!BunnyRider! He is really afraid of something!

Igor Knows!

This is (imho) one of the greatest Hollywood character creations! This is the way I see him!

Three comics pages in pencil:

2007-05-29T01:14:00.000-07:00

Generic Ork vs Generic Dwarf assisted by Noble… anyway, see for yourself:

Three comic pages set in Tolkien’s kind of universe. Comments and critiques welcome!

In the meanwhile...

2007-05-08T05:27:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted anything for a little while... the reason for that is that some of the stuff made in the meanwhile is yet un-postable (for copyright reasons, although it hasn't been paid yet), and this is the other thing that is postable ;-) (or Blogable... hmmmm, one wonders about those new words...)

This is my 3D - character, made for short animation which I am planning to do in a next few months. It was modeled in Blender (free 3D app, but as powerful (and even more powerful) as anything out there: visit www.Blender.org). This is Ambient Occlusion render of the modeled character without textures. (Ambient Occlusion fancy word to describe light condition which is similar to the cloudy day)

The same character with textures. (textures describe surface properties of the material: color, bumps, the way it reflects the light, etc, etc). Character is also rigged, which means that he is able to move (and change his facial expressions) - in fact he can act! More of that very soon!

If interested, you can visit thread on the blenderart forums which covers this character creation on the almost step - by - step basis!

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=91877

SantaDwarf brings Christmas present to one Dwarfling

2006-12-26T00:59:00.000-08:00

Inspiration for this piece came with the season... It was actually drawn and painted on Christmas Day (most of it after son and missus went to sleep ;-D)

Pencil on paper, scanned and inked digitally:

I wanted to use warm honey color for the background when painting: I am quite satisfied with the final result. After this stage I felt that adding more color to the picture would actually take away some of its magic.

At the end I just added vignette and my blospot adress:

I hope you like it!

My take on Marvel Superheroes

2006-11-21T07:40:00.000-08:00

Those are four illustrations that with Marvel Superheroes...

Daredevel has always been one of my favourite characters... but villains he faces... brrr, scary! This ilustration contains all of the coolest villains in one place (and one lonely hero ;o))

Thor & Co. (you know)

Once upon a time there was this mini - serial with a guy named Bloodstone... I have read and re-read it several times... and when I heard that there was comicbook with his daughter, I just had to make them meet (now, Bloodstone, being dead, just had to be zombified, don't you think?)
Ever since I saw "Blade", I wanted to make an illustration, but making him fight just another vampire felt just too ordinary... so I thought: "Who is bloodthirsty enough to cause Blade to make an honest mistake?"... and I decided ;o)

They were all penciled on paper and then inked digitally... I hope you'll like them!
Comments are wellcome!

Paint & Color

2006-11-16T22:40:00.000-08:00

Paint & Color: I have colored Einsteindwarf drawing... I am very satisfied with selecion of the colors and overall balance of the piece. At first, it seemed bit awkward beacuse of the difference between shaded monochromatic version and this color version... I could paint in some more details, but I now consider this illustration finished.

Ink & paint

2006-11-15T02:34:00.000-08:00

I have decided to ink and paint one of the drawings:

Ink first!

For some time now I am using digital ink: Pencil drawing is scanned and inked in painting app (I am using Corel Painter Classic: simple, yet effective)

On to the Paint:

I love to put shadows and highlights first. I make decision about background tone and do the shading in different layers...
After few hours of work, I've get to this... Next thing would be to make decision of the color scheme, but I feel very satisfied with this phase, so I'll do some experimentation about the colors and decide if I would go further...

Second post!

2006-11-14T00:08:00.000-08:00

Hey! I like this! Those drawings are done several days ago... I hope that you'll like them!

"Longbeard"

"Pig raiders"

"Dwarf vs Mouse"

First Post

2006-11-13T22:54:00.000-08:00

This is my first post... I've ment to start my own blog for some time now, but I was samewhat wary of the comitment that would mean... I would have to regularly update and bring in new art, or the blog would lose its purpose...

Well, chalenge it is!

Those are two pieces that I've drawn yesterday: I hope that you'll like them:"Pest Control"

"EinsteinDwarf"