Paul Orlando Caggegi

Expanding my network

Feb 17

Posted by pcaggegi in blog | No Comments

I’ve made my entry into a couple of online ventures via work and podcasting contacts. The first and most exciting, is appearing on Creative Cow. I was commissioned by Roger Bolton of Core Melt to create a tutorial to showcase some of the plugins available in the coremelt suite for Final Cut Pro and After Effects. The tutorial is available here: http://library.creativecow.net/articles/caggegi_paul/coremelt_montage.php

The other venture is joining an aggregate blog/resourc: The Visual Artists Podcasting Network. This resource is the brainchild of Thomas James, host of the popular podcast, Escape from Illustration Island. It brings together several excellent blogs and podcasts which deal with illustration and visual storytelling.

Ratings for the Process Diary have increased to unprecedented levels, and don’t show any signs of abating. The climb has been steady and upward, boasting over 38,000 individual views over the last 30 days (stats courtesy of Feedburner). I attribute this in part to the promotion that blendernation and vimeo users give it. This taps into an audience of people looking for the information I am providing.

Work is now coming from online sources more and more, and it is increasingly difficult to ignore the impact of the web on my freelance career. Time spent on self-promotion on the web should be seriously taken into account when thinking about what to spend time on promoting your own business.

First Peek at Webcomic pages

Jan 13

Posted by pcaggegi in Sketching, blog | No Comments

Hi guys. I had a blackout yesterday which halted work for a little while, so I pulled out the old sketchbook and began to doodle the ideas that had been mulling around in my head on how to proceed. This is just a very VERY rough outline of the first pages of the up-and-coming Character Development webcomic. It always begins with thumbnails for me. I also have a strange habit in which I begin at the top right-hand corner of a page, draw down, then move left for a new collumn. I also write like this. Could be because I’m left-handed and I hate ledgers, then consequently I hate wasted space… dunno. It’s a quirk. We all have them. This is my thing, I guess.

Anyhow: below is the thumbnails of the first few pages! Stay tuned for updates in the coming weeks/months.

Drawing is becoming such a relaxing and inspiring thing for me… I’m wondering if I’m going to draw the whole thing instead of leave it up to 3D entirely. When doing a quick reference model for a colleague last year, I discovered that I could make 3D sets and models as line-work backgrounds fairly quickly. I am hoping to utilize this skill as something to base the sketches on. It is all to get a better looking product.

On style, I’ve decided that every page is going to have a sepia-tone base and that colors are going to be applied over this in a multiply transfer. This gave some concept art I did recently a look and feel that seemed… right somehow. I applied a sepia tone to the above to see if the sketches would keep that same tone. I like it.

Submitted artwork to a worthy cause

Jan 6

Posted by pcaggegi in Charity Work, Sketching, blog | No Comments

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

-Margaret Mead

Monday, January 11th is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. To participate, I joined the Comic Creator’s Alliance–a group of over eighty comic book creators (both web and print) who volunteered their artistic talents to raise money and awareness for this cause. You may not know it, but there are currently 27 million enslaved people worldwide- more than double the number of enslaved Africans during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children every year are sold into slavery, most of it sexual. The US Department of Justice estimates 16,000 victims of human trafficking are brought into the United States every year. Unlike slavery in the 19th century, what is happening today is happening in secret. So it won’t end until awareness is raised, and people like you and me take a stand.

So here’s what we did: each creator contributed an original drawing of one of our own female characters, and combined them into a single wallpaper image. The wallpaper features characters from The Phoenix Requiem, Girls with Slingshots, Earthsong, Looking for Group, Shadowgirls, Marsh Rocket, The Uniques and three IDW Publishing titles: Fallen Angel, The Dreamland Chronicles and The Dreamer, and lots, lots more! Donate today to download this unique, once-in-a-lifetime wallpaper. The Donations Drive will last for two weeks, from January 11th – 24th. All proceeds will be split evenly between Love146 and Gracehaven House- two organizations working on rehabilitation of victims and prevention of this crime.

To learn more about the Comic Creator’s Alliance visit www.comicalliance.weebly.com. To learn more about the problem, visit http://love146.org/slavery. (Note: contains adult themes and actual accounts of sex slavery.)

I submitted a rendering of my own character, Minauld Wallace from the title I am working on: Character Development.

Minauld Wallace - Final

I’ve put up pictures showing the process here on the website, including the process and finals of two other characters from the series.

Recent work

Oct 27

Posted by pcaggegi in The Process Diary, blog | No Comments

It feels as tho it’s been non-stop for me since about July this year. A good thing? Well, in some respects, yeah, but on the downside, the stress can be immense in this feast-or-famine life-style.

I’d like to draw attention to some recent work I’ve been involved in lately. An Icelandic company – midstraeti – contacted me to rig some characters for a series of ads. I’ve rigged two frogs, and several human characters in Blender. The ads have been for Vodafone, and an insurance company. I’m currently making changes to a few rigs which will appear in their latest efforts, but the current ads are front-and-center of their homepage, so go check it out!

In Process Diary news, I’m putting the finishing touches on the October WIP video this week. I’m still experimenting with compression settings, but I think I’m reaching a nice compromise in size-vs-quality, tho! This month’s WIP is another mixed-basket of techniques, but all with a relevant purpose: creating a scene from a library of assets. Workflow is vital to a good project. Whether tackling something solo, or working in a team, you need to set ground rules and systems which everyone can follow. Changes will always need to be made, but having a system which can accommodate and foresee the types of changes that are likely will put you in good stead, and will minimize wasted hours.

One nice part of the tutorial was inspired by Kris Wittig – a process diary listener, who I did some work for recently. He showed me a neat little camera rig he’d created, and I asked if it would be ok to showcase it.

The WIP video for October 2009 should be available via the blog and podcast feed on the 30th.

Oct 6

Posted by pcaggegi in The Process Diary, blog, gallery | No Comments

A sneak preview of concept art for models to come: