Hard times...

I saw this post reposted on another website I frequent and I think it's good to have it here, for myself as well as those that stop through here. [Granted things area little different for minorities, BUT there's still A LOT of valid info here for everyone that takes on the concept of "Deferred Gratification" as a real part of their day to day lives]

(originally from conceptart.org)

Jason Manley

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first, you are not trapped in your situation. You can get out of any situation you want if you are willing to take the pain of doing all the things you dont want to do..the long hard way. The fruitful way.

At seventeen I was homeless and orphaned, taking care of my fourteen year old brother who I somehow managed to keep in school. I had dropped out of school. I did two years of wasting time eventually trying to get my head on straight. At nineteen I was homeless again. Scraped together enough money to get my ass to arizona to study art. Got a temp apt to get me through to the end of the month and took a job at subway (applied all over til I found something). The subway job paid enough money to sometimes eat and pay my small studio rental. I went back to school to get my graduation and was working full time (thought I needed to graduate from HS to get into a good college). Trust me...it was fucking painful. I transferred to a community college the following year and slowly got better and better jobs. Worked telemarketing fundraising to afford a 1977 datsun and art supplies. Shittiest job ever but paid double what subway did. Worked three jobs during the summer to get caught up including going to alaska to work the salmon docks across the country. I did not give a shit what it was, if it paid for my goals to be met and didnt involve anything illegal, I did it.

As time went on I realized I needed to arrange my priorities again. I took a night time job so I could exhaust all my energies in my art and studies. Eventually got a job at AT&T...Att this is Jason how may I help you?...I was still far behind those who had life handed to them their whole life. However, I was catching up. In time I realized it was not a chase against others but to only my own race to my goals. Kept the nose down. Chose friends who worked on art or learning always. Ignored the time wasting folk who never will amount to anything other than regular. Grew up around enough of those to realize the difference. After three and a half years I took my first art job and quit my shit job...have lived with and from art ever since.

By the time I was 29 I had achieved every goal I had reached for when I first set out. That is when I realized it was time to set new goals...each time this happens it feels like starting over...get something done..start again...in time your life becomes what you want it to be. Even those of money have to do this if their life involves learning, skill, and growth. It is not money that holds people back...is just their own mind.

The hard part about certain situations is not everyone is told they can do and reach their goals if they just work their ass off starting RIGHT NOW. Some know it and wont work for whatever reason. They listen to that voice that says I want to chill and watch tv or i dont feel like it. Others have addictions or mental issues keeping them from growing and learning. I didnt want to be any of that. I wanted to do cool stuff...to have an interesting life...and to work in a creative way.

Hard manual labor growing up taught me that my mind would rot if I chose that kind of path. I wanted something to use my mind. Bored if not...and with boredom comes making trouble or distraction. Gotta turn that into work ethic...no choice. Carl Dobsky was telling me this about the atelier every day. It has to be just uncomfortable enough to make the coolest thing to do be art. If there is a blaring tv or anything else, than there are other options. Options that keep one from not working to reach their goals.

Complacency is the womb of mediocrity. You clearly are not complacent. So do something about it in every free second of your day. All this wandering around doing not a whole lot but thinking isn't getting you much done. It is however, giving you a taste of life many others would never have the guts to explore. Just dont stay down there too long without coming up for air.



Good luck,



Jason

Another small update...

This is Myurene, a Golden Jackal anthro, designed by one of my co-managers in the studio. It's coming along nicely, but this will probably be the last WIP posted publicly for a while anyway.

Small Update

This character is a Gemsbok Oryx anthropomorphic character (Yes - the Nommo Universe and this Gliese 581 c/d Universe will most definitely converge...)

Nothing special today

Almost ready for UV mapping and detailing in ZBrush.

Latest WIP (work in progress)

Probably one of the most gratifying projects I've ever been a part of is starting this illustration studio. We're not completely off and running, but we're definitely getting there.

My latest work in progress is a character named Moses: (This story will tie in nicely with the Nommo stories.)


[Look Below]

Crazy thing called Life...

Lots of crazy things personally, professionally, and health wise have created the maelstrom from which I've been operating the last couple of months. I've neglected calls that should have been made BUT it feels like I may have righted the ship, turned the tide (and whatever other cheesy phrase you could insert here. Hopefully things will be normalizing soon and I apologize to those I haven't gotten too. The image here is for Nommo, it's a another test rendering of the Orisha/Jinn/Spirit Watchers with some minor alterations. Updating should hopefully be more frequent from now on.

Deep Blue...

This is primarily just a stress test for rendering full scenes for Nommo.

Dedicated to the McNabb haters in Philly...

