I received one of my DVDs. It was Chet ZAR's. I quickly opened the packaged and slipped into my drive, and was entranced by the tutorial that was making it's way through my skull and into my brain...
The DVD was great, and the techniques I learned were invaluable and I've already pretty much memorized all the important info. (Or at least what I felt was important.)
But I'm somewhat upset that my Keith Thomspon DVD hasn't come in the mail yet! They were both set at 2 day shipping, and were ordered on Tuesday. I received the Chet ZAR DVD on Thursday but did not recieve the Keith Thomspon DVD. And I didn't get it Friday or Saturday. So I'm looking forward to Monday, of course.
This sucks because Keith Thompson is not only a great artist, but the way he draws in pencil is very similar to the way I draw, or at least the final render (minus the painting) looks very close to my work. I don't mean in conceptual form, but in the look and feel of the penciling.
He also covers the traditional side of his art, he starts from a sketch on pencil and paper, then scans it into Photoshop and talks about how to clean up the image for Digital Painting. This is an important section to me. But of course it's not near as important as his painting techniques, which I'm excited to learn, because I really want to paint many of my concepts.
So I anxiously await Monday.
In news related to the development my mod Ruiner: We're getting very close to finishing up the work to release the first three levels of our mod. Things are really looking great and it's definitely fun working on the project. But to be honest, I can't wait until it's done; not just to see how people enjoy the work that has been done, but also because I really want to get work on some my own personal projects I've been constantly thinking about.
My personal stuff consists of things that I'd like to make in my 3D/2D programs, and take them into game engines. I've been thinking about working with the Unreal Engine, but I've worked with id software tech for such a long time that I may just use that. Many of the stuff I have in mind is environment art (even though I usually do characters), and a character (maybe more). It's all sci-fi that's been bouncing in my head for the past few months.
No matter what, I can't wait to get plugging away at those ideas.
