[Anjin3515]

Whewwww.....sweet stuff....

[themagicpen]

OMG !!!! These are fantastic !!! ..show them over at www.cgtalk.com for more exposure !!

[NoRwoOd]

Wow, these look realy good!

[Frost]

Very nice stuff kevincu. Welcome, share some more, and keep up the great work.

[kevincu]

Thanks Frost, Norwood, themagicpen, Anjin and Atrophy, I really appreciate your compliments, they push me to keep drawing and adding stuff to this fourm.

Somtimes I get bogged down with life and work, doing what you have the energy to do, then finding more to work on the things that really make difference for yourself. I'm very appreciative that what makes a difference for me, others like yourselves vidicate for me that I am on the right path. Thank you guys so much. I'm glad that we're on this same path together. I wish we all could just meet up at some coffee shop every night and just draw away together. Perhaps someday that will be possible, but until then I'll just keep sharing that coffee time here with you all.

Just to let you guys know I'm starting to play more with photoshop and hope to add my first attempt at my of art in the digital realm. It's been a lot of fussing with the program trying to achieve someone elses look or feel which hasn't been that fullfilling to me. So I stopped and now I'm painting in PS the way that I know how to do things. And with this change I think PS is becoming my tool not the other way around. I'm going to push to finish this piece by the weekend. I don't have a computer at home so I have to stay late at work to finish it, you know how that goes. But it has an hour or two before it's done so I'll fit that in here and there.

Anyhow, it's time to get back to work before I get stares.

Thanks again,
Kevin

Oh, I took a look at cgtalk.com, I'll add stuff there too. The same stuff I have here, perhaps some of my 3d models from my previous game. It was a boxing game.

Take care all!

[kevincu]

I'm running out of vehicles to post so I'll start showing some of my environments and character stuff. I hope you like it.

Kevin

[jakub]

ooooh grrrrreat! id buy most of them if i had the money. nice design! i didnt read every comment, so maybe this question did appear earlier: are you a professional designer?
_________________
searching for silence

[kevincu]

Yeah, I've been working since about 1996 in various areas from motorcycle design, entertainment, and videogames. I'm in videogames right now doing conceptual design and a little 3d. My 3d skills are way below my traditional art skills. They both battle for my time, but my favorite is and will always be the act of drawing.

[kevincu]

Just wanted to add something and show people what I'm working on right now, well at least something that I can legally show.

It's photoshop, just trying out my technique within a digital medium. It's working out pretty good. Anyways, it's unfinished and now is a great time to lend some suggestions as they can be implemented easily at this stage. Plus it will show you how I approached this image too.

Anyhow, I look forward to any and all suggestions you guys might have!

Thanks and have a good weekend!
Kevin

[silkdancer]

What should I say for the great works?

to be or not to be, this is a question...
_________________
Ask For More...

[kevincu]

Well I'd know what to say to your nice compliment. Thanks!!! I'll post some new stuff soon, I'm just really swamped here at work preparing for E3. Is anyone here going? If so let me know, perhaps we can meet up there one day!

[Tomasis]

hey kevincu

very nice images you did have done..

I wonder why dont you have own homepage when you are very good artist?

I like much Bruce car.. I want to learn how to make these "effects"

good luck.. im excited to see your new works
_________________
out

[kevincu]

I had some time this morning so I added another image.

This image is my first attempt at a full blown digital rendering. It took a while to do because of that but I learned a lot from doing it.

To Tomasis,

Thanks, I'm glad you like my work.

The Bruce car is a traditional piece using typical car rendering techniques.

Paper: Vellum
Mediums: Prismacolor Markers for the reflections, Nupastel Chalk grounded into powder and mixed with Baby Powder and applied with a Webril Wipe for the cores, Prismacolor Pencils for the line work, and white guoache for the highlights.

Hope that helps some. Wish I could do you a demo, but I think that would be hard.

Maybe one day when I get a site going I'll put up a demo of how it's done.

Till then I'll keep posting here.

Kevin

[kevincu]

Sorry for not updating lately, just been pretty busy at work and slacking after it. I'll try to keep adding things as I can. Game is getting close to done also which will help a lot. I'll be able to upload those images once I get the go ahead.

Kevin

[kevincu]

Well, just trying to keep things up to date, at the very least, just trying to post more!

[kevincu]

Finally new image. Nothing to do at work so I painted. Hope you enjoy. Let me know if you do or don't like.

Thanks
Kevin

[kevincu]

I'm finally getting to find some time to breath and think. I'm just finishing up a project at EA Los Angeles called Goldeneye 2.

