Art of Carguin

More of the recents

2011-06-17T18:27:00.001-07:00

I was working on Captain America as a matte painter for the last few months and we finally wrapped up the project. Looking forward to its release in July! I'll try and post some screenshots by then. For now, here are some recent personal paintings, including a rework of an older one. Yeah, I like reworking old stuff. CGHub was nice enough to feature it though. Woot! Thanks for the support.

Shipssss!!

2010-08-03T23:38:00.000-07:00

Lots of ships!!! Not exactly an intentional theme...

Updated my website but not my blog, so might as well. Here are my most recent paintings, with the last one being a repaint. Need a jump start before I continue with my next batch. Off to vacation next week! Yay!

Thanks for amazing critique and encouragement from friends at IMD!

Temple Interior Revised

2010-06-02T15:34:00.000-07:00

Oops, accidentally deleted the post when trying to delete a spam comment. They are so annoying! I tried to ignore them but the sad thing about being able to read Chinese is I find a lot of them too disgusting to ignore. Anyway, sorry to those who commented.

Not a matte painting...

2010-05-16T20:01:00.000-07:00

From sketch to finish:

EDIT: I ended up changing the lighting on the painting because backlighting is really a bad choice for showing off the ruin. I hope it's better...

I'm trying to break these matte painting habits that I adopted at work and focus more on design, but they are surprisingly hard to shake off. I'll probably do another one that shows off more design based on the same sketch.

Also, played with an awesome plug-in that Va introduced me to. After filtering:

Alien Mine

2010-05-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

Used Vue for lighting for this one. It was a lot of fun.

This one can be better. I'll come back to it. It seems like the very thing I want to keep is what needs to be rid of. Sigh. Different setting for the same extraction machine as above. I designed it in photoshop then put together in Maya.

Sci-fi Envi

2010-04-01T00:38:00.000-07:00

Started with a doodle at work and expanded into a full blown painting. Thanks to Eddie who kept pushing me to refine and make things better.

Beautiful Grim

2010-01-24T17:56:00.000-08:00

My entry for Daarken's Beautiful Grim Auction, held in an effort to relieve his girlfriend, Cat's financial burden from her breast cancer treatment at the age of 25. Check out his site to see how you can help out (donate / purchase), too! Best wishes to its success!

Sick = update time...

2009-11-13T14:01:00.000-08:00

It is a good chance to finish up paintings that were started with a scattered mind. I'm trying to improve my approach, ...so needed to get these done and not look back. Lots to change and think about... learning them the hard way.

Would have been nice to add a city at the bottom, but... too exhausted...

Did this costume design for the painting above. But... I changed the scale a lot, so you barely see him. Kind of stupid... haha.
As much as I love sci-fi work, I'm not great at it. The design is kind of bleh... but it's started like 6 months ago... Hope my next try would be better.
Also... I realize I enjoy knowing who created the paintings and feel frustrated when not, so even though I never did before, I'm going to sign all my stuff now :)

End of daylight saving update!!

2009-11-04T00:00:00.001-08:00

Wow! Can't believe I didn't update until the next time the time changes!! 8 months... sigh. I'm prepared that nobody would see this post for a while. Unfortunately personal stuff is still in the works. I'll post as soon as they are finished. The reason why I have materials to post is because this featurette video is recently available on youtube!

The following are screenshots of matte paintings I worked on for A Christmas Carol!

Did most of the closeup store fronts, as well as embellishing the streets. Scene setup by Glenn Cotter, and art directed by Brian Flora + Doug Chiang.

Supported Chris Stoski for these paintings (the entire forest fly through sequence!!) I was able to contribute paintings for the sky (some pieces of clouds, hehe), forest junk (leaves and the likes on the snow floor), a few backgrounds + all the lakes!!! Watch out for them :) I'm the most proud of them. This was an extremely challenging sequence.

