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). 

   

Week 5- Perspective Homework

Perspective is one of those things in art that you can't really be bothered to learn but know that it is of fundamental importance, so you jump into the deep end and just slug along with it. the work for week 5 was two pieces of fairly rudimentary one-point perspective both based on the teachings of two YouTube videos.

The first piece is that of a room drawn using one-point perspective (and as steady a hand as one could muster).

Apologies for the scanning, but I'm sure you get the picture (no pun intended, even if it is a terrible pun...).

The second: a slightly more complicated piece of an abandoned highway on some apocalyptic near-future Earth. This one was done with a ruler and boasts a sprinkling of colour.

A grimy and gritty abandoned highway. I have inked the more important lines but many of the original pencil lines which join up to the vanishing point are still there, I feel it just helps one to see the inner workings of a picture sometimes.

  

Oh, perspective. There to teach us that art is not all just crazy squiggles and vibrant colours, it, too, has a duller side (its own inner chartered accountant, if you will).

Week 4- Gun design Homework

The title says it all. For homework we had to design a futuristic, mechanical projectile firing weapon.
As with all design projects a mood board was required:

Some are real weapons most are from games or concepts which other artists have come up with. With these in tow I was able to get sketching my own ideas down into my sketch pad.

These are the above aforementioned with ideas ranging from quadruple-barreled shotguns to high powered single shot railgun pistols (naturally I also included some doodles of vaguely gun shaped things).

Looking at these sketches I found myself quite partial to the idea of a futuristic break-action quadruple-barreled shotgun. A gun that perhaps one could use to defend your space freighter of boarders and invaders. 

I think I can honestly say that I am most proud of the "space shotgun shell" in the lower left hand corner
(Note slightly boss-eyed top right-hand barrel in the gun's front view...whoops).

  

The finished thing (done in Photoshop if you couldn't guess). I took aspects of some of my other weapons and combined them with the quad-barrel shotty-blam to make a big, hefty, probably-hard-to-hold but powerfully frightening hand cannon of a shotgun.

Personal Work: Horned guy-thing

Just thought that I would share a little non-homework piece of work. I just started doodling some head designs of some kind of horned creature liked one and thought that I would try and do something more substantial with it.

Not a happy looking chap is he...

Everything but the face is relatively under worked but the idea was to draw the eye to the centre where, lo and behold, the face is.

I also added an overlay layer to the picture and threw in some purple-ish (maybe?) tones just to be able to better envision the colour of the creature's skin.

I could have done more with the horns and hair, but I am happy the contrast that they bring to the better rendered face.

   That's all really, just a quick painted piece that I was quite happy with (sometime I just try to paint something and it all goes downhill from there so I think I got quite lucky with this one).

Unity Level Design Homework

Our first piece of homework given to us in our first Games Encounters class was to block in a basic level map in Unity (being thrown into the deep end seems to be this years theme). I will not bother you with boring images of colourless blocks being thrown around here and there but one I had the general layout correct the map looked like this:

I was going for an ancient Egyptian feel.The idea was that the player would be exploring an old and forgotten site of temples and pyramids with some creepy aspects such as the pyramids floating orb, hinting at some kind of ancient magic.

With a splash of colour the map took on this appearance:

I chose a simple sandy palette, naturally, it is after all set in the Egyptian desert. I am very happy with the dark colour of the floating orb as it contrasts nicely with the predominantly sandy theme and it draws the players eye. 

A series of screen shots from a first person perspective:

A view up a the pyramid just outside of where the player starts.

The "Obelisk". 

A poorly lit picture I know, but it is of a gold figure inside the main temple with an alter in front of it. It signifies the end of the level

It was all built very simply, using a plain as the ground, a variety of cuboid shapes for the buildings and pyramid and cylinders for the pillars, with the odd sphere here or there.   

Week 4- Crusty-Ocean things (Crustaceans)

The task this week, following a couple of tutorial videos by FDZ School of Design on YouTube, was to design three crustacean monster concepts by first designing a silhouette for the creatures and then working it up into something more readable as it were. Naturally, as with any design project, I started with a mood board of many things clawy and crabby:

Gotta love isopod eyes, stare right into your soul...

Using my reference to help me I got to work of three monstrous (or at least monster-ish) silhouettes which ended up being: something crab-ish, something isopod-ish and something lobster-ish.

I like the one on the right, the way his arched hulking back moves down to his twiggy little arms. I feel he is just the right sort of unpleasant.

To finish it all off I through in a splash of colour, numbered them, added a sleek grey background and a few bubbles ( I though this may make it look all good and professional and what not).

The line up completed.