Tuesday 13 December 2011

Learning zbrush

So the past few days I've been trying to learn zbrush As I feel that if i'm going to get anywhere this year. I'm going to need to learn the basics of it along with UDK.

So after hours of watching tuts on how to get around the interface of zbrush. I managed to import my face from my mortal engines project and i had a little go at sculpting over it which didn't turn out too well.


Kinda didn't feel it looked like me much. So i decide today to work from just z spheres and build my head up from there which i find look far more convincing. Only problem is is that i don't know how to model the eyes in. I need to work on how to do eyes as i haven't clue at the moment.


Tuesday 6 December 2011

visual composition

Composition is something i really need to focus on this year for my finals. My placements of objects in scenes can often be poor choice in my past work. Poor placement of my work will always leave my work looking bland and boring even if its colourful. It wont do anything to make me stand out when trying to get a future job as a game artist. So i've went through the internet finding out things that will help me out of my composition choices. These are someof the things i found that i need to consider when doing my drawings


Rule of thirds... When there is a main focus in my scene to make the focus more interfesting i should split my scene up in to 9 segments and place my main focus where the segiments intersect with each other.

Balancing elements ... Incase when using the rule of thirds leaves the scene weighted on one side.

Symmetry and patterns... this can bring a tension to a scene when its least expected.

Leading lines... Lines that will draw the viewer in to the scene and not out of it.

Depth... Adding objects in to the foreground can give a sense of depth.

I feel these are very important elements to consider when arrange and framing my scene. I need to make the viewer interested and drawn in. Often when looking at deviant art i find myself skipping over images and not getiing pulled in to them. My work shouldnt be considerd as that as if i want to get a job as a games artist i need to grab the interviewers attention with my work.

Fibonaci Spiral Is another technique i should consider using with my to create interesting  composition in my work  hopefully to help draw my attention into the scene.







Batman uses this in their screenshots for their game arkham city






















Mike mentioned last week to also break up our your and play around with our arrangement to see how we can affect out composition. so here is my attempt at doing so.

This was the original








From these i kinda feel like i should have left my background more open and moved the fence back to give a more sense of depth and after looking at it now it looks more flat compared to the others.

Sunday 4 December 2011

Painting over a photograph scan

 Yes i know the title says photograph  scan and I know how Chris hates photographs of work but some times they have there benefits.
To the right there is a scanned version of a drawing  of a dinosaur drew while are the museum. It's missing a background as at the time i only focused the dinosaur while i was there and left out the background. Now i could draw the background in and that would all be well if there wasn't a chance i may ruin my final from it. I also wanted to add colour too so i could go over with coloured pencil or paint but that might be dangerous again of ruining it which i didn't want to do. So i wanted to use photoshop to help me.
Now the difference between a scan and a photography is alot as you can seen a scan is pure white background where and the photograph has a more grey creamy paper texture like background. also it creates a focus point of on the drawing itself which is handy if you haven't drawn a focus like in my drawing.  Also the way a photograph leaves a grain is also helpful for me as it will give a texture to my background.
So basically Making my drawing a base and cropping it to the size i want. I made a new layer and painting over my colours for my lighting against my wall behind the dinosaur. This gives me a starting point of where i want my lighting to be on the the dinosaur aswell.







Because my shadows a warm yellowy orange my shadow has to be the opposite and a cool greyish blue should compliment the orange. Using a new layer to paint the shadows in aswell incase i need to rub out.







Once i got the shadows down i can multiply my drawing over it and paint in the lighting to my dinosaur after. This really gave a nice dark effect to my bones and i think its turned out really well considering how the paint over took 15 mins.
This technique really helps me speed up my work. I'm going to try use this in my work as much as possible so i can have more out comes.

Final three concepts. Decisions decisions

So these are my final three. I'm put off by the first one now as it reminds me way too much of Assassins Creed.

I'm torn between last two. I really don't know which one looks more interesting. When modelling  I'm really going to need to change the way goggles rest on my head on the middle one as they are on the big side, maybe I can pull if off as style? most likely not.

I do like the idea of the rebellious character but its going to be based on me and do I look rebellious? No.
If I have time over Christmas I may make the rebellious one but for now I think I should stick to the middle one as I think its the one that suits me best.