Then this part is where I'm most proud of since I received the most minimal amount of help. Lighting setup + art directed by Chris Stoski and Doug Chiang. (Can't see much here... but there's more stuff if you watch the animation!)
These compressed images really do the art no justice. See it in its full glory in 3D at the theater (shameless plug!) It's a good film~~~~~~ (plug ends)... It was heart-warming to see all the late nights and team effort pay off. Go matte department! If you guys get a chance, go see the film :D

Finally, congrats to Siren! I was fortunate enough to be one of the owners of the "first edition". Awesome stuff... wish the stories could be longer so there's more room for you to expand your creativity. Anyway...

I'm not dead. Good to know, right?

Update when there's more stuff to show :) Happy November!

Daylight savings update!

2009-03-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

Today I decided to put together the stuff that I did incohesively over the past month. I've been learning a lot at work, esp. on matte painting, though that's not being represented very well in my personal work. I hope I still have time to go through some 3D Max tutorials tonight... after having forgotten about the lost hour time and again. Urgh.

-Forgot to include this one. Refined illustration from before...

Doodled today.

These are life drawings done at life drawing workshop at work. Lots of fun being psyched out by amazing artists.

I thought I got plenty to show until I ended up deleting a lot of stuff I realized look unacceptable. Will post more soon...

Needs more practice...

2008-12-10T14:38:00.000-08:00

I think I have an annoying tendency to paint brown in shadows. Granted, I wasn't using reference, which, is NOT an excuse.Sigh. Oh Well. Move on and do better next time ;)

Demo Reel!!

2008-12-08T11:37:00.000-08:00

Ready for view here.

I think I'm really doomed with homework.

Something decorative

2008-11-13T01:58:00.000-08:00

AND I got Enya's new CD!!! LOVE LOVE LOVE. Here's a drawing for her. Not that great, but with love :D Inspired by Zhang Lu.

Midterm Checkpoint...!

2008-11-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

Matte painting and some character work...

City closeup...

Cheesy Chinese people... These are in progress :) I want to give them more props to carry.

Next up would be sets, color scripts and sketches that need a lot more work...

Matte Painting concepts

2008-10-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

Still working on the model... Shading done by Mr. V.

I will be back.

The long-anticipated!

2008-09-24T22:55:00.000-07:00

Picture of the 2 victims! Jon and me!! (Please be advised that this post is entirely comprised of inside-jokes)
This is the offender's prank:

He deliberately looked away when he counted to 3! That's why we were both caught looking so dorkily surprised!

The offender:

But eventually the offender repented and succumbed to the wrath of the righteous, so I was like ok I'll take a picture with you.
The end.

(Sorry the original intention was to make fun of Jon but... the flow of the story works better if Tom is the villain! Hehehe... oh my god Tom you really have potential to be a cool-looking vampire I have to paint you!)

Horror

2008-09-22T01:32:00.000-07:00

A combination of what I deem horrifying:

1) Legion from Castlevania - the most disturbing concept on earth. I hate this boss. I'm honestly disturbed every time I see it, its disturbance is equivalent to cockroaches.
2) Pregnant monster - quoting Ryan Lang
3) Going bald

Goki?

2008-09-21T19:12:00.001-07:00

A brush test...

Favorite subject: Cheesy pale handsome man

2008-09-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

Dark stuff

2008-08-21T19:15:00.001-07:00

I didn't realize how dark my characters always are until I posted this against my other work on this blog. Hmmmm... I'll paint something brighter next time. I haven't updated in while. I've always thought a brush set to opacity - pen pressure is very hard to control. But after looking at a lot of paintings, and made a new brush, I experimented with it and I think I've come up with something new!

Samurais

2008-06-08T17:36:00.000-07:00

This thing took longer to fix than thought....................................

...

2008-06-01T12:31:00.000-07:00

Posted for Eddy. Assuming the friendly people at Udon didn't make a mistake or accidently forget to put it in, this illustration will show up in their Street Fighter Tribute book this summer (June-July? At Comicon...)

Ultramarine Blue, Viridian and Alizarin Crimson

2008-05-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

Some sketches I did with my new favorite brush pen...

I have finally done something related to my major!

