Ocean Invasion #1: Octopus arborealus
This is the first in a series of pieces I'm doing.
"Ocean Invasion #1: Octopus arborealus"
Click for larger. NOTE: actual resolution quality of the piece is MUCH higher than these compressed jpeg images.
"Ocean Invasion #1: Octopus arborealus"
Closeup
Modeled & Rendered in Blender2.52. Post-processing in GIMP 2.6.
I was asked by another artist whether my inspiration was the "Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus" campaign. Honestly, I actually had never heard of such a thing, and was a wee bit disappointed to learn of it's existence 
Then again, a tree octopus is too cool an idea for to have not already been thought of.
Sea Stars & Sea Cucumbers!
I was asked to take some pictures of our scientific model organisms for a colleague. I figured you all might like to see them as well, considering how magnificently cool and weird they are. If any are used for publication, they will be removed from here.
The first is the Bat Star, Patiria miniata (formerly Asterina miniata) and the second is the California Sea Cucumber, Parastichopus californicus. Click on image for larger versions.
Bat Star, Patiria miniata
Bat Star, Patiria miniata - this one has 6 arms!
Bat Star, Patiria miniata
Bat Star, Patiria miniata - tube feet (also note the tiny brown polychaete worm)
California Sea Cucumber, Parastichopus californicus
California Sea Cucumber, Parastichopus californicus
California Sea Cucumber, Parastichopus californicus
California Sea Cucumber, Parastichopus californicus - the mouthparts look a bit like cauliflower heads when submerged.
California Sea Cucumber, Parastichopus californicus
California Sea Cucumber, Parastichopus californicus - I smell a bad SyFy channel movie in the making...
The Making of “K-T”
I know of at least a couple of people who were curious how I went about making my latest art, "K-T." Here is an abbreviated walkthrough...
First came the idea. I've had the general idea of the composition in my head sometime: a view from a mammal ancestor's burrow of the distant K-T meteor.
When I decided to actually make it with the free and open-source Blender and GIMP, I first made a very quick (like 5 minute) sketch of my idea layout (Note: You can click on all images for larger versions):
Hilarious sketch up of the idea. Looks like it was made by a two-year-old.
Next up: modeling the creatures. All objects are modeled as a 3D mesh, working with them and sculpting them at times much like clay - except it's all in the computer.
Velociraptor polygonal mesh
Velociraptor Model - color and shadow to help see curvature
Next up comes the coloring, texturing, and addition of fur.
Velociraptor Texturing and Fur - an early test
In reality, the coloring and texturing is done on 2D images (using the free photoshop-like GIMP), which are then mapped onto the 3D mesh:
Velociraptor Color Map
Next up: a poseable armature has to be made and applied to the 3D mesh. Think of this as an actual skeleton that the mesh will deform with.
Velociraptor Armature Rigging
The armature has to be tested with lots of poses to make sure the mesh warps correctly.
Smile for the camera!
Rinse and repeat for the other objects:
Mammal with fur
Your great x 10 to the alot grandpa
Now start putting objects into the scene:
Basic Scene
More detail
And finally we have everything in place
Scene Mesh
Scene solid objects
At this point alot of time is put into positioning lights and tweaking textures so that everything looks good. Lighting is probably the hardest thing to get right (especially with fur).
Finally, the image is rendered and the image levels and coloring and effects are tweaked using GIMP.
Note: you can get a super high-res large poster of this artwork here.
"K-T"
"K-T" Close-up
All in all, the entire process took 3 weeks. I could have easily spent another 3 weeks tweaking and fixing many aspects of the piece and adding more details, but I was pretty much ready to move on to something else. So, I got it to the point where I was happy with it as is.
I hope you enjoyed it!
Artistic Depiction of the K-T Extinction Event
Okay - so I've been "away" for a while. What can I say? I've been busy with other things.
However, one of them is now complete. I present for your viewing pleasure, my new paleontology-inspired artwork:
"K-T"
Sixty-five million years ago, a daily struggle occurs in the midst of the world-changing event that would result in the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs and the eventual rise of our own lineage of mammals.
If you or someone you know would like a poster print of this work, you can BUY IT HERE. Or you can browse a couple of my other pieces (more forthcoming).
Note: The poster is MUCH larger and higher resolution (these web images don't do justice to the actual level of detail). I can make other sizes available (or on other products). This took me three weeks to create, using the free and opensource Blender and GIMP software packages.
Here's a cropped piece to give you an idea of the true detail level:
