Entering the Third Dimension (NOW OPEN)

Are you finding that your sketch books are overflowing with characters these days? Have you been wondering what some of those character would look like if they were a little more three dimensional? Well come on in and Enter the Third Dimension....

Q&A

Whats this Enter3D stuff then?

I've been doing tutorials and 3D training videos for a long time now. I've been working with more and more 2D designers and especially 2D character designers. More and more people have been asking about how to get their concepts into 3D. This new area of my website is designed to help.

What will I find there?

Help and support for one thing. I want to help anyone new to modeling get a feel for how subdivision modeling works and how to learn the basics. The new area of the site is broken down into:

An Introduction
The Basics
Some Projects
A Subdivision modelers Primer

I will use this framework as a place to keep my future tutorial videos. If you have specific requests then please feel free to add comments in this blog post.

Is it finished?

Nope. Not by a long way. I've been getting help and feedback from some amazing designers and I've been given some amazing character designs to use in future tutorials. The site is there as a resource for future modelers and a place to add new video content as I produce it.


Thanks have to go to Wes and the KURV guys who host all my stuff. The ever supportive Nevercenter Silo team for sponsorship and encouragement. For help with or for providing character designs and reference images James Yeah!, Moopf, Tado, Steve Cairney, Steve Talkowski, George Coghill, Lawrence Basso and many more to come. For constant advice and reality checks Wayne Robson, Dave Davidson. The multi-talented Glenn McGuire at Sparkle Media and Anthony Fillice my business guru and life coach. Oran Parker for design feedback. What would I do with out you all and the hundreds of others who I have the pleasure of interacting with on a daily basis. Thanks!

Follow me on twitter for updates.
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Monsters can Dance

I have had loads of great feedback about my recent Breakdancing Mummy #twitsketch and custom sculpt. So much so that after posting at the Kidrobot Forums I decided to go ahead and do more `dancing Monster` concepts in the hope that a new idea for a sculpt would crop up. Below are the results so far.

Please comment below this post and add your thoughts about which other monsters should join the elite `Monster Fame academy` and be immortalized in ink. Maybe a Riverdancing Beast from 40,000 fathoms? Or a Headbanging Predator.?












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Fuse Wax by Willow products

I've been talking to a few artists this week about using `Fuse` Wax for sculpting and I thought I'd re-post the video that Willow products made to demonstate the basic properties of the wax. I'm a long time sculpey user but last year I fell in love with this wax. I tried about 5 or 6 different type of wax from very soft almost playdoh like Wax to the other end of the scale with carving waxes. Fuse was the best imho.

Heres the demo video to give you an idea of why I like it so much.





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A week with the classics

Coming to the end of a long hard week and I just wanted to share what I’ve been up to this week. This week I’ve been listening to a few varied audio books. I’ve spent lots of hours in the car and I’ve been soaking up some Ernest Hemingway, namely a Movable Feast, a memoir about his years in Paris as part of the American expat circle of writers in the 1920s. I listened to a reading of The Old Man and the Sea last week which made me pick up this memoir and I have thoroughly enjoyed it.

I followed that up with Moby Dick which is a huge piece of work and not at all what I expected. I was of the understanding that it was a book about a madman chasing a whale: Well, it is, but it is SO much more. For example, Chapter 32 is entitled Cetology. Now, is the branch of marine mammal science that studies whales, dolphins, and porpoise in the scientific order Cetacea. In Moby Dick Herman Melville describes his belief is that all members of the Whale family are, in fact, Fish. Or more accurately `Spouting Fish`. He goes on to describe a wide variety of the Whales and Dolphin specifically the ones that could be caught by whalers in the mid 19th century and how much oil each species could yield. It was published in 1851 which was 8 years before Darwin let loose with the origin of species but it still shocked me for some reason. As I write I am only 45 chapters into it but I am engrossed. I have a habit of reading a classic novel and then following that up by reading the authors biography. Herman’s biography is now on my book list. He got marooned with Cannibals for three months and didn’t end up on the menu. How cool is that! Strange that I should be so entranced by a book about Whaling when I am in fact a staunch Whale conservationist. I suppose the more you understand about an issue both negative and positive the more you can help to improve the situation. You only have to look at the moving and distrubing film SharkWater by Rob Stewart.

I’ve not had a great deal of time for `real` or `paper` books this week but I’ve squeezed in a look at a couple of art related books. One showing the paintings of Norman Rockwell and the other a brief biography of Dali. I’ve managed to catch a couple of films namely Sexy Beast, The Goonies and Coraline at the Cinema (Amazing film!)

What have I been drawing and modeling? Err...very little actually. I’ve worked on one creature for the Wii title I’m working on and I’ve managed a few scribbles in my Moleskine but that is pretty much it. My Kong sculpt is now fully dry and I’m planning a new clay project which I am hoping will be a Rhino of some type.

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