2008-04-25T19:06:00.000-07:00

Background paintings :)

I started painting this in the evening and stayed up all night (ok I did fall asleep for 1-2 hours, hmm... I guess that doesn't count as "stay up"), after doing just... one thumbnail, I think it does make a different when you already have your mind set at something. That was how I felt when I first came up with the concept. I think I want paint another piece depicting a land flowing with milk and honey - the Promised Land from the Bible, next. That place sounds delicious.

Finally a painting I started almost a year ago in landscape 1. Tomutsu was right about the umber everywhere in my painting. So one day I just took a palette knife and went all over the painting. This is the result:

EOW

2008-03-19T10:34:00.001-07:00

Matte painting and oil quick study

2008-03-16T23:55:00.001-07:00

Here's my matte painting midterm. The clip is 90 MB and it's not extraordinary so I'm only posting the stills. Making images fit together is actually MUCH HARDER than I thought!! This one is the final version after a lab tech advised me that my clouds were too muddy. I did do some painting in this one and realized matte painting does require strong painting ability to be able to master.
After I composited everything I actually end up liking my old but "muddy" version (no offense to the lab tech he was very helpful). So I decided to show it anyway.

And here's the original plate.

EOW

2008-03-10T22:35:00.000-07:00

My snow Count Dracula!!

2008-03-01T15:34:00.000-08:00

I painted this a lot faster than my usual stuff. It makes such a huge difference when you're painting something you love. Next time I should paint a penguin. (AND probably because I was listening to Enya the whole time...)

Sketchy

2008-02-28T04:29:00.001-08:00

Not in order of creation...

Thumbs for layout contaminated by the Oliver-stickers.
This is before I took landscape painting... the class was fairly useless...

Monochromatic for Zhaoming's class...

Sketch at John Wentz's workshop...

A useless sketch.

Environments!!

2008-02-01T02:18:00.000-08:00

Sketch from memory:

Study:

Equally bad :)

Figure painting final

2008-01-27T23:56:00.001-08:00

Thanks for all the kind words. Been gone for the last 3-4 weeks. Much has happened... US election, stock plunge, subprime crisis, economic recession, interest rate cut, historical fraud; Taiwan's legislative elections; Hong Kong's demonstration for democracy; Violence in Kenya; Beijing Olympic, etc... . So, I didn't really practice... What does art stand for at a time like this? Haha... Just took some pictures of family and scenic views from China that I may share later.

Here's a painting done for Henry's class. Brought it home for family, currently sitting at the corner collecting dust. No one seems to care, grr. School starts tomorrow but not really ready for it.

More WIPs

2007-12-07T23:15:00.001-08:00

Entrance to the castle.

The result of jealousy :)

Heads!!

2007-12-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

The following were done in Zhaoming's HH class and serve to illustrate the life/struggles of an artist. First you did a decent drawing and you thought you're going to rock your way to the top.

Then, you DETERIORATE!! (Freaking drawing paper!! But that's no excuse... Zhaoming draws on Color and Design bristol vellum!) You can do even less when given more time.

And you continue to deteriorate as you learn more, and deteriorate, deteriorate...

...
...
...

|
|
|
v

until you feel that you're grabbing onto something...

Then... pop in the hands too...

Oh my, the magic of Zhaoming's class!!!

And these are some digital head paintings of friends that I did a while back. They fit the theme of heads.

Absolute WIP!!!

2007-12-01T16:19:00.001-08:00

These will be better. But here are some WIPs. It isn't an excuse to why my work isn't better, but you can tell how much a printer can screw over everything.

I've slacked enough

2007-11-16T12:01:00.000-08:00

Originally reserved for consumption in thanksgiving, the game mentioned in my previous post has been beaten by its owner in about 2 days. ...Now I can leave the secret stages for thanksgiving.

In addition, I spent a lot of time doing something completely optional: coloring my characters for Advanced Perspective's final. The other one needs fixing...

