Leo Blanchette, Illustrator

Summertime Adventures

nobody@vox.com(Leo Blanchette) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:10:32 -0700

I've created this blog post for those very valued customers of mine who may be contacting me for freelance work.

Its been a year since I took to flight on this freelance illustration thing. Although it started out as rough seas, I can say its been an adventure. I'm amazed at just how much work it is to do this sort of thing. The success of this do to a large customer base which values my work, and, indeed, I greatly value their loyalty.

The amazing thing about illustration and creative projects is that you have to have fun to do a good job. If you don't, it just doesn't flow! And I can say, its been fun!

This summer: I have to take a load off and take time for my greatest supporters in my life -- my family. So I'll be decreasing my freelance workload to zero, while I continue to do small contributions in the microstock aspect of the business, and let my computer just render 3d images. I may be able to fill requests for Orange Men and 3d robots, but overall, my workflow until September will be spontaneous and light.

A Special Project

Very, very often, I get requests for exclusive versions of my orange men and robots, which I must always turn down for various details that are based on annoying legal technicalities. I also get requests to sell the rights to these character sets, which also, I cannot sell. Some of the requests have come from very large and familiar companies! I cannot accomodate these requests because when these characters and images are sold under royalty free licenses, its no longer possible to sell "exclusive rights" to an image because people already hold limited rights.

So, with this scenario coming up quite often, I've actually decided to take the some of the summer to make a character and and design package (right down to envelopes and business cards) bearing the core qualities of my AO-Maru and Orange Man series. This will not be sold microstock, but will be put up for sale to the company that would like to establish or reinvent their image along these lines. It will be for the most part a very complete skeleton for the visual aspect of their branding, should they choose this design package I am creating.

It will cater to the subject of SEO and web design (since web designers are the larger part of my customer base).

Orange Man Calligraphy

It will include, among many other necessities:

1. A complete 3d model ready for posing and rendering.
2. A complete set of standard stationary (which will have layouts and elements consistent with the mascot).
3. Web Graphics and Elements.
4. Plus an array of rendered images, and other visual elements essential to a business.

It will, in theory, be complete enough that you will simply have to insert your logo (which you may want to create or redesign along these lines). Your designers will have a complete set of consistent graphics that they can use right away.

Since I will not be working the hours I usually do, it will most likely be available by the end of August or September at a set price or to the highest bidder, depending on interest. If it doesn't sell, look for it in my microstock portfolio!

Contact me if you wish to have updates on this project. I will be making a special mailing list for it.

Thank you for your continued interest!

Leo

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Check Out my Webcam!

nobody@vox.com(Leo Blanchette) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:19:02 -0700

Yet another 3d robotic creation! This was a lot of fun -- I wanted to make a robot that was somewhat realistic and didn't take long to render. The result was this 3d webcam robot.

He is created in blender 3d, and uses material nodes (basically overlapping material effects) as well as render nodes (sort of like an in-program post-processing tool like photoshop) to create the effect of realism. He doesn't actually require raytracing to achieve the "real" so renders take less than five minutes. In the near future I'm going to get a huge line of images produced on a variety of subjects. In the meantime, his existing images are highly useful!

Feel free to check them out!

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AO-Maru the Friendly Robot

nobody@vox.com(Leo Blanchette) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:51:33 -0700

AO-Maru the Friendly Robot.

I created this robot as a sort of "friendliness assistant" to designers. AO-Maru is a technological wonder, inquisitive in nature, and does his job very well when it comes to bringing to life concepts such as (obviously) robotics, web design, programming, and more. He's also been used in medical and community design projects!

Like all of my 3d work, he is created and rendered in Blender 3d. This particular model uses Yafray to render, since yafray does a wonderful job at accomplishing realism without having to wait five days for the render to complete.

In the near future I intend to render many more poses, hopefully involving unique objects besides the robot himself, and involved in as many conceptual and useable situations as possible.

Glossy Detective Robot with Magnifying Glass

If you would like to see the entire series, feel free to visit my website or my flickr photostream.

If you would like any special poses, please send me your requests. I may be able to get a few done.

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Announcing a New Line of Microstock Bots!

nobody@vox.com(Leo Blanchette) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:12:49 -0800

Announcing a New Line of Microstock Bots!

A lot went into the preperation of this highly optimal workflow. But now I can announce a new series of robots to make their entrance into the world of Microstock! Pictures below:

There will be more on the way! These were simply my test subjects to see if my ideas would work properly between Illustrator and Blender 3d. I also intend to do animations with this robot, which will be available on any microstock sites supporting video.

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Reel Mess Advergame in Beta Testing

nobody@vox.com(Leo Blanchette) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:15:42 -0800

I enjoyed this project greatly!

Its an advergame called "Reel Mess" where the object of the game is to untangle the fishing line. They had me do most of the art for it, so I went all out in Adobe Illustrator and did some serious gradient mesh/vector images that were cartoony enough not to be too realistic.

Heres some screenshots:

REEL MESS

REEL MESS Win

If you want to check it out before it is live, you can register a free account on www.greatdaygames.com. If you go to the "My Profile" page and edit your profile, you'll see a checkbox in the lower right of the screen that says "I want to play beta games." If you check that, then click on the "Games" button in the main nav, you should see it at the top of the list (with a red "BETA" next to it). Play away! There is also a link to the forum for this game if you want to leave any comments.

