Week 15 The human anatomy

It has been three weeks since the last project and it was time to go back to work. Term 2 started with learning the basic of anatomy. We looked at idealised human proportions and learned the average body measurements, like the average human body is 7,5 heads high and the legs are four heads high. The tutors were kind enough to provide the best anatomy material from books and also I have picked up a couple of other anatomy books specialised for artists for a refresher of the basics.
In life drawing the lesson brought me back to the basics as well and we did draw everything learned so far from term 1.

I do think I have improved greatly on life drawing. This class also allowed me to develop my understanding of how the human body works. 

Although I have put in a little more effort into the first drawing because I was given more time,
I noticed I have made a mistake by drawing the arm too short on the third body. I still
enjoy quick gestural drawings as they are much more entertaining to do.

Further research and learning continued with taking pictures of myself and other people.
Doing these exercises makes it easier to understand bone structure, plus facial muscles.
In game production I started making a low poly female body. The method used to create the model was planar modelling. The head was already pre-made, so all I had to do was extrude the shapes from the neck plane by plane following reference.
Another trick in this method of modelling, was that I only had to create one side of the body and then use a symmetry modifier to get a symmetrical copy of the half body. It kind of felt like connecting two pieces of an Easter chocolate bunny.
CRITICAL STUDIES!
The week ended with some new years resolution planning for the course. We were provided with plans containing boxes to fill in strenghts and weaknesses and how to improve in every area of the course. There was also a section in which I had to answer what could prevent me from making improvements. These are some goals I have set myself:

1. Visual Design: Improve on my life drawing and value ranges. I will do that by purchasing a wider variety of pencils and practise more.
   I would also like to work more on researching and taking my time on developing ideas more before moving onto final concepts.
2. Game Production: I would like to improve on modelling by also practising more with the techniques I've learned so far.
3. Critical Studies: I have to admit, probably the hardest part of the course as it is unreasonably hard to write blogs every week. I want to start posting my blogs Sunday nights. Another important thing would be to work on my English skills, grammar, vocabulary and punctuation. Also perhaps the most important thing for me would be to become more analytical and descriptive about my work.

I had to think about where I see myself at the end of each year of studies, also I had to visualise where I'll be after graduation. I know for sure I want to have greatly improved as a student and a person by the end of the first year. The second year I'd like to finish the year and having skills that would allow me do my work in the third year with ease. Eventually the end goal is to graduate and get a decent job.Next week Critical Studies will help me decide which career path I'd like to take and I am looking forward to what I might decide that day.

Week 11 Conclusion of the Tree project and Term 1

The last week of the first term turned out to be a review week and for that reason it was a week full of self directed studies. The self directed time included an opportunity to do some clothed model sketching in the Life Drawing studio. The students were allowed to choose what to draw, so me and a couple of other students asked the model to do some quick sketches of different seated and standing poses. This would have counted as primary research for the upcoming Stylised Character project.

I moved onto modelling the trees in 3DS Max. The project introduced two new techniques for making 3D models. One of them was creating the tree drawing an NGon and a line for the base of the tree. Then I created a loft along the guidelines and continued creating spline lines. Up to that point there was no need to change the model to an editable poly. I only needed to change the object to editable poly for extruding branches along the created splines.

I had applied the bark texture to the loft right after it was created and for that reason there was no need to unwrap it, only the branches needed it.

Example of the tree branch with Alpha
Channels applied

After unwrapping, phase two of the tree creation started with creating a tree branch and leaves. Adding a single new Alpha Channel made the texture transparent in 3DS Max.

To finish the model I had to copy around planes with the branch texture applied to it and the model was done and ready to port to the Unreal Engine.

The trees could have been improved in more than one way.

To improve my tress I could create a different tree with more branches going out of it. I could also change the colours and add more chunkier leaves for the alpha textures. Perhaps adding more branch  and leaf planes to the trees could make it look more rich with leaves.  Also the branches of the tree could have been made longer to look more realistic.

In conclusion I am quite happy with the trees as they do not look alien to the village when in engine.

So far I love the course and I've learned so much in such a little time. I look forward to what the next term will teach me and how I will develop as a person and an artist.

