Steampunk Homework

The task at hand for the last two weeks was to come up with a steampunk design of anything we wanted be it character or vehicle, animal or weapon, animate or inanimate, the choice was ours. As with any design task, say it with me; moodboard:

With the moodboard in mind I came up with an idea for a character of a steampunk lady gunman person. Because I'm highly original that way.

So I sketched some ideas out both on Photoshop and in my sketchbook. See if you can guess which ones were drawn where.

I was partial of my idea seen in number 3 of the gunman wielding two pistols rather than a sniper rifle sort of weapon. I was also drawn to the idea of the character having a face mask similar to an early camera.It was different and I thought that it could add to the piece. 

My final design. The character features the camera inspired face mask-thing as well as two revolvers inspired by the British Webley revolver.

The final piece took about four hours in Photoshop (I think). I don't thing there was any part of this piece I found more challenging than another, it's just a little tedious here and there, but what isn't I suppose. 

Lava Monster

The homework task this week was simple: design a lava-monster-thing.As with anything I began searching for anything lavay which could help me with the task at hand. The moodboard itself:

With all this to help me I scribbled down a few thumbnails hoping to develop a good idea or two.

I wanted to do something with concentric circles. Why? Because they look cool.

I was quite partial to my final two designs, number 4 and number 5. Although I was very fond its ethereal and almost angelesque (if that's a word at all) nature I forsook number 4 for 5 as I was in favour of 5's monolithic structure, especially the huge megalithic block which sat on its shoulders and from which its head was also attached.

The upper torso features a more prominent red hazy-glow from the lava to help separate it's head and shoulder-block-thing from the rest of the body. 

 The finished piece, the monster seen here standing in a pool of its own leakage.

In all the process of painting the finished piece took about three hours. I chose to stick with a deep red for the lava for stylistic reasons with some yellow-orangeyness going on near his eyes and mouth to draw the views eyes. 

Mudbox Workshop

A few weeks ago we had an Autodesk Mudbox tutorial by Tony Mayor, a man with expertise in the area of  3-D sculpting.

The first thing given to us was to experiment with the different different tools that Mudbox offers on a poor, unsuspecting cube. This was the result:

The "Eldritch Cube".

We were also encouraged to experiment with the texture stamps Mudbox offered.

Textures seen here on another poor, unsuspecting cube.

We were then shown how to make are own stencil textures in Photoshop and were encouraged to play around with that function.

A simple black and white stencil made in Photoshop.

The stamp being used to decorate (I use the term loosely) a poor, unsuspecting sphere.

We were also shown the painting functions contained within Mudbox. It's fairly basic even primitive when compared with the likes of  Photoshop but useful for throwing colours or even textures onto an object.

Seen here is the UV channel of a poor, unsuspecting sphere with textures and a smattering of colour thrown on.

With the basics down it was now time to model something proper, or at least decorate something with the skills we learned. To do this we were to work on a poor, unsuspecting T-Rex.

The work in progress.

The finished article, sporting a somewhat rhubarb and custard inspired colour scheme. Perhaps not much in the grand scheme of things but I was quite happy with how my "Fabulousaur" (yes that is what I named it) turned out.

Just a picture of wrinkles I used as a stencil to work on the above.

Overall I was quite impressed how easy to grasp the Mudbox system is and how natural and intuitive it is to use. In many ways it can be seen as the yin to Maya's yang.

 

Lizard Dude

At the beginning of the term we were given the task of painting and finishing a sketch of some lizard-warrior-guy-thing from an online tutorial by Feng Zhu of FZDSCHOOL on YouTube. The task was fairly straight forward: paint the lizard guy using skills and hints taken from the videos and finish him off with lizard skin textures.

There he stands in all his glory. Perhaps not my most inspired work but I was fairly happy with the outcome. Using photo-textures like the scales seen on his head and shoulders are a cheap and easy way to quickly add detail to a piece. 

First Homework of the Term: Muscle Work

Oh Lord, it's been over a month since I last posted. Right, as the title says, our first piece homework of the term was to draw a label front and back view of a skinless body all in the name of getting to know musculature. So without further ado the sketches:

And now the pièce de résistance: the front and back view (I know, terribly exiting...)

There it is. That's it. Shows over.

Surprisingly (at least for me), drawing this didn't take me as long as I thought it would, granted, it's perhaps not the most accurate diagram of human musculature in the world.

Although I'm am not really one for more technical work this was far more enjoyable than drawing the skeleton and it helps you realise what unforgivably complex machines we are. 

Life Drawing

Just some of my pieces of life drawing work from this term (it's about time I put them up). Even though most of our course work is done digitally it is still founded in the essentials of art, which we impart study with life drawing. In these classes we replace Wacoms with charcoal. I hate charcoal, just thought I'd throw it out there.

Run of the mill 5 minute poses with charcoal.

Scribbly sketch.

Portraits with exaggerated curves.

Oddly enough, I am quite proud of my ink work.

I took a more illustrative approach with the ink, drawing with it more so than painting with it.

Just thought I'd throw this all at ya in one go. And I do apologise for the quality of some of these pictures, they were taken on my phone. 

Maya Assessment- The Temple

For the 12th December, just before we break up for Christmas we have been tasked with modeling a temple design based off of another temple model to see how capable we are at modeling and texturing.

 The basic, untextured block form of the temple, showing wireframe.

After most of the blocking out the finer details were added, such as decals and tiles around the roofs.

A near-top view of the temple showing some colourised detailing aspects.

A textured version of the temple with wireframe on. Textured with brick and roof tile images created for this exercise.

Off-front view of the temple. Note set of missing pillars near the front of the building.

Front view of the building with all pillars where they are supposed to be.

A side view of the finished temple.

And a nicely angled view (I think) of the completed building.

All in all I'm quite pleased with the temple, I does manage to look like the original temple we were asked to model (at least to me), and for that reason I am happy. Some of the texturing, I admit, is a little off, perhaps to do with the polygons in which they need to texture although it is probably down to the fact that UV mapping and texturing is not my forte. 

All well, for now I'm rather pleased.