Year 2 Halloween

This assignment was an open assignment to create something with the halloween theme.

 

My original idea started out as creating some kind of stitched together girl and evolved to puppets and then a combination of the two.

 

I started by simply googling some images that gave me inspiration. I also scanned a few pages from the Alice The Madness game.

 

 

I did a quick artist study on Abigail Larson. I follow her on deviantart http://abigaillarson.deviantart.com/.

 

Her images

 

 

My quick pencil 'study

 

 

 

Because I wanted to do a humanoid figure I needed a reference for poses, I searched through another deviant artist who provides stock images.

 

 

 

My designs.

 



 

The second design is my chosen.

 

 

 

 

Some work in progress shots.

I was not able to finish this assignment simply because again I was getting bogged down in details. I have many layers which are not adding to the painting at all. I probably repainted the same parts at least twice without really making any difference.

I like how my idea evolved through researching different themes. I really wanted to try and create a background scene of a cardboard stage. A stark contrast in style from the skeleton dancer and giving it a creepy innocence vibe.

Sci Fi Ship Paintover

The assignment was set for two weeks in which we had to design a Sci Fi ship of our own choosing. 

The idea for my ship was that it is going to be a high end commercial vehicle for one or two passengers. The way it would work is that is uses electromagnetic fields to repel and attack on its surroundings. This works because the planet this vehicle is on is one giant city, so there is always a skyscraper for it to cling on and slingshot along.

First step, research.

I began by researching bluprint designs as this is what I wanted to do for my designs.

I knew that I wanted to follow the style of a commercial vehicle so I searched concept cars and bikes.

I then searched for concept designs of sci fi ships, mostly futuristic bikes as that is what I was leaning towards doing.

I decided to do flat silhouette designs. However I spent a lot of time making it look 'pretty' and made my designs not look clear at all. I try to counter this by adding in the shades to show the different levels but overall I believe these designs to have failed.

Trying to make some more sense of my design I picked my chosen design and label it.

I felt confident enough to begin 3D modelling my design.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

I made my model very efficiently so that it can be continued with and used as it is in a game engine. I am very pleased with how the model turned out and felt very confident going into my paintover.

The next few images are of failed paintovers that I first attempted. I was not happy with the composition or lighting on either of them. The side view was meant to give me a general idea of what I was doing. None of them are finished.

In Max I set the scene using Omni lights on the bike to give and a skylight for the background.

I started my paintover by getting so base colours down, I then added some mesh textures to the darker areas and a windscreen.

Continuing with refining the paintover, adding more textures and the extra added writing on the side which I felt played on the commercial vehicle side of things.

I then got to work on the background, I rendered this out from Max with a flat plane and extruding different areas. I then added a panel texture

Finally I created a mood for the painting, using photofilters to give the whole scene an orange glow from the windows. 

The window texture was added in last in an attempt to make it look more like a city scape however it is very simple and I feel I could have done much more to it.

Overall I am very happy with this paintover, I feel that I have learned a lot about my workflow and where I need to improve on.

Next time I do designs I will probably sketch them in pencil first and then try and do a 3 quarter view so that the design is clear to anyone.

A little bit of feedback from my peers and I have changed up some slight things such as adding a reflective light on the top half of the ship and dulling down the orange and making it appear that it is a glow from street level and the blue is from the sky.

I had some spare time and decided that there needed to be something in the top right hand corner. This is not a serious attempt but an idea of how I could have filled this space.

Life Drawing- Year 2 - 1

First life drawing session after the summer break.

Getting back into it, charcoal feels odd to draw with after so long

Starting to get a feel for it again on the 3 minute sketches. Drawing the figure way too wide, this is a probably I seem to have carried on from last year.

Still not quite getting proportions correct

Very difficult 15 minutes of drawing with my left hand (i am right handed) However it turned out reatively nice.

Trying to make the figure less wide, starting to get more confident.

Finally feel like I captured the model in proportion, size and body type. Focused on using stronger edges to bring forward different parts. Using finger to wipe away mistakes and then turn into slight shading.

Minotaur (on going)

This is a box modelling task. By following a youtube tutorial I started with nothing but a cube and slowly added geometry and form by extruding faces and moving verts.

Starting very simple I created a humanoid form, keeping things very bulky because the Minotaur in the end is very muscular and flabby.

Begining to refine the form. The tutorial kept this much more simple at this stage than what I had but this did not cause me any problems later.

Continuing to refine the form...

...and some more.

This is how far I have managed to get with this tutorial.

I found this task extremely difficult as there is a lot of tweaking to be done, which turns me into a perfectionist and getting stuck on tiny details and following someone using a different software to what I am confuses things at times. For example using split tool shortcuts that we do not have in Max.

I did however learn a lot in how to add geometry without adding too much wasted geometry by creating my own splits in the mesh and turning them into loops.

I also learned that it is possible to change nGon polys into quads, this part I still find tricky at times but now I know it is possible and I can slowly start to figure out how to fix those.

Overall I believe my 3D modelling skills have improved from following this tutorial.

Fishy - UPDATED

Our first task of the year for this Unit was to create an underwater sea creature.

I knew that I wanted to do a small type of underwater creature much like a piranha but with a twist. So I researched three different types, squid/octopus, shellfish and different types of fish.

UPDATE- I then did several research sketches

UPDATE- My chosen design is the top right fish. It is a mixture between a shellfish, jellyfish and a piranha

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Next I started to work on a sculpture. I decided to start straight from Mudbox and use the generic sphere shape to start my sculpt. Below is the progression.

I found this process to be very natural to me and enjoyed it greatly. I was able to get enough inspiration from my design to be able to replicate the sculpt very similar to the design. I am not very familiar with Mudbox tools so there was a lot of back and forth with trying one thing to another until I found something that works.

Below is my render using Mudbox Lighting, I simply added diffuse colours to each light. Overal I created three, one on the left and right pointing downward and a very dim light underneath to act as the reflected light.

Because I was running out of time I decided to very quickly use a stock image online for my sea scene.

Render added and photofilter to make both render and background match and added some light beams to match the lighting on my render.

Began to use real life textures to detail

Continued to detail, some painting was used to give detail to the teeth, eyes and inside of mouth

Added several more renders of my fish at different poses to add to the background, I reduced their opacity to make them match.