Week 10 The tree project

Week 10 was the start of the Stylised Tree project. It was an easier project compared to the previous house project, but it came with it's own challenges and new techniques to learn. But before I tested out the new ways of making the 3D models I did my primary research by gathering first hand research of images from parks. It came as a benefit that the trees were leafless this time of the year, as it was easier to learn how organic objects tend to grow. The other steps I took were gathering interesting images from the internet and then making of mood boards.

Chosen ideas for the 3D models

I drew silhouettes of trees and then copied the silhouettes around and changed the appearances to create as many different trees as I could. Then my work development continued with making the decisions of which silhouettes seemed most interesting to me, the ones I chose to develop further I started rending out some dark grey values to have an idea what the silhouette would look like in a more 3D form. Painting in values into the silhouettes is probably one of my favourite part in the development. It is most exciting to see a flat shape gain more of a 3 dimensional look. After the silhouettes were done I have gathered some opinions from my classmates and friends to know which tree drawings seemed most interesting to them. I had also to keep in mind that I had to follow the same style guide and avoid making my tree too skinny. So after the big decision making I chose two trees that I thought were most interesting and what suited the given style and painted the trees from angles I will need to use when making my tree in the 3Ds Max.
Those angles were later copied multiple times to do some colour tests for the trees.

I tried to choose harmonious colours for the trees and at the end I chose which colours to use for the textures.

The week was not all about creating concepts of trees, we did some shadow and light drawings in Visual Studies. We used charcoal and white chalk to investigate how lighting reflected on a human body. The challenge was to only sketch out the brightest and the darkest tones of the body and mid tone paper did the rest of the work. I think I could have done better, as I am still trying to improve on balancing how many shades of light and dark I can use when creating drawings.

Week 9 Extention and two days of Critical Studies

Week 9 took an interesting turn, with an announcement of an extension for the village project. Meaning that I was given a great opportunity to improve and push my house model further. 

The good news was followed by an interesting lecture on the colour theory. As an artist I felt that the theory is very important, because a great model or painting would be overlooked if it had a poor colour palette applied to it. After the session everyone received feedback on how to improve on the house models.

The house wasn't chunky enough as the wooden beams were too thin. The silhouette also did not quite fit the requirements. So I've increased the size of the breams and shaped up the whole house it would fit the style guide more.

Now the house is in a chunkier form and with an altered ground floor, which I made smaller. The roof has been changed slightly as well. All that's left now is to brighten up the texture colours and export the model into the Unreal Engine.

The life drawing took a turn and pushed me out of my comfort zone, by completely changing the media of drawing the model. This time I could only use scissors and dark paper to cut out the silhouette of the model. It was quite unusual, but very exciting and I did feel like I did quite well.

The first silhouette was a simple pose, so less edges were needed to cut. The rest of the cut outs were a seated pose. The very last silhouette was put into an environment that I drew with a pencil. This also meant that I had to consider the models proportions when cutting out so it would look right in the environment.

Even thought it was extension week, I had two days of critical studies. A conference day was held to help improve on blog writing. There were many different sessions to choose from and I attended the one suggested in my blog feed back. 

I went to Word art first. The seminar explained how to analyse work and be descriptive when writing about my own and other peoples art. What I never thought of before was that I should make mind maps before starting my blogs. In the session me and my group had to write down words describing the chosen character image. The words ranged from media, style, feelings, mood and etc... At the end of the session we had created quite a wordy mind map and example paragraphs on our page.

The other sessions were more formal, describing differences between descriptive and analytical writing. This helped me consider point in which I need to improve.
 The last session explained how to manage my time and how to make a working schedule. It also made everyone consider that work is as important as personal time and also sleep.
It was quite an interesting week and I do hope to improve more on my blog writing in the following weeks.

