One of my favorite spots in LA is Secret Headquarters. It's a comic shop in Silverlake. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, but when I came across "I Will Pet You While You Sleep" by Jon Vermilyea I was stoked! His art is super playful and grotesque and cute at the same time. I bought the book and was really inspired to make a print of the hand. I think it's really cool!!!!

This is from an About the Author on Google Books:

"Jon Vermilyea is a multitalented Los Angeles-based illustrator, cartoonist, animator, and printmaker. His psychedelic, candy-coloured illustrations and unique designs of the monstrous and mythical have left their mark on a wide range of clients."

I'd say that is about right.

I take a lot of screen shots and test renders as the project rolls along. Here is a selection of some of the most informative and or and stupid ones.

As you're scrolling through, you're probably noticing a lot of different software being used. Here is a list of every program I used during the making of this handy boy.

ZBrush / Maya / Arnold / Substance Painter / Photoshop / After Effects / Pure Ref

I like to keep track of how long projects take for me to do. I've always kept that data private since it can be a pretty sensitive thing. Will people think I'm too slow? Or not spending enough time to make something great? It's on the same level of talking about how much you get paid. For this project, I want to publically breakdown how long it took because whether you think I'm fast or slow doesn't really matter to me. I put a lot of time into this project because I loved working on it and it was soley for me. When you look at it, I want you to think that no matter how long it took, it was worth it.

Certain projects I can whip out in a few hours, but they won't be this complex or maybe the piece will be modeled to a fixed camera. When I am working for clients, everything depends on what they need and what their deadline is. I always do my best within their constraints to make them happy. When I am working for my own entertainment, details can be perfected and time doesn't really matter.

All that being said, the total time I put into the piece was 96:30 hours. The break down goes something like 62:30 to make the model, 25:30 for lookdev and the last few were for rigging, animating and compositing. I started the piece on September 10th and finished everything on October 3rd. I had to slow down since I sometimes have to work for actual money. 💰💰💰

All that time doesn't include the extra hours I'd like to spend cutting up the model to be 3d printed and the time it'll take to make a real-time version for Instagram.

The thing that took the longest was making all of the wrinkles by hand. I wish there was a magic way to cut all of those in. I really thought hard about a way to make them quicker, but to get the look I wanted, I found that the only way was to sit down and muscle through it. At the end I was getting pretty burnt out because I'd say that the wrinkles took a good 50% of the 62:30 hours to do. Glad I pushed through, because I'm really happy with the way everything turned out.

If you're interested in how I keep track of my hours, I use an app called Timelime. I've been using it since 2014 and I really like it since you can log hours on your iPhone and iMac (sorry if ur not all up into dat iLife like me ✨ 🖥️ 📱 ✨) and they will all sync up nicely. It really helps me to visualize how much I actually sit at my desk. I definitely take a lot of pride in how much I work, but it's also a reminder to get up and do something else for a little bit.