Saturday, November 27, 2010

Shoes

This is just a quick update on progress. As you can see below, I have the shorts of my latest character model pretty much finished and have moved on to the shoes. You have to understand though that I am working at a very slow pace. I really haven't even worked on the model at all for the past 2 or 3 days; what with Thanksgiving and all. But I hope to start working on it again and get it done quickly because Dominance War starts up in January and I would really LOVE to enter it.



I also drove up to meet some YouTube friends the other day and I edited another video that we shot. It's a sequel to an older one, but it's pretty action packed.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Working

My quest for a job continues. Lately I have been applying for more local jobs than industry ones simply because I want to be able to work and make money while I continue to build my portfolio. I need a lot more finished, industry level work in my portfolio in order to impress studio employers.

I am still working on my self portrait model. Here is what I have done of the high poly model so far:



I updated my site today with the Work in Progress of this model just to show that I'm not sitting around doing nothing, not to mention I think that this model already exceeds everything that is already on my site. Every model I make is better than the last. The rate that I'm completing things is slow though. This character model is taking way too long and I'm hoping to speed up the process soon so I can start working on my prop portfolio. Although, I fear a job would slow down this process even more.

It all boils down to the fact that I'm still adjusting to being out of school. It's only been a few months since I graduated and being at home with absolutely nothing to do is strange. Once I get accustom to a new schedule however, I should be able to begin churning out a constant stream of new content, posting on forums, and hopefully land some kind of work in the game industry.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Adventure Time

The other day I finished this peice of fan art for Adventure Time. AT is one of my newest favorite cartoons so I really wanted to make something with its characters. You can see it here http://allthatisfuzzy.deviantart.com/art/Adventure-Time-182603852?q=&qo=



I'm currently trying to get a hook on an art style for a comic book project. It's taking longer than I thought, but I've been looking at more and more comics recently to try and pull different things from different sources. The Dark Tower comics have an amazing look to them, but I've also been re-reading Watchmen as well as read the Walking Dead for the first time. They all have very different looks and feels but I'm confident that I can come up with something that's unique for this new project.

Ontop of all that, I'm still working on my self portrait model. I finally got the hang of retopologizing my models in 3Ds Max using the freeform tools. That is VERY exciting. Once I get all of these other projects under wraps, I can finish that model and then hopefully make a shit-ton of props.

This last week I made a few more YouTube backgrounds for some folks that requested them. The one you can see at youtube.com/couchpotatotheatre and the other at youtube.com/emmyblogs These don't really take long to do so they haven't gotten in the way of my other work.

However, this weekend I will be heading up to Parma Ohio for the annual Ghoulardifest. I missed last year due to swine flu but the year before that I helped work the event with Mike from couchpotatotheatre as well as the rest of the guys from TheTriangleChannel. This year will be no different, so I will be up there working for at least two days, staying the night at a friends apartment in Cleveland. Come stop by and meet everyone!

That's all for now. I have to go draw myself out of a hole.

-Matt

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Sky might fall

Still haven't landed a job, but it's not all bad. I've had plenty of time to work on my portfolio (although, I've spent a lot of time doing nothing). I'm sitting on a couple unfinished projects and once they are done it will look like I've actually accomplished something. The one unfinished project is my self portrait 3D model. As soon as I learn the freeform modeling tools in Max, the sooner I can retop my character and get him done. But before I do that, I want to finish this digital painting I'm working on. I started it a week or so ago and it's really coming along. Not wanting to give anything away, I'll just say it's a realistic interpretation of one of my newest favorite cartoons. It should be done within the next few days...I hope.

Speaking of drawing and painting, I may have landed that comic book gig. Maybe. I don't want to jinx myself or give out any info about the project, so I'm just going to leave it at that. But it's definitely exciting and I hope it all works out.

This past week I saw two movies, one of which was The Social Network which was very well done. I loved the characters (probably more than I would love their real life counterparts) and I loved the overall story in general. The other movie was Let Me In which is a literal remake of the Swedish film Let The Right One In which is a visual representation of the Swedish book of the same name. I read the book before I saw the original movie and really enjoyed it. The Swedish film was ok but lacked a lot of what made the book special. The new film really takes the original and remakes it shot for shot the same (except for the cat scene which was traded out for a car crash). The movie wasn't bad, but kind of unnecessary. The book still beats both and is probably more horrifying than the two movies combined (Tommy locked in a pitch black storage room with a mutilated, undead, pedophile...)