...OK, this is an interruption of your regularly scheduled programming



This is a blog for my Nommo project, but the aggravation in me has been growing all season long. I have to get it out. I'm sick of the racists in Philly that hate McNabb. I saw the same identical build up of racism leveled against a Black quarterback fueled by the media in Philly before and that quarterback's name was Randall Cunningham...another quarterback headed to the fame.

Words of a fan on Randall Cunningham
David Kowalski

"Randall Cunningham is hands down a Hall of Famer, maybe not this year but in the next couple here are the reasons why, Randall has better stats than HOF Joe Nameth, in Cunninghams 16 year career he has a comp. pct. of 56.6, 29,979 yards, 207/134 TD/INT, and thats just passing, running he has 4928 yards and 35 TDS, not to mention when the Eagles called on him to punt, he did it well. Now you may say that those stats alone don't get him in but he is a 3 time MVP, Only Unitas, Favre, Jim Brown, and Y.A. Tittle have won 3 NFL MVP awards, Montana only won 2 NFL MVP, all in the hall or on there way. Now you say that most of them have a ring, but what Randall lacked in rings he brought with other things. Cunningham was a pioner for the Dual Threat quarterback, so now players like Vick and McNabb can thank him for that, but not only that Cunningham was a very successful quarterback when black quarterbacks were not given a chance. For all of this I believe he should get his bid into the hall."

Words from the PRESIDENT OF FOOTBALL OPERATIONS for the Eagles.
Joe Banner

"I can't envision a situation in which [McNabb] is not our quarterback next year,"

"We are talking about a quarterback who went to four straight [NFC] championship games. There are only four quarterbacks in the history of the league that have done that. You are talking about a quarterback who has had a higher winning percentage in his first seven years in the league than Peyton Manning. You are talking about a quarterback that has one of the highest quarterback ratings over the first seven seasons, one of the best TD-to-interceptions ratios of any quarterback in the history of this game in his first seven seasons in the league. . .

"My expectation, and I can't really even picture a different scenario, is that he'll be the quarterback."

Donovan McNabb will more likely than not be the Eagles starting quarterback until he decides it's time to hang up the cleats and he will probably win a few Superbowls in the process, so just think about how long Elway was in Denver...That's probably how long Donovan will be with the Eagles. Deal with it however you like. It's sickening, for me anyway, to feel like I have to defend a young eventual Hall of Fame quarterback, because more than a few people want to judge the quarterback on things other than stats, but don't want to admit it.

Thinking Beast Experiment

(Final) Digital sculpting on Computers is a Godsend for technically minded artists/filmmakers. I primarily use Maya, modo, ZBrush on OS X and have worked in Linux, but am not a huge fan.



(Update)



After a good hiatus, much needed funds for real life, I may be back to Nommo:NSR, but I have quite a few irons in the fire.

Another Sekmet image

Above[edit] is a another image of the WindCurrent Sekmet, one of the 3D ships I'm building for the Nommo Project. I completely forgot that I had this image rendered and was a little further completed here too.

First Female Cloud Soldier WIP

Yeah, women can be Cloud Soldiers too! I was able to get a kind soul to photograph herself for me to use as reference for my next cloud soldier design and this is where I am so far.

First Cloud Soldier

This image is my first Cloud Soldier sculpt. I remember testing out the modo renderer and having a rough go at getting the glass transparent, because of the way the shader tree was set up, but this was my first successful and I'll definitely be redesigning the goggles since they a little too much like "Rock Star" shades for me, but I really like the quality of modo's Global Illumination rendering.




In terms of my general process for the material for this project I really don't do a lot in terms of sketching for these sculpts -characters or vehicles- as it allows me more freedom in the design process. In terms of Influences and inspiration it's largely a blend of a lot of research on a African Tribal arts, clothing, costume, Comic book mythology and animal structure/anatomy.

Orisha/Jinns in the House!

This is actually an Orisha/Jinn that is essentially a Spirit Watcher and one of many different Orishas observing the events of the "New Stories of RA!" This particular Orisha is based on the Satyr and I actually am finding information that places the origin of the Satyr mythos in Ethiopia. Initially this was a design for an illustrator, but he didn't like this one, so it left me with a sculpted, but unused character. I hadn't really done any Orisha for my project, but since they are nature and animal oriented I wanted fantastical Anthromorphic like creatures. The Physical make-up of this Satyr fit what I was looking for, but it being part of Greek Mythology to begin with was a problem since I have set the Nommo stories within African/Egyptian mythology, so it was a Godsend that in doing some basic research on Satyrs that I didn't mention much about the Celestial watchers that will be an important part of the trailer in the synopsis , but their role is more secondary.