A 40-minute sketch at Ruben's. I tried HARD to shake off Ryan's and Mike's influence, but I'm sorry, we are going to the same school. Still tried to imbue it with a little bit of Gibson. Desperate at the deltoid area too. Argh.

My favorite game x my favorite illustrator

2007-11-04T23:33:00.000-08:00

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I got it!!!!!! In my hand!!!!!! (For free too, thank you Mr. V) MY LOVE!!! Look at the way the eyes are painted!!! Ayami Kojima is my god(dess)!! She's my no. 1 influence. I love her!! I made it a point to post this before 12am!!

A pleasant surprise is that it also contains Symphony of the Night (I didn't know, oh my god)!! I'm going to consume it over thanksgiving. Right now it can sit comfortably on my shelf.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Whatever

2007-11-03T16:14:00.000-07:00

*"Penwork" hurts eyes - deleted*

Long pose from Henry's workshop. Made the leg a little too dark :( And got a nice FLARE there. Whatever. Too lazy to fix it.

Eye-shadowed Nick:

A more "finished" piece:
Finally, I'll leave you with this "proverb" that I loved and wrote down from a game I was playing. For the longest time I thought I lost it, but found it just recently. To avoid this from happening again and to share it with you all, I'm saving it online.

嫌なことから目をそらさず、

何でも正面から受け止めろ。

Ken's translation: Don't avoid something because it's unpleasant; rather, face it head on.

Blessing

2007-10-29T23:18:00.001-07:00

It is a blessing to be able to paint at home, even though I know after the sun comes out, I'll be screaming. It's the first time I work on my painting assignment at home, and it felt very very good. The following photograph almost persuaded me to become a fine artist.

Painting is so fun!!!!!! Thanks to all the people who gave me advice/guidance with regard to my last post. I have long forgotten the joy of just being able to draw and paint, and been stressed over how to get better fast too much. Ah, what an idiot. I just sketched at BART over the weekend for the first time. It was refreshing and liberating.

Anyway, here are some clothed figures, something I constantly struggle with.

One huge head...

Finally...
Meet my son, Chow, hence the full name Chow Chow. Taken before our class at Sutter.

Lingering questions in my head + big traditional dump

2007-10-15T19:25:00.001-07:00

Can all the illustrators and good drawers out there explain to me how life drawing helps you illustrate better? What are you thinking when you draw people, animals and objects? Are you analyzing? Do you memorize how to draw them so when you illustrate you can draw from your head? How does limiting the time you spend on an art piece (life drawing) help you improve? Do you not think that working from photographs, which allows you time to analyze all you want, help more? And if you are working from reference when you illustrate anyway, what continues to motivate your going to workshops and drawing naked/clothed people, with a pen?

Help me...

Anyway... so here is my dump.

In-class painting.

Jennifer. 10 minutes (?).

Terry. 10-15 minutes...
Note: These are Terry too!
Here is Gintah! And Emerson! And Mike!

Practice on environments

2007-10-13T11:57:00.001-07:00

Painter = crack?!

2007-10-12T23:41:00.000-07:00

Jon Foster is right!!! I have always wanted to paint this way (you might be scared), but Photoshop can never, never, never satisfy what I want to do with my brushstrokes! I really liked the result (for now.) I will never use Photoshop anymore!!!!!! (for now.)

This is for you Emerson. Painter sketch. I even named my file "love".

Traditional painting dump

2007-10-12T20:32:00.000-07:00

When I was carrying this painting around I think I managed to freak some people out, so I guess I was able to convey 1/10 of the beauty of the original painting. I will clarify here, that this is only a master copy, called Green Mirror, by Z.S. Liang, a very amazing painter. No stress people :) Keeping the proportion right with a large painting was definitely challenging. I will try to fix the legs when the day comes.

A still life. Color adjusted (finally).

More practicing...

2007-10-05T23:56:00.000-07:00

My speed has grown, but it is my vision that has not...

Nonetheless... (Tangent fixed)

Oh so disgusting

2007-09-28T23:26:00.001-07:00

My previous post hurt my eyes so it has been deleted.