Nuthin' But Mech 3

 I am incredibly honored to have been invited to submit imagery for the Nuthin' But Mech series.

In appreciation of Francis Tsai's contributions to the artistic community, proceeds from the sales of this book will be donated to his family.

You can order your copy from Design Studio Press.

Nuthin' But Mech 3

I've been sitting on these images for over a year now and am excited to finally be Sharon them! 

For my submissions, I wanted to pay homage to the still bourgeoning field of 3D printing.

Images were first sketched out as thumbnail sketches before diving into Maya and ZBrush for modeling. Rendering and compositing completed with the ever awesome KeyShot 3D.

ResinBot Prototype V1

SpoolBot Prototype V1

Surge Protector

Just finished up this model test using Maya, Zbrush 4R7 beta, and Keyshot 3D. I was asked if I had anything in the Disney style in my modeling portfolio, and I hadn't.  So I found some Wreck-It Ralph concept art from the amazing Bill Schwab to use as reference and inspiration. I've always been a fan of the "Cartoon Modern" retro aesthetic, and this piece was a pleasure to sculpt.

I've got additional views on the Project Page, and will upload some turntables in the near future.

Final Textures

Base Model

Making of Sketchbot and 3d Printing @ NYC Maya Users Group, Wednesday, May 18th 7-9pm

I'm very excited to be invited by Steve Mann and the NYC Maya Users Group to give a presentation on how I use Autodesk Maya to create characters that are printed via rapid prototyping and make their way to final products - specially, the Sketchbot vinyl designer toy.

I'll be bringing along plenty of samples to show what the 3d printing results look like, in addition to touching on a few other 3d-to-print projects I've completed over the past year.

The meeting will be taking place at Oceana Digital on Wednesday, May 18th from 7-9pm. Entrance is free and you can RSVP at nycmayausersgroup@gmail.com

 I'll also be giving away one original Sketchbot variant at the end of the evening!

This will be my last event in NYC before we head out to LA on May 20th. Would be great to see lots of familiar faces there for my last hurrah. Blue Sky Studios will also be on hand showing behind-the-scenes on their latest CG animated film, Rio. This is full-circle for me, as I moved to the East Coast 17 years ago to animate for Blue Sky!

Honey Nut Cheerios Sci-Fi Spot

SciFi Cheerios "if" Spot from Steve Talkowski on Vimeo.

I worked with Hush on this spot a few weeks ago. My role entailed rigging up and animating the bee character, modeling the honey wand and subtle honey animation, and full lighting of the character. A hero Cheerio was animated landing and bobbing in an imaginary plane, and this was repeated numerous times to fill out the foreground splashing bits of cereal. The spot was composited and colour-corrected in After Effects.

Check out Hush's website for more killer work, including another spot I animated on, Sony Ericsson's "Dance Off"

Sketchbot Revisions Part 2

I've been getting some great feedback over on Flickr, and I agreed with the observation that his legs appeared a bit too thin. I also wasn't entirely happy with the flappy feet and felt they needed to be shorter and more round as exhibited in most of the recent sketches. I also paid considerable attention as to how the limbs would attach to the body, inserting a slightly recessed area on the body so the limbs would inset nicely into their slots while allowing full 360 degree rotation.

I think I also came up with a new logo for the toy line. ;)

Sketchbot Revision Update

NYCC is 4 1/2 weeks away, and I'm feverishly putting the final touches on the revised Sketchbot. The plan is to do a relatively modest run of hand-casted resin figures exclusively for the show. This will also serve as a testbed for having a 3d printout created to use as a master to create a silicon mold from. I'm in the process of finalizing this geometry and will be choosing a 3d print bureau soon to upload the model to. I'll post photos from that result when I get the model, then document the molding and casting process once again. Stay tuned, it's gonna be a busy month!

Sketchbot Turntable from Steve Talkowski on Vimeo.