Happy Halloween

This week I'm working on some tombstones and such as a small off project. Kind of fun and something a little different for Halloween! Also did some minor background painting, just threw something together to present the AO pass a little better. Enjoy!

Painting Day 2

Hey everyone. Today I started 2 paintings. First off I started to work on a mountain scene with a lake in front of it, however I only worked for about 30 minutes on this and got a rough block in and colour palate started.

Mountain Scene

And my second painting, I'm really enjoying working on this while listening to her music, Im only getting started but am quite happy with how things are turning out so far. Ellie Goulding is my next subject.

Ellie Goulding

Both of these paintings will be finished in an upcoming post unlike the last painting I posted. This brings me to my next topic. I will be out of town camping with my brother for the next 3-4 days. However I will still pledge to do 14 paintings or more over 14 days, posting multiple once I get back. Not every painting will be 100% complete as, like yesterdays post, I will use some to try out a new technique.

Thanks for reading everyone! and let me know how i'm doing with my current 2 WIP paintings, and if you have any tips to improve my art let me know, yesterday A friend helped me out by letting me know that you can assign a hotkey to flip the canvas. Thank you as this has saved me from destroying my knuckles and wrists =)

Signing off till the weekend,

David J Stelmaschuk

Breaking Radio Silence.

Hey guys,
Update for you today. I've shelved my forest cottage scene. I was feeling quite demotivated by it. I have however practiced up on some particle effects which was my goal for the project. Currently I've been thinking a lot about a project that a buddy and I came up with about a year ago. Ive been trying to design a story in my head and I'm getting really close to having it picture perfect in my mind. However, This leaves me needing to learn how to do some decent concept art, Which brings me to why I'm posting today.

I've just started to do a few WIP Digital paintings. These will give me a rough idea of what a character or scene looks like. I'm not going for details in these paintings, I will first try to establish tone, and a character likeness, something that makes characters unique.

I will be trying to do 1 Painting a day for a few weeks, I will upload all paintings here on the blog.

Please please please, if you see something you like/don't like, something I can do to improve my work, Let me know. I'm still in a learning stage for doing this kind of work and can use any and all advice that you can give to me. Thanks in advance!

And my WIP painting for the day:

I hoped to learn more about tone in this painting, its far from finished, but I learned alot about light and colour  in this and I feel that I completed the goal that I set out to achieve. Thanks for the read everyone. Tomorrow I will be uploading an environment painting. I hope to use tones and colours to take it one more step from this type of work tomorrow.

Once again, I'm still learning, and would love to hear any feedback that you can give me for my concept digital painting's sake

See you tomorrow,

David J Stelmaschuk

Why saving is important!

Hey everyone! I'ed like to take this time to inform myself and everyone that will listen to me about why saving is important. from Wednesday till now I must have lost 10-20 hours of work due to my own stupidity.
As a result I've missed out on my goal of having the building at least 80% modeled. The silver lining to this is that I relearned a major lesson on saving often and in increments, as well as to turn on that handy auto-save feature in Maya.

On Friday I decided to catch an early showing of Pixar's Brave, and I was really impressed! When it comes to a Pixar movie you know you're going to be getting top dollar entertainment as well as AAA grade CG VFX and animation, but to me Brave went above and beyond expectations. I would highly recommend seeing this movie at least once, and maybe a second time if you wanted to see it in 3D! Brave has replaced UP for me for my favorite Pixar story.

I plan on coming into VCAD this next week a few times, to help out a few of the grads with whatever I can, as well as work on getting you guys a better update for Wednesday. Thank you so much for reading, remember to save often, and go out and watch Brave a few times.

Until next time,
-David J Stelmaschuk

New Project

Hey guys, been working on getting a rough block in for my newest project. It will be based roughly around this picture.

My main goal for this project is to brush up on some dynamic simulation with both a) A Chimney giving off smoke and b) A RealFlow waterfall flowing into a small pool of water.

Some other things I hope to include are:
Animated wind blowing through trees and the swing, maybe even clothes on the wire
Interior of the Cottage. Though I don't think I will include and inner to outer shot to save time
speed mapping. my goal is to have this completed and rendering within 3-5 weeks.

I took a render of my main shot so you can see the very rough block in stage. For Sunday I want to have the cottages exterior finished to about 80% so that I can begin to get a feel for the scene as a whole.

Thanks for reading! I look forward to doing this project, and I will see you on Sunday!

-David J Stelmaschuk

Tuesday Update!

For the first project I've decided to just post weekly updates on what im currently doing. This will get me warmed up for the world of tutorial blogging. My first post will likely be a project overview. This is so that I have a documented case of what my goal is for the project, something that you should do every time you start any kind of project, as well as so you guys have a good idea of what Will be going down for the next few weeks.
Anyways, this was just a quick Tuesday update. Will Have another more informative post tomorrow.

-Thanks for the read comments are apreciated

-David J Stelmaschuk

Hello Everyone!

Hello everyone! My name is David J Stelmaschuk, A recent graduate from the Visual College of Art and Design in Vancouver. This blog will have a mix between tutorials and weekly progression of my personal projects, as well as to show people what i'm currently up to. I hope you enjoy! The first post will include my student demo reel and subsequent posts will be a project that I intend to work through and create various tutorials to help people, and to give them a little insight into my workflow.

Sorry for the quality