(Please let me know if the link no longer works)

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Creating Hydraulic or Pneumatic Tubes in Blender 3d Tutorial

nobody@vox.com(Leo Blanchette) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:30:13 -0800

Creating Hydraulic or Pneumatic Tubes in Blender 3d Tutorial

By "hooking" points of paths to "empty" objects in blender 3d you can create tubes that move with the objects they are connected to via parenting -- in this case, a pneumatic piston used for a robot arm.

This tutorial assumes you are familiar with basic modelling in blender. So I won't go into great detail with basic functions like how to move and rotate objects, parent/child objects, etc.

So how bout some pictures to see the effect at work!

Piston level with tubes:

MWSnap183.jpg

Piston rotated counter-clockwise:

MWSnap184.jpg

Piston rotated clockwise:

MWSnap185.jpg

Looking at the above examples, you can see that regardless of which way the piston is rotated, the tube sticks in place to where its connected. Its a very useful effect for many purposes, and not hard to impliment at all. For this project the piston will be used to move a robot's arm, and to make it realistic, I wanted the tubes running through the mechanical work of the robot, flexing and bowing naturally.

1: So first, in the usual manner, add a UV sphere. That is [spacebar, add, mesh, UVsphere]. See screenshot below.

MWSnap187.jpg

2: After you've created your UVsphere and hit [tab] to get into object mode, add a path over the same spot. [space, add, curve, path]. I suppose you could use a bezier curve or something, but I use paths because they are less restrictive.

MWSnap188.jpg

3: Now you end up with this millipede looking thing. Thats a path. All those things comprising the millipede's legs are actually arrows showing which way the path is pointing.

MWSnap189.jpg

4: Move the path [g] left, so that the tip of the path is somewhere around the middle of the sphere or near its left side. It doesn't matter for this example really, we're just making a rough example to learn from.

MWSnap190.jpg

5: To make your path into an actual tube type in the values you see here. Make sure you are in edit mode and you will see the little window here holding the values listed below. Change them to what you see in the little screenshot below. If you do it right, you will see it go from a basic path to a tube. Notice as you move points on the path that the tube conforms around it.

MWSnap199.jpg

Please note I moved the path over a bit so you could see the example better.

MWSnap192.jpg

6: Here is where the really cool trick comes in. Click on the path and [tab] into edit mode if you are not already there. Click [right mouse button] the last point on the path. Then push [ctrl H] which will bring up this "hooks" window. Select the "add new empty" option to add an empty object.

An "empty object" is simply a placeholder, or an invisible object, which is handy for situations like this. They don't render, but are objects nonetheless. It'll make sence in a few steps.

MWSnap193.jpg

7: See those arrows pointing in line with the X,Y,Z axis? That is an empty object. True to its name, its empty! Nothing but an invisible place holder. Thankfully we have this handy XYZ arrow thing so we don't lose it. Notice if you move the "empty" the path will always point to it. One more step left!

MWSnap194.jpg

8: If you didn't already anticipate it, we're going to make the Empty a child of the UVsphere. Do this by selecting the two of them and pushing [ctrl P] where it will ask "make parent" and you select "OK". Now the Empty is a child of the UVsphere object, and wherever you move the UVsphere the tube will go to. Now all sorts of possibilities are running through your mind -- like vacuum hoses, exposed arteries on mutant beasts, cables...!

See the screenshots below to see the effect at work:

MWSnap196.jpg

MWSnap197.jpg

This ends my simple tubes tutorial. Check back for more how-tos on Illustrator and Blender 3d!

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DCWS Rocks!

nobody@vox.com(Leo Blanchette) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:04:59 -0800

DCWS rocks!

Its amazing how much goes into making a good website. I waited patienty until I found a good web designer. It was long wait. When I connected up with DCWS I was mostly concerned with creating a *simple* website that ranks nicely in the search engines. I would have been happy to rank in the first five pages of the larger search engines. I don't even pretend to understand this stuff, but I do know that its not easy to get to page one of google, much less the first listing! But thats where they put me when you search Freelance Vector Illustrator! Same with Freelance Vector Artist!

DCWS officially went above and beyond with my site! If you want a skilled web designer, I can definitely say they are the ones your looking for.

Oh -- here's a link: http://www.dcwscomputers.com/

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Its ALIVE!

nobody@vox.com(Leo Blanchette) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:49:09 -0800

I have a plan to use robots to take over the world. Unfortunately, they never leave the "concept illustration" phase. These were a lot of fun. For once I stepped aside from the pure "what will sell" approach to the "just have fun for a change" approach where I got to be like a the little boy I used to be drawing in math class. Hope you like them!

And here is a desktop wallpaper! Simply follow the link below the picture to choose the size you want.

Robots1152x864

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14304964@N05/sets/72157603126325710/

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Web Crawler

nobody@vox.com(Leo Blanchette) — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 16:08:25 -0800

My latest creation, #2 of the "Bots" series.

Web Crawler Bot

Its a web crawler, such as is used by search engines to spider websites and to collect information. There is a tutorial coming up, but I'm trying to find a bot that will be simple enough to make a tutorial that will not span 80 steps.

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Pick the Robot for Upcoming Tutorial!

nobody@vox.com(Leo Blanchette) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:08:58 -0800

RSS Bot

I'm doing a robot series, and behold! My first creation out of the robot construction bay! (The orange RSS bot to the right).

Well, soon (maybe this week?) I'm going to do a simple tutorial on how to color a character in Adobe Illustrator. I've recently done some simple sketches, and as I vectorize them I will take the necessary step-by-step screenshots to show the process of making a simple vector illustration.

So...here's some pictures. (See Below) Which one would you like to see a tutorial on? Just post a comment and let me know! If there is more than one comment, I'll simply take it as a vote.

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