Pencils and Caffeine

Finally!

2011-08-28T22:59:00.000-07:00

I got a job! I am humbled and flattered to join the world-class concept art team over at Sony Santa Monica!!

I love my job, and can honestly say that there is no place I would rather be. It is an honor and a privilege to work with such a talented, passionate group of people. Being asked to work here makes all of the years of blood, sweat, and tears (and all-nighters!) worth it!

Getting to this point has not been easy. Without trying to sound too corny: I would like to give a hearty thank you to everyone who gave me support and believed in me through some of the most difficult years of my life. I could not have done this without the help of all of my incredible friends and family. Thanks everyone!

I will still be finishing up school, so expect some art-related updates from my remaining school-work in the months to come, but unfortunately I will not be able to show most of what I do at work for several years. I'll have to do some personal work now and then to try and keep from falling off the face of the earth!

2011 Intern Show Postmortem

2011-04-04T22:45:00.000-07:00

Wow! It sure has been a while since I put anything up here. Bad Zach! I'll try and be better about that in the future!

So another intern show at Art Center has come and gone, and once again the bar has definitely been raised. The turnout was great this year, and the student work was spectacular! I had a great time and got to meet a lot of very cool and interesting people. Here are a couple of pieces I worked on for the show...

A new piece for my senior project -- the goddess Athena from my Greek/Steampunk/Fantasy version of "The Odyssey":

(She's sitting on her "steamthrone" :] -- I'm such a nerd!)

Here's a piece I reworked a little bit from my "Dead Space" redesign -- I think it makes for a more interesting narrative:

A 6-headed sea monster I'm designing for my "Odyssey" project:

Some more work on my cyclops zbrush maquette that I'm doing with Bryan Wynia. Still a work in progress, but its certainly coming along:

Oh, and I got published! Kevin Chen over at Concept Design Academy submitted my work -- as well as that of a few other students --to an article that 3D Artist Magazine was doing on the Zbrush character creation class that Bryan teaches:

I would definitely like to thank Kevin Chen, Bryan Wynia, Josh Herman and everyone else at CDA -- it was an honor to be selected and represent the school!

I have a lot more stuff in the works that I will be sure to post up here soon! Thanks, as always, for taking a look.

One Hour Zbrush Sketches

2011-02-13T02:41:00.000-08:00

I'm taking an independent study with the amazing Bryan Wynia, whose class you should take if you haven't already. We're developing a "cyclops" character for a project I'm working on.

Did a bunch of Zbrush head sketches yesterday, each one was timed for an hour:

I apologize for the corny names -- I was tired and it seemed hilarious at the time. ;)

***

*EDIT: So I did one today at school for the open house we were having in front of a bunch of people on the projector! It was super intimidating! Here's what I came up with:

***

*EDIT: Took one of the more successful designs further, and toned down the "pornographic" nature of it, as per the request of one of my instructors:

Thanks for looking!

End of Fall 2010

2010-12-17T19:41:00.000-08:00

Term just finished -- here's a few things I've been working on recently.

More on my Dead Space redesign. I've only got a couple of pieces up to the level of polish I'm happy with -- more to come after I get some sleep:

A couple of pieces from my "Originality in Design" class taught by Nick Pugh. I was initially a little bit apprehensive about taking the class because of the "abstract" subject matter it deals with, but was actually pleasantly surprised and got a lot out of it.

I developed a design language out of an abstract scanning technique that turned out to be pretty successful. For the final, I had to build one of my designs in 3D, which was a little bit of a struggle due to my limitations with the software. Had to learn how to use Sketchup and Modo in two weeks, so given the time limit and my limited 3D knowledge, I think it came out okay:

Modo is really fun (Sketchup is not)! I expect to be using it more often in the future.

Thanks for looking, more coming!

Some sketches

2010-11-05T23:14:00.000-07:00

I'm starting a Dead Space redesign, here's the initial pass on the "Necromorphs":

A lot more for this project to come soon.

Also, here are some sketches done for my "Originality in Design" class:

Nothing super original yet, but the techniques used to arrive at these are certainly out of my usual repertoire. I have to give some credit to my buddy Arron Ingold (super-talented guy, btw: you should check him out), who has come up with an extremely efficient "creature head" painting process that he was kind enough to share with me. I'm now able to do these fairly quickly, so expect more of them pretty soon.

