Just an aside:

This is a recent Ted Talk with Steven Zapata on generative AI. Good stuff for those who care. Legal cases/precedents are mounting.

He comes in at the 2:47 mark.

Haha! Gruesome - awesome!

Thank you much. He's about to get a lot more awesome once he sheds his human suit.

Stand back and stand by.

Unencumbered by the human suit he is forced to wear to work, our hero settles into a much deserved state of vegetable bliss for the evening.

For those who hate this stuff feel free to disregard, but I'm proud of the work and want it to be consumed en masse, so...

Coming this Thursday, September 14th at 2:00 PDT to Nifty Gateway.

The I Yam Collection

Presented by Iv gallery LA

These are small editions of the titular piece (huge and super hi-res) and five equally nutty videos, which tell the tale of our hero's moment of divine, drug fueled epiphany.

You can get em right here, no crypto necessary; just make an account and dig in. My work will never be any cheaper. This is a one time thing to encourage collection!

https://www.niftygateway.com/collections/iyam

I feel like you're speaking directly to me...

I just set an alarm. Too broke to get too many, but I'm excited to get what I can! So dope, brother!

Thanks for making sure to let us know.

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Popeye!

First and foremost, please click the link and check out the videos. That’s a whole lot of render time!

Note: I believe there will be five videos. I’m not sure why they only uploaded four. And I didn’t write the copy!




That’s Popeye smoking DMT, yo!

Today's the day!

I'll be scoping out those videos on my first break

One love

Thanks, buddy.

There are four videos, with a fifth that will likely be airdropped to all collectors after bidding closes in a week. With the purchase of any of them, you'll also get a huge, hi-res still of I Yam, suitable for print and framing, for a measly exxxtra five bones.

Go snatch em up. Bon appetoot!

https://www.niftygateway.com/collections/iyam

Got me some!

One love

Greatly appreciated. Thanks, mang.

Nothing new to share today, but here is another of my Art vs. Artist doodads that I made back in July. Didn't love it, so I never showed it - but hopefully someone somewhere can find something to take offense.

I'm not offended but I think it's dope. You with Wing Zero wings from Gundam Wing

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Thank you, Void. Much appreciated. And thanks for collecting a couple of these, along with the still piece!

For others' perusal, here are the five finished video clips. They're all animated within ZBrush, and then the various passes are combined in After Effects, along with color correction, sharpening, etc., as well as added particulates and rain effects on the last two for a bit of extra atmosphere.

Turn on HD (and audio, of course), honk liberally upon your vaporgenie and settle in for some synesthesia.

The pleasure is mine, oh lord of the grotesque and maniacal.

You did just give me an idea to smoalk a little changa while watching some of these on repeat. I tend to avoid screens while in the space.

I have to wait until this cold and cough blow over though.

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DOOOIT.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rendered out a turnaround video of a model, turned off the lights and had me a honk in order to judge from a different perspective. 10 minutes later I’m looking at a completely different thing, but I’ve been gifted a weird new roadmap to turn it into something other.

Almost like using AI for reference, but I don’t have to steal anything from anyone or sell my soul for a great result.

I've been busy trying to learn some new software as of late, watching a million different video tutorials for Character Creator 4, iClone 8 and various related plug-ins.

It's the keys to the kingdom if I can figure out how to incorporate them into my workflow (switching back and forth between & relying hugely on ZBrush), but so far it's frustrating. They lag terribly on my machine (which has 32 gigs of RAM, but no graphics card), but if I can get it all to work correctly it'll provide an incredibly efficient system for posing and animation - basically turning all of my characters into little digital actors.

The tech is friggin spectuncular.

I just downloaded the trial version of CC4 a couple of days ago (after weeks of non-stop tutorial watching) and made this little fella to try and test it all out. I built out the low res character in CC4 (which was a super fun, fast and intuitive couple of hours), and then ported him into ZBrush for one night of sculpting and one night of detailing/painting. Then I sent him back to CC4 for rigging (which worked great) but from there, problems abound. At least so far. Oh well. I didn't have any little green men in my stable of stars previously, and now I do - even if he's just chillin' in a static A Pose for the moment.

From here it should be a snap to pose him in any of a million ways, but as I said, I'm running into problems. I can do animation tests in CC4. He looks good walking around/doing calisthenics and shit, but I can't seem to manually edit his pose or successfully bridge back to ZBrush.

It's fun as hell (in theory at least - or rather, it will be for sure once I've figured out what the hell I'm doing). If I can then learn Blender for rendering (which I'm anticipating will be a very steep curve), I'll be able to make really polished looking animations at a very rapid pace.

I'll figure it out. He'll be dancing the macarena in no time.

Request: I'd love to see Martian Manhunter's brother here do the floss

One love

That stuff is super easy, as is mocap/syncing movement to iPhone video.

Haba na haba hujaza kibaba.