After playing the demo for EAs MMA today (which I had to sign up for an EA account using my email before i could play it
Also, Dominance War 5 is slated to start at the beginning of next year. If I'm not elbow deep in comic book art, I would really like to enter it. I don't believe I would be able to do that well (I probably wouldn't even place) but I think it would be fun and it would give me a project with an actual deadline which would contribute to me actually getting it done. As of right now, I have no idea how to enter the thing, but I made a new GameArtisans account and am waiting for further information to come forth. So that's something for me to look forward to.

There's a lot of stuff going on even if it looks like it's a lot of nothing.

-Matt

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Site Launch

I finished up my site and launched it yesterday. The site hosts my art portfolio as well as a collection of other work I have been involved with. It's still a bit clunky right now, but a friend is going to help me optimize it so that it can run smoothly and fast. It should be running at 100% in the next week or so, but the basic site is up and can be viewed at www.mattmuzzy.com

Now that I have my site up, I can continue work on my portfolio. I hope to have a lot more props and characters done in the following months (unless I can land work on a particular comic book). With a new site, I have new confidence to work on building my gallery. Within a year I should have a real solid portfolio and hopefully be able to land a job at an actual studio. Here's to hoping! But in all honesty, I have confidence in myself. My skills can only get better from here.

In the meantime, I will be holding a launch party for my new site this Tuesday night at the WRDL radio station at Ashland University. I'm probably not suppose to ask a lot of people to come because it's not my studio and I don't want to get the person working there in trouble, but then again, I don't believe a lot of people read this blog anyway so what the hell? There will be pizza as well as Ricky from The Ricky Stewart Show. He will be signing autographs for anyone who would actually want one. He'll also probably try to sell you all his new line of health products, so watch out for that as well.

If you are in the Ashland, Ohio area, tune in to 88.9 WRDL on Tuesday night from 8 to midnight and you can hear my friend DJ Eu, as well as John Gees every week. Ricky and I are usually there as well and this Tuesday will be the site launch extravaganza.

This site should start a new period in my art career, so I invite everyone to check back for new work. I'll keep this blog up to date with what's happening even if it's only to keep track of everything for my own benefit.

-Matt

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Site revamp

I'm getting more excited the more I work on my new web site design. The current one I created in the midst of vast amounts of portfolio work I had to contend with during my senior year. Now that I have that giant load off my shoulders, I am able to sit back and clean the site up a bit.

The foundation is going to be the same. I really like the black and white color scheme for 2 reasons. One: it's different from everyone else that I graduated with. The typical portfolio site is dark, usually gray or black. I wanted the opposite so I went with white. Two: by having the site itself be white and black, the only color that pops out is that of the artwork itself. Although darker sites can look sleek and cool, I think my site has a certain boldness to it that corresponds with my own personality.

The new site won't be a drastic change from the old design; just thinned down, boxed in, and cleaned up. It will be MUCH easier to navigate and there will be no need for javascript (sorry Dan). So that's something to look forward to in the coming weeks.

I am continuing my portfolio work. I'm in the process of mastering retopologization in 3Ds Max. There is a killer video on it that someone posted on YouTube, but I think I am missing a plug-in or something because neither version 2010 or 2011 have the tool set that this guy was using. Nonetheless, I hope to have this next character done around the same time as the new site launch. The sooner I finish this character the sooner I can start working on some props and some other characters as well.

This morning I received a registered letter (I had to sign for it :D) from a professional game company regarding my interest in a concept artist position at their studio. I'm not sure if they send registered letters out to everyone that has contacted them, but it sure as hell made me feel special. The only problem was that the date on the letter was the 8th, and today was the 18th. I emailed the woman who wrote the letter as soon as I got it, hoping that it wasn't too late to respond. I'll probably have to wait until the weekend's over before I get a reply, but I definitely have my fingers crossed.

