Robogabo

Sketchbook updates > 5 years +

2009-11-12T21:09:00.000-08:00

Hi guys, it's been a while since I updated this blog,
been working at 343 industries for the last months.

I've been updating my online sketchbook everyday.
Actually I'm proud to say that it's been 5 years
of constant daily posts with new artwork, here's the link:

Robogabo daily sketchbook

(The Thread is located in the exclusive sketchbooks section
so you need to be logged in)

Also here's another Diorama image I did for my portfolio.

Charging up - tutorial

2009-02-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

Here is a copy paste of a tutorial I did:

1) Do blocks of color,

you can use an old illustration you did or a photo ref.

2)Draw the perspective lines and major blocks,

get a feeling for the space.

3)On top of it start painting and define the overall,

don't focus on a tiny area.

4)Start zooming in and polishing, or poping elements,

is a good idea to use some soft edge brushes

in combination with hard edge ones.

5)On a new layer draw the silhouette of the mecha,

and charcaters and repeat steps 1-4 on them.

6)Use some masking selection and gradients to pop things more,

maybe play with the brightness and contrast too.

Use filters to taste, crop and save :-D

Hama

2009-01-21T20:25:00.000-08:00

Red Fraction Mecha

2009-01-07T18:00:00.001-08:00

Started this working on the silhouette for each character,

then made a layer on top and sketched with linework all shapes.

Worked the colors for the girl and mecha,

and picked a red background and greenish light.

Merged all in one layer, on that started cleaning the whole thing

and rendering it, at the end cut and move or distort parts

and elements and played with some layer effects,

trying not to burn or loose the original rendering too much.

btw

Happy new year 2009 to everyone!

Oni girl & mecha

2008-11-25T10:34:00.000-08:00

So, I've been doing the usual square color studies
with complementaries and analogs,
so what better way to try wacky colors
than with underworld characters :-D.

Here is some demon girls.

Oh and btw a quick update on my new PC,
the problem of getting totally frozen is still there,
and i think it has to do with the graphics card . . just a guess.

I started playing Left 4 dead and every time it will get frozen ,
so i lower all the video settings on my card and in-game,
and still would crash . . . .
my wife suggested to close the virus scanner,
which is constantly scanning ,
and for some reason it stooped freezing .

I would say:
-it will freeze 9 out of 10 times
when i play left 4 dead with virus scan on.
-it will freeze 1 out of 10 times
when i play left 4 dead with virus scan off
and all in-game video options at max.

Monster Hunter

2008-10-30T07:37:00.000-07:00

So I got into Monster Hunter 2 Freedom game for the PSP
and i can't wait for the Wii version that is coming out next year.

Here are some illustrations i made, based on the game,
i won't go into a review of the game but i gotta say
once you get into it, it becomes very addicting,
so be careful about that ;-)

A little about my character, HR5 completed all game till Lao Shung
(not killed but completed the quest) and 100% heavy bowgun baby,
then after not being able to complete monsters
like red khezu i changed to great sword
(valkirie blade working my way to Siegmund)
that's when i stopped playing the game since
i could not get the necessary material drops
after trying so many times :-( . . . that's my story.

Some good websites: Gamefaqs and Skies of Croda

Photoshop Rig & Mecha

2008-09-23T15:51:00.000-07:00

So i got a new PC, and i tried to stay below or at $1,500
the main function would be Photoshop, so for the scratch disk,
got a Solid state hard drive and didn't care much about 3d capabilities,
nor the quad core processor.

Photoshop can only use 3 Gigs of Ram in 64bit, if i remember well,
but i didn't go for the 64bit OS so 4GB ram was the way to go.

first test on it was trying some crazy
scaterring + dual brush+ none spacing + texture
BRUSHES at 170dpi , and i gotta say it was very smooth.

I usually work everything at 72dpi cause i like the speed,
with this machine i can finally upgrade to 170dpi for everything
and keep my speed addiction.

Altough, somehow i fear this Rig is not that stable,
yesterday it frooze meanwhile i was painting this image,
just frooze, never happened to me with windows XP
and the same version of PS been using for a while . . . only time will tell.

Here are the main specs:

case: CoolerMaster Centurion 590 RC-590 Mid-Tower 420W Case
cpu: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 CPU @ 3.00GHz 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache 64-bit
hard drive: Single Hard Drive 750GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
2 hard drive: 32 GB 2.5 inch SATA Gaming MLC Solid State Disk
motherboard : Asus P5N-E nForce 650i SLI Chipset LGA775 FSB1333 DDR2
Ram: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)4GB (2x2GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory
Powersupply: 750 Watts Power Supplies (Corsair CMPSU-750TX - Quad SLI Ready
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 1GB 16X PCI Express

Gotta give credit to my wife Kelly who was the mastermind
behind the planning of the new PC, great job baby <3

And now some Mecha partially created and finished
in the new "IL MONSTRO" PC

COMICON challenge Top finalist

2008-09-02T11:56:00.000-07:00

Yay!, results are out and i'm happy to share with
you guys, the good news :-) got a 3rd place in the competition.
The contest was great and as always FredH did a great job!

