BYU film art

This is another painting that I did for the BYU student Film Crossing. I spent the past two days on it and had a lot of fun applying some new techniques that I learned looking at other people's art blogs over the weekend. The huge thing I have learned is how to apply texture to my color, which I think makes a huge difference. I never realized how texture could add a whole new depth to a painting. I'm very proud of how it turned out.

Character development

This is the old man that Riley gets his trumpet from at the Flea Market. He's always reminiscing about the past and the band he used to play in. I spent a lot of time on light and shadow, and textures on the wall and floor. I'm just about done with all of the characters, and will soon start more on set design and other things that will go into the environment.

class assignment

This was our third assignment where we had to take curves and model them into shapes. This is one of a few things I modeled. I did a soda bottle, cam opener, jar, and this lamp, which is my favorite.

In class assignment

This was an in class assignment I did in my Intro to Maya class. We had about 50 minutes to build a spaceship from a simple cube using the tools we learned about in the lecture. I combined images in my head of a concord jet, and a bat and when I showed it to my teacher, he said it looked like a pterodactyl. I didn't have any reference, just my wild imagination. It took me around 20 minutes to complete.

Revision

I did some revisions that the director requested. The road now curves around the valley and not up a hill, which in real life would never happen. I made the blue sky at the top darker and I upped the contrast of the colors myself because I thought the first draft looked a little washed out.

BYU student film art

I'm excited to report that this painting has now become an official reference painting for the BYU student film. It's posted on their website and listed under reference painting for students to refer to for scene lighting and coloring. It's an original piece of artwork I did redoing the color changes they wanted and more light before dusk. I referenced the 3D model they did for the film of the gas station, so that is what it actually looks like. The background took me the longest time. I had to of changed it and erased it 10 times and them tweaked it a dozen more times until I finally got it to look the way that I wanted it to. I think I really like digital painting. It's a lot of work, but fun.

Brenden

These are pictures taken in the past two weeks, and recently this week when Julie's Parents came for a few days. Brenden recently discovered his favorite sleeping position on his belly, and enjoys a new toy we bought him that helps him stand up. His hoodie is his usual outfit in the mornings when Julie and him drop me off for school and it's cold outside.

Brenden

BYU student film art

I started working on the BYU student film Crossing. I am working on the Art team and was given this first picture with a script of colors to use and was told to use only those colors. The second photo is the script of colors and the last one is the finished concept I did over the past day. The film takes place at night, and so I focused a lot on changing it to appear so and have the post light stand out more. I made a movie of all of the things I changed as well and am just having slight problems with posting it for some reason. I am excited to finaly work on a student film and hope that I do well enough for them to use it.

Character Development

This is the dad in my story. He loves to fix things or make them better. The latter usually doesn't always work out for the best; (think, Tim Taylor from Home Improvement, only nerdier. This is him in his element where he spends most of his time in the basement. I forgot to mention something about the mom character I previously posted as well. I have her in a painted background which is actually in the house. She is artistic and loves to paint, and is shown in her office that she painted herself.

3D Castle in Maya

This is my first project for my intro to Maya class. It's an old war ravaged castle. You can see in many places where there are missing bricks. I spent a whole lot of time this past week on it and am pleased with how it turned out. I combined about three drawings I made for the castle and in the end just decided to go from my own imagination. I had a lot of fun trying out different ideas. We didn't have to make something as big as this, or even as detailed. We just had to show skill in building, duplicating and editing different size and shape bricks. I got bored with just using plain old rectangular bricks, so I created a curved edge brick by extruding the faces and bringing them out and scaling them to appear more rounded. The cool thing about this project was that I only created one brick and duplicated it to create the entire castle except the mountain which I created from a sphere and edited it separately.

Character Development

This is the mom for the same story as my recent drawings. I probably spent the most time on her than any of the other ones. All together it probably took me longer drawing the hair, shoes, and face than anything else did. This is definitely a step up for me drawing women. My attempts in the beginning of this year were not nearly as good as this.

