Well, finally getting round to making some changes! I know it seems like forever since I last made any updates on this site, but I’m alive and kicking.
I’ve actually been very, VERY occupied recently (all good stuff) and very busy with work. IVe changed jobs twice now, and working with a fun studio giving me a lot more responsibility as well as workload.
Having said that, there’s not been that much time for personal projects and arting just for the fun if it until recently.
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to get some sculpting done again,and I’ve got to say I’m really enjoying it again. I’d forgotten just how therapeutic it can be. I’ll post a few samples soon enough.. Just getting on top of things again now and seeing if I can post from my beloved iPad

Well, finally the new site is up and running, even though just in fledgeling form. I’ve got the first few posts uploading, and the gallery will be filling up by the day – all the behind-the-scenes work is done and it’s just a matter of uploading content from the various parts of my drive.  The last site was entirely manually managed, and had become a bit of a beast to manage, let alone maintain.

It’s been something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, though I was hampered recently due to a debacle with DomainPeople.com.I was very much in danger of losing my domain name registration, as they emailed me to say my registration was due for expiry, but then subsequently refused to acknowledge the email adress as viable (not the same as the one they had on record).

Having moved country twice, and house 4 times since I first registered (in 2002!) The chances of me having the same ISP, let alone ISP based email address was small to NONE.  Silly buggers. They then asked me to post Photo ID, which is utterly ridiculous, as I could have posted one of my brother or, frankly, anyone.  There’s NO way they would be able to tell whether that was me or not if I wasn’t physically stood in front of them.

VERY long story short (2 months of chasing). I finally got my domain registered again with them a couple of days short of the expiry.  I have since transferred everything to my other provider and registrar YOUR-SITE.com.  Your-Site have always been fantastic, and incredibly service minded.

Happy Rico now!

Ship Street

There’s something about Tudor buildings I just love. The silly imbalance and top-heavy design of them always makes them look like they should fall over. I always imagine Ankh-Morpork would be full of them. The wizard staying at the Ship Street inn here is *obviously* up to no-good in his room..

Modelled and rendered completely in Maya, textures painted in photoshop. It pretty much started out as an experiment in repeatable 32bit displacement mapping that I was tinkering with (the castle) but then I kinda got carried away as a 3D doodle. Pretty happy with the result though.

Black Dragon

Another Dragon, this one was commissioned for the book by Shayne Easson over at Phantasy Ink. Again, fabulous, fabulous people to work with, and I sincerely hope they sell bucketloads (especially with the new huge trend for eBooks that the iPad has spawned)

The Lizard King

Broken free from the chains below, the Lizard King is hungry for retribution. Not quite Dragon yet, and on the verge of ascension.

I’m delighted to say this piece is now the cover for Shayne Eason’s Phantasy Ink book coming soon: (website) – a company that have proven to be an absolute pleasure to work with (please, do pop by and pick up a copy!)

Fall 'n Angel

Having never had an opportunity to sculpt a female character, this piece was more a study than anything else. The usual imagery of angels is terribly cliche’d, and I was trying to depict her as both relaxed in her nudity and seductive at the same time.

Fall ‘n Angel was never intended to be vulgar, though I must admit I enjoy the Victorian attitude that people immediately adopt in response (naturally!).

Quite interestingly, women seem to appreciate her natural form (larger thighs, and heavier knees than normally associated with model types) whereas men react mostly in defense of what they know. Fallen Angel really has been a wonderful insight into the psyche of peoples perception (and I can’t pretend not a joy to work on)

“All art is immoral.” – Oscar Wilde