Rabbits, plinkety, plinkety plink
[8 may 2009]

Comcast Rabbit has won a stack of awards - A Mobius Award, A gold and silver Andy, as well as a bronze lion At Cannes. I was responsible for modelling, surfacing and fur grooming of the rabbit during my stay at Animal Logic.
For the project we spent a day playing and photographing hairless Sphynx cats, and I had the opportunity to dissect a couple of rabbits to get the correct muscle and bone placement. Smelt... Interesting. Thats dedication for you.

Major Update
[3 april 2009]

The website has had an overhaul during my sculpting breaks this week- you may notice the gallery is now a great deal easier to find and navigate. I have also made more room for the image previews.
In addition to all this interface twiddling, I have also added a whole swathe of new images in the galleries, showcasing sculpts, speed sculpts, works in progress and z-sketches that I have had kicking around for a while in my down time.
Please enjoy the excessive graphics load times! ;)

New images
[26 Feb 2009]

I have had a few hours spare to post some updates to my long neglected personal gallery- its nice to be too busy to do my own stuff! You will now find a new Zomilla image, a quirky batman speed model I did a while ago and 'angel'.

The concept art section also got some lovin, in the form of a new Masters of The Universe Teela concept.

Holy Melting Ribena Berries Batman!
[9 Feb 2009]

Well a Happy New Year to one and all. Its a heatwave in Sydney and my studio has been COOKING. I have big fans, every window open and am seriously considering hiring a nurse to pat my forehead dry like a surgeon whilst I work. So far, my fiance has vetoed that last one.

The heat has brought a few challenges. Like most 3D animators I have a few action figures about the place, actually I have several hundred of them in my studio (nerd brag) and a few of those plastic fellows have started to sag somewhat. Hermione Granger keeps taking a dive off the shelf, as does the entire NECA AVP range- not built to stand up those suckers.

Aaaaaanyway....The new season of 'So You Think You Can Dance' is now airing in Australia, and this year Ribena is a major sponsor. Z-space created a whole new series of ads featuring dancing Ribena berries.

I was called in to model the new berries, and as it was quite some time ago it was a real joy to see them finally dancing around on TV. Even if it means I have to watch the show with my partner between ad breaks.

Spirit and Wild Things
[8 feb 2009]

Speaking of things I worked on a while ago, The Spirit is in theatres now and Wild Things finally (FINALLY!) has a release date.

Dragonage Trailor Out
[Jan 2009]

The trailer for DragonAge is now out. I produced several character models for ACT 3, one of which now appears in my Cinematics gallery.

GCAP Speech- Sculpture for games
[25 Nov 2008]

Gcap was great fun- especially getting caught at Brisbane Airport in the most terrific thunderstorm I have ever seen- I grabbed some video footage for reference! Unbelievable.

It was great seeing so many of my friends, old students and clients all in the same venue- I will definately be adding GCAP to my calender from here on.

My speech was on the subject of Sculpture for games- which I did using the latest release of MUDBOX. I covered how you can sculpt using 'feel' by dynamically reposing your mesh to include strong gesture and weight. My class also covered some primary anatomy and general tricks for laying down detail fast using stencils.
Its actually a really vast subject, and due to a delay getting started I had to skim the sculpting techniques a bit - however I am currently planning a MUDBOX masterclass tour.

As promised, I will be adding the character 3D files and the stencils I used shortly to my Tutorials page- please check back in the next few days! There may even be a few tutorial videos there if your good. :0)

Two Moons release
[3 November 2008]:

If you where at either my GDC and AGDC talks on rapid prototyping games a few years ago you may remember the brightly colored diablo-like fantasy game I was showing.

I received a few comments on what the game was and when is is coming out- I had to say that sadly it was only a prototype and it was made specifically for the show. However that may no longer be the case.

I have decided to release the funky ninjette 'two moons', her kookie Pumpkinjack enemies, effects, weapons and all the scene assets and animations as downloadable game packs that indie developers can pick up and run with.

The first release will feature Two-Moons herself, in several pack formats.

She has been totally revamped to work for third, first person and RTS as well as her native isometric, and featuring 3dsMax 9 file, OBJ file, biped rig, bones rig, bone constrained to biped rig, several levels of detail and a handful of texure sets (A range of armors, good and evil, team colors and more realistic styles).

