I did it again!

Yeah...

I kind of forgot about my blog.  Actually, it became one of those vicious cycles.

I was going to do a mega-post of everything from second semester, before I realized that I didn't really like much of anything I did second semester -- too rushed!  A few were OK I guess, but the plan was to post them after improving them.  I did a couple new little things, but didn't want to post them until I'd put the earlier stuff up.  And the longer I waited, the more I felt like I had to post better stuff to justify all the lost time.

Then my 15 credit hours of LA summer school started, I had to help my family move, and some other big stuff came up... and I barely had time to work on anything art-related.  During that time I DID make a blog for a business class I was taking, where I watched the games industry.  It took a good bit of work, so check it out here:
http://www.kzexploringbusinessmarketwatch.blogspot.com/

Now I'm considering skipping the heap of 2nd semester stuff altogether and just moving on...  but it doesn't sit well with my slightly OCD mind.

I know blogs are supposed to be fun and casual... why do I always have to get myself into these gridlocks?

As I have mentioned (maybe not here), I am working on a book project.  I still haven't made up my mind as to how much to post of this onto my blog.  There's something to be said for keeping one's ideas to themselves...  I would love to post some teasers, though I may make a separate blog.

Another thing I HAVE been updating is my formspring account:  http://www.formspring.me/KirstenZirngibl
If you ask me a question, I'll try to answer it within a week.

So... before my school year starts I'll try to post all the not-so-great 2nd semester stuff, or just move on.  Either way It'll take a little courage.

Have a good rest of summer,
~Kirsten

Kirstenzirngibl.com is LIVE! Check it out!

>>> www.kirstenzirngibl.com  <<<

In this past 5 days or so I worked pretty hard at designing this site and getting the content together.  I had never really done an actual, functional website before, short of the rinky-dink projects in early High School.  I wanted to "do it right the first time" so that I wouldn't be tempted to go back during this semester (or a year or two from now) to develop/overhaul it again.  I originally had this super-complicated idea, and almost went with flash (which I haven't even tried yet), but I'm glad I used a more conservative layout and HTML.  I think it's faster and just easier to get to the work.  (Google likes it better anyway, and I hear art directors actually want to be able to download images so they can keep your work in a folder for future reference.)

I still need to fix some stuff in my bio and add some better titles/descriptions to the pieces, but for the most part I'm going to call it done for now, though I hope to update it with new work regularly.

Anyway, my site also represents the visual "brand" I plan to use in marketing myself.  I wanted something kind of quirky, with structural forms in an organic layout.  I wanted something that could somehow communicate versatility and detail-oriented, complexity-driven style.  I wanted to enhance that message by making it look both new/futuristic and historical (kind of steampunkish?) at the same time, hence the color, texture and choosing serif font).  I hope I at least somewhat succeeded at this.  (By the way, I just realized not so long ago that this kind of reminds me of conceptart.org.  If you thought that too, just know it wasn't intentional, and when you compare them side-by-side they look pretty different.)

(And major thanks to my dad for helping with the code.  While I did some HTML/javascript/CSS back in High School and have a basic understanding of it, it probably would've taken me a week to look up and relearn how to do what my dad hammered out in half a day!  He also had some valuable web design advice that I'm glad I listened to.)


Anyhow, I'd love to hear your comments/critiques about it.  If there's anything easily fixable that you think would be better fixed, I'm open to going back in before I start getting busy.



Finally, make sure to check out the "links" section.  I've got some well-known artists, but also some less well-known ones as well listed there, as well as some cool resources.  And also, if you know me at CCAD and have a personal site of your own, I've probably linked to you.  (And they're not in a particular order, just as they popped into my head.)

Spectrum 17's Call for Entries Poster

I first found this through Irene Gallo's Blog.

I haven't seen this many puns in one place for a long while now.  If you're a digital or traditional illustrator, I challenge you not to chuckle on at least one of these!

It also reminds me to enter a couple of things this year-- who knows what'll happen?

EOW #130: The Water of Life at the World's End

This was done for the latest Environment of the Week.  VOTE HERE:  http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=177432

(I'm still tweaking it, too.)