Here's the WORK IN PROGRESS of my pitch illustration for the Legend stuff from the previous post:

Thanks for looking!

Legend Redesign

2010-09-30T23:51:00.000-07:00

So school started again, and in one of my classes we are being asked to redesign a story of our choosing. I am doing an "updated" redesign of Ridley Scott's Legend -- paying homage to the original designs while embellishing on them (or in some cases changing them).

I kinda feel like these aren't done yet, but they are as done as they are going to be for the time being:

Still polishing the final illustration, so stay tuned.

As a bonus, here's a couple digital landscape paintings I did for a class I am taking with Robh Ruppel. Robh is a truly amazing teacher that I cannot speak highly enough of. He has somehow broken down a subject matter that I have had unending difficulty with into bite-size chunks.

Trying to get as much as I can out of three values / no fancy brushes:

A color study of the same subject matter at different times of the day. I was trying to get as accurate-to-life color as possible, while keeping the paintings relatively simple:

Thanks for looking!

End of Summer Update

2010-09-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

Well, school started again this week, so I figured I should put up some of the stuff I've been sitting on for a while.

Another creature for Jerad's class -- a redesign on Pumpkinhead. Getting the anatomy right on this guy was certainly a struggle. I'm not used to doing horror-type creatures, so this was a nice change of pace (and fun!):

A closeup of the same piece:

I have more that I probably should show, but I want to polish a bit before I send it out into the world wide web. Stay tuned!

*EDIT* So, I checked this out on my laptop, and it looks pretty dark (losing a lot of information). It looks fine on my desktop, so please let me know if its dark on your monitor, and I'll throw a lightened version up. Thanks!

Late Summer Update

2010-08-24T15:06:00.000-07:00

Here's another character done for Jerad's class, a redesign of the aliens from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind":

A costumed version of my goblin character from the previous post:

Something I probably shouldn't be showing, but will anyways until I'm told otherwise:

More to come soon (I promise)!

Comic-Con 2010 Aftermath

2010-07-26T04:05:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Comic-Con 2010, and all I can say is -- WOW! I got to meet a ton of amazing people, got some great critiques on my work, and just had an overall great time!

Here is a WIP piece I am doing for Jerad Marantz's creature design class at Concept Design Academy:

Not only is Jerad a spectacular artist, but he is also a really incredible teacher: he possesses the rare skill of being able to effectively communicate his decision-making process when designing. I am learning a ton, and I think my work is going to make leaps of improvement in the near future because of it.

The Zbrush portion was something I did for a class taught by the immensely talented Bryan Wynia, whose Zbrush class at CDA is also not to be missed. Bryan is an amazing instructor who is able to keep things lively and fun through many of the more difficult technical hurdles of trying to learn Zbrush!

Unfortunately, much of my newest work is now for freelance clients and therefore NDA. I'll try to keep this blog updated as much as possible, however.

Just so this post isn't a complete wall of text, here's a pretty old environment sketch I forgot to throw up here (man, I have a long way to go with environments...) :

Thanks for looking!

2010 Intern Show Postmortem

2010-04-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

A couple of pieces that made it on to my internship show wall this year that haven't really been shown here yet:

I also did a lot of tweaking on a lot of the existing pieces in my portfolio. You can find the changes on my portfolio blog.

Although the employer turnout left a little to be desired, I still learned a lot about presentation, what pieces of mine people gravitate towards, what type of work my portfolio is still lacking, etc.

Great job to everyone who participated -- I think the average level of work in the ED department is the best its ever been. Kudos everyone -- we put on a hell of a show!

Another quick caricature

2010-03-22T00:27:00.000-07:00

So we had a very quick assignment recently where we had to caricature ourselves as a superhero (in a sort of cartoony/stylized fashion). I decided that it might be funny to just do myself (in street clothes), given that I have the power to stay up for ridiculous amounts of time:

Its just a sketch at this point, but I kinda like it that way. According to my friend Arron, its the best drawing/rendering I've ever done. Not sure I agree with that, but I do like how it came out, given the time constraints.

(for those of you who are -- or were -- in arch 2: yes, that is white gouache on the paintbrush)

Pre GDC madness!!