NOMMO: New Stories of RA! : Synopsis

Productive Upswing!!

I'm finally on a nice little productive upswing and I'm able to sustain that for more than a week. Work is slow-going, but that's just the nature of the "Thinking Beast." (corny joke I know.) I've been bouncing around modeling characters, many of which aren't finished, but I'm ecstatic to have them as far done as they are now. This is the most recent Nigerian Cloud Soldier model/sculpt I've been working on.





Wires for my first Cloud Soldier:





Detail Shot:

FINALLY an update!

Won't say much here other than it's taken me a while to get out of the funk I was in right around Christmas, due to family medical emergencies. But things are back on the move again with the NOMMO project. Below are WIP images of of the WindCurrent Sekmet. I'm beginning to view it as the "Millenium Falcon" of the NOMMO Universe. For the few who still stop through here don't hesitate to say hey and let me know what you think of the WC Sekmet.

Character Rigging and Skinning

Character rigging and skinning is the process of building a "Control Skeleton", like a puppet rig, for a 3D sculpted character. Above is an image of my Centurion character with the control Skeleton (Rig) almost completely visible. The process of connecting the 3D mesh to the skeleton is skinning and building the skeleton to match the character and the complex set of relationships that become the controllers or the control system of the skeleton is rigging. Fortunately my first experience with character rigging and animation was my first Maya class taken at CADA. Susanne Taaffee's Maya 1 class "Trial by Fire: Intermediate Character Rigging." Character rigging is tedious and was overwhelming when I was first exposed to it in that class, but over the two years before taking Dan Visloski's Character Rigging class I really worked rigging concepts enough to really have a handle on it and was able to really glean all of the information from the advanced rigging classes necessary to feel competant in rigging just about anything I want to.



Rigging Image LARGE

Logo Design

NOMMO: "Word Magic"
New Story of RA



This is my official logo for the project. Ultimately I chose the typeface and design because it is reminiscent of typefaces used for Greek stories and easily relays to most people the idea of expressing mythos through story. Since Egyptian mythology as well as all other African mythologies pre-date and heavily influenced the development of Greek mythology I felt it was extremely appropriate. In the future I will redesign the logo, modestly, to include technological elements that are also representative of this story.

Link:
Link to Larger Image

Influences: The Thinking Beast

I am very story/purpose oriented so conceptually, with all of my creations, I have a fairly clear idea of what I'm looking for early on because every character or creature or environment or architectual structure has a clear purpose or place and set of emotions I intend for them to carry in a given story. Once I have the story nailed down I begin to find ""loose" image references or sketch, or commission another artist to sketch images of the character(s) which I model from, regardless of where the reference images come from I can have as much or as little freedom in the modeling phase as I choose. In more than a few cases I've found it useful to use modeling applications without reference as an effective brainstorming/sketch tool as is the case with the "Thinking Beast" and my Centurion.

The "Thinking Beast" is a character/creature that I felt I definitely needed in my story. No sci-fi fantasy film is complete without a huge imposing quadraped. The main difference between most huge creatures, as depicted in film, and "Thinking Beast" first can be distinguished first from the character's name; as the name would suggest these creatures have as many complex thoughts as any man intelligent man would. In keeping with with Egyptian Mythos that character is a mix of animal and human/Sphinx-like elements and also falls squarely between the ethereal an corporeal realms. The beast is "Ghostly" white because it represents that rarity and mythical element that has been recognized by so many cultures and traditions throughout history in story. Most of my characters are not replicas of the original Egyptian pantheon deities, because these are "The New Stories of RA." The following images are random images that influenced the 3D design of the "Thinking Beast."

The "Thinking Beast" was modeled, rigged, and skinned (enveloped is the XSI terminology) in Softimage:XSI. I later exported the geometry for tweaking in Maya and to re-rig and skin the character since I decided on primarily using Maya for the rest of my project.

Digital Sculpting: The Process...

Using an image like this isn't the way I start all of my models, but it is the standard, accepted beginning of most 3D sculpted characters. Essentially images, drawn, photographed, or aquired from any other medium are used as "set" reference for multiple perspectives to aid in sculpting from all three dimensions {X, Y, Z}. The red lines represent continuity of the position of facial features from all three perspectives.(Gotta have your eye in the same spot regardless of angle of view, because it's still your same head.)

Even with the reference images, for three dimensional sculpt most of the information just isn't there, so it takes a considerable amount of patience, diligence, and a modicum of innate ability to fill in the gaps and move towards a 3D sculpt that looks like the original 2D image.