Adobe Photoshop - Steampunk

The aim for this assignment was to create a steampunk character or object. I was a bit wary upon my initial ideas for this as I didn't want to end up with a generic steampunk setting but before creating a design I would be happy with I first had to practice poses and to break out of my mentality of illustration = concept art. My first set of ideas (below) were very illustration based and I felt, along with the advice of classmates, that a stronger focus on what concept art is was needed. I also included an image I had done a few weeks prior whilst trying to practice character art

It was at this point that the debate with illustration vs concept art led me to restarting my ideas. And my first approach was to study some poses from industry character concepts and draw my own.

I then took my previous ideas and ended up taking the concept of a steampunk gunner forward. A character that wouldn't be wearing the dresses and high fashion of some steampunk representations but instead look a bit more hardworn. Of course certain elements like corsets I thought would work well so I included them still. I also set myself a goal with this assignment to try my hand at the drawing of ambient occlusion (AO). However for this to work well a detailed lineart is needed. Now I haven't really done much lineart before so I had to spend longer on this stage than I first intended.

The lineart turned out okay if taking into account of my lack of experience with it. But there are many elements of this technique that I need to learn and develop more. First off my line widths were pretty much the same throughout the drawing which loses some of the focus. And the face still seems a bit off to me but I hope to be able to correct this in later stages if this still bothers me to a decant extent. Moving onto the AO I instantly had issues with the brushes and smudge tool and will have to look into creating personalized brush presets for the smudge tool. I am not happy with my time management up to this point as the lineart took longer than anticipated. But I shall continue the development of AO and will then colour from that.

The final AO result has positive elements to it and some negative to it. For starters considering it was my first time trying to recreate this kind of shading within a painting I felt I achieved some success. However it was not too a degree I am completely happy with, as I moved through the figure I learnt more and more about the creation of AO and also felt my initial drawing was in need of greater refinement. I will take these aspects into consideration in the creation of my next piece and use this knowledge to further my understanding of the form.

The colouring and rendering part of this process took many attempts to even bring to an acceptable standard as the multiple saved copies within my hard drive can stand testimony too. The final result is something I am semi happy with but feel like my lack of understanding of light held me back in some aspects. And my struggle with the Ao in the previous step left me having to manipulate it so not having a a great base to work from held me back a bit.

Mudbox Dino

The Mudbox Dinosaur was an interesting first experience of 3D sculpting programs and is something I want to try my hand at more in terms of developing my artistic skill set. The modelling aspects of this where one creates textures and forms from a basic model is a strong technique. In regards to this project I got caught up with the details on the head. So whilst the head looks good the body requires more work. This applies to the textures as well. However my file got corrupted for some unknown reasons so screenshots aren't available. But the rendered video is. 

Spring Project - Open Waters Concept

This second concept piece for the open waters area was supposed to try and represent the scale that could be used within the environment. To make use of vast models and long panoramas to make the player feel small and to try make the ruins seem more ancient and otherwordly. The image is done in greyscale as a way to learn my values more.

Adobe Photoshop - Muscles

Similar to the previous terms skeleton assignment this task was given with the aim of developing correct anatomical knowledge for drawing the human figure. This task was rather interesting and I can fully understand the benefits to such a depth of understanding in terms of the human musculature. I found myself struggling a bit with creating the correct forms such as the biceps and triceps. But as i progressed I found it easier to understand the flow of the tendons and began to see where they started and linked too and from.

Adobe Photoshop - Rock/Lava Creature

Since the aim for this assignment is the creation of a lava rock creature I decided that spending time learning how to draw rocks and how they are formed and what they can look like. This meant a few studies were in order which I shall post below. Within some are just some initial idea sketches for the creature.

Adobe Photoshop - Lava Creature

The aim of this lesson was to take the image below of a sculpted rock monster by artist Andrew Martin and edit/paintover it to create a lava creature from it.

 I really enjoyed this process and felt the need to create a suitable environment for it as well. I got to practice the use of images within my work again and I feel like i'm slowly getting the hang of both environments and the manipulation of photos. The image as it stands requires some more work to the lava and background but I felt i should still submit it as it is and update when I have finished,

Spring Project - Player Movement Scripting

The second task of this week was the creation of player movement scripts to allow the player to control both the camera and the character in a 3D space. I was easily able to create this movement on the x and z axis as this was basically a normal character motor using the application of the inbuilt unity inputs. However our game requires the use of all 3 axis so as to simulate the feeling of swimming and to not restrict the ability to swim up or down. This presented a whole host of problems for me to overcome. Originally I just created a 3rd input axis and tapped into that but the character could only move on its global axis even when parented to look at another target. Therefore I started tapping into the transforms of the object and used that to move the controller around. However this meant the player would retain motion from hitting into things even if the player was not actively  creating any input. Therefore I created a secondary part of the script to turn the ridigbody kinematic on and off to null any momentum at the moment no inputs are detected. This is most likely a very roundabout method and I shall be editing the script as I see fit. But it remains a strong starting point as it stands and can be used in the final game if the need arose.

Spring Project - Open Water Concept

There are 3 main bodies of environments within our proposed game. We have the starting cave, the open waters and the abandoned city/ruined cave. Each of these areas requires a different environmental feel so as the player progresses through the game the sense of danger increases and the player begins to feel more and more out of place.

I first did some quick sketches to try get a feel for what I wanted the area to look like. I knew I had a starting point of large structures with a meso-american feel to them but wanted to take this further and try and develop a sense of scale. This application of scale began to merge into the idea of massive pyramids or obelisks which dwarfed the player to create a massive sense of scale and a feeling of being in the open ocean. Furthermore the addition of large sea creatures could increase this effect. I decided to take the top drawing of the second image below forward and develop it.

The final image took a while for me to develop correctly I moved between greens and blues a lot trying to establish a nice deep sea environment. The greens had the bonus of provindg a really strong murky effect but make the piece feel very dark and damp. The use of curves on the RGB scale (specifically the blue) allowed me to alter the image to a much nicer ocean feel. I also had to play around with the values of the image a lot as I found myself creating many black areas within an image which created null zones with  the painting that were too contrasted. Another point worth noting is the use of photo images within this piece, this is something I have never really used before so it was interesting to try apply this to the image and whilst in some areas I think it turned out okay in others it needs more refinement. But as an initial concept I think it will do.

Personal Work - Figure Drawing Practice

I wanted to get some more work in drawing the human figure and so did some studies from reference/ As I progressed through the evening I felt a greater understanding of light and anatomical structure had developed but this needs to be refined more by the creation of more of these studies and the application of them into other pieces.