I'll keep everyone posted on what's going on, as well as inform you when the new site it up. Maybe I should have a launch party. Those are always fun.

-Matt

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Air is fixed

So we got our AC fixed, although, we don't know for how long. A friend of the family came by to give an estimate on how much a new one would cost but instead he replaced some part and it started working again (why couldn't the other 3 guys have done that?). So I am definitely grateful for that. Our only problem now is Time Warner Cable and their internet access. A few months back they called and said they were raising our rates. We expressed our displeasure and ever since our internet has been flicking on and off every day and night. I'm pretty sure it's a conspiracy considering they have a switch in their offices and can just shut our internet off whenever they want. Someone probably just sits there and flicks it back and forth for a few hours every day. It's really irritating. But I digress...

I started working on a self portrait model. I made one back in Character Modeling 1 but I never actually textured it. I tried again a few quarters later but only finished the face. This time around I have the whole base mesh done! I hope to finish it in the coming weeks so I can start something else.



Something else I've been working on is a YouTube talk show with Ricky Stewart. We had made The Ricky Stewart show many years ago, but we just recently decided to revamp it. Well, the new episode is 13 minutes long and is really, in my opinion, a horror. Don't get me wrong, Ricky is awesome, and so is his guest Reubnick, but just the idea of trying to market a 13 minute video on YouTube is hell. I don't see it doing too well in accordance to views and such, but we are going to continue to make more. The plan is to fix all of the mistake we make with each new episode and hopefully have an actually good product by the end of it.



Other than all of that, I've just been sitting around watching TV and applying for jobs here and there. It's still pretty lonesome with all of my friends in school, but every Tuesday night me and Ricky Stewart drive over to Ashland to help with our friend's 4 hour radio block on WRDL. It's pretty fun, so if you are even in that listening area, check it out. I can't remember the actual channel number, so sorry about that... (no one reads this blog anyway)

-Matt

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Working it out

This is a strange time in my life. I'm out of school and I have nothing to do but work on new content for my portfolio. After a long break, I'm starting to get back into the 3D modeling groove. My portfolio needs a lot more pieces before I'll be satisfied.

After getting some critiques from an employee at Raven studios, I know I need to not only step up my level of detail on character models, but also build on my portfolio of props, and that's exactly what I plan to do. I've already changed my site to read "digital artist" instead of "character artist" because I need to focus on more than just characters if I want to try and land a job somewhere. I'm actually completely redesigning my site at the moment, so check back for new work and a new layout.

Right after graduation I jumped onto a mod project and volunteered to continue helping out with my former internship, but after a month or two I realized that I needed to take a step back and start to figure things out in my life. I realized that I'm not going to get a job in the game industry right off the bat, so I have been looking around for something to do locally until I can build a stronger portfolio. In order to build a strong portfolio, I believe I need to focus on work that I personally want to create and therefore I am taking time off of all outside projects in order to make myself happy. I seems kind of selfish in a way, but as soon as school ended I fell into a rut when it came to motivation, and now that I have practically cut my ties with everyone, I have been able to focus on just "art" and have become more productive because of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not abandoning any of these prior affiliations; I plan on returning to them when I'm ready to start contributing. I just need to work on building my confidence first.

All of my friends have moved away or are going to school at the moment, so I have plenty of alone time in which to work. The only factor that's making things tough is my air-conditioning because it keeps breaking down, but I'm not complaining. I am looking forward to building up my portfolio, re-launching my site, and then jumping into as many projects as I can before hopefully landing a job in an actual studio.

It is still my dream to work in the game industry, making anything that anyone tells me to make; but as for right now, I need to make what I want to make (as if to get it all out of the way now).

-Matt

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Doctor



Here is a doctor character I have been working on for a mod project. He's just a background NPC but I'm trying to make him as well as I can. Parts of the face still need polish but his body still needs most of the work done to it. At this rate it will be a couple weeks before I can get him completely done.

Every since graduation I have had little to no motivation to work on anything. Considering this is the first big summer break I have had in 3 or 4 years, I'm trying to soak up as much of it as I can. I started college directly after highschool graduation and have had 2 to 3 week summer breaks ever since, so having seemingly unlimited time is really nice... but also really different.

