More Daily Doodles and experiments in 3D

Here are a few more daily practices and warm ups. Enjoy!!!!

Environment Thumbnails

Thumb, Th, Thumb, Thumb.... Thuuuuumbs.  Here are a bunch of thumbnails for the visual development of a project.  Done quick and loosely with custom shapes and the lasso tool in Photoshop.  Each one of these will be enlarged and detailed, adding characters etc., but will remain very graphic in design.  These are just the initial concepts at this point, but I got the o.k. to share them, so here they are.  Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy !!!

Studying The Photos

Here are a couple of Studies done from Photo Reference for an assignment from Noah Bradley's Art Camp. The first pic is a series of Thumbnail compositions of Environments from various pics off the internet. I added a few imaginative elements in and changed color and composition as I see fit. Next is a portrait of an old man, I figured I would mix up the studies subject matter and use subjects that benefit me. This guy for instance can lend himself to some great Horror art:) where the enviro thumbnails can also be used for sci-fi background etc. The wrinkles were a great practice for me. And lastly, a study of a bird from a pic I took at the Zoo. This one was good to study and utilize for possible creature design. Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!

jab, jab, WHAMMO!!! the art of Rafael Rivera a.k.a. DARAF

My book is finally done. It was alot of fun to work on, but along the way everything that could go wrong did. My main PC did not power up anymore, my external hard drives seem to not be working ( this had all the back ups) you name it. Still I pushed through and am very proud of the outcome. I own a ton of art books, so I feel mine is a bit unique because I have not seen an art book with so much different subject matter and styles all done by one artist. usually books like this will be published with various artist contributing. So with that said, you can flip through a few of the pages below to give you a preview and also click on the link (the icon that looks like a shopping cart) to purchase the book. It will make an excellent book for the artist or art lover in your life:) And remember: sharing is caring so please help spread the word in all of your social media circles. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoy jab,jab WHAMMO!!! the art of Rafael Rivera

jab, jab, WHAMMO!!! by Rafael Rivera | Make Your Own Book

Fun but far from done

Another piece for my book:)

color keys and Z-brush 4R4

This is a paint over and texture pass of a crude Google sketchup model. I gave it a few different color passes to experiment with time of day and mood. Below that was some practice using my new upgrade to Z-brush 4r4. This creature bust was the same model with features morphed and pulled a bit. loving this new upgrade and looking forward to trying out the rest of the new features.

Google Sketch_up compositions

Here is a few thumbnails generated using google's 3D program Sketch-up version 8. Just simple shapes obviously nothing special here, using the same model and lighting it differently and zooming and panning around the model to generate some interesting compositions that will later be used as a base to paint over in photoshop. Below that are some more creature design explorations and the beginning of a dinosaur model done in z-brush.

Sci-Fi Thumbnails

Here are a few speed paint/ sci-fi thumbnails. I will be turning these into something more concrete sometime soon.

Exploring The Hive

Another Environment concept that started out as an abstract composition.

Shamayim

A concept I put together after watching Thor and looking at the Art Of Thor Book. That explains the "rainbow bridge looking thing" lol The title Shamayim is taken for the Hebrew word for heaven or sky in the bible. I chose to put a few traditional christian symbols in there like , the tree and the couple in the lower left foreground. The floating thingies were loosely inspired by the movie Knowing that starred actor Nicholas Cage. I tried to give the sea an other worldly glass like appearance and the technology is meant to look otherworldly as well. Thanks for looking

Enviro times two

Working on both of these pieces simultaneously, a technique I picked up watching Feng Zhu's Design Cinema on You Tube. I really enjoy this "knocking two birds off with one stone" approach. Whenever I felt like I did not know what direction to go in with one piece I would jump on to the other one. I also quickly noticed the advantages of taking your eyes away from one piece and when I returned to it, I would quickly spot areas that needed adjusting. Besides that I was twice as productive. Give it a try:)

Abstract Environments

Here are a series of unique environment thumbnails that I generated by using some abstract compositions as a starting point. I have fun coming up with something from the chaos of the abstract shapes. I get to generate ideas that I may not have normally come up with by letting the abstract shapes dictate the direction of the image and it's components. Below the thumbnails are the nine abstract compositions I made to paint over.

Another enviro concept

Wrapped this one up today. looks like the Nautilus went through the Bermuda Triangle and came up somewhere not so familiar.

Year Of The Dragon

This being the Chinese Year of the Dragon gave me an idea for this piece. I also took some ideas from some of John Carpenters movies, specifically Big trouble in little China, and They Live. The idea of an underground world of magic and demons came from Big Trouble and the portal to take you there came from They live. I intentionally left it pretty rough, so it is still more of a painting sketch. Below, the piece is followed by some more quick thumbnail sketches done on my tablet.

More enviro thumbnails

Some more quick ideas for later development.

Future Environment

A future Environmnet Design. I think I'll just leave it up to the viewer to make sense out of it all.

Alien Invasion

I did these two while watching Skyline and Close Encounters Of the Third Kind.

Rebel Hideout

Environment concept.

Sci_Fi Speed painting

Another warm up enviro speedy.

Enviro W.I.P.

I been busy with lots of stuff that I can't share yet, but here is a practice environment based off of a Alex Ruiz tutorial for now.