World Building 8 - Tree

For this project we had to design a tree with character - not as a character, but rather with interesting aethestics to it.



For my moodboard I was mainly looking for images with a matching mood and colour scheme to it. A lot of images seem to be associated with this complimentary scheme and style, and since I wanted to base my tree off something in a swamp or marsh.

I started off by simply sketching in the basic scene, and the different background/foreground elements. I then started working on adding some value to the tree itself and some brushing on the swamp water.

I mixed a few textures on the swamp water and experimented with some different brushes to give the tree an interesting ccontrast to the rest of the image in both texture and sharpness. I experimented with the lighting to give the image more of a mood and tone.

I like the brushwork and texturing within the image, however I feel like the image's lighting could of used some work especially on the tree itself, as in my opinion it stands out too much from the background in a bi tof a cartoony way.

World Building 7 - Dragon



For this project we had to design a dragon and do our own paintover, based off a model in mudbox.

For my moodboard, I was typically looking at typical fantasy dragon designs, normally seen in more western productions.

I started off originally with the intention of completely doing the project as an illustration, mainly due to the fact I can't really get on with Mudbox, as I find it can be confusing and unpredictable at times, when not working from a base mesh.

However in the end I decided to bite the bullet and attempted to create my model from scratch in the program. I decided to use what I had done so far with the illustration to use as a sketch and reference.

Due to time constraints and other difficulities, I didn't have time to really make a base mesh for my model, so instead I experimented with working from a sphere as I would do in sculptris.



I started off by pulling out the rough and basic forms of the dragon. I initially had problems with this particular method, as I would constantly have to raise the subdivision levels in order to produce more polygons for me to sculpt with. This is an issue as having to go too high poly too quickly, means I miss out on adding much needed detail, such as bumps and scales.

In hindsight it would of been better to use a base mesh - however as stated I had little time unfortunately in regards to this project and other commitments.



I made the wings and horns seperately in 3dsmax, before importing them into the scene. I'm happy with the wings shape however I think I made the base too spindly in hindsight, it should be much thicker at the shoulder muscle. I messed around with the different light settings and composition before rendering. I could not pose the model too much, as it took two minutes to reload the scene everytime I posed a part of the model - this got very infuriating.

Once rendered I brought the render into photshop, and duplicated and hid one of the renders to use as a lighting reference for later. I decided to wrap around kmodo dragon and iguana hide textures around the model to give it some colour and texture to the render.

Once I had every thing textured, I overlayed the render to use as a general lighting guide for my dragon. I then did some tweaking with the textures and depth, to highlight more muscles and uneven surfaces, due to the lack of bumps and surfaces on my sculpt.

I think overall I was pleased with the how my lightign came out in photoshop, it was less flat and more atmospheric than the lighting I've experimented with before. That being said, I think if I had more time on the sculpt I could of pushed the detail even further, as some more careful planning and detail on the sculpt could of resulted in a much better result and would of saved me some time with when it came to texturing and rendering.

In furture, I will definitely do a base sculpt to add the detail earlier on, so it will look alot better when it comes to the actual paintover.



World Building 6 - Christmas Card

This week we were tasked with designing a christmas card, to be printed out on A6.

For this project I was working with Ricardo Costa.

We started off with a rough sketch in order to get the idea and artstyle for the card, we opted for a more blocky/cartoony theme and rather than focusing on just Santa, we decided to have a bit more of a narrative.

For this Project we were going for a mix of illustration and 3d paintover to achieve the final the design.

Ricardo produced and created the major models that were needed, whilst I posed and rendered them, and brought them into photoshop to handle the illustration and paintover.

First we did was put the Reindeer into the scene, once Ricardo finished the model I posed it using the CAT system in 3ds max, then brought it it into photoshop in ordered to be painted. I did the same thing with the Sleigh.

The second model to be added was the child and christmas tree scene. Same as before with the reindeer, though this time I messed with glow effects for the lights on the tree.

Ricardo did a great job on the present machine and I had fun painting the details into it. However as I was working on the image, I decided to drop the tone the background down, as the white was clashing too much with the colours and scene.

We decided to change the angle of the Machine render, in order to make it more 3d/isometric. Unfortunately I had to re-paint it, but we still had time on our side. Next I did a quick render of the desk models Ricardo made.

I illustrated the students in the scene, although I was getting frustrated with how they looked, but deadline was approaching at this point.

The final addition to the scene was the final model of Santa that Ricardo did. I took it into the scene, but this time I set the render to Overlay and painted beneath it, in order to preserve the great lighting from the render.

Once we were happy with the composition of the card, I put together a border and Ricardo produced some text to finish the Card off.

Also did a variant with a different background.

Overall, I had mixed feelings on the result of this project. Personally I don't like the results of my illustrations, we had a lot of work during this week, which made it hard for me to give the project my all, however I will say it was a good exercise in teamwork, and producing a brief with a second person.

World Building 5 - Surrealism

This week in world building we had to produce a piece that was surreal and a bit on the strange side.

I started off with just producing a moodboard consisting of strange and surrealistic pieces. The term surrealism is so broad it was quite hard to pin down an exact theme. I decided to settle on something weird, but a bit colorful as well.

I decided to do a 2d painting for this week, however due to lack of time from working on other projects, I found myself having to dive right into painting the piece.

Started off with a really rough sketch of the characters, I then dropped in some base colours, and minor shading for the background.

I added detail and further adding shade to the environment and characters.

 

When I was happy with the basic form and shade, I began to add highlights, and more shadows, as well as playing with the exposure settings to make the colours less flat.

Overall I was pleased with how the lighting came out on the scarecrow character, but everything else I am not pleased with. I'm not sure why, maybe it was due to having less time eto work on it this week, or that the idea didn't really match the image I had in my head. I would rather start the piece from the ground up, as I cannot really think of anything to add or change that would make me happy with it.

Game Mechanics 7 - SU Textured

The majority of this week was spent making sure the SU model was fully textured and shadered ready to be imported into unity.

Although I'm happy with the results I was fairly sick of texturing the SU, merely because it was so repetitive and dull, but I'm glad of contributing to the project. I am very curious to know how the shaders will look in unity along with the lighting.

Game Mechanics 6 - Texture tweaks and and Map texturing

This week I concentrated on finishing up a few textures I had started on for a few models, along with beginning the process of unwrapping the SU and texturing it.

Stage Model by Paul Simms.

Since the Stage was one of the more important models I had a lot more opportunity of going into detail on it. I had fun with doing the textures as I experimented with using different brushes to create the different scratches, markings and debris on the stage model.

I also went ahead and created a normal map for the BlackSquareBoard model, so we could try and get the crumpled paper texture to stick out more.

This week I only got around to unwrapping the SU mainly, we decided to go for a texture map for the walls and floors, rather than repeatable textures, this was due to time constraints and that we didn't want anything to go wrong with the unpredictability of importing the file into unity and having the uvs and textures mess up.

For the textures themselves, I tried to keep them as close to the SU and reference photo's as possible. My plan is to add normal mapping and specular shaders later on, to further enhance them.