Doomsday Machine 4 Color Sketch

Inspired by the Star Trek Episode of the same name, and a photo of a flower I saw. Both drawn and painted in Photoshop.

Xeelee Sequence Timelike Infinity The Eye Of The Spline

Michael Poole riding the "Hermit Crab" towards the Spline warship, from the book "Timelike Infinity", part of the Xeelee Sequence by Stephen Baxter. The Spline are basically giant intelligent whales that have modified themselves to become spaceships, and rent themselves out to the highest bidders, in this story, the Qax. All painted in 2d in Photoshop.

Last Stand

Next To Conquer

Quick rough that I came up with while stuck in the parking lot also known as the 80 highway.

Also two color sketches showing my initial ideas before I refined the first one with more details. 

Check Out Affinity Photo

So ever since Adobe went rental only, I've been hoping to find an eventual replacement for Photoshop in my workflow (I'm still using my trusty CS6). After seeing Affinity Photo in action earlier this year, I hoped I might finally have my answer.

The open windows beta started about a month ago, and I'm happy to report we may in fact have a winner. I made a detailed list of all the features I use in photoshop, and ended up with a list of 111 features. Affinity covers 101 of those features. Plus, it has a bunch of new features I've wanted for a long time, like an improved Liquify, more no destructive procedural filters, brush categories, multiple layer masks. In fact, the only must have feature it lacks for my workflow is the ability to clip layers to groups.

The future in painting/photomanip apps finally looks bright again, and it looks like we will indeed have a viable alternative in the near future. Check out the open beta and support this software!

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/

Update On Paris Talk in 2017

I'll be doing a talk in Paris in March on the making of the Inc book project, I'll be discussing our process, doing a live digital painting demo, and showing off a ton of never before seen art. The conference will also feature 19 other artists, some amazingly talented people will be there, artists from all different walks of life. Check out the official site below, you can watch the teaser video and get tickets to attend in person or tickets to watch from home. Hope to see some of you there!

http://www.iamag.co/features/iamag-master-classes-17/

CGTools Updated Nov 29th 2016

I've received many requests over the years for my 3dsmax UI, so I've just uploaded my 2017 UI files. I'd recommend taking what you want from these and customizing them, no two people work alike and I don't expect anyone is going to use my exact UI. But it is interesting seeing how other people choose to organize their tools, and so maybe this can help inspire a UI for you that's better for your own workflow. Enjoy!

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/ui/ui_3dsmax.htm

Desert Wandering

“Although I knew better, I pushed us day and night, sometimes taking shortcuts we should have avoided. We were nearly devoured several times.” - Landis

From the Inc Book Project.

Link Removed

New Paintings

Soulburn 3D Education Page Updated Nov 22nd 2016

Added a new 45 minute video tutorial called Shading A Hard Surface Model 2016: Texturing A Robotic Mask, which shows off my workflow for texturing hard surface models (and shows how max 2017.1's new BlendedBoxMap and Curvature work as part of that workflow)

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/shading_a_hard_surface_model_2016/shading_a_hard_surface_model_2016.htm

Available at low quality on youtube or high quality downloadable for $1 on gumroad.