Nathan Ray

Out of basic.

2012-02-21T02:27:00.003+11:00

Well I finally got done with basic training and arrived at AIT a few days ago. we should be finishing up our orientation and start classes here pretty soon. It may be a little bit before I get artwork posted, I have some sketches that I want to upload but my new tablet doesnt seem to want to cooperate. The tablet is the only computer that I have available to me at the moment and I am still learning its little quirks, for instance its hard to type with this and the cursor seems to go where it wants. Anyhow, Shmert is on hold for right now, I dont know how rough classes will be when they start so I will see what I can get done here.

Boot Camp Sketches

2012-01-01T15:00:00.000+11:00

I don't get a lot of time at boot camp to myself, just enough freetime to shower, read and write a letter then off to bed. I sketched these out while waiting for our buses to come home, it was a pretty long wait. I will say this about the Army, it may take you forever to get there but you will get there. We waited around from 8:00 am to about midnight to start processing. A few hours of processing then onto buses and we arrived at the airport at 9:30. The first picture is the mural on our wall in the barracks. Our Drill Sargent says some privates went down that road, we prefer not to find out if its true. The second is my baby, her name is Verra (yeah its a Firefly reference) and I have been dating her for almost 4 weeks now haha.

Delta 1-13

2011-12-28T05:14:00.001+11:00

Ok so I haven't posted in a while Ive been working my way through boot camp at fort Jackson S.C. I am the first guy in the top left. We are out on exodus for Christmas for another week and then its back to finish up our training, hopefully I'll be off to my AIT pretty soon after. Ive joined up with the Army National Guard for as a UAV operator, I am pretty psyched at the prospect. Ill try to get a few more posts up before I go, as for Shmert he is going to have to wait till I get some more time to work with, might be a while though, I don't have my computer or files up here with me in N.Y. And it may be a while before I can work on him at my AIT.

Unfamiliar Territory

2011-11-14T16:28:00.001+11:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #17- "Unfamiliar Territory".
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Shmert will be on hold for a while, I will start working on him again when I get back from Boot Camp and AIT. I may get some time for him while at school but I don't know for sure yet. In the meantime I will post what I can and I'll keep writing down new ideas. Don't worry he doesn't get eaten.

"Crunch"

2011-11-01T14:49:00.003+11:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #16 "Crunch".
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Welcome to Earth.

2011-11-01T14:43:00.003+11:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #15 Welcome to Earth.
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Crossing Wires

2011-10-27T13:41:00.001+11:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #14 Crossing Wires.
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Scratch Chess Board

2011-10-14T14:12:00.000+11:00

2011-10-01T09:39:00.002+10:00

New notebook project check it out here.

I have been wanting to try this for a little while, basically just a grungy aggressive note book. Every other page has a rune/tattoo water mark.

Walking Warrior

2011-09-30T09:29:00.000+10:00

Yesterday at work

2011-09-29T13:03:00.001+10:00

Scratch Notebook

2011-08-19T12:49:00.000+10:00

I am trying something new through a local company here in Raleigh. Its a pretty basic project just a regular 5x8 note book for 5 bucks. I have a few more ideas for notebooks with a different flare to them. Feel free to drop a comment, let me know what you think.The main wall is still a little weird, I am still figuring out Lulu. And now my shameless plug.

This is not just any not book, its got like a hundred pages and a super awesome graphic! You can write stuff in here erase it and write it again. Journal, sketch, doodle jot down ideas, you name it. You could roll it up and kill bugs with it, make a make believe telescope or use it to fill out a bookshelf! This is among the most versatile and high tech in pen to paper technology, limited only by lines and paper length.

You can see my wall at this LINK.

Tomahawk

2011-08-16T14:32:00.000+10:00

Page #13 Little Details

2011-07-02T14:29:00.002+10:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #13 Little Details.
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Page #12 Booyah!

2011-06-18T12:08:00.003+10:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #12. Booyah!
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Red N' Blue Bot

2011-06-07T13:55:00.000+10:00

Finally posting something after quite a while, I found this in one of my sketchbooks from last year. There isn't much of a purpose to it really, its one of those "move the pen around to see what happens" drawings. I kinda like it.

Shmert will return, I am just having a "fun" adventure in computer maintenance and learning some things the hard way. But hey I guess the keyword is learn.

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #11, Remote?

2011-04-15T13:34:00.001+10:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #11, Remote?
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Air Base

2011-04-13T14:31:00.000+10:00

This was my final project for my level design class. I will make a new video for it because this one is pretty shaky, I just recently got back into the editor and am trying to remember all of it haha.

Page #10 Seat Backs and Tray Tables

2011-03-27T18:45:00.001+11:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #10 Seat backs and Tray Tables.
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Another Quick Sketch

2011-03-27T18:32:00.000+11:00

I was feeling inspired after the movie tonight and did some sketching. I pulled the tablet out and threw some color on, its still kinda messy but hey its practice.

