Sketchbook 11 - Character Design and Toys

First sketch was of a toy helicopter I used to play with as a kid, I wanted to go for a vehicle design, and my aim was to try and achieve perspective with as little guidelines as possible, I think it was a fairly successful attempt as a sketch, but I did have some trouble with the wheels.

 Here I sketched two character designs, the first a warrior woman of sorts, I still need alot of practice with female characters, but I'm ok with how this came out, I think the proportions fitted well, but I wasn't too pleased with the face at all, although the scan of the image takes away alot of the shading.

The next character was a alien/creature design, really rough but I fele it has quite a bit of character, I like the overal design, but once again the shading disappearing on the scan has annoyed me a bit.

 Here was a sketch of a Luke Skywalker figurine, not pleased with this one at all, admittedly I was tired when I did it, I don't like how the head came out at all, then again the model's face was somewhat melted. I think the body isn't too bad, but I could of done better overall.

Life Drawing 6 - Female Model

This week we had a female model posing. As with the male model, we had to draw her in different poses at different durations. The first image directly below was done with a single-line however, in order to just draw the silhouettte, had difficulty with this technique as I was tempted to simply draw all the features in, still it came out ok despite how difficult I found the task - especially in mapping the anatomy.

 

I was fairly happy with how my longer skecthes came out. I avoided drawing the face and mainly concentrated on the main proportions of the body, I was pleased with the results, I've learnt alot with these classes and I feel it's shown. I think the only real difficulty I had was with the legs and thigh, getting them at the right angle was difficult due to the perspective of the pose.



Sketchbook 10 - Broken Dragon and Monkey Man

 I found an old dragon toy I owned, however it was missing a few parts, but I decided to sketch it anyway as it made for an interesting design. I feel like my line work is getting stronger and I am happy with the piece, I fill the form came out strongly.

Here I drew a monkey man character hanging from a branch or pipe, I played with proportions on a bit for this one, but I like the overall composition and design. I'm also pleased with the shading as it is subtle but makes it stand out.

2d Lesson 11 - Harmonising and Speed painting

The first thing we had to do was a speed painting in an hour, based off a reference. I think the foregrount figure of the boy on the left came out well, but I had difficulty in doing the background, or at least getting it more realistic, but I did find an interesting technique when it came to making it less obstrusive, by using a grey fill on a opaque layer to flatten it down.

The second exercise was another speed painting done in 50 minutes. I had a bit more difficulty with this one due to the fact my monitor at the time's colour wasn't accurate so the image came out alot lighter than I expected. I like how the came out, however I feel I failed in regards to the composistion off the image (which was more at an angle) and I used too much yellow where I should of used blue. Still in future these mistakes will be the first things I focus on foremost.

Lastly is a painting I did using a limited colour swatch from a previous image - that consisted of mainly yellows, pinks, and muted purples. I'm in a mixed mindset with how this came out, I like the creature design, but I had difficulty painting within the limited colour scheme, but I feel it was able to achieve the exercise's goal.

3d Lesson 11 - Unwrap Model

This week I had to texture a pre-made model that hadn't been UV Unwrapped.

Using the UVW Unwrap tool, much like the same way I did for the t-shirt model. I had to find the seams in the model in order to texture it, I also used the relax tool to expand the map and pixels to prevent stretching.

I really disliked the model as it had terrible clipping and the textures poked through with rough edges. The eyes also bulged out and I couldn't fix it in the render. Still as an exercise I am satisfied with the texturing, there was a few stretching incidents, but it otherwise came out well.

 



Finally I did a quick exercise to produce a texture from a photo using Photoshop.

Using the grid overlay view and transform tool in photoshop, I was able to take a part of the bulding and skew it so that it was flat and not at an angle. I've done this before but I never thought to use the grid overlay before, and it was incredibly helpful, I'll definitely not overlook it in the future as it speeds up the process and makes the texture more accurate.

Then all I had to do was place the texture onto a box, and preserve the uvs so I can extrude the windows into the building.

This was a quick method to produce textures for buildings but I found it helpful and can see it coming in handy for creating low poly assests.

Games Encounters 3 - Atmosphere