2010-03-12T06:58:00.000-08:00

A couple of rushed pieces I'm trying to get into my portfolio before GDC tomorrow:

Architectural Interior for the game "Brutal Legend"--

A satanic dragon-thing --

Also, I finally updated my portfolio blog to prepare for GDC. Wish me luck!

Fantasy Dog!

2010-02-16T04:39:00.000-08:00

This is a WORK IN PROGRESS for my creature design class. I am in the midst of working on the costume (a sort of camel rider motif), but its not done yet...

Attempting a bit more of an "illustrative" approach, which I am beginning to like!

Thanks for looking!

Some speedpaintings

2010-02-16T04:02:00.000-08:00

So I am fortunate enough to be taking a class with the incredible James Paick. I have been learning a lot, and have been getting over some of my trepidation about environments. Here's some quickies from his class:

Of course blogger has to mess up the color a bit, but hopefully you get the point.

Cheers everyone!

Live action "Steamboy"

2010-02-16T03:33:00.000-08:00

So here's some stuff from the end of last term that for some reason I haven't posted. I have some design sketches as well, but I want to clean them up a bit first before showing...

More to come soon!

Its my aeroplane

2009-11-19T23:20:00.000-08:00

I know, I know -- I've been bad about updates! I have lots to show, but most of it is still unfinished! I promise to get to some of it soon!

Anyway, here are some sketches for my "wright brothers" style airplane.

I was going for more of a "wobbly line" approach this time. Hope it works...

Here's the rendering. I wanted to make it colorful, because its supposed to be for a "hero". I'm not completely happy with it, but I figure its time to move on:

Thanks for looking!

Princess Bride - Part I

2009-11-11T23:43:00.000-08:00

Hey all -- its been a little while since I updated here. I've been busy retooling my portfolio and working on projects for school, hence the lack of updates. I have a lot of half-finished work that is going to have to wait until I get a little spare time.

Anyway, here's a project I have been working on for my character design class -- its a re-imagining of "The Princess Bride." I have 6 characters designed, but they are not all rendered yet, so look forward to seeing the rest of them soon.

My portfolio blog is back up with a bunch of new work. You can find the link to it at the top of this page.

Cheers!

Mechs!! (Part Deux)

2009-10-23T20:50:00.001-07:00

So here's how the mech turned out.

I named it the "Z-2 Hammer Head", here's the final rendering (I still may go back and throw on some rim lighting):
And some color variations. I kind of like the "multi" sponsored one more than the "coke" one -- it has more of a NASCAR feel...

I really like how a lot of this page came out, so hopefully some of it will make it into my portfolio:

I did some orthographics and more sketch pages as well, but those are not really worth showing.

Thanks for looking!

Mechs!!

2009-10-07T20:07:00.000-07:00

So I'm taking this class called "Vehicles and Props" this term, where we got a very open-ended assignment of designing whatever sort of vehicle or prop that we wanted. I decided to do a "Gladiatorial Mech-Suit", which I defined as essentially a large robot manned by a single pilot whose sole purpose is to beat the crap out of other robots for sport on TV. I figure they will all have corporate sponsors like CocaCola, AT&T, etc. Also, I decided it was all hand-to-hand, no projectiles. Think wrestling, but with giant robots. Anyway, here are some of the sketches:

(The first one is a continuation of the one I did over the summer for Carlo Arellano)

I'm amazed at how much I have progressed at designing mechanical objects even since the summer. Its always an awesome feeling to see noticeable progress in your work.

In two weeks I have to finish up the design, as well as do a final rendering. Wish me luck!

A recent caricature

2009-10-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

For a recent assignment, we had to caricature ourselves. I did quite a few, for homework, but feel like this was the most successful:

The assignment was lots of fun!

Flat "Gargoyles" re-design

2009-10-07T19:37:00.000-07:00

So, this term I am fortunate enough to take a character design class at Art Center! Our first project was to redesign some of the characters from the 1990s animated show "Gargoyles". The instructor wanted us to make them a lot flatter and simpler, and to adapt to an established style. I also decided to give all of my gargoyles obvious animal resemblences.