Page #9 Almost There

2011-03-13T18:20:00.001+11:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #9 Almost There.
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Page #8 Minor Setbacks

2011-03-13T15:34:00.001+11:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #8 Minor Setbacks.
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Page #7 Lights on the left

2011-03-08T15:23:00.004+11:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #7 Lights on the left.
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The Tiger Ship

2011-03-04T16:56:00.000+11:00

The Tiger Ship - Prowling through space, the futures equivalent to our submarine. Watching, waiting, ready to strike its unsuspecting target. Found an old sketch and decided to dust of my wacom tablet (literaly) and give freehand drawing and digital painting a try again. I still need a lot of practice to get where I want to be, I am pretty happy with how the background turned out though.

Cute?

2011-03-02T13:53:00.000+11:00

Cute? - The fateful moment when Lord Shmert, the mighty conqueror discovers that he and his crew are "cute". The rest speaks for itself, he is on a shirt now. You can view the shirt at this link.

Ink Wash

2011-02-22T14:01:00.001+11:00

I use to watch the show Samurai Champloo a lot and was pretty fond of it. The picture is an India ink painting I did as a sort of a sketch/practice. Ironically the picture is a sketch of a screen shot from the TV show so I cant take much credit haha.

1911 Shield

2011-02-14T14:37:00.002+11:00

1911 Shield - Click here to see it.

Level Design Demo

2011-02-03T16:07:00.003+11:00

This was my third project in Level Design One. We were asked to build a level that mainly utilized terrain to make for interesting play. I made this one for vehicles, lots of jumps and blowing stuff up. My original idea for the level ended up being way to ambitious for the time I had to make it. I originally wanted to have extremely dense forests that were connected by caves and the paths up the mountain would have been narrower. There is a section where there is an artillery vehicle hidden in the trees but that was the extent of the surprises for I had time to prepare. I learned the hard way and very soon after starting the project that trying to judge the size of your terrain can be pretty tricky when your making one that's fun to drive on as well as be on foot. I am still happy with the end result, even if it feels slow at times. I enjoy driving the smaller vehicles around on it and I think they were a much better compliment to it rather than being on foot chasing each other down. The song is "Black Hole" by Rich H.

Survived Shirt

2011-01-30T17:01:00.002+11:00

Show your support for zombie apocalypse survivors everywhere with this new shirt. Click here to order your very own. The shirt makes an excellent dish rag too.

The Snarl Shirt

2011-01-07T15:26:00.002+11:00

The Snarl Shirt - Hit the link Here to see more of it.

Battle Face

2010-12-06T02:15:00.002+11:00

Battle Face - I love it when a doodle turns out looking interesting, I made this up last night and slapped it on my Zazzle account. I think it turned out pretty cool, let me know what you think.

Halloween 2010

2010-11-01T15:24:00.005+11:00

Halloween 2010.
Jumping ahead of the story a little bit.

The Rhino Board

2010-10-23T14:17:00.003+11:00

The Rhino Board available here at my store.

Page #6 Enough!

2010-09-30T14:00:00.006+10:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #6 Enough!
(Color is coming)

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Joust

2010-09-30T12:39:00.001+10:00

Another design I have up on my Zazzle account.

Cockpit

2010-09-27T03:22:00.000+10:00

Commander Shmert in the cockpit and ready for battle.

Fire Leaf

2010-09-27T03:20:00.001+10:00

Looks good on black and white. New design I have posted on my Zazzle account.

Page #5. All Hail!

2010-08-23T15:00:00.003+10:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #5. All Hail!
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Page #4 Hurried Departure

2010-08-12T13:59:00.004+10:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #4, Hurried Departure.
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Page #3 Transmit Where?

2010-08-06T09:26:00.004+10:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page #3, Transmit Where?
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Page #2 Are we not fierce

2010-08-05T06:36:00.007+10:00

The Adventures of Shmert, page 2. The great space commander Shmert, befuddled and disgruntled by his crews new found taste for being cuddly and adorable decides to take a short break by "invading Earth"... by himself.
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Level Design

2010-06-26T15:30:00.006+10:00

Some pictures from my level design class, I am still working on the video fly through and it might be a little while before that gets posted. I have some more examples posted on my profile site. All the levels were made with the Unreal Editor, I have come to be very fond of that program. Just a little disclaimer, I did not make the textures or the static meshes in these levels except for the Gatling Wing. I wish I had more time over the last semester to add elements like that. I am hoping to get some more projects done like this soon with all elements build from scratch.

