Planet Blender

A Digital Painting of A Wilderness of Stars, oh and of course, a spaceship.
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2010-01-15 20:19:57

Every week I go to The Illustration Art challeng website to get inspiration for a digital painting. This week the word on Illustration Friday is “Wilderness”, and me being the science fiction, space ship obsessed nerd that I am, the first idea that jumped to mind was “A Wilderness of Stars”; but where had I heard this evocative phrase before. I started Googling and found …

A Wilderness of Stars by William F Nolan

It seems it was a the title of a collection of science fiction stories, which included a work by the writer of that sci-fi classic Logan’s Run – man, you can find anything out on Google. That would fit for where I had heard the phrase, if it was the title of a science fiction book that might have been hanging about in second-hand stores in the 70s then the title could easily have lodged itself in my subconscious round about then.

I wasn’t satisfied with my Googling though. I wondered if a third rate hack science fiction writer could really have come up with a phrase like this. A phrase that is hard to forget once you hear it. It turned out that he didn’t, the phrase is part of a quote by Mark Twain.

“Nothing exists; all is a dream. God – man – the world – the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars – a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space – and you!”

If Twain got it from somewhere even earlier then I didn’t find out by just Googling. Anyway it seems to me to be perfect inspiration for a digital painting of a spaceship against a backdrop of the wilderness of stars. So I fired up GIMP and attached my drawing tablet to the USB port for some painting.

I started by sketching out the shape of a spaceship freehand using GIMP and my Bamboo graphics tablet. Sketching out these virtual paintings this way, is becoming surprisingly easy and intuitive after a couple of months of practice.

Next I chose a colour for the spaceship and added it to a new layer underneath the frame. I’m not sure green was a good choice for the colour scheme of the image, and luckily we are still early enough in the digital picture painting process to easily  be able to change it to something better.

I added some bright blue to a layer below the spaceship, then duplicated it and turned the transparency down on the two layers. Then I smudged the layers and it looks as though radioactive fire is shooting out of the spacecraft’s engines. Excellent.

This spaceship painting is still at a very early and developmental stage, be sure and pop back to the blog to see this abstract shape turn into a beautifully realised cruiser of the wilderness of stars.

Learning Action Constraints
Blender Cookie - 2010-01-15 13:08:27

In this tutorial, I go over how to set up the action constraints, where you can use a bone to control things like finger curl/expand, or something more advanced, like facial expressions. Support the site – Download includes: High resolution .mov Video .blend file at the state of the tutorial

http://blendercookie.com

Learning Action Constraints
Vimeo / Blender3D [Tutorial] - 2010-01-15 12:36:22

In this tutorial, I go over how to set up the action constraints, where you can use a bone to control things like finger curl/expand, or something more advanced, like facial expressions.

Cast: Wes Burke

Tip: Combining Two Rigs in Blender
Vimeo / Blender3D [Tutorial] - 2010-01-15 12:09:05

In this tip, I show you how to combine two rigs into one, and how to adjust the settings in the new rig to conform to the settings in the original rig.

Cast: Wes Burke

keying set part1
inblender.blogspot.com - 2010-01-15 09:52:00

pada tutorial kali ini saya akan mulai mengenalkan keying set yang merupakan feature baru blender 2.5.., yang salah satu fungsinya adalah memudahkan dalam pengeditan animasi.
download tutorial --->>  keying set part1

Blending Life 2
BlenderNation - 2010-01-15 05:13:49

More than a year has passed since BLENDING LIFE 1 finished, and after its success last time we are happy to soon present you with BLENDING LIFE 2!  We received loads of entries during the first challenge and were blown away by the Blender community’s talent and also their determination to learn [...]

Blender car source file
mike's digital anthology - 2010-01-15 04:32:05

What a learning experience!  I know the car is far from complete, it’s still missing a lot of the trimmings and details, but the model should be good enough for a quick animation.

So without further ado, here is the packed Blender file of the BMW.

The Ian Report #479 - Blood!
Ian Hubert's Posts - Project London - 2010-01-15 01:30:00

This week is the epitome of all previous weeks, with one exception: blood.

This is the week of blood!

Blood flying out of people's backs! Blood splurting out of their chests to splat on the ground! Blood splurting around like people stomping on ketchup packets! 'Blood steam' rising up in the air from the wounds! There hasn't been a single bit of blood in all the rest of the movie—then bam! Blood town! Population: This Week! Blood oozing in cracks, and oozing down backs, there's blood and there's guts, and it's all goin' nuts!

Oh man. It's pretty great times. Trust me.

Compositor's Tip: A bit of blood on the lens goes a long way towards making an otherwise lackluster composite really Pop!

We get our blood from DetfilmsHD! You should too! They have two whole discs of blood!

It's bloody great!

Ian Hubert
Writer Director

Sign up for our sometimes monthly email newsletter.
Become a fan of Project London on Facebook.
Follow Project London on Twitter.