Art Station

I finally have an Art Station. It has work both professional and personal.  You can check it out here : Mike Kime's Art Station

Most of the work is posted from over the past 2 to 3 years.  The rest can be seen on my main site.

New PC Build - 5960X

I built a new computer shortly after the release of the new Intel X99 platform. I had not built a new machine in 4 years and have been doing a lot of Mental Ray / V-Ray rendering.  The machine is as followed.

3dsMax 2014 : V-Ray 3

New Machine

Asus X99 Deluxe.
Intel 5960X 3.0 x 8 core
G.Skill Ripjaws 4 Series 4 x 8gb (32gb) DDR4 2400
Samsung 840 Evo 500gb SSD
Corsair RM1000 1000wPSU
Corsair H100i
Corsair C70 Military Green. Painted parts in my garage.
Nvidia 780GTX

Render Time : 16m 23s @ 4.3ghz OC w/ render temp of 43c according to DIP5

Render Time : 19m 54s @ 3.0ghz stock w/ render temp of 38c according to DIP5

Old Machine

Asus P6X58D
Intel i7 Bloomfield 950 3ghz x 4 Core
G.Skill Tripple Channel DDR3 1600
Kingston SSDNow 240GB
Thermaltake Blackwidow 850w
Cooler Master HAF 939

Render Time : 48m 16s


I rendered the same V-Ray 3dsMax 2014 scene on each machine for comparison.
The render uses 15gb of ram during rendering.

The image rendered was a raw render of the following with out all the post and photoshop work: http://www.pseudo-pod.com/temp/Camber/Camber_01.jpg


I overclocked the New Machine using ASUS software. It runs through clock speeds until blue screen. It got to 4.5 ghz before crashing and then set itself to 4.3.  The machine was not stable Overclocked!  It would freeze now and then. I have since set it back to default (3ghz) and the machine has been quite stable since.  Perhaps some day in the future I will try to squeeze 3.5 out of it.

It is a beast regardless of overclocking or not. Some how my performance, especially in 3dsMax viewport performance, throws my work machine under the bus!  I am very happy with it. My Work Machine is an expensive Xeon 32gb machine with a 760 card.




Zbrush Performance difference between Old Machine and New Machine

Old Machine

Zbrush: Single 3.188 Multi Tread .682

467% performance

New Machine

4.3ghz OC  Zbursh: Single 3.9,  Multi Thread .637

615% performance

Misc build pictures:

Black Moth resin kit available for Pre-Order

I was involved in sculpting for a resin kit at Industria Mechanika!  Everything is complete and ready for Pre-Orders.  The concept was done by my friend Adrian Majkrzak.

Check it out HERE!

I worked on the UE4 GDC Demo titled "Infiltrator" this year. Here is some of the work I did on that demo. It was an awesome team working tightly together. Jay Hawkins had the concept nailed and I started from his base model that he provided for the character.  I did some renders with skin/face for pre-vis fun.  

IMAGES HERE

Here is some of the work I did for Gears of War : Judgement. Lots of collaboration as well as inventing and concepting.  Young Doms knife was a lot of fun to come up with and create.
LINK TO ART HERE

Velbor

I'm deciding to call this done (at least for now).  I got inspired to do this character and just started pulling things around in Zbrush. It was rendered in Mental Ray and touched up in Photoshop.
::Click here for the site full o' images::

SMB Box

Super Meat Boy - HTPC/LanBox/Emu/NetRender etc...

I built an mATX PC using recycled parts from an older machine to use as a mutli-use HTPC/Game box for my theater room. The link to pictures and information is here : http://www.pseudo-pod.com/temp/meatbox/meatbox.htm

Currently it is a XQPack-2, Quad2Core 3.0Ghz, 16GB DDR2-800, Zotac GT640, Corsair H60, machine with pink/white LED's and lots of custom SMB stuff.

Chun-Li

Chun-Li is finished.  The final image can be seen here:
http://www.pseudo-pod.com/temp/ChunLi/chunli.htm

RAAM's Shadow DLC posted on Zbrush Central

RAAM's Shadow DLC is posted up at Zbrush Central.
ART IS POSTED IN LINK BELOW












I did the Marauder, Jace (Young), Classic Clayton Helmet, and boy....
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?162670-Gears-of-War-3-Character-Art-Dump-(new-images-posted-on-Pg-17)/page17

I started this character in 2007 and just recently "finished" him. He's part of this world called Buhm Town. There is a long wacky back story about him that I may put up some time.

Images are here : 0.0.0 on Pseudo-pod

Gears of War 3 - RAAM's Shadow DLC

The DLC is out! This is one of the best DLC's i've seen. Lots of good effort behind it and I personally see it as a kinda cool B-Side to Gears 3. The team here at Epic really kicked ass on this! Its quite different and has a lot of new stuff going on including new characters that hopefully I can post soon.