Spike Spiegel

2010-06-17T11:33:00.002+10:00

Spike Spiegel, this is an ink painting I made a couple years ago of a character from the show Cowboy Bebop. Yes, the proportion of the gun is a bit off but I still think its kinda cool.

Hungry Little Bird

2010-06-17T11:29:00.002+10:00

An old sketch I found, thought it might make an interesting post.

Page 1# Cuddly Invaders

2010-06-15T15:32:00.014+10:00

Shmert The Conqueror. Page 1#, "Cuddly Invaders". Well here he is, I decided to scrap the other version and try a new approach. Im sure its got some typos here and there I need to catch, some things may get edited. This is a bit of a work in progress and an experiment at the same time. This dude has been in my sketchbooks for the past few years and I felt it was time to do something with him, I am going to try to keep this weekly on my blog, so check in, let me know what you think.
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Let Me in Your World

2010-05-13T07:44:00.003+10:00

Deep Renewals new album, "Let Me in Your World" is being released at the end of this month and should be available at this link. My thanks to them again for another fun project.

Interview

2010-04-17T14:43:00.003+10:00

WRAL did an interview at Wake Tech on the day production of the Gears Of War 3 was announced on the Jimmy Fallon show.

If you look very closely you can see my computer mouse, haha. It was pretty cool they interviewed my professor and I and even shot a few seconds of my terrain level.

3d Modeling Fall 2009♦

2010-03-09T10:38:00.001+11:00

Models from my second 3D class in fall of 09'.

Lyme

2009-06-18T14:48:00.003+10:00

I designed the layout as well as graphics for this book for Renewal Enterprises. The book focuses on awareness of Lyme disease and its treatment. The book will be available at this link
http://renewalenterprises.com

Floodgates

2009-06-04T07:04:00.002+10:00

My first project for Deep Renewal. This picture displays the inside and outside of the CD insert for there first official release as a band. The CD was released last October and the music is available for download at www.deeprenewal.com

Sour face

2009-06-04T06:59:00.002+10:00

Couple quick sketches on my wacom tablet.

Rocks and Waves oil painting

2009-05-23T17:24:00.006+10:00

An oil painting from a while back, probably my favorite project from my 2D studio class.

Surreal Landscape

2009-05-23T15:57:00.002+10:00

A collage of beautiful landscapes. The rock formations are from The Garden of the gods in Colorado. The Landscape behind is from the top of Pikes Peak overlooking Colorado Springs. The visibility is supposed to be over two hundred miles.

The Hero-ine Within

2009-05-21T16:40:00.006+10:00

A design for my friend Michelle at Deep Renewal. THe link below will take you to her books.
http://renewalenterprises.com

Garden of the Gods

2009-05-18T14:58:00.003+10:00

Not art by any of my doing, thought these rock formations were to cool not to share. I snapped this from the car in the Garden of the Gods in Colorado. This place was pretty surreal.

Mystery in a woman's eye

2009-05-18T14:46:00.003+10:00

I decided to try something different in photoshop a while back. The idea was to combine different aquatic elements to see if it would enhance the texture in the eye and make it appear to have more depth.

King Mingus at the Autumn Cafe

2009-05-18T14:33:00.003+10:00

This is a dvd jacket I did for some friends after their second live performance. The band consists of the three brothers writing and playing their own original music as well as paying tribute to bands such as Genesis. I followed them for a while before my move down south recording events and doing art for there dvds. Ive done a few for them but this is the one Im the fondest of. Ive posted a link to some of there videos below, there are more to be uploaded as soon as I get computer that can handle the editing.

http://www.myspace.com/kingmingus
http://www.youtube.com/user/KingMingusMusic

Live Fire

2009-05-05T14:56:00.003+10:00

I should probably explain my logo, Ive been asked what it means. I haven't been able yet to make an animation of the logo in action but the idea came about of a plane reaching the apex of its performance in a dog fight with another plane causing it break out of the film strip in its 2d existence and fly out into reality. I didn't intend for this to be my logo and am yet to think of a clever name to go behind it but its grown on me.

Spring 2009 3D Demo Reel

2009-05-05T06:36:00.005+10:00

Finally done with classes this semester and gearing up for the next. I think Ive found my muse, that being 3d. Thoroughly enjoyed the class and am looking forward to more 3d in the fall. The video quality isnt the greatest I have a better looking one on my Youtube page. The song is Silent Thunder by David Dirig.

2009-05-02T12:45:00.003+10:00

N.C. State Cloging Team

A design I did for the N.C. State Clogging team last year. It was screen printed on there performance wear. This is not the final version of the design, it was turned down because it did not "emulate" the Mr. and Mrs. Wolf mascots. Im pretty fond of this version but either way Its still pretty cool to have had designed art work licensed for the teams use.

2009-05-02T12:36:00.000+10:00

First blog upload, Im going to try to be consistent with this.