Life Drawing 8 - Inking

This week we once again had the female model posing for us.

Our first task was to start with quick five minute sketches, focusing on various poses - I'm fairly happy with how my drawings came out with this, I felt I got enough detail in during the small time frame.

Our second task was using inks to capture the pose. I had difficulty with, I managed to get a technique down after a few trys, but overall I feel that I certainly need more practice before mastering it.

We ended the lesson with two 30 minute drawings, I chose to use pencil and charcoal for this as I wanted to focus on my mark making. I felt these two pieces were a definitive success and I can see clear signs of improvement with my drawing overall.

2d Lesson 16 - Robot Paintover Brief

Our latest brief was to create a model of a robot, render it and paint over it in a similar manner to the previous paintover brief.

Character Description:

A simple robot worker used on the production line of a large mega-corporation. Is cheap to build, and makes use of a pulley, and ball system for it's joints in order to lift and move heavy objects. Built to resemble a human structure - in order to provide empathy amongst the human employees of the corporation. 

Robot Research:

•  Usually mechanical and artificial - if it includes organic material it is normally known as a cyborg.
• Typically used in industry as free labour - can accomplish more tasks quicker than humans, without the need for pay or rest.
• Can serve as the role of sidekick or villain in films and games - occasionally featured as protagonists.
• In Japan robots are given the same rights as humans. (???)
• More ethical questions are raised as robots become more advance - as whether they can be treated as just mere tools, if they develop consciousness.
• Can be given human features - such as eyes, faces, biped bodies, in order to make them more appealing/relatable to humans.
• Can be used as expendable weapons.
• In media the quality of the robot can vary - from being crudely built out of parts (Star wars), to a seamless and high-quality almost organic finish (I-robot).

 I was looking at different examples of how robots could be built with a more human/lean figure, I liked the examples seen in the I-robot and Star Wars, especially with the way you can see how the robot's parts form together and fit.

Initially I was going to aim for a human face - but due to time and more lack of experience thus far of modelling human faces I decided to go for a more simple head- model. The Geth in Mass Effect and the Battle Droids in the Phantom Menace had some interesting head models- that were simple but gave them a unique design overall.

I had a pretty clear idea of my design, but I had a look through some other images of droids-particularly more retro ones- to inspire my more scrapyard droid look.

Concept:

I started off with some rough sketches and silhouettes of my robot, mainly I wanted to get the shape down - a lean and scrappy biped type robot.

I settled with the idea of the lamppost head on to the developed body I had on the far right image.

 

In Maya I started off with constructing the main body/chassis, using cube and simply and altering the proportions. For the arms, I mainly used cylinders to create the tubes and edited their vertices's. 

I then created the pelvis and started working on the legs - I kept everything divided, because I wanted to envision where the wires and pipes would go between the different limb pieces, that I would add later.

Here I started adding more details, such as the pipes I mentioned and gears - I wanted the robot to look very mechanical, but not overly sophisticated.

I started working on the head, which I found to be more of a challenge - the topology isn't great, as I had trouble figuring out how to mould it into the shape I wanted, still I managed to get a result I was happy with - for a paintover it's fine, but I would of put more work into the model if it was an actual game model.

Once done with modelling, I mirrored the arms and legs, then posed the model into a stance that I wanted the character to be in. I then added some basic metal materials to give it a shine, before rendering.

This is the render I produced to paintover with in Photoshop.

 

I started off by adding details to the render, such as painting on the glow of the head and bulb on the chest, and adding wires between the segmented body pieces - to add more allusion to the scrapyard effect.

Using the skew and warp tool, I started to wrap and add a nice panel texture I found, around the render - I found this a little more challenging than my last project's attempt, due to the harsher angels - but I feel it created a nice result.

Finally I added some additional details, enhanced the lighting, and painted in some more decals and highlights using some grunge brushes.

I'm very happy with how this render came out, I feel the lighting works well and I'm pleased with the model overall. I gained alot more confidence with using Maya in this project and I can see why the program is useful in creating organic/bipedal structures. If I had a bit more time and knowledge I think I would of gone into more detail on the hands and feet, but as it stands I'm very happy with the result of this project.

Sketchbook 12 - Safari

I did a quick sketch of my girlfriend's cuddly toy, I don't think it came out too badly, but I will admit it is rather rushed as I've been pressed for time this week - my focus has been on trying to make my lines bolder.

2d Lesson 15 - Mouse Monster Speed Paint

Today we had to do a 2 hourish speed painting of a mouse monster.

I'm content with how mine came out, I feel I matched the colours and shading fairly well, but I wish I had a bit more time to get the shape more exact. But considering the original image was done in pencil, I felt I achieved a decent result relying off tone and colour alone.

2d Lesson 14 - Cannon Paintover Brief

This week we were giiven a brief to design and create a turret, that we could then take into photoshop and paint over as a high quality render.

'PlanetSide 2 - Time Lapse Weapon' Notes:

Maya:

• Starts simple polys and extrudes them up.
• Turret is mostly composed of resized rectangle meshes.
• Edits the vertices to round off sharper edges.
• Mostly duplicates previous shapes and places them elsewhere.
• Adds several metallic material to different parts of the model to break up it's geometry.
• Renders with mental ray with a daylight light source.

Photoshop:

• Uses lasso tool to isolate areas to paint.
• Uses clone tool to fix geometry.
• Uses warp and skew tool to overlay textures to wrap around the model.
• Paints additional details directly on.
• Dodge tool is used to add highlights.

Concept:

To begin with I started off with some rough sketches and ideas, I was mainly focusing on tryign to capture the silhouette and shape of various turret designs.

I settled on a combination of 2, 3 and 4.

I started off making the core as a sphere, and the barrel as a cylinder, I then extruded the barrel out to form a base.

I seperated the barrel using the extrude tool to add more detail to it, then I made a cylinder at the base, before extruding it up and extruding out legs from the center to stand it up.

I extruded the wires by making a curved line, then using extrude to pull it out along the model, I then started tweaking the polygons and adding last minute details. Finally I added texture to the gun in order to break it up and lay out the colours, before rendering.

I rendered using mentalray and a daylight source, before taking the image into photoshop.

I started off by painting and smoothing out the geometry on the canon to make sure any hard normals aren't glaring through. I then started painting in the areas I wanted to glow, before adding a glow layer filter to them to give a soft blurred light source.

I used the warp tool to overlay a texture over the canon so that it curves and matches the model, I also added painted details in a similar fashion.

 

I painted in some final touches, and started adding highlights using the dodge tool and darkening the shadows with a multiply layer. I added a background, and rendered a shadow (had trouble with maya so it came out as a reflection :( ), before adding a final overlay to bring out the colour.

 

I enjoyed the project as a whole, and I chose to use Maya in order to better myself at it, I'm fairly pleased with how the paint over came out, the idea wasn't my initial one - but I'm still pleased with how it looks overall.

Sketchbook 11 - Alien 2 and Dead Rose

 First sketch was an attempt at drawing a dead rose with glitter on it, I found this difficult and wasn't too happy with how it came out, I was trying to concentrate on shadow and form same as last week, but I feel it doesn't translate well and the shape is hard to read.

The second is a alien wearing a robe and a glowing helmet, I'm fairly happy with how it came out, I feel the shadows came out well and the lighting isn't too bad, it's a little hard to read out of context but I think it represents teh design well.