Essentially, I bought this beautiful birdcage at target (I couldn’t resist) when I had come up with the idea to fill it with candles (including a bird one :p) and decorate it with fake flowers to give it a sort of beautiful natural wilderness look. I still am not sure if I’m done with it, I might add another flower at the top, etc… But we’ll see. I like it for now.

Thanks for a great month, everyone!

Phew!

Following on yesterday’s theme, Russian poster style mashup with aquatic life…

Well its over. I never could have predicted or preconceived any of the work I did for this challenge. This was the beauty of thing-a-day for me. The spontaneity that is often suppressed by daily routine and habits has been restored. Thanks to all those who commented on my work and those who inspired and challenged be to pursue new directions. I would like to keep tabs on several artist I’ve come to know from thing-a-day and hope they will continue to keep tabs on me. All of you can always find my work on my website: http://elliottmitchell3d.com/index.php and look for me in a few days on ZBrushcentral.com and CGSociety.org forums. I’ll most likely be posting under my real name, Elliott Mitchell (unfortunately MrT seems to be taken).

Just a heads up, I am looking for freelance work and other employment options as of a few day ago. Please e-mail me if you have any leads, jobs, advice or need of consultation.

One amazing observation I made was the global interest generated by thing-a-day. I have had 1400 visitors to my website since 9 days ago when I put up a counter. I have been randomly sampling visitor’s IP addresses who visit my site after seeing my work on thing-a-day. In the last few days visitors from the following locations have looked at 4 or more pages on my site:

Karlsruhe Germany
Moscow Russia
Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Curitiba Brazil
Gothenburg Sweden
Dublin Ireland
Osaka Japan
Paris France
Falmouth UK
Chandigarh India
Sarajevo Bosnia and Herzegovina
Seoul South Korea
Lisbon Portugal
Vienna Austria
Tokyo Japan
Macau Macao
Stavanger Norway
MONTREAL CANADA
Vancouver BC
Amsterdam Netherlands
Canberra Australia
Rajkot India
Stockholm Sweden
Hong Kong China
Laxou France
Istanbul Turkey
Athens Greece
Villejui France
Basel Switzerland
New Brunswick Canada
And all from over the USA

“Be well, do good work and keep in touch.” - Garrison Keillor

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

before	after

the vignetting effect on the top photo is too prominent/hard, i was going to add black bars to crop to cinemascope or re-do the vignette. i also saved non-cyan/blue tinted images that can be viewed here.

I wanted to redo a still life I created as a demo for an intro Maya course I taught last semester. I used my own original photographic textures for the wood and background. I hand painted the textures for the fruit in Zbrush and Photoshop. I modeled the wood block and fruit in 3D. The scene is lit from the background image.

No offense to the original posters words!

* i have edited the gold look from earlier today based on feedback and the fact that i didn’t like what i made earlier… i think it definitely works better but still doesn’t look quite gold-like…

before	after

next i composited a pink cocktail umbrella into a photo that was taken of a friend of mine:

before	after

he just loves pink. i might even add a cherry/pineapple to the drink if i have time…

Other doodles:
<– Mole men in the office
<– Large owls
<–Small owls
<– Gerbil powered solar system model

And this is my 3d assignment for tomorrow, playing with dynamics. It’s nothin’ special, but it’s not a big assignment:

YouTube Yay video link

went to the concert after work tonight. took me 2 minutes maximum to make some lame sketches — still unable to draw in closed public spaces. here they are:

and original set up:

My MINI Cooper was in the shop last week getting an oil change and engine service and also getting his front tires and brakes changed. I ended up walking to work all week and took lots of contemplative pictures of rain-soaked bare branches along the way:

All of this car repair hullaballoo was in preparation for a road trip from San Jose down to L.A. I picked my baby up at the service center on Friday afternoon, paid them a bajillion dollars and that night we were on our way. Everything looked and felt great. It did NOT seem like the car battery was gonna die halfway there. Yet that’s exactly what happened. Ugh.

So my Thing for bright and early Saturday morning was having my boyfriend and his dad (we went to stay with his parents) show me how to replace the battery. An unexpected but important lesson learned.

Shilla is interested:

After many false starts I finally managed to master increasing and got this far but, sadly, ran out of wool, otherwise I would have got it finished today. Not very happy. I bought two 50g balls as per the instructions in the magazine, but I clearly need another. *fume*

Raw Food Restaraunt Song

Right now, I’m fighting off a migraine brought on by the rainy weather. UGH.

A little scene today, instead of the usual mish-mash of faces. The guy came out first, and Batman (a la Darwyn Cooke) came second, by way of non-explanation. I am happy with how gnarly this naked man looks.

[media : sakura sumibrush, pigma micron 005 pen, disneyland autograph book]