The competition was similar to Dominance War but with a comic book spin.
So the character i choose was Battle Angel Alita

I got some great critique and comments from the judges
and got another chance to share and have fun with a lot of talented artists.

Here is the page with the COMICON challenge results
I guess in retrospective i see that my illustration abilities
are still really weak, i don't feel very comfortable,
but i like more the concept art and brainstorming part.

If you guys want i can share and post all the process and images for this entry,
drop me a comment to let me know :-)

DEEP underwater 1st place

2008-07-31T07:24:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, it's been a long time since i've updated,
wanted to share the news and some artwork.
I got the grand prize on conceptart.org DEEP contest

It was a lot of fun to participate, since it was more
concept art driven than an illustration contest,
i felt more comfortable coming out with ideas.

Here is my entry,
most things are made for exploration and travel
in the depths of the sea.

These Mechas can be upgraded into war driven machines,
but it's not their primary function,
a good example is the bulldog back fins that can carry
"upgrades" for weapons, and the S.I.M.O.N. big side panels
that can be changed into ones that contain torpedoes.

The bloated crab sucks sea water and boils it to generate energy
and fill the balloons, once placed inside cracks
the device will increase it's size and break it apart.

First is a hard suit for outer repairs at high water pressure,
next a pilot suit with a full close helmet, with video display,
then a light exploration suits and some civilian suits.

The first is a fish that can be called using a distress signal,
carries a shell with air, so once it's used you can throw it away
and it will land with other shells at the bottom of the sea.
Next is a rescue/air bubble, placed for divers who run out of air.

Rooms inside the city,
mostly places related to water control,
that diver is just an inspector,
checking everything is running all right
and no coral or bio formations gather around the machines.

A mysterious creature I guess chaotic neutral,
that uses the rapiers to stun or disable
vehicles or mechanical devices.
It carries several batteries at different frequencies,
so depending on the size or type of "enemy"
it switches the rapiers connection
. . .. hope that made any sense.

Dominance war III Finalist

2008-06-04T20:49:00.000-07:00

Alright, The competition of 2008 ended,
and I am really happy that i made it to the top finalists.

The contest was awesome, and being able to show the progress
of each of the entries and getting feedback was one of my favorite parts.

Also the organizers and Fred did a great job in the presentation
and overall management, being able to see what the judges choose and thought
about the entries was amazing, made me really happy to know
that great Pro Artists liked my entry.

Here is the link to the Dominance War III finalists
and my entry:

And now some links to my favorite 2d entries of the competition, great job everyone! :

Dae hoon Lee - Managa
Myungsin koo - loveme8022
Jonguk Jeon - ENrang
Joongmin Park - JerryJ
Jaehwon song - jisol
Won Jang - OZingan
Jeongsil Lee - persona
Sooho kang - gaeberman
Kelly Hamilton - artkitty
Justin Albers - Albers
Andrew Hou - nJoo
Vinod Rams - Jedi Hindu
Sean A Murray - Muttonhead
Tham Hoi Mun - Rezeroth
Sang Han - fluxen
Christopher Flork - The Flork
Carissa Susilo - gough
Michael Dashow - walrus
Robert Kim - Roboto-kun
Jiansong Chen - chainjane
Yountaek Oh - enozria

Boat transformable robot

2008-05-23T07:33:00.000-07:00

Another Photoshop Mecha.
Not too happy with the Mass/volume interlocking.
Tried to show shared visual parts on both modes
to reinforce the fact that it transforms, but it doesn't look right.

Where does all that metal mass goes when in boat mode? not good enough

Harrier Mecha Transformer

2008-04-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

Swooosh . . .

2008-04-22T07:39:00.001-07:00

Last man standing

2008-04-13T20:45:00.001-07:00

Entry for the LMS concept art.org illustration contest.

more from the Vault

2008-04-10T07:48:00.001-07:00

Robot from the past

2008-04-07T17:04:00.001-07:00

Digging out the oldies

2008-04-03T16:32:00.001-07:00

Tribute to Vyle

2008-02-05T17:21:00.000-08:00

a mecha inspired by David Levy's design's

inspired by Merkava

2008-01-25T09:17:00.000-08:00

Updates!

2007-12-16T18:19:00.000-08:00

Added some updates to my portfolio and also created The Conga , a blog featuring links to some of my favorite artists.

More mecha

2007-11-21T21:25:00.000-08:00

2007-10-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

My portfolio