With the release of zBrush 3.2 for OS X this last week, I had to spend a few hours in it. I’ve always dug Z, and found the community at zbrushcentral to be a huge source of inspiration. There always seems to be something cool to check out as a plethora of vets and vets in the making call it home. I struggle to find time to build out the skillset with my current commitments, but you know what they say – you never have time, you have to make it. The subject matter of my sculpt is probably the most tired of them all, but sometimes that’s what happens when you’re not paying attention. Start with a sphere, crank up some tunes (some Adam Johnson for this) and a couple hours later you have an alien skull with a forehead that reminds me of the Smashing Pumpkins Bullet with Butterfly Wings. At any rate, it was some needed fun, and I enjoyed getting to know z just a little bit better.

Since I’m rambling about it this is probably a good time to throw a nod to some of my favorite artists at zbc (well worth checking out if you like this stuff):
Simon Blanc, Renaud Galand, Cedric Seaut, David Giraud, Greg Callahan, Ralf Stumpf, and T.S.Whittelsbach

Click to enlarge:

Natural Media Tool Palette for Photoshop CS4

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the last week rebuilding some of the tools from the first NKS panel and refining the overall tool selection to be more efficient and more dynamic. I wont be having much time available to retrofit this kit anytime soon, so wanted to make sure this version was well thought out and worthy of the effort.

The tools are somewhat personalized around my workflow in the sense that I use pencils, markers, ball pens and ink quite frequently. However the selection remains wide enough that I feel many concept artists, graphic designers and product designers could utilize them effectively- in any capacity from ideation to rendering. I’ve attempted to keep the tools true to their name and real life functionality, so lead should look and act like lead, and so on. If you experience any shortcomings in their effect it’s due either to a fault of my observation or the extent to which brushes can currently be modulated in Photoshop, which is probably somewhat true of all of the tools to some degree.

I’ve made a short screencast showing the install procedure and a quick overview of the tools in action to give you a sense of their effect without committing to a download.

View NKS2 Screencast

Please note that about 50 seconds into the video (where I first start using the tools) that they’re only putting down dots. This is due to a setting at the bottom of the Tool Preset window [Current Tools Only] being checked – this needs to be unchecked for the palette to function properly. Aside from just putting down dots, you could get an error message like ‘Cannot execute the ‘Select’ command’, or other nonsense. So make sure you ‘uncheck’ that if you haven’t already.

One of the cool features of this kit, aside from centralization, is the fact that you can reset the initial state of any of these tools to better suit your personal taste. Say for instance that you like a darker lead, or would like the grease pencil to start out with a circular tip and a lighter tone. All you need to do is create a new tool preset (with your settings) and rename it identically to the existing tool preset (i.e. ‘Grease’, etc) which can all be done in Photoshops ‘Tool Preset’ palette.

Another nice feature about having tool presets triggered by actions is that you can assign hotkeys to them in the Actions Palette. For example if you primarily use markers and pencils you could set the Dull Lead to F1, Sharp Lead to Shift-F1, Lt Marker to F2.. and so on, you get the idea. I hope eventually that Photoshop will support hotkey addressing of custom actions with regular keys (non-function). I think Autodesk Maya is terrific example for Adobe to emulate in this regard.

This custom tool panel, like the first version, is only compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS4 and newer. It was created with the Adobe Configurator utility, and should be used with the most current version of Adobe Extension Manager (2.1 or newer). So make sure you get that installed before giving it a go. You can grab the newest version here.

Enjoy!

p.s. if anyone feels they’re able to improve the natural effect or feel of any one of these tools – please send me the updated preset and I’ll evaluate it for inclusion in the next version. I’m more than happy to give credit (and a high-five) to anyone who does so – however I cannot offer any monetary compensation as this is a freeware effort.

>Download NKS2

(right-click and save)

NKS2 by NKURENCE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Ever since I saw the 7 Laserdeck Skate Show I’ve wanted to produce my own decks. Today, the first shipment arrived.. and I’m stoked. Each of these was laser engraved front and back with my artwork. I had 3 made for the initial run. The first is a logo design for Ochre, next one is for Terminal (the final release on Narita Records), the third is titled 2808-a design cooked up just for burning. I’ve got a number of other designs in queue for production, which can be seen in the engraving section of the gallery. Here’s some detail pics of the finals:

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