I'm still looking for a job. I have emailed and sent DVDs and resumes to a whole lot of companies all over the east coast. I recently had an industry professional hit me hard with a lot of critiques and that has changed my point of view a lot. My currently plan is to just get a job somewhere around here (maybe Best Buy or something similar) and just build my portfolio. The work that I have currently isn't bad, but it's not at where it needs to be by any means. And that's partially because I've had to make everything in my portfolio during such a tight time schedule. Now that I have all the time in the world, I'm hoping to pull out some really amazing stuff. I just need to get motivated and get working (my friends going back to school will definitely help).

I saw the midnight release of Inception last week and really loved it. I wouldn't say it's the greatest movie of all time, but it was really good in the fact that it was based around an idea that was fun and interesting and, for the most part, different. In a world where video games are still in their infancy, I look forward to the future where games can have super creative ideas behind them other than the generic alien shooter. And I realize that some games out there have already done this, but I can only assume they will become even more awesome into the future. I don't know. It's kinda hard to explain at 2 o'clock in the morning. Maybe I'll delve further later on. Or maybe not.

-Matt

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Ready to work

I am officially a graduate of The Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Now equipped with a bachelors of science and a Best of Show award from AiP's portfolio show, I am open to start working somewhere. I've already applied to a number of studios around the country, and must now play the waiting game. This is the start to the rest of my life.

Exciting.

I also want to say to anyone that's looking at my site that I am also proficient in modeling that is not character oriented. Although my site has yet to show my prop and environment modeling, I'm an all-around kinda guy. So look forward to more updates to my site in weeks to come.

-Matt

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Making space

I finished the textures for Boss Grim. Thanks again to Monica Mulneix for the character concept. This guy is one of the enemies for my Advanced Game Production Team class. I like him especially because I created all of his textures by hand in photoshop. I usually rely on Google images to give me photos that I then manipulate and tile, but this time around, everything was made from scratch.



I've also decided to drop the "punk" character I was working on from my demo reel. I know in my last post I said I was going to try to finish it in such a short amount of time, but honestly, I don't know why I would waste my time when I could just spend time on it after the fact to make him look good instead of rushing him. In his place, I will be showing Ugly and Beautiful as a set. You can see them here http://mattmuzzy.com/Ugly.html and here http://mattmuzzy.com/Beautiful.html They aren't bad, they just aren't super great. But as soon as I graduate, I'll have more time to polish characters and make ones that are actually super badass.

-Matt

Monday, May 24, 2010

Grim

I'm slowly getting Boss Grim's textures done. I still haven't projected his Ax normals yet but I'm working on his back guns at the moment. All of his textures so far I have made completely in photoshop except for a slight metal overlay that I got off google for the shoulder plates. Clouds, Texturizer, and motion blur are really usefull!



I'm also furriously trying to get a 3rd character done for my demo reel. Boss Grim and Harvey James's Kim Min Ji are the 2 that I currently have. My 3rd character was going to be a futuristic Power Rangers with real detailed cybernetic armor. That however didn't go very well. I'll probably finish it at some point, but the scope of that project is too big to pull off in the next week. Come to think of it, the scope of any portfolio reel project is too big to pull off in a week.... damn it. But I'm going to try. Here's what I have so far on character #3:



I have a week left before i have to turn my demo reel and everything else in. I have another week after that before the portfolio show. Technically I could do a shit job for the class and have it done for the show, but I'm going to try to get it done in time for class. I honestly believe I can pull it off.

Stay tuned to watch me fail...

-Matt

Saturday, May 22, 2010

BLOGGLE

I've tried blogging many times before. It's hard for me to keep up with it but I try and try again. I'll be posting pictures of stuff I'm working on. I recently finished the 3D model of Harvey Jame's Kim Min Ji. She's my first successful, cell-shaded character. I started a new character today as well. I'll post more of that when it gets done.













Harvey James is really badass. Check out his site here http://www.harveyjamestm.com/ I'm honored that he gave me permission to model one of his characters. I would like to model more in the future because his stuff is really fun.