19 August 2008: Stormreach Gallery added

I just put up a gallery of some of my fave peices from my Dungeons & Dragons: Stormreach work. Check out the 3D gallery for 58 new images featuring oodles of costumes, models and weapons from Turbines MMOG extravaganza. I did so many textures for this game I ended up having to keep a database to track just mine! Seriously good fun old school texturing.

11 August 2008: Fuel

I recently worked on a number of projects with the team at FUEL, including five TVC slots, including a new Toyota commercial (my second- I hope Toyota send me a free sample one day). I also did some digital set dressing on the forthcoming movie The Spirit. Looking forward to seeing it arrive on the big screen.

2 August 2008: Comcast rabbit

I finally saw the finished Comcast rabbit slot I worked on during my time at Animal Logic. I created the Rabbit-Panther thingie, including modeling, surfacing and Shave&A Haircut groom. (Someone else did the Turbines) I used Maya, NEX, Zbrush, Body paint, Renderman and coffee. Lots of coffee.

29 April 2008 Dell-icious

Today my Dell 27" ultrasharp monitor OF DOOM arrived and frankly I am having kittens. Why kittens? It takes up my entire field of view in my office- thats why. I can Z-brush sculpt kittens to scale. TO SCALE dammit. KITTENS OF DOOM!
Sure, its going to suck juice enough to make my neighbours lights dim- but I figure that since I once owned several hundred acres of forrest back when I was a child, and haven't run a car in twenty years, I figure I am pretty much carbon neutral for like, ever. In fact, I may just go turn some lights on in the house for the fun of it. Bwa ha ha. So how is the monitor? So far I have to say I am hooked. Its really awesome to model on, the picture quality is great- if limited to 60 hertz at full resolution. The color range is fantastic, and I am getting really inky blacks. So far- two thumbs up.

27 April 2008 Z-space

I have just finished a month onsite at Z-Space modelling and surfacing for the new FOX sports HD network among other things. Very exciting. A big hi to the great guys and gals at Z-space. Hulk smaaaaaashh!

27 March 2008 Redesign

What? Another redesign for daveking.com? Have I turned into one of those "double hand-wavey" web heads?
Well, no - you won't catch me doing anything with Java except drinking cups of it- but now I have wrapped up working at Animal Logic I finally had some time. Speaking of which, the Sony God of War commercial is now up on youtube - my contribution was as personal hairstyler to the Gods themselves using Shave & a Haircut as well as some sculpting and cloth work.

FURY trailer released
[2nd August 2007]

AURAN has just released the cinematic trailer for FURY, which was created by the team at ACT3 Animation. I was brought onboard to model and shade the characters. You can find it on Game trailers Here

CGOVERDRIVE 07
[24th June 2007]

CGOverdrive was a world class conference- even just for the speaker line up- Blizzard / Blur Cinematics masters John Chalfant and Paul Hormis, Mohsen Mousavi, Kyle Balda, Feng Zhu and Michel Gagné among others. Square Enix also showed a sneak peek at the new Tabula Neo Crystalis series and The Lucasarts empire was there in force with some very authentic clone troopers keeping us rebel scum at bay (though thinking about it- my fiance did buy me a red lightsaber this year- perhaps I am on the Dark Side.)
Anyway, If you are in the asia pacific I highly recommend getting on a plane and hitting CGOverdrive 08 if anything just for the speakers!
I was up to my old speed modeling mayhem again- knocking out yet another freaky little demon model during my two hour long show to a Prodigy soundtrack. Very demonic. The atmosphere at the show was electric, especially near the end- there was just so much enthusiasm in the room- we did lots of interviews, photos, give-aways and signings! I have to say Kyle Blada gave the most amazing presentation I have ever seen- a fully animated CG tutorial synched to his live talk- showing how to animate like a Pixar badass. Excellent stuff

TIM Scripts

Paul Hormis and I have been doing a lot of brainstorming and bitching at CGOverdrive at our hotel bar. The result (besides the hangovers) are a few new TIM scripts that polymodellers will find handy. Head over to his site to get the latest build! Paul says he wants to hit a 1000 TiM scripts by the end of the year. You go guy. Go to his site here.

New Creature Workshop Disks

Thanks for everyone who has been writing to me asking for more 'creature disks. The response has been huge! Rest assured, all new disks will be on the way now that I have settled back down from my travels. The unreleased material has been totally revised to include the latest tools and features for max, and includes improved workflow using Polyboost.

The Winner is Syd-en-neee!

Kathryn and I have waved farewell to London and have moved back to spiritual home of Sydney Australia. We are full of fairly strong spirits as we speak. Great bars in Sydney.