http://jdnelms.cgsociety.org/gallery/ jdnelms's gallery of images en-us 120 http://jdnelms.cgsociety.org/gallery/538249

I love robots and androids. This a piece I started back in 2004 inspired by the movie I-Robot. I worked on a lot of illustrations that year so this one got shelved soon after I started it. It sat about 1/3 finished until this year when I came across a great robot illustration by Stephan Martiniere titled Para 4. That inspired me to finish mine.

Although the subject matter of my piece was originally inspired by I-Robot, the layout and composition were inspired by Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Botticelli's renaissance masterpiece; The Birth of Venus. Of course, you can't create a female robot without mentioning Hajime Sorayama.

My Venus is primarily a Photoshop montage of aircraft scrap photos and industrial parts images. Venus herself was modeled in an older copy of Poser. The techicians are composites of various photos.]]> Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:22:25 +0000 http://jdnelms.cgsociety.org/gallery/415982

Its been quite a while since I've done any Sci Fi art. Back in the mid 1990's I illustrated Star Trek Master series trading cards but after a while, it got dull.

After years of working primarily in photo realism, I decided recently to start working from simple line art and building up details using only color and loose line, no photoagraphy or 3D.

It was very liberating, because it allows me to focus on composition and color and build up a rich painterly image using only Photoshop.

I was always influenced by the space paintings of John Berkey. He created beautifully detailed space scapes from very simple simple drawings and loose brush strokes. This illustration is my tribute to his style.]]> Wed, 11 Oct 2006 10:24:46 +0000 http://jdnelms.cgsociety.org/gallery/452933

I always loved sci-fi art, and concept art from the 1950's. The futuristic art and architecture of the time was defined by sweeping lines, metal and glass, and was inspired by the jets and rockets. Today we called it Retro Futrurism.

I was inspired by all those old magazine ads that forecasted a world of tommorrow (often 1960!) and how future citizens would live in that utopia.]]> Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:28:34 +0000 http://jdnelms.cgsociety.org/gallery/599255

On January 8, 2008, hundreds of residents of the small town of Stephenville Texas looked up into the winter sky and saw an object "as big as a WalMart."

The sightings made national headlines as television news crews from the major networks and CNN, converged on the town. Many had captured the strange lights on video cameras and cell phones. At close inspection, the footage was blurry and inconclusive at best, and the even the reliable witnesses accounts seemed dubious.

The Air Force claimed the UFO the town folk saw was merely a pair of National Guard F-16s on a training maneuver out of Ft. Worth. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Case solved. Merely mass hysteria and small town imaginations run amuck... or was it?

My UFO started off life as a chrome hubcap. The details were created in Adobe Illustrator and brought into Photoshop. Small town elements like the water tower were from photos I took in East Texas. The police car was a 3D model from Google SketchUp. Although SketchUp does not do photo realistic rendering, it did provide very accurate details an perspective.]]> Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:57:03 +0000 http://jdnelms.cgsociety.org/gallery/533644

I occasionally go sailing out of Long Beach harbor, and I'm facinated by the shipyard itself. Long Beach/Los Angeles harbor is the world's largest shipyard. Gigantic tanker vessels, container ships and luxury cruise liners dwarf the sailboats and waverunners that scurry around them as they all compete for space in this immense industrial mecha-city.

I studied Maya, but I never mastered it. It takes too much time to do simple models, so I build my images from simple line art instead. The thick details are primarily custom brushes made in photoshop which allow me to paint layer and layer of details.



]]> Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:11:06 +0000 http://jdnelms.cgsociety.org/gallery/738342

Just another piece of space art I knocked out last year. The ship was constructed in a 'collage' technique I developed over the years. Essentially I draw my basic shapes and layouts in Photoshop and use them as a guide for assembling different mechanical bits and textures I keep in scrap as well as interesting things I find on the web.

Like the Orion Dockyards piece, I also used a lot of custom brushes made from mechanical parts like engines and circuit boards.

The asteroids are lava rocks I picked up in Hawaii many years ago. I can only hope the curse is gone by now.]]> Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:30:52 +0000