The Skeleton

With our week's classwork being based on the proportions of the body and how it can be altered to make characters and creatures look more exiting our homework was also suitably body based. We were tasked with studying the skeleton and it's mechanical nature (ie. its joint structure). First off we had to do studies of key areas of the skeleton before finally doing a front, side and back view of a skeleton complete with labels of bones and joints.

The idea of the studies was to sketch and try and learn about key areas of the skeleton using as many sources as possible. It was whilst in the midst of doing these drawings that I found myself thinking that surely all areas of the skeleton are key areas of the skeleton. Surely?

Next was the front, back and side view.

I learned from this exercise that drawing skeletons is not particularly fun. They are very technical and I found it hard to keep the proportions of different parts correct to one another. The rib cage and pelvis being particularly demanding.

All in all it seems like the key lesson here is practice drawing more skeletons Quinn.  

Tank Assignment

With us practicing and trying to understand perspective during class our homework given was suitably perspective based. The idea was to come up with a concept for a tank and to draw it in a perspective view. Easy right? Err. No.

Moodboard. Naturally.

 After shotgunning a moodboard together i got to drawing out some silhouettes of what I hope are fairly interesting looking tanks. I had a lot of fun seeing what shapes did and did not work for tanks and I was quite partial to the idea of a tank with large wheels like the giant land movers you see in large quarries and strip mines. However, number 8 was the one that became my favourite design. I think because it looked long and sleek. 

Note number 3 for obligatory Iron Cross.

With my favourite chosen, I got to work on this:

I used a whole array of photos from tanks to easily, but I think, effectively give it a tanky feel. 

But now the real fun began. I had to draw this tank in front three-quarter view perspective. 

Insectoid Character Design

The task given to us, a couple weeks back, was to come up with an "imaginative concept" for an insect-ish character which could be used to discuss possible art directions in some hypothetical future game. We needed to: compile a moodboard, do some sketches, work up further your three favorite sketches, do a front and left blueprint style view of your chosen character design and then a final three-quarter view piece of your final design. With two weeks to work on it this was our most demanding piece of concept work yet. So without further ado, moodboard:

With the moodboard to help me I got on with some sketches in my sketch book.

After scribbling down a few sketches I was quite clear to me which ones were my favorites. So it was off to Photoshop to see if I could work the concepts further.

God bless layer via copy (my preferred way of producing symmetry in a piece). .

Front and profile mugshot(ish) style pics as required. Getting everything in line was a pain.( Note presence of smaller abdominal claws which were subsequently dropped from the design as I felt that they didn't and much to the creature and just got lost in the thorax detailing.) 

Although I was fond of them all, ever since I did a sketch of 'im in my sketchbook there has always been a special place in my heart for "Super Mantis" (called so because of his size, not as an indication of any super powerful aspects).

I used a leather texture on his shelly part.I don't think it looks half bad really.

The final picture. I must admit that drawing this (not so) little fella was a complete and utter nightmare. Trying to get his thorax and shell look right in a three-quarter view was eye-gougingly

stressful but after a while I finally got what I was looking for. I'm quite happy with how the colouring came out but wish that perhaps I could have made i a little more interesting, replacing the need for black outlines with shade and tone. But, alas, I was quite frankly losing the will to live with this piece after trying to get the line work to look right and am still rather happy with the out come.  

Maya- The Turret

Over the past few week our class work has revolved around building and designing a gun turret which could be used in a game. Using simply square blocks I got to work assembling what eventually became this:

As you can seen not too much detail, at least not at this point but all was well for the time being it did, indeed, look like a turret. I say "all was well" because when I tried to texture it with a basic checker patter there was something definitely off.

Something had gone askew with the polygons inside the turret body warping the appearance of the texturing on the outside. But not all was lost, thankfully there were models provided to work from if we wished so I (unfortunately) had to abandon Warpy McSkewy and set off to work on a pre-provided model.

Our job then was to take the base of the turret and embellish our turrets with panels, rivets, spheres, greebles and nurnies (nurnie , stops being a word very quickly after saying it a few times. nurnie, nurnie, nurnie...). The result: 

 The turret base all kitted out.

The turret base made all lovely and shiny and detaily and what-not.

Achieve with normal and bump mapping.

A long time coming- Some Maya Work

Yes, I know, most of this stuff should have gone up way earlier but now just be thankful that is is finally up. Maya models are (naturally) a huge part of the course, with Maya being the program used by us to make all things three-dimensional ( apart from those basic shapes cobbled together in unity, but I digress). The first honest piece of Maya work I had done was all the way back in week one with a rough model of a grain silo:

There it is, not particularly impressive but cut me some slack it was the first thing I ever properly made in Maya.

The second thing made was for homework that week was a fish we had to make along side a tutorial on Lynda.com. Unfortunately due to some server issues further down the line it seems to have been lost to cybernetic oblivion. I might still be around however, I'll do some fishing around for it and keep you posted (Eh? No. Didn't think so).

Next, along with another tutorial, we had to model a hammer, a crowbar (or pry bar, if you're from the Colonies) and a ladder. This time not only did we need to model them but texture them instead, which was an interesting (and totally not fiddly, frustrating and stressful) experience. The results:

The hammer and crowbar seen here roughly textured but still managing to look like a hammer and crowbar, a result of which I am quite pleased with.

The ladder shown here at it's most flattering angle, the texturing of said ladder if where most of the stress came into play as I found it nearly impossible line the texture of the rungs along the side of the ladder in line with the ladder rungs. As a result the ladder looked a bit off and the result was, quite frankly to say, embarrassing, hence the wonderful front view to hide its and my terrible, terrible shame.   

Next in line (Lord, I hope this post isn't going to be too long) was some furniture work which was, like the work before it, made alongside a Lynda tutorial. It consisted (note consisted) of two chairs, one square and one round and two tables, one square and one round. So, er, yes all of this was completely and irretrievably destroyed (as far as I am concerned) during the same server issues which claimed my poor little fish. It still, however, may be around if I dig deep enough an I will keep you on note about it but thankfully I do have a rendered and textured version of the square chair and square table:

The articles of furniture as seen with wire frame on and untextured.

The textured articles.

Seen here also is my all so beautiful wood grain texture. Made in Photoshop.

There is still more work to go but I think I'll leave it for now with this post. Expect more Maya work to come and I will see what I can do for those thought lost. .

Week 6- Hallowe'en Assignment

With All Hallow's Eve around the corner our homework given was suitably ghoulish. We were tasked with coming up with a scary monster concept. By now I'm sure you know the drill; mood board:

With this this all assembles out of images grabbed from all four corners of Google images I set about to do some concept sketches trying to figure out what I could do.

I briefly entertained the idea of an aristocratic pumpkin guy.

The pumpkin seen here at the top  was a large influence on my final concept.

Scribbling out these concepts gave me a fairly good idea of what I wanted to do.

So in Photoshop I drew out and coloured my final concept:

Wouldn't like to run into him on a dark evening, luckily with that large glowing pumpkin stitched into his torso you'd see him coming from a mile away.

 Lo and behold, the aptly named "Franken-Monster-Pumpkin-Thing". I had a lot of fun with this guy, splicing together a large, ugly Frankenstein's monster-esque thing with a large malevolent jack-o-lantern. Complete, of course, with large hacky-slicey pole arm (all the better to butcher you with, m'dear).