[UPDATE] I shot the blog, and it felt good to see it die.

In case you've been looking for awesome new content, I'm afraid you are looking in the wrong place. No no no, don't worry, I'm not quitting, or dying. I may be guilty of 1st degree murder to this blog, and writing propaganda all over it with it's own blood, but I finally moved to a real website.

This blog was starting to become something that blogspot couldn't handle anymore, so I moved it to a nice fresh, clean, and very smexy Wordpress site. So if you want to see some new posts, follow me down the rabbit hole to 3D Esprit's new website. I promise you, that it won't hurt, and that you will have zero regrets.

See you on the other side!

[Workshops] Blender Guru: Architecture Academy

I think it's finally time to start reviewing the Andrew Price's Architecture Academy. I've been in this course for half a year now, and I'm just getting to the point of finishing. Granted, I had a few months where the Academy took less priority than other tasks, but just last month I started back again, putting my nose to the grindstone, and knocking out 6 weeks worth of Academy. So I think it's safe to say I can make a fairly solid article about Blender Guru's Architecture Academy.

[Review] AMD AM3+ 8-core FX 9590 CPU & Blender

If you are a Blender user, you know that your CPU is just as important as your GPU, and my current CPU wasn't cutting it anymore. So today, I finally replaced my almost two year old AMD FX 8150 8-core CPU. It's predecessor, the 9590 "Vishera" 4.7GHz 8-core, is rumored to be the last of the FX series. I didn't want to upgrade previously, but since it's now said that the next generation of AMD CPUs will not really hit until 2016, I thought I might as well upgrade. You can only wait for so long before it starts to impact your work.

[Review] Sketching Line Art Digitally - Mischief and Krita

While getting myself ready for the new Concept Cookie "I Can Draw Anything" workshop, I felt the need to find something to use for digital line art, since Photoshop never made me happy in that area. When doing some research, I found many people suggested Mischief. During this week's CoCo livestream, I was introduced to another app called Krita. So in this article, I'm going to talk about these two applications, and what I liked most about each.

Learn2Draw : How To Draw Anime People and Bodies

So I went through an online drawing course I ran across from an artist on Youtube, named Learn2Draw. While I was a bit reluctant, the price of the course, plus having available critique from the artist pushed me to try it out. The course is stated as being focused around drawing Anime characters, but I found the fundamentals and principles being the real focus.

I found myself having to re-learn a lot of things after the course as I pushed forward with the human form. I'm not one to "bad mouth" anyone, so I will leave it at that. If you are wanting to learn something like this, look closely at what this is, and at the art style of what it is suppose to be. The comments in the Youtube channel should give you enough feedback. 

[Review] Printrbot Simple 1405 Maker's Kit

After finally deciding to hop into the 3D Printing market, I started looking at cheap starter 3D printers. After finding quite a few that were fairly cheap, I began asking around for the most recommended 3D printer. This is how I was introduced to Printrbot. Seeing a printer I had to build, was definitely interesting, but the fact that it was much cheaper than the pre-built model made me quite happy with the price.

The Kindle

As I progress through my journey of obtaining a wealth of artistic knowledge, I find that some methods of learning present some surprising results. Today, I want to bring up the Amazon Kindle, and how it has been an extremely valuable source of knowledge.

[Book Review] Line Color Form: The Language of Art and Design

So, I took a trip to one of my local libraries to see what they had in terms of Art and Design books. While most were based on Art from a certain period of time, I did run across the book Line Color Form by Jesse Day. While there are many times I feel I know about the basics, I never regret reading more about them. Usually each resource gives at least one more method or concept that others neglect to mention. This is one that took those fundamentals, and went a step further in explaining the purpose of each.

[Book Review] 3D Game Textures: Create Profession Game Art Using Photoshop

3D Game Textures: Create Profession Game Art Using Photoshop
by Luke Ahearn

I'm sure there are many people that started 3D modeling to create game assets, especially recently with Sony's Player Studio allowing anyone to become an asset vendor for their three main MMO games, Planetside 2, Everquest, and Everquest 2. While it is pretty easy to get into the modeling, the texturing can be pretty rough, especially if you know nothing about CG development. Even if you are fairly seasoned creating your own textures, but wanting to create game assets, this book is a "must have".