It's been a very rough schedule and I was pretty tired outset. But it's coming to a close which gave me time to fix the broken image links here and add a couple of things. When the project releases I plan on posting all that I can here and in another forum called Digital Xtreem Forums. You can find it and my work here: http://digitalxtreem.proboards3.com/

Sorry for being MIA, it's not only you but I've been MIA from myself also. I'm looking forward to refinding myself here through my art that I hope to share with everyone that is willing to look.

Thanks,
Kevin

[ryanpaul]

Honda Indy project? So you were in Rob Bauer's class at ACCD? That was some of the stuff that got me into car design. Cool stuff. I still love the pie-in-the-sky car design of the 90s.
Cheers, Ryan

[Misc]

That's some serious quality work. I'd kill for your skills!

[weaselball2]

usually I just lurk...but I posted becuase this is seriously awesome stuff. The kind of skill I wish I had

[Capt.FlushGarden]

how could I have missed this!? its really YOU! kool! really impressive stuff, i try to draw cars on my free time and i feel like a pure noob ugh...

love the rougher scribbly ones, yumm!!

J

[Odds]

'Diablo' and 'Strag' kick ASS.
cool concept for both... i'd like to see some of these colored and put into scenes

[kevincu]

Hey folks, thanks so much for your kind words! I'll try to use them as positive reinforcement to keep drawing and designing!

Odds: I'm glad you can find something good through all my bad anatomy! Hehehe. But Strag might one day be done up more or go through a little redesign, as the story he was developed for is being revamped and relooked at again. If I do anything more with him, I'll post them here for sure. There are more designs of him but they aren't mine. I could ask the artist if it's cool to post them here for him or not. I don't know, let me know if you want to see them and I can post them up here for a few days for others to look at. They are totally kick ass!!!

Capt. FG: Your compliments mean a lot to me and your skill level is something that I look to achieve sometime in this lifetime. I've been a longtime fan of your work! I also love your Propeller thread. Keep inspiring! I don't think you're that far from being able to draw cars though as you've already shown a good understanding of proportion and rendering of hull shapes. Cars are easy, just cheat the hell out of them! If they aren't going to be bulit in real life who cares how tall the green house is on them or how long they are. Long low and wide is my motto! It's why I'll never be good at designing an SUV. Hehehe. My favorite plane is the GeeBee, just totally out there! It's how I think if I do something like a Batmobile. You should try one and post it as it's very jet inspired and all. Do one, I'd love to see it!!!

Weaselball2: Thanks for taking the time from your lurking to leave me a message. I really do like getting them and really appreciate someone taking their time to leave me one or some.

Misc: You don't have to kill anyone, it's not worth the time for the crime. Just go into major debt and give someplace like ACCD, CCS or Rhode Island School of Design all your money for say the next the 15 years. But I tell you, it's totally worth it!

My advice is this. If you want to go into Entertainment Design start off taking Industrial Design like Craig Mullins did. Do that about half way through, say till you finish your sophmore year, then get out! Take those rendering skills they taught you, then switch to illustration to learn to paint and get a solid background in figure drawing, because Industrial Design won't teach you that, well at Art Center anyways. Can you believe that you can go all the way through Art Center and not get one mandatory figure drawing course in Indutrial Design? Yet they have a mandatory lettering class? Go figure? Hehehe, no pun intended.

I'm long winded, sorry.

Rypaul: I did know Bauer but haven't seen him since graduation. I know he did some time at Ford I think and perhaps Nissan? It's hard to miss his flashiy renderings! The Indy project was my favorite project at school and it was great that it got so publicised and that it was so blue sky!

Are you still in car design and if so where? I believe I was better in school then I am now, or perhaps that was my hay day! Hehehe.

Thanks everyone! I'm going to go sketch a car! Hmmmm, what should I sketch?

Kevin

[kevincu]

Image done for Goldeneye the videogame.

[Vyle]

Hi there, I am surprised by the inequal quality of your work. There are some very nice things, and some that I really do not like to be honest. Some of them also remind me a lot of illustrations I have seen before, do you use illustrations to inspire you sometimes?
For example I am surprised of the low quality of Darklands, and the high quality of airforce one.
I hope I don't come as too aggressive I am just very surprised.

[kevincu]

Hey Vyle,

I really appreciate your comment and they are valid ones and a very observant one. Thanks for taking the time to really check out my work.

To answer some of your questions and to not make any excuses although they might come off as one.

The work that I posted here span somewhere between 1990 to 2005 with the Airforce bike being thee most recent of my pieces.