I realized I hadn't really done much surreal/fantasy work.  Never really felt like I could identify with it so much, but I did really enjoy making this piece.  It was a challenge, though.  I ended up solving a couple of my problems using 3D.  For example, I initially sculpted the actual water in modo 302, then applying a water material (refraction index 1.33, just like in real water) in order to figure out the distortion of the figures underneath.  But I really backed myself into a corner compositionally.

In fact, it's got some problems what probably can't be solved unless I overall the whole thing, so it's probably a good idea to move on.  But big thanks to the awesome folks at the critique center at conceptart.org for helping me out with a myriad of issues.  Juggling a complex image is so hard to do objectively!

The 3D really makes terrible reference compared to a good photo.  Thanks to my brother for letting me take this ref of him.  I'm lucky to have him at hand while I'm home for break!

EOW 129: War Zone

Here's something I did for another Environment of the Week over at CA.  The topic was "War Zone".
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=176987
(As you can see, there were a lot of awesome entries!)

     Yes, I know the perspective is off.  I wanted to try out doing a composition without worrying about it this time, as I've been told that when I obey it too closely, my things are stiff looking.  And for something like a war zone, shouldn't everything be a little cockeyed to suggest distress?
     Anyway, the foreground tower implies a lower horizon line than the back (though I had been hoping the viewer would interpret the background as being on a lower plane, as I'd intended.  Guess I failed at that, as several critiquers pointed out; next time I'll have to find a happy medium.

Anyway, here's a backstory/explanation I came up for it:
My concept is not a war on an city, but instead a near-future economic war in which factories and chemical refineries are attacked. Sort of a war to sabotage the resources of the opposing side instead of directly going after civilians themselves.

Perhaps this could be an environmental war, where extremist environmentalists with a cleaner but more expensive technology resort to terroristic means by taking down major refineries in order to raise the price of their less eco-friendly competition so that their own methods are also cheaper by comparison.

So in this scene, the opposing side/eco warriors have set up rocket launchers on the upper scaffolds (that's what that gun thing is in the relative foreground) and are aiming at storage tanks.

Some earlier stuff I missed putting up

Wow, I didn't realize how long I'd gone without putting up anything, so I just remembered to put up the second Provantage cover I illustrated, which was actually finished at the end of October.  I only did the illustration, the graphic design was done by Mark Filipiac, the art director.

You can also see the site banner that went with it, here:  http://www.provantage.com/

Now, while I was doing this cover, my styles and concepts class had a "game concept" project, so I decided do make a game theme that would go along with my Provantage cover, so I came up with a concept centered around a "high tech" christmas.  I looked at old central and northern European architecture and how to make it futuristic.  It was really fun.  I'll post the story description later on, probably.

I enjoyed thinking about the designs so much that I might want to make this the theme of my project for illustrative drawing next semester.

Here are some of the initial designs for the game, which would be a PvP type of thing similar to TF2.  A couple were done on the Wacom Cintiq, most of the others were just rough sketchbook scans:


Storyboard for the cutscenes.

Here's Santa in his full get-up.  He made a deal with Uncle Sam that results in the Christmas faction having a LOT of fireworks-based weapons.

Santa could definitely use some refining.

New Figure Speedpaints from Life!

Here's some more.  I think they're all one-sessions (around 2 hrs.) or less.

I like these more narrative ones.

I came in late for this one and kinda rushed it.  Now the proportions are all wonky... :-(

This setup had really nice natural lighting.

An experiment with getting good directional texture in Photoshop.

I wish we'd had more time for this.

Decided to try this entirely in Painter.  It certainly took longer, but I do kind of like the more "impressionistic" look.


Again, yay for narrative poses!

Study with a draped figure + graffiti/rust texture = homeless guy illustration!

Our last thing in Figure Drawing class this semester.  Class was cut short at the end for critiques.
I really didn't do a good job capturing his likeness in this one, but I do like how the actual rendering came out.

My approach in Painter, a little looser than in Photoshop.