Here's the final lineup:
Here are some of the sketches/design work:

* I turned Goliath into a lion--

* Lex is some sort of spidermonkey-type thing / Broadway is a pig--

* I also designed the female protagonist of the show, Elisa (didn't get to a turnaround) and the villain David Xanatos--
I had a lot of fun doing these -- they were very different from what I normally do. Hopefully you all enjoy them as well!

***EDIT: Threw in the color lineup and condensed the sketch pages***

Some work from over the summer

2009-10-07T19:03:00.000-07:00

So, I took this class over at Concept Design Academy here in Pasadena taught by the very talented Carlo Arellano. The emphasis of the class was good functional design over pretty renderings, with an encouragement to do more linear-based work. This was a huge change in perspective for me. Although it was difficult at the time to essentially change everything about the way I work, I feel like I have grown by leaps and bounds because of it.

Here is a sample of some of the work I did over the summer (I keep meaning to rework some of this, but I may never get around to it):

I also messed around in zbrush quite a bit, but don't feel confident enough in what I did yet to show. Hopefully look forward to some of that in the future...

Thank you, once again, for taking a look!!

Summer '09 portfolio

2009-10-07T17:31:00.000-07:00

Hey all -- its been a while since I posted anything up here. I have a lot of new work to sift through (a lot of it not worth showing), but before I show any of that, I figured I would put up my portfolio from the beginning of last summer as a sort of milestone of my progress, since most of it is likely to be swapped out for newer stuff in the near future.

I cringe when I look at some of this stuff now, but I guess that is just a testament to how quickly my abilities are developing.

Anyway, here it is...

Puss in Boots Design:

"Dark" Robin Hood Redesign:

Halloween Mask Design:

Peter Pan Redesign (southwestern setting):

Imaginary Creature Anatomy Study:

Misfit Muppets Design:

Reflective Vehicle:

"lolcats" Toyline Design:

Misc:

Golem Costume Design:

Thanks so much for looking!

Some stuff I forgot to show and more WIPs

2009-03-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

Forgot that I never showed this on this blog. Its an attempt at a reflective/shiny object. I envision it as some sort of bizarre craft that hovers over land -- piloted by a couple of cartoony aliens. May still add some more subtle detailing:

An attempt at a more character-driven illustration (trying to go a little more painterly with my application and storybook with my colors). For my Peter Pan story:

Thanks!

Some work in progress

2009-03-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

These aren't done yet, but I figured I'd show them anyway.

A "Puss In Boots" design for my costume design class:
A "Peter Pan" redesign for color theory. I had to design two of these characters in a weekend, then do 2 paintings the following weekend. It was intense, but I learned a lot (like how hard drawing/painting tweens is):
Are you liking the new larger format? So glad I was able to finally figure out how to do that.

Cheers!

Costumed Figure Speedpaint

2009-03-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

Did this yesterday in costume design class from a model. Kind of an experiment...

Portfolio Blog

2009-03-12T20:51:00.000-07:00

I have a new blog up, specifically for my professional portfolio! I will continue to post on this blog, however, with works in progress and insight into my thought process, etc -- trying to keep things more personal.

The new blog's address is http://zacharybergerportfolio.blogspot.com/ and it does have some work that is not up here. Expect to see a few updates on both in the weeks to come, as I have a couple of things in the oven that are not finished enough to show yet.

Thanks for looking!

Some new costume design stuff!

2009-02-21T22:13:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone -- thought I might share some new work with you!

Here is something I did for my costume design class. We had to take our inspiration from a piece of architecture then do a costume design for an existing character. I chose the Parthenon for my inspiration, and did the Hebrew Golem myth for my character. For those that don't know, its basically a much older version of the Frankenstein story, except this "creation" is made out of clay.

I did the designs last week:

Did the rendering on Thursday:

Thank you for looking!

A preview of what's to come!

2009-02-09T01:01:00.000-08:00

I wasn't happy with the previous rendering of my imaginatomy creature from last term, so I decided to redo it this weekend (I had a light homework weekend). I started this last night and finished it today.

Cheers!

Some stuff from the beginning of this term...

2009-02-05T04:39:00.001-08:00

Here is some work from the beginning of the new term. So far, things are going great -- I am enjoying my classes even more than last term!

