"Tae's imagery is fused with dystopian sci-fi and classical mysticism. He sketches on paper first before painting." That's great! Y'see, it seems to have become a bragging right by many professional artists to paint straight away on the canvas. I'm not saying its bad.
I understand, I remember how Feng Zhu, emphasized to no end that everything is about speed. Having to draw it on paper, scan it, then paint is an excess to these folks. So damn! I'm pretty sure Mr. Choi's seriously sped up his pace, and forced himself to draw and paint digitally by now, but still... aww... who am I kidding?! I should learn to paint digitally straight!! Nobody uses paper anymore!
He has an advantage - he knows 3D. He fuses 3D into his works, to achieve incredible detail and accuracy. Again, a lot of artists seem to force themselves to learn this to help make them more 'marketable' to the creative industry. I myself would... love to... Again, I'm only kidding myself. I'm too lazy to learn 3D. I tried it once with Milkshape, and I ended up with a really screwed up sphere. Let me learn to paint first before I get ahead of myself.
A lot of Mr. Choi's inspirations have been MTV, classical art, Hollywood films. I think a lot of young artists would say the same thing... Or not. Who knows what young people think these days.
To add a sense of depth or another layer of visual communication, Mr. Choi adds codes and symbols to his works. I don't exactly know what he means by that - but obsessive people who enjoy this sort of thing might pick it up quickly. You know, like spotting a... uh... spotting the word 'sex' on the clouds of an animated feature. Stuff like that.
Th drawbacks to working professionally as a concept artist is that the public doesn't get to see your work until the project is released, and even then it may not be released at all. I know this, since I once saw this professional concept artist's laptop, and he was scrolling through dozens of folders of art for various projects. He kept muttering, "Oops... I can't show this to you yet... Oh, that's top secret.."
"So I try to spend as much times as I possibly could on personal works" Supposedly he works 2 or 3 hours, but given how slow he updates his personal portfolio, I guess he's busier than ever. He is currently working on a comic book which would be released on a major comic event.
The TaekwonV Thing
Here is a CG demo reel of this vastly-improved tribute to a rip-off. Watch, and be amazed!
It loops twice. I don't know why. Finally folks, if you understand Korean, maybe you might have seen this already. If you don't understand, keep watching. You'll see some pretty cool CG-wizardry and fun test footage of TaekwonV.
So what ya'll think? Good?
What is Taekwon V? Is that some kind of new Korean RPG? No. It's just some "revival" of a classic Korean animated television show for children. See for yourself. Wonder what happened to it...
According to ImagineFX, Mr. Choi received permission fro the original artists themselves to recreate the design, "I was trying to keep the original look as much as possible and just add a heroic, modern look."
Here is a CG demo reel of this vastly-improved tribute to a rip-off. Watch, and be amazed!
It loops twice. I don't know why. Finally folks, if you understand Korean, maybe you might have seen this already. If you don't understand, keep watching. You'll see some pretty cool CG-wizardry and fun test footage of TaekwonV.
So what ya'll think? Good?
Great art, inspiring as you said. Thank you for sharing.
-G
Might want to think of something aside from a free Photobucket account as enough hits on your account and all the graphics on your blog are gone. Like they are right now.