Jab Jab Whammo, now available at Amazon.com

So before I get into some shameless self promotion, I wanna take the time out to share some awesome tutorials by the very talented Anthony Jones. If your not familiar with his work, do yourself a favor and check it out here. I first heard of Anthony Jones through a 9-week Creature Design course that I signed up for over at the Schoolism site a few years ago. The course was awesome, I learned tons and have been following Anthony's work ever since. Anthony has put together a series of very affordable tutorials , and from the sounds of it he intends on adding a bunch more. I picked up Designing with confidence, Painting with confidence, Zbrush to Photoshop workflow, And Kitbashing your own Paintings. They are all awesome, so head on over there and pick them up. You won't be disappointed. You can check out the Videos Here. I forgot to mention he includes all the files, tools etc. that he uses. Now for some self love :) My art book Jab, Jab, Whammo is now available through the Amazon marketplace. You can check that out here. Good father's Day gift I must say, perfect for toilet reading :) So feel free to help spread the word about Anthony's tutorials and my book of course. Sharing is caring you know. You can preview a sample of the book below, and I also added a nifty little animated Gif of some progress shots of a painting of Italian Actress Gina Lollobrigida that I am working on. I'll be posting the finished piece soon, so be sure and check back. Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!!

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

Z-brush Idea Generating

I been having fun generating a bunch of silhouettes in z-brush using the techniques of the talented Cesar Dacol Jr. of Phoenix Atelier. I purchased a stream of the workshop from The Stan Winston school website, you can check it out here. This technique involves generating a bunch of silhouettes very quickly and altering each slightly using z-brush's layers. You end up getting a bunch of variations of your design pretty much for free. Lots of "happy accidents" occur this way. Here is an example of a page of thumbnails that I put together very quickly using this process. You kind of just free your mind from worrying about anatomy or anything technical while you put together shapes by pushing and pulling the digital clay around. I could have then decided to sculpt one of the thumbnails, but in this case, I just carried them over into photoshop for refining and painting. Below is an example of what I did with one of the many shapes I came up with. thanks for stopping by, enjoy!!!!

Zenomorphs

Here are two Zenomorphs inspired by the movies Alien (the franchise), and Prometheus. These were originally done for a face book speedpaint group started by artist Alex Ruiz that I decided to take a little further. The first one was done using the new Zbrush 4r6 and photoshop cs6. I tried to re-imagine the Deacon from the end of Prometheus with more of a reptilian appearance. The second one was more true to the original H.R. Giger design for Alien, but of course with a bit of a twist. This one was done in Photoshop and the new Corel X3.  Both the upgrades for zbrush and corel painter are awesome, and game changers in my opinion. If you are an artist and use anyone of those programs, definitely look into upgrading.  You'll be glad you did. Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!!