A greyscale rendering of a "blob character" for Viscomm 4. I did one of the "Misfit Muppets" from my sketchbook.
A closeup of the same character. It seems that blogger/flickr is still messing with my values a little bit. Some of the subtle contrast seems lost. Oh well.

An "experimental" piece for Viscomm 4. I used very non-traditional techniques to arrive at this:

A costume for my Costume Design class. We had to take a photo of an object from a magazine and design a set of 10 variations around it using the motifs established in the source material. Mine ended up as a wrestling costume. Weird, but I had fun with it:

A rather fun assignment for my Color Theory class, which is kind of hard to explain. Basically we had to change the narrative in the first 2 pieces by changing what type of color contrast we used, while still using the same illustration. The third one with the really wacky colors is really just an exercise, and has no narrative.
Cheers!

Some stuff from the end of last term...

2009-02-05T04:02:00.000-08:00

It seems that I am way past due on an update here. Here is some stuff from last term.

One of my last assignments for VisComm 3 -- still trying to get better at those man-made objects:
A toy design project that my good friend Tom Zhao and I did together. We made a toyline of lolcats. Here is a small sliver of the thought process that went into the designs:

Here is a shot of the final toy lineup. Tom did the majority of the sculpting. He is a much more adept sculptor than myself:

I have a couple other things that I may or may not throw up here, but thats it for now.

Thanks (as always) for looking!

So here's what I did this weekend:

2008-10-30T13:52:00.000-07:00

I had to design a Halloween mask based on some sort of religion, mythology, culture, historical movement, etc for my "Creative ID Process" class. I ended up going for the black plague, basing my mask off of plague doctors, which I had never heard of before, who basically dressed up like birds and wore primitive gas masks during the European plague.

Anyway, here is the final rendering for it:

Here is the "callouts page", which explains some of my design choices. I also did a bunch of design work/sketches that are not shown here.

Thanks for looking!

What have I been up to?

2008-10-23T15:51:00.000-07:00

I figured I should add to this, as I have been dormant for a little while. Here's some stuff that I have been working on for My VisComm (Visual Communication) 3 class at Art Center. We are focused on rendering matte surfaces in photoshop:

A sketch I did out of abstract shapes - turned into a spaceship.

I took the same ship and put it into perspective, made a couple adjustments, then added some wear and tear. Rendering manmade forms is new to me...

My creature for my "Imaginatomy" class.

In an effort to find a more permanent solution to my image-hosting problem, I am hosting these through flickr. Hopefully this will prove to be a more successful.

Thanks for stopping by.

Color Corrected Work

2008-07-28T21:52:00.001-07:00

In order to counteract blogger's bizarre desire to desaturate and lighten my piece, I had to artificially saturate and darken in in photoshop, and upload it several times until I got it looking right on the web. What you see here is a little closer to the original intention of the piece (although still not completely identical). Hoping to have a more permanent solution soon.

Cheers!

Portfolio Part II -- Unrelated and Personal Work

2008-07-26T22:04:00.000-07:00

Here is everything else that I submitted to the Entertainment Design committee at Art Center that was unrelated to my Robin Hood redesign project (with the exception of a couple of pages that I added in later). Most of these are just bits-and-pieces of classwork and personal work: anything that I felt best showcased my abilities.

*EDIT: It seems that Blogger messes with the colors of my images when I upload them. This is most unfortunate, and I will be looking for a solution in the near future. In the meantime, please bear with me.*

I hope to have more entertainment/concept-art related color-work in the near future!

Cheers!

Portfolio Part I -- Robin Hood Redesign

2008-07-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

Here is my redesigned take on the classic "Robin Hood" story, set in a retro-futuristic alternate reality. This was used as an entrance portfolio into the Art Center College of Design's Entertainment Design major: a program that only 20 people a year are accepted to. I was fortunate (and hardworking) enough to make the cut.

This was all produced in approximately 6-8 weeks, and the focus of it was primarily design. Basically, the portfolio-review committee stressed that they wanted to see as many design variations as possible, with less emphasis on "finished product" or detailed painting/rendering. We were asked to redesign the characters, creatures, props, vehicles, and environments from start to finish of a classic fairytale or story. Hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I did making it!

Welcome!

2008-07-23T02:59:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog! Samples of my work are available in the posts above. Here is my business card/contact information:Hope you enjoy!