After drawing zombie clowns and playing So Much Balatro- the clown motif was glued in my head. So I drew-
Clown Guy™
Also, sometimes life gets stressful. So I drew a lil guy that in these trying times I hope can offer something relatable:
And I’ve been tinkering around with character concepts- so have some of those and a process video to round this out!
(and yeah, I did draw Clown Guy™ and then hide him away. He didn’t fit the vibe at the end.)
I don’t really enjoy using instagram anymore, but I do realize I still have it linked from my site. And I waffle on picking it back up again just to have it up to date- but then I remembered I have a blog I can post to. So. I’m gonna toss a bunch of what I’ve been drawing lately in here!
To kick it off: A fun concept I’ve seen a fair share of artists try is popping the greyscale filter on their ipads and run away drawin. So I tried it:
Process video
Next up- Zombies!!! My nightly routine lately has been to pop on some old school Left4Dead and play a round with my partner. And I was thinkin about it the other day and way back in my school days, I used to 1. Play Left4Dead all the time and 2. Draw zombies like it was my job. My style doesn’t generally veer towards Ooky-Spooky anymore, so I thought it would be a nice challenge to try drawing zombies again and see what I could get done:
Clown Zombie inspired by Left4Dead2
Smoker from Left4Dead2
So, my original timeline? Blown fully out of the water. Best laid plans, right? I have not even opened that low poly file since a few days after the blog post- life got really busy as it always does. Plus I found UV Mapping does not scratch the itch I thought it would.
So instead I’ve been balancing all the demands of my day-to-day (work hours, cars breaking down during winter, getting hit with a nasty bug in the middle of nowhere) with whatever fun little blender tutorial I can get my hands on and starting a sketchbook up with my partner.
So, to that end, I’ve got a WIP of my current Blender project to show as well as a sketch that I really liked.
made by following Cas Raven’s tutorial.
Mango Green Tea Celsius can
I’ve always preferred drawing the human form over anything else- so taking to 3D and creating items and objects instead of people surprised me. And the fun I got from that almost immediately translated back to my sketchbook which I found really interesting.
Anyway, I have more I want to add to the ice cream file, so hopefully here shortly I’ll figure out what I need to cross that finish line with it.
I was trying so hard to keep focused on the low poly build- but I gave in and built myself a little crystal gem
I followed this tutorial by Levi Magony and dived straight into messing around with nodes. And now I think I’m a huge node fanatic 😩💦 It’s a lot to keep hooking up for what feels like very minor changes, but wow the final result makes the build so worth it.
I know this is common place now- people mess with nodes all the time every day. But it’s crazy to me that without all of this:
my gem is just chillin in the layout tab lookin like a grey blob:
Something got into my system as 2024 came to an end and now Blender is reinstalled on my PC. The last time I’d had the program open and running was back in 2018 and I’d been messing around with emitter systems. I still have the results posted up on my instagram. After following a basic “create fire” tutorial I remember getting real geeked and deciding I wanted to create the meteor logo from Final Fantasy 7.
The meteor of inspiration in question
I remember at the time I’d had a blast, but that was back in 2018 and my life was hectic then, so unfortunately Blender as a hobby fell to the backburner.
Still even that wasn’t my first time with the program. No, that would go all the way back to my highschool days. I’d been part of a vocational class in my last two years, and while the class in question was around to teach/certify students in solidworks- the true pièce de résistance of the course was all about Blender. It wasn’t just the students who were excited to poke around in it either- our teacher was also a huge nerd who was super excited to teach the video game/3D animation segment of his course. We’d spent a huge amount of time running through model creation, rigging, framing, and as I recall we had a whole lesson dedicated to mouth flaps too. Over a decade from that course and I still remember it so fondly.
Which is maybe why now in 2025 the bug is biting again. I can’t have an experience so enriching and informative and just decide to leave it in the past. So, I’m rolling up my sleeves, dusting off the cobwebs, and redownloading the software. Aaand making this blog to track my progress- since 3D modelling takes much longer for me than my standard 2D art/animation does. Which is to say I want a little keepsake of my progress.
In light of that I’ve been trying to do this right and running through the process of “conceptualize” to “realize”. So I suppose I’ll show the art I knocked around to get the ball rolling:
A Mechanic I’d scribbled up while i was on lunch at work one day
I sketched a few other small angles just to decide if I thought she had a fun enough design to take into a 3D space with
Nothing too serious, just trying to keep it loose and fun
And from here I knew I’d like her shape and form enough to spend who knew how many hours runing through tutorials and pulling edges and making faces to get a rough model going.
So, I needed to figure out 1. Her front and side view BUT even before that 2. The style of 3D modelling I’d want to do. I know Blender is much more robust now then it was when I was in school, but I remember how quickly subdivisions bogged down the school computers back in the day and not for nothing, but the current laptop I’m working with is definitely over 5 years old and has its own struggles with speed and power. So I figured going whole hog, high detail render was probably out just on tech specs alone.
Which is fine, actually, because I’ve been deeply in love with some indie games lately that have a cute retro-throwback low poly model appeal. I spent December playing Arctic Eggs, Mouthwashing, Sorry We’re Closed, and Webfishing, so those PS1/Gamecube era graphics were/are hyper appeal.
So done deal then- I’d model this mechanic girl and keep her polygon count low. With that decided, it was time to whip up the front and side angle drawings:
To brush up on basics I hit up youtube and fortunately this tutorial by Crashsune Academy helped me out loads. After about a day, the interface and the hotkeys all came pouring back and it’s honestly like I’ve never left the viewport at all. There were a few starts and stops along the way, but in what felt like no time at all, I had the base body all built up and ready to go and finally I’d applied the first go round of my UV Mapping- something rough, and really just to block out initial colors/get a sense of the color scheme:
Oh my god the pain and labor I went through to get this simple gif- you have no idea. Keyframing I’m used to- a 2D character rotation I can do in my sleep:
the intro animation to my portfolio video - before text was added.
A sketchy turn I’d made for fun sometime in the summer of last year
It had been AGES since I’d animated anything in blender and Oh Actually I knew none of the hotkeys for it, or how parts did or didn’t have to be selected, and GOD my mirror modifier had been set up all wrong. I didn’t have my first attempts saved, but I did grab this one Goof Up before I’d made my final animation:
(sorry for the awful quality- I’d exported it wrong out of blender (give it up for ✨learning✨) - and used some website to convert from my initial file to a gif so I could share it with friends.)
From this point though, I’ve got her rigged, mirrored correctly, and once I’d done my initial WIP gif, I went back in to model the rest of her overalls. Now she’s in the viewport looking A Little Rough while I go through her second pass of UV Wrapping.
She’s lookin a little rough, a little busted, but it’s a work in progress. We’ll get there.
My goal is to have her modelled and fully wrapped by end of January. And some short animation by Mid-February.
But naturally I’m also fighting the urge to make 50 thousand other things in Blender at the same time. I have to keep telling myself “One Step At A Time”.