Elizabethtown

This is a paper about the region I'm from for my Geography class.

Michael Finch wrote:

Elizabethtown

Elizabethtown, Kentucky

Michael

Finch

From all of the stereotypes people have said over the years, one might expect to meet a person from Kentucky who speaks with a Southern accent, have married his cousin, or live in a hillbilly shack and eat road kill found on the side of the road; but, then you meet me. I was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. It is in the central part of the state about forty miles south of Louisville, (Loo-uh-vul, for those not from around here,) and has a population of about 22,000-25,000. Upon arrival, you would be surprised to find a large city of suburbs, farms, and even some disbursement of hillbillies amongst a beautiful rolling hill landscape of foothills from the Appalachian Mountains covered with all assortments of trees from oaks, to maples, pines, beech, willow, etc.

What a lot of people don’t know is that during the Civil war, Kentucky was not considered a part of the Southern Confederacy. It considered itself neutral and caused many families strife when houses where divided with brother fighting against brother or father or their own relatives who disagreed over the conflict. This describes a lot of the people who live there today. You will find many people who have trucks, cars, or flags displayed in their homes with the Confederacy flag on it. They are still very racist and fit your typical description of a Southern Redneck. Then there are those who are much more civilized, still speak with a Southern accent, and are some of the nicest and friendliest people I have met throughout the entire country.

Speaking of accents, I’m somewhat of a special case. Most people from here speak with a Southern accent. My entire family and my relatives have it, but not me. I guess it might be because I had speech therapy from K-8 in school. It remains a mystery for me. The only thing I say that comes remotely close to a Southern accent is when I use the conjunction “Y’all,” meaning you all. That’s usually when people try and guess where I am from.

The seasons here range from hot and humid summers with 90 degree temperatures, to cold, snowy, and everything covered in and inch or more of ice. Even with those occasional extremes, the weather is absolutely beautiful come fall when all the leaves change covering the hills with an assortment of bright yellow, amber red, and searing orange. Spring is equally beautiful with many of the trees around the area having flowers that bloom extravagantly; such as Tulip Poplar trees, Magnolias, Cotton Woods, Cherry trees and the like. The parks here are dazzling this time of year, and with all of the nearby lakes, and rivers, camping is an ideal thing to do here and throughout the state.

One stereotype that probably does apply here is the religious one; namely, Southern Baptist. People here are very religious, and growing up here, I was usually the only member of the LDS faith in my school. So in an area that is part of the Bible-Belt, it was interesting to observe how people did or didn’t live their religion or what they would have to say about mine.

Elizabethtown, Kentucky is in a perfect location of the state if you like theme parks, big city life, or horse races. We have a huge Six Flags theme park, the Louisville Slugger baseball bat factory and museum and the famous Church Hill Downs all just forty miles north in Louisville, (Loo-uh-vul,) where there’s plenty more things to see and enjoy as well. So come visit a place where you’ll meet some of the friendliest people on the planet, see a remarkable landscape like no other, and enjoy everything from shopping in the city, to camping in the great outdoors.

Character Development

This is Kiley. She is the young sister of the family. The hardest part of this drawing was the face. First, I drew many many faces trying to get a young look instead of an older one, and then tried to draw a hairstyle that maintained that youthful look. I have to say that drawing girls faces are the hardest thing for me and hopefully I did a good job on this one.

Brenden and Labor day with Mom and Dad

These are some photos from the last week or so of Brenden, and this Labor day weekend. My parents came up with my uncle Bill and aunt Kathy. Brenden loved seeing his grandma that he hadn't seen since he was born! The video shows how much he would laugh when she would play with him, and the pictures of the overlook and waterfall are when my uncle Bill, dad, and me went up to Squaw lookout and Bridal veil falls. It was so beautiful and I never knew it was just down the road.