I have been working at Conde Nast now for almost a year and today just launched Vanity Fair & GQ February issues! Its been a good year, hope to see another one just like it for 2012.
Its been nearly a year on/off with this one. Keeping with my track record of never finishing any of my fun projects this is going surprisingly well. Hopefully I can get it ‘finished’ before the new movie comes out and fingers crossed my version is going to be better. Ha we will see, I doubt it however!
You can see more updates here and how I have gone from rotors to engines: SEE PROJECT THREAD HERE!
I have been invited to give two days of talks and workshops at Michigan State University in a few weeks. You can read more about it here: www.cal.msu.edu/index.php/download_file/view/183/1/ - United States
Based on the ship from Avatar thought I would have a go to see what I can come up with. This was basically just a test to see how Google Sketchup and Thea integrate with large file sizes and millions of polygons. As you can see it handled it fine.
Still a work in progress, hopefully have it finished and illustrated soon. This is a LARGE ship so you need to click on the images to see close up! The last image is of the lander, its the section just in front of the mirror. the little white dots by its base are spacemen so you can get an idea of just how big this is supposed to be!
You can see more here: ISV IMAGE GALLERY
Here are some updates on the helicopter. Just playing with a black paint scheme, glossy instead of matte.
I have now updated my portfolio website. It still isn’t finished and needs a lot of editing but you can check it out here:
http://liam887.carbonmade.com/
Some recent changes to the helicarrier model. This is only a concept as I have no idea what It will look like in the official movie but here is what I have come up with so far based on ideas I have shared with some fans of the series who have contacted me regarding changing the engines as well as other professional concept artists. Havent managed to do any renders yet so this is just raw output from sketchup…
You can see its development here in its own section: https://liam887.wordpress.com/project-s-h-i-e-l-d-helicarrier/
Have now worked on four issues of WIRED magazine for the iPAD and one issue of GQ. London has been very good so far and have even managed to find a house in the last week so getting my freelance 3D and design work back as we speak.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was commissioned to do some freelance work for Wired magazine and now I find myself working for them full time and leaving university! Its been a hectic week but watch this space as hopefully I will be in a better position to do more 3D work for the mag and be allowed to post it here…
Almost finished work on the models save the minor details (not including the interiors) cant believe its taken 13 months but they are looking nice at last!
Here are the two most refined versions. The Aerospatiale SA-2 Samson on the left from the movie Avatar and on the right my own SA-H2 COmbat Search and Rescue variant designed by myself. Both made in sketchup with many many many revisions over the last year.
The combat search and rescue model differs in that it only has one mounted door gun, a winch, fuel tanks instead of pylon mounted ordnance such as quad missile launchers seen on the SA-2 two sets of of opening rear cargo doors, no wire cutters on the rotor hubs and a in flight refueling boom.
Pretty happy with how they have turned out and much better than I would ever have expected when I started over a year ago, amazing the tips and tricks you can pick up in such a time span.
However next comes the hardest part, the dreaded paneling 
fingers crossed on that sketchup doesn’t like tiny geometry I have already scaled up the aircraft to something like 40 feet high so I can work on it!
YOU CAN SEE THE REST OF THE DEVELOPMENT HERE