Week 8 Bradgate Park and the continuation of the Village project

This week has been one of those rare ones, where the tutors took the whole group out to draw and gather photographic reference. The place where we went was called Bradgate Park. A very beautiful and huge park with several old ruins, but the ruins were not what we came for. It was the nature and trees, a primary source of research for the upcoming Tree Project. It was the most perfect day to visit the park as the weather changed throughout the day. The colours went from grayish tones to very saturated colours infused with sunlight. The environment had looked just like a post card from Scotland and there was also an array of wild animals and fearless deer.
I chose one of the paint overs as my final concept reference and did a quick concept painting of the house sides. This allowed me to move onto modelling the house, as I was running short on time. My group and I have decided to keep the same colour scheme for our buildings same as the buildings in the example village created by the tutors.

Bradgate park had a very big variety of trees. Most of them were foreign, a lot of the seeds came from overseas. I think this tree had quite an interesting silhouette, the curvy branches seemed like they were weighted down by the miniature leafs. This image also has very saturated colours at the back. It was taken at the end of the journey in Bradgate.

It was nice to break away from the house project and do something a little different other than the usual weekly routine.

The house project continued and I have finished the concept for my house and had moved onto modelling.

I chose one of the paint overs as my final concept reference and did a quick concept painting of the house sides. This allowed me to move onto modelling the house, as I was running short on time. My group and I have decided to keep the same colour scheme for our buildings same as the buildings in the example village created by the tutors

 
At the end of the week I had my model close to conclusion. I did learn  a new way of texturing. I had to make my Photoshop textures tillable, so even if I needed to stretch any of the unwraps out of the boundaries of the UV map it would still have the same quality. This method saved a lot of time and I did enjoy making stylised textures for this particular house. 
I will learn to import the house on week 8 and show the results of how the house looks in the game engine.
There were no critical studies this week and instead we were allowed to work onto finishing this project.  

Week 7 Start of the village project

This week was quite unique as I was introduced to a new project called The  Medieval Village Project.

The project includes three parts in which I will need to model a house, tree and a character following a given style. My end results will be imported to an existing village created by my tutors. 

It is also a group project which means that groups of 10 people would need to communicate and interact to create successful end results.

But before the project in my Visual design class I was exploring positive and negative space. I had to draw what surrounded the model instead of the model itself.

In digital painting the tutor came up with a creative way to start the medieval project, by using parts of old houses and bashing them together. I felt quite like playing with lego parts and the photo bash allowed me to prepare myself for the silhouette making and to understand what materials and shapes I should use.

I moved onto making silhouettes and gathered opinions of my classmates to know which silhouettes seemed most interesting to them.

After choosing the silhouettes that seemed right, I did paintovers to have an idea and come to a decision of which house would end up as a final concept.

This was the result and these paintovers concluded my week. A very busy week awaits next and a week that will probably throw the biggest challenge in my life and test my patience.

Game Art Design Week 5 and 6! First serious project practice

This post will be a little different as I chose to mash two weeks into one as weeks 5 and 6 were dedicated to the Stylised Rock project. Week 6 was also a review week and for that reason I was able to focus on finishing given tasks and a game production project.

Let me begin with the start of week 5! It started with the very first trip on the course to the old Guild Hall museum. The purpose of the visit was to gather as much visual reference as possible and the information gathered would later relate to the Village project in week 7.

Here are a few examples of the Guild Hall thumbnails.

The next day I was given my first Game production project in which I had to create a stylised rock from scratch, using my own concepts before developing the final 3D piece.

The creation process began with me gathering an extensive array of rock images and with the images I had to create a mood board. With the help of the mood board I started producing sketches of real life reference rocks and drawings of rocks and crystals from pictures.

I was interested by the peridot shapes, which is why I started my silhouette making with the shape of the green stone.

I moved onto rendering in values onto silhouettes and with that I have made my decision on the final design.
But the process didn't end there. I created a few more colour paint overs on how I could make the stone look like with patterns.

I researched some frog skins and patterns and used them in the development of my idea. The stone shape did remind me of a sitting frog with it's mouth open.

This was the result at the end of making the concept of the stylised rock.

Using the two concepts as reference planes in 3ds Max I was able to create my stone easier.

The conclusion of the stone also concluded week 6. I do understand that the 3D model did not turn out that well, but I do realise my mistakes and will prove on them in the following week in the new project.