goodies!

Located here are various goodies that may be of interest.

Writing-related goodies:

Scriverner Layout - For all you writers who use Scrivener.

Music-related goodies:

Zendrum Layouts - Various layouts I have created for the Zendrum LT.

Digital painting-related goodies:

Before jumping into the tutorials, or downloading the brushes, please read the following:

1) These brushes are my gift to you, but please do not email me and ask me how to use the brushes--there is no trick to using them--just draw and paint as you would other brushes.

2) I'm always experimenting and refining techniques and workflow. so whatever I share here do not necessarily reflect how I work currently. In fact, there are some things I used to do that I would not do today, so be aware of that--you could be exposing yourself to less-than-optimal workflow or bad techniques.

3) I get emails from people all the time, asking me why they couldn't reproduce the same result in their painting from following my online tutorials. It always surprised me that anyone would think a tutorial is all it takes to get the same results that took me many years of learning and practicing to achieve. They would ask me, "What is it that you did in the final steps to get it to look like finished work?" or "What brushes did you use? Why can't I get the same look you did?" My reply to them has always been the same:

"It's not the brushes or any other secrets that I've held back--it is simply experience, patience, and practice needed on your part."

If an experienced guitar player showed you how to finger a bunch of chords and showed you all the notes on a guitar solo, you wouldn't automatically think that you could play just as accurate, expressive, and fast as him, would you? Then why would you believe a painting tutorial can turn you into an experienced painter? The only thing that could get you there is years of learning and practicing. With any creative endeavor that involves muscle memory, eye-hand coordination, observation skills, analytical skills, critical thinking, creative thinking, memorizing and understanding important rules and theories, exposure to a wide-range of styles and works, acquisition and refinement of taste...etc, it will take a long time to simply become adequate, and it'll take far longer to become proficient. Some people spend an entire lifetime and never get beyond being simply adequate, while some will become good enough to be called a master by others. The painting tutorials are just chords and notes that I showed you--you're the one that has to practice the until your fingers bleed (yes, some guitarists do practice until their fingers bleed) .

Moonlight Lovers Tutorial - A tutorial I did for cgsociety.

Scythe Wolf Tutorial - There's also a different version of the Scythe Wolf tutorial that contains a lot more text explanations (compared to what's on my website) published in Digital Art Masters: Volume 1, published by 3dtotal.com.

Blood Siren Tutorial - General steps of the painting.

d'artiste: Digital Painting - I co-wrote a book on digital painting techniques with Linda Bergkvist, John Wallin Liberto, and Philip Straub. The tutorials and tips I've written in the book are far more detailed and in-depth than the ones I have on the website.

Art Techniques and Theories forum at cgtalk - I started this forum at cgtalk.com to help artists with questions and to discuss topics of interest to artists who are looking to learn to improve.

Becoming a Better Artist - Critical Knowledge and Techniques For Today's Artists - This is an online workshop I spent over a year and a half creating, and It's an intense eight-week course that covers the most important things I have ever learned as an artist to date. It is suitable for both novice and advanced artists, and contains some topics that are rarely discussed or taught elsewhere. If you want to see the workshop repeat so you could enroll, just contact the folks at CGSociety.org.

Corel Painter-related goodies:

Painter tips and tricks (updated 11-29-2005) - Some tips on how I use my brushes and set up my UI.

Rob's custom Painter brushes (updated 11-30-2005) - Current release is for version IX of Painter. Using them in earlier version will cause glitches. I do not have earlier versions available anymore.

Examples done with my custom brushes (click on the images for explanation of each brush):

Read the following instruction for installing the brushes:

First, extract zipped contents straight into your "Program Files\Corel\Corel Painter IX\Brushes" folder. After you have extracted the files, they should be available as a seperate library (just go to the "Load Brush Library" option in the Brush Selector Bar". If you want to move them into the default Painter brush library, just read the Painter help file for how to do that.

Game art career advice-related goodies:

I wrote an article on the art of art direction for Gamasutra, published here. It might help those of you that want to get into the game industry, or thinking about moving up to become an art director.

Personal-related goodies:

Influences - People and creative works that I love.

Internet-related goodies:

Links - Some of the websites that I visit.