I'll paint over this in colour and come up with colour designs for myself to see which ones work best.

Model of my head



So my first attempt at modelling my  head I learnt a few things. My head is horrible uneven. trying to symmetry my head isn't ever going to work for me as it just doesn't look like me. As your can see from my ref of myself ( yes I know I look creepy with my hair combed back but my curly hair was in the way) the right side is slightly smaller than my left. My imperfections on my face a really what makes my face  me. Taking them away I look like a different person. From the side I do look like me but not totally.

I have a few issues with my model I still need to fix my eyes are too big  and I need more of a forehead even though it matches the side of my head. my hair will cover that though so I'll leave that part. I think I might have possibly made my nose too fat aswell.

While writing this I Thought it be a good idea to mirror my head to show how my imperfections change how I look from one side of my face to another. As you can see I look like a skinney guy like Christian bale from 'The mechanic'  on the right and more a a built up guy on the left.



Mortal engines.

 So I've begin to start concepting my idea for my mortal engines character of myself. I've started to put my ideas further at the start with crazy costume ideas but I dont think it works well I wanted to make it make more simplistic. I decided to work on the last two ideas as they was very simple and I thought they'd work well to progress.



So from the two concepts I've came up with these. I've tried to make them look as simplistic as possible but still look like a explorer the thing on the  back is a tube holding maps. he has a lot of pockets to hold his stuff as well so he hasn't got a backpack, hes more of a stranded explorer. the bottom line is kinda the same but more stylized and more like they are hiding something or rebel like.


So I'm down to my final 3, I don't know which I like the best.
All of them  I find show a different meaning like the first looks like his hiding his face like he doesn't want to be seen. The second looks more explorer type and the last looks very rebellious.
I'll paint over these in black and white and see how they look, then decide which will work the best.

Friday 2 December 2011

Concepting and Planning.

To me these two words are probably my biggest weakness I have such bad use of my time, I have days where I’ve wonder what I’ve done. This is a big issue for me because it also has a effect on all my work as it limits the amount of time I spend on them when I’d like to do more.  I’ve spent a week writing down what I do with my time to see where I’m wasting a lot of my time. A lot of my time ended up being travelling, Facebook and Youtube. I realised that I procrastinate a lot and need to cut that down as I waste about 3 hours a doing that and about 3 hours a day traveling and waiting for buses and trains. I really need to cut these hours down as it’s a quarter of my day gone. I’m going to use my time traveling to uni as much as possible to draw but it doesn’t help having a bumpy train. With my procrastination I Think I just need to sit and stop messing about and get on with my work and plan out a dead line to work too. I think because of my planning isn’t strong it causes me to slack off when I shouldn’t be.

I need to write each week a timetable to work to. I think I could write this ever Monday morning while on the train. I’m think about working on my concepts for my VD work on the trains home each day so I have most concepting on compositions and what not. This should leave me with more time to work on finals at home.
I think one of my concepting Isn’t the best, I know it has a few flaws that I need to iron out.  I think my outcomes to my work sometimes don't always come out as planned. My Loughborough final was one of these. When we went there it was really grey and and it had put a downer to my mood that day. I couldn’t focus on my work and it made me feel lazy and moany about the cold. I got lots of photos though. I couldn’t really decide on what would be a good final on Loughborough as a lot of people used the same spots in the years before. Its really hard to draw/paint something that’s already been drawn/ painted  So I was a really lost of what I wanted to do. Then I saw the film Paris texas and the colour to that filn really inspired me to base my final on that. So you decided to take Loughborough to texas and make a desert  sort of scene. I did a few concepts of the water tower that was in Loughborough and the tent that was next to it to make it similar to Loughborough.

After finally getting a composition i liked i did it over in water colour. but my water colour skills aint my strong point so i tried to go over it alittle in photoshop but  it hasnt came out exactly as planned it looks like it has a empty right side but i was using the diagonal rule for composition. So I feel like if i add anything there it will be distracting.

Concepting I should really work on more I really need to stop being so clingy to my first ideas and work on the ones that work well. Loughborough and texas are completely different places  maybe adding them together isnt the best idea and more of focusing it on looknig like loughborough in the first place.