27 Nov 2023
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Coming soon…

November 27, 2023
After almost a year and a half working in the beauty/cosmetic product CGI world in 2022 and 2023, I felt it was time to fulfill a lifelong dream of starting up my own studio. I don’t have much to share right now but we are busily working away to build our website and create digital assets to sell. Stay tuned for more.
26 Apr 2022
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Happy Birthday Jim!

April 26, 2022
This was sculpted in ZBrush, and rendered in Maya and Arnold. The blurred background plate it a photograph. Everything else is a digital sculpture. I started this years ago as a work project that was canceled before it really got started, and picked it up again recently just because I wanted to finish it as a personal project. It was a little above my head a few years back so I figured it would be a good challenge now. When I picked it up again all I knew was I wanted it to have a certain mood. I couldn’t put my finger on it to verbalize it, but I could feel the mood I wanted. I realized Sunday night as I was putting the final touches on this piece that today is my best friend of 26 years’ birthday. My best friend who passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly in September the year covid started. And then it became clear to me where my inspiration for this image was coming from. I wanted to make something that reminded me of him. Like the many times we would meet at a bar in Manhatten on an early summer weekend afternoon while it was still light outside, eat dinner, drink beer and have fascinating conversations all night until 2:00 am. I would stumble home. My tummy full of beer. The blurry colored lights feeling warm and magical. My brain tingling with stimulation from the things we talked about. How wonderful it felt to feel understood. How amazing it felt to have someone I admired so much in my corner cheering me on like him. He was a kid genius when we met at 24 years old. Buzzing with potential. Cracking open the multimedia scene in New York. A technical pioneer. One of the sweetest spirits I’ve ever met. One of the fiercest competitors. Gone way too soon. So, it occurs to me as I finish this that even the most mundane of images we start are part of the stories we tell. Our stories. This ones for you Jim. Happy Birthday! Cheers!

PERSONAL PROJECT modeling, texturing, shading, lighting, rendering

02 Dec 2021
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The Making of a Newark Bee part 3

December 2, 2021
I’ve just finished stage 3 of my bee in which I’ve reorganized her geometry and added hi-resolution detail. I’m super excited about how she’s coming together. The next phase will be sculpting the flower she’ll be landing on to build her an atmosphere, then, adding hair. After that comes texturing and shading her (assigning physical properties like color, roughness, reflectivity, and opacity). And then, on to the final stages where I’ll light and render her.
Thanks to The Cave Academy (caveacademy.com) for this lighting and turntable setup.
17 Sep 2021
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The Making of a Newark Bee part 2

September 17, 2021

I finished the second phase of modeling the base of my bee this week. I’ve added the legs, wings, antenna, mandibles, and stinger. The next phase is going to be very technical and boring. I will reorganize the bee’s geometry so she can later be made to move and I can properly add hi-resolution detail. Adding the hi-resolution detail will be when things get really fun for me. Then she’ll really start coming to life.

12 Aug 2021
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The Making of a Newark Bee part 1

August 12, 2021

A lot of folks have asked me about the 3D sculpting process so I thought I’d give you a peek behind the curtain as I embark on an exciting new project. I’m going with my heart this time around and paying homage to a few of the things I love most: my beautiful Branch Brook Park when the cherry blossoms are blooming, and the almighty bee. The bee is part of the glue that holds our ecosystem together and right now they are under assault and facing extinction if we don’t act to protect them. I’ve just started this project and there is an awful long way to go. I hope you can join me on this journey.

05 Aug 2021
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Milk n Cookies

August 5, 2021
After focusing on digital humans last year I felt it was time for something new. So, I directed my attention to fluid dynamics. My 3D software Maya has a fluid simulator that started me off in the right direction towards making this milk. But I felt the end result didn’t quite capture the detail and drama I wanted. So I took the fluid mesh into ZBrush, an organic digital sculpting tool, and hand sculpted more detail.  I then brought it back into Maya (and the rendering engine Arnold) to do the texturing, shading, lighting and rendering. I’m pretty happy with the result. I have grown so much this year. What a gift it has been to be able to take this time to take deep dives into areas of 3D that I want to improve.
Lots of folks seem curious about what 3D is, and how it works. So, I like to show my work sometimes to help people wrap their minds around it. What you see here is the wireframe 3D mesh, the greyscale displacement map that gives the cookie it’s detail and the final image.
01 Aug 2021
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Architectural visualization

August 1, 2021
The last year I’ve had the privilege of working on educating myself and exploring where I want my career to go. Architectural visualization is one area I wanted to explore. I worked with my friends Israel Ehrisman and Mark Covey to design and pre-visualize their vision for their new master bathroom in their magnificent Forest Hills, Newark, NJ home built in 1928. I’m absolutely crazy about their house, so, It was a real honor to be able to be a part of helping them realize their vision. Whether it’s filmmaking, architectural visualization, visual effects, artistic image creation, gaming, virtual reality or augmented reality, 3D is going to be a major part of all our collective future.
03 Feb 2021
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Dashing through the snow

February 3, 2021
I love shooting with professional camera gear. It has expanded my world as an artist in ways I never expected. And I hope to keep improving. But, I’ve never really wanted to be a professional photographer, because I know how much work it takes to be really good, and my true passion lies elsewhere (in 3D). But it sure is fun when you’re in love with your subject matter.
We’re coming up on our second year of covid lockdown. Even as we confine ourselves and hunker down. So much has changed. So much has happened. There is so much to be gained in the winter months. Time to plant our seeds of thought. To reflect and consider. To tire ourselves out with fun in the snow, and sit by the fire to rest.
Spring is coming soon. It always does. It’s always my favorite time of year. How do I want my new life to look when we all start to re-emerge. These are the things I have had time to consider. A silver lining of covid.
23 Nov 2020
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Inspiration

November 23, 2020
Every once in a while you see an artists’ work, who, even if you don’t have their skill and talent you know enough to know what it took to get them there. Because you are striving for the same things. You understand the things they gave up to develop in such an exquisite way. You understand the luxuries forgone. The resources redirected to making better work. The fear overcome. The free time dedicated to yet more work. This is one of those people for me. This is the work of, 3D Digital Artist Ian Spriggs it represents a mastery of so many different skills sets. Anatomy, lighting, hair, skin, photography, a sensitivity to what makes us human, not to mention incredibly complicated software that usually takes teams of people to operate due to its vastness, difficulty and complexity. When I see work like this for a moment it takes my breath away and makes me feel a little hopeless. How could I ever…? And then I hear a little voice in my head saying, “you can do this”. I think that’s what they call, inspiration.