Okay, let's start off with my name.
My name is Randy Petty and I go by the handle of "Marvel1".
I grew up with comic books (Marvel Comics, hence the
nickname) and drawing. I started out like so many
before me...crayons, sketching with pencil and ink,
dabbled in watercolor along with acrylics and oil,
and so on and so forth. I always wanted to be a comic
book artist since I was a kid but pretty much kept
it to a hobby. I did the normal things growing up...you
know, hanging out with my friends, girls, school,...well
you get the picture. But there was still drawing.
I think that I sometimes drove my parents to worry
from the amount of time I would spend drawing. For
me drawing has always been a way for me to visualize
my ideas, to bring to life my creativity and my imagination.
I am self taught and book taught.
I was usually going to the library or out buying just
about any book I could find on cartooning, how to
draw comics, anatomy books, figure drawing and the
likes. My interest was comic books, Super-hero comics
and Marvel
Comics in particular. Don't get
me wrong, I was also a big fan of DC
Comics as well as independent
press comics like Dark
Horse Comics, AC Comics,
Image and many more. My personal preference
has for the most part been Marvel. Comic books were
a great resource and reference for me that supplemented
the "How to books".
A few years back I decided that I
wanted to do a bit more with my artwork than just
a hobby and enrolled in a Design College. I majored
in Advertising Art and got my Associate Degree. The
thing is I'm not overly fond of advertising but the
skills I have learned while in school have helped
me tremendously and gave me a new perspective on my
art. I've been out of school for coming up on 2 years
and have done some freelance work, tattoo designs,
a couple of websites here and there. The one thing
they didn't teach me in school was 3D. I had to find
that myself.
A fellow student told me about this
program called Poser so I thought I would look into
it. I found the galleries at Renderosity
and was amazed! Now I couldn't afford Poser at the
time but I was able to get a free copy from a magazine
called 3D
World. After doing some more online
referencing I found The 3D Comic Collective,
now Animotions,
and found a 3D Super-hero haven! Not only were the
works of these artists utterly fantastic, both in
figure creation and rendered images, but the artists
themselves are a very nice bunch of people. I have
learned quite a bit from early days in Poser from
them. The same can be said for the artist community
at Renderosity. If you are just starting out in Poser
then I highly recommend both Animotions
and Renderosity
as a tremendous resource to help you in honing your
3D skills. Join the forums at both and pick their
brains. Remember that "there is no stupid question".
I work mainly with the standard Poser
4 models (P4 Nude Woman, "Posette" and the
P4 Nude Man, "Dork") as you can see if you
go to the Freebie
Section. I do have the Hi-res models
(Victoria 1, 2, 3 and Michael 1, 2, 3) and perhaps
I will do up some characters with them someday. But
until I do I'm content with creating with the standards
because I can share these without anyone having to
shell out a bunch of money just so my characters will
work. And I try to keep the file size down as low
as I can for the convience of those, like myself,
that are still on dial-up modems.
I like to try new things and as with
Poser I am sinking my teeth into 3D modeling. I am
starting to create props for some of my figures using
a program called Wings
3D. I love this modeler because
the learning curve is not very high. It is very easy
to use and there are many tutorials out there to get
you started out. I'm hoping that I will soon have
enough props finished soon to where I can start offering
some up in the Freebie section as well as opening
an online store and placing some for sale.
Well that is about it I guess. If
you have any questions about my work, my gallery,
or maybe just me in general, just drop
me a line. Thanks and have fun!