Darklands was actually done in about 1995 and was my first use of the digital medium and done in Painter when it still came in a paint can. So my lack of control of the medium is very apparent.

Also some of the pieces here are done under crunch work deadlines where speed is of the essence and the atttention to detail must be overlooked to just get the ideas across, I'm sure you must now that also. I would and could have put more into it on my own time but I feel that it would be good to show others that everything can't be a perfect polished piece and that sometimes it is messy.

If you look at Syd Mead books you see these incredibly detailed and clean paintings and sketches and it can be demoralizing and makes you think that he is beyond human. But one day one of my instructors brought in a very hard to find Bladerunner sketchbook and it was wonderful to see that he is human seeing some of his very rough initial ideation thumbnails.

Some of these pieces you can see that I put a lot of time and love into them, those are my most personal pieces that I really liked doing enough to spend days on. Some aren't and you can see that also. Is it good for me to show those latter ones? Perhaps, or perhaps not, is it hurting me or not? I don't really know, I'm just showing my art and I appreciate everyday that I have it and feel beyond lucky that I get paid to do it.

If I were looking for a job with the art I put up here, then you'd see a very select choosing of only my best work, but I'm just putting up pieces that I like for one reason or another. Maybe you'll find it or see it, maybe you won't.

Vyle, thanks so much for critique and for letting me chat a little, or alot.

BTW, I really like stuff, it's great on many levels.

Oh yeah, I do look at a lot of the stuff out there and can't produce work of the caliber of most of the artist I do admire out there. And yes they do influence me either consciously or unconsciously, but I never try to reproduce their work. I might look at it for it's lighting, composition, colors, or use of value, but I think we all do that. The best inspiration we recieve is from what see and captures our imagination in one way or the other, or simply blows us away one image after the other.

I think art is something that isn't taught as much as it's shown. I can't remember being taught in the traditional way of teaching from a textbook or from lectures when it came to art for me. The best lessons I learned where from watching other artists or instructors drawing, sketching or rendering an image in front me. You absorb that and take what technique you liked the most and integrate into your own, showing influence, but hopefully it's just that. Hopefully it becomes just a part of your own look.

Anyhow, This has again gotten long, but you presented some good questions about my art and provoked a lot of thought. Thanks again.

I look forward to seeing more of your art and hearing more of you comments, it's very appreciated!

[kevincu]

A little old but haven't posted it yet.

Traditional pencil sketch of a ramp for a vidoegame.

[Vyle]

Once again, sorry if I came a bit blunt on my message. I just could not put my mind together to why there was such a discrepancy between the images.
I think I might have a reason and maybe a tip that might help you. You have obviously a VERY good eye for detail, rendering and textures. It seems the only area where you seem to find trouble is perspective.

If I was you (I do it myself regularly), I would fill sketchbooks with simple imbricated volumes (as if you wanted to draw the blueprint of a city in perspective).No shading, no texture, no colors, just volumes. I bet you that after a good 20 pages of those, the quality of your work would truly JUMP. You have a very good base, but your quality in coloring is hurting your need for structure: put the coloring away for a bit, and practice your volumes.
The last sketch you just posted is a perfect example: you seem a bit unconfident with your perspective, and the quality lowers, compared to the other beautiful renderings from sides.
I am telling you all this with such passion, because before you, I found myself in the VERY same position. As a matter of fact, your bike sketches remind me A LOT of what I used to draw not too long ago.

Always know your weaknesses, and face them, is what I notice makes for good progress: I kick my own ass regularly (with anatomy for example...).

Anyway, I hope I might be of some help, keep posting!

[kevincu]

Thanks for your wonderful tips Vyle, don't worry, I was offended nor did I find your comments blunt one bit. I took it as very constructive criticism and very good observation.

My one greatest weakness is perspective, I didn't get the foundation that I really needed and wanted there. It's a very tough and technical thing to learn, not that I don't know it, just don't do it with a critical eye or technical precision, I'm a bit lazy there sometimes. I might and wish to take another class in it. The instructor I had was more of an eyeball it type of instructor, I needed the other instructor who was very technical with it.

Sometimes when I have to do something that's very tough like a 3 point with lots of fisheye I sometimes do a quick block model of the environment in 3d and use that to overlay as a guide, I consider it cheating. Hehehe, but it gets me there faster.

I will totally take your suggestions and fill a sketchbook with just perspective type studies. Thanks a lot Vyle! I totally hear you when you say attack your weaknesses.

Here's one sketch where I used some 3d to help me layout the perspective.

[kevincu]

I would like to play around this more, we'll see, if time permits or energy.