Check out trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cFAmVRJpOM&feature=g-u

Megaman Tribute Book

The book arrived (awhile ago. I've been slacking on the Blog big time). This is where he be in the book! There was some really great images in this massive art book.

HAGGAR

== I participated in a BRAWL competition at Polycount.com around April 2011. I chose Haggar from Final Fight. He came in 3rd place.

Third Place Trophy

Competition Results

== I felt he could use some uprezing after the competition so I took him to completion with a scene after it was over.

Link to Haggar-Revisited here

Gears of War 3 Ships ::: Art Dump

== Gears of War 3 Has shipped and is doing well. The team did a kick ass job! GameHere

== Art Dump where you can see what others and myself contributed to Gears 3 -=HERE=-

I contributed to a very large portion of the Lambent you see in the game as well as a lot of the Savage Locusts. Hoffman, Prescott, Commando Dom, Civ Cole, Armored Kantus, Onyx Guard to name a few. Thanks to everybody who played the game and all the Gears fans out there! It was great to be a part of this series!

Air Man and Mega Man Tribute book at Comic-Con 2011

MEGA MAN TRIBUTE LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER

-The book is premiering at the San Diego Comic-con at the UDON booth (#5037), July 20-24

-For fans not attending the show, you can preorder the book at UDONstore.com

-(LINK TO UDON STORE )

- The standard softcover edition is also available for preorder on amazon.com

MEGA MAN TRIBUTE SOFTCOVER

- (LINK TO AMAZON)

Click here to see : AIR MAN

Air Man, 31, and things

A few things that have been happening lately. I was busy all January with Epic work which ended a few days ago.

A few days ago I turned 31! The 1 is a spear with a little barb on it to make sure I know I'm in my 30's.... If last year I had any doubt. :)

I didn't get time to really celebrate, especially during this weekend, because I've been working away in my free time on a submission for the Udon Mega Man Tribute book. I was inspired to do an Airman. He's a character that is cool and really stands out. Even though my favorite character is Metal Man. Mega Man 2 is my favorite of the series and I've beaten it countless times. Infact I should go play through it again!!!

Latest Air Man Images
He will be updated eventually. I have not had the time to put everything I want into the image or the model. His back has a flathead engine and some wings. I would like to take him a little further

Its been awhile!

Wow its been a long time since I've posted!


I went home for Christmas. This included Portland at my brothers place and then my home town in California. Leading up to Christmas I worked on a piece for my brother/wife/daughter. My brothers wife is pregnant and so I sculpted up a piece and had it printed by Offload Studios. You can see it here:

Apple Sculpt and Print

It was very fragile and came in pieces. 2 Leaves and the Apple. I had to hollow out the apple and separate the pieces. When I got it I had to take it with me on the plane in a box covered in "Fragile" logos. It looked.... bad. A lady actually switched seats on one of the flights. But I wasn't going to let anybody touch it.

We had to assemble it with glue. It does stand on its own with out any help, which is nice.

The print process was pretty grueling and taxed my machine heavily. Hollowing it out after the fact was hard to do. The big thing I wanted to do was have high res texture maps baked into it at print which Offload does. That process was tough and I think UV Master for Zbrush helped save me, even though the hand-paint-seams function seemed totally broken. In the end the final result was great. The piece feels solid and has a "grain" to it that really ads to it.

TED - Niels Diffrient Talks Freedom Chair

I like to listen to Ted talks while I'm working. Recently I happened across a talk by Niels Different where he talks about his design background and then into his decisions on the Humanscale Freedom Chair. Its one of the major and decently known Task Chairs available.

I tried a Freedom chair out for about a week (not long enough- I had to give it back). Its a really nice chair. Solid construction and a head rest like no other. The first thing you will notice is the firm back that you can still lean back with a bit of force. Once you start leaning back the head rest moves to counter that. Its very different.

Video Below:
http://www.ted.com/talks/niels_diffrient_rethinks_the_way_we_sit_at_work.html

SONIC BOOSH! - GamePro article

GamePro February issue hit stands today (if you can find it! hehe). It includes a 3 page article/interview about Guile and M.Bison with full images. I really like the layout they did and effort they put into it.




......Now if I would get off my lazy ass and actually pose them or something.

Guile/Bison - GamePro

The article is at GamePro.com and touches on the Guile/Bison characters.

A larger article with more details on my thoughts and process will be in an upcoming GamePro magazine. I talk about the struggle of taking iconic characters from one style and trying to make them work in another. etc...

-Click Here for GamePro.com Article-