Week 13 - Being a Slob at Christmas

   Well, the holidays have flown past and now it's not long until I return to Leicester. This christmas has mostly consisted of eating. That's not an exaggeration either, I don't think I've ever consumed so much in such a short amount of time. I don't regret it though, Dad's Christmas dinners are to die for!

   Aside from eating, I've been spending the holiday with my friends and family and, for once, ACTUALLY PLAYING GAMES WHAT?! I've been playing Dragon Age Inquisition the most which, even though I got it when it was released, I'd only played it a little bit what with projects and such. I'm in love with it as well. I thought there would never be a game I'd fall for as much as Skyrim and well, I was wrong. I've been playing Pokemon Alpha Sapphire as well, which has been a lovely bit of nostalgia, because the third generation Pokemon games were always my favourite. 

   As well as eating, being with my family and friends and playing games, I have been drawing quite a bit. I had meant to do more work, finish the little girl from the last project and so on but, to be honest, I've really enjoyed just seeing people, being with my family and having a holiday. It's been great to just do some relaxing studies. Below are a few of my favourites that I've produced recently.

   This was supposed to be Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys. I'm not sure I've completely captured his likeness, but I do quite like this drawing. 

   Model reference for all of the studies below was found at http://artists.pixelovely.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/.

   This is probably one of my favourite studies I have done in a long time, because I really enjoyed mapping out the highlights and shadows. I think that's why I've come to really love using Conte pencils with mid tone paper, because you have even more manoeuvre and control over the tone of the piece and the results are fantastic. 

   I've been taking this opportunity to do studies of my family and mostly my boyfriend as we're just sitting around as well, which is something that him and my friends have got used to me deciding to do from time to time. 

   I received some brilliant presents for Christmas this year as well! Amongst dvds, games and other lovely things, I got two art books! Which is always so exciting! I got The Art of Dragon Age Inquisition and The Art of Frozen, both of which are so gorgeous I could sit looking through for hours and hours. 

   My boyfriend's present to me was perfect; he's bought tickets for us to go to 'Video Games Live' at Birmingham Symphony Hall. It's a Symphony Orchestra and Choir that play scores and the best music from Video games, which I'm so excited to see!

   Speaking of exciting events! I've booked tickets to go to one of the VFX festival days in London in January, which will be really interesting and (hopefully) a chance to network and build contacts. I think it'll be a really good day and I'm really looking forward to it!
   
I've also started to set up an online portfolio on Behance, please take a look!

 >> https://www.behance.net/gacollinsart# <<

Week 12 - Film Room Project Post-Mortem

   It's been quite a while since the Film Room project, and since then I have had some time to reflect on how I thought it went, and how I'd do in the future. 

   The aim of this project was to work in groups to strengthen our abilities towards working as a team, whilst building a set from a film as exact as possible, from Max to Engine. Everything from camera angles to scale to lighting had to be accurate, so we had quite a challenge ahead of us. The aim was to recreate the scene to be as similar as the film still we had chosen, so we had to pick something interesting with a dynamic colour scheme and lighting. 

   

   These are some of the mood boards I initially produced, analysing the scenes and the lighting in them. A lot of time was wasted when it came to selecting a film still to work from, but I think this is because we kept choosing films with dull lighting and a colour palette mainly consisting of brown and green. One of the shots we chose was quite good though, I think, and that was the one above, of the almost empty room in Sweeney Todd. Even though we didn't end up doing this one, I think it could be interesting to do as a small personal project, because the room is a very dynamic shape.

  We eventually chose to recreate this scene from Moonrise Kingdom, but looking at it now, it's just so.. yellow. I think we could have chosen something more interesting, like a scene from Pushing Daisies or the Grand Budapest Hotel or something. 

   I mean look how adorable these sets in Pushing Daisies are!!! Pretty much all of the sets in Pushing Daisies are interesting; it's a really cute quirky show. Maybe I'll do one of these as a personal project? Yeah, that could be fun, and now that I have more experience I think I could do this in a much shorter amount of time and achieve better results while doing so! 

   After this I did a paint-over of the scene we chose, then drew up some concepts of the room to put it into context for the group. After this I went on to do some concepts of the objects that would be in the scene. Looking at the amount of objects we had each at this stage, it looks like such a small amount, but I remember it taking a while to get done. I think my concepting skills have improved so much since this project, then again I suppose I didn't really need to concept a vast amount, I just needed to make sure that everyone had a good idea of what the objects in the scene should look like.

      This was our final screenshot. I think overall we did quite well. I'm still fairly pleased with the wallpaper textures I had made, because it was a really strange wallpaper, so I think it went alright. I can see parts where there are seams which is so annoying to me now, because if I has just stitched those UVs together before texturing, they wouldn't have been there. Some of the textures, such as the textures on the door, could have been better; same with the geometry. 

   As for working as a group, considering it was the first official group project, I think we did really well. We got on really well and made sure we helped each other at every point. We could probably just have done with organising our time scale better, because some of the things we were doing shouldn't have taken as long as it should. However overall, I think we did well as a team, and the workload was fairly even. 

Week 11: Iterating and Presenting

   Week 11 was half a week of pre- deadline panic and half a week of Christmassy rejoice. I started the week aiming to finish the textures for my characters to start rigging. I put them together in engine and kept testing them against one another, trying to make sure they fit together well.

 



 

   Whilst I was at this stage, I showed my work to Steve, one of my tutors, who pointed out that my male model appeared rather feminine and that there were certain things I should alter to give him a more masculine appearance. I am so grateful I received this feedback, because honestly, it hadn't even occurred to me. I think I got too caught up in what I was doing to realise just how far I had strayed from my original concepts. As soon as it was pointed out to me, I was kicking myself for having not noticed sooner. I'm a bit ashamed to say that, due to being annoyed at myself and stressed about having to make changes so close to the project deadline, I sent myself into a bit of a tizzy. It turned out that there was no real need to, as I managed to alter the model significantly with enough time spare to put the model into a simple pose. I think I was just scared that I wouldn't and let it stress me out too much.

 



 

    So! I went on to try and make my model more similar to the original concept. I can't look back at the old model without cringing now. It's not only way too feminine, but it is also quite creepy and just really wrong looking and ugh. BUT. I made a list of the things that needed altering and steadily worked through them. I was able to make changes without stretching the textures drastically. I fattened the neck and made it a bit shorter, to make it look less elegant and swanlike. I also shortened the hair and made it less flamboyant, which I think communicates the image a lot better. The most drastic changes I made were in the face, where I completely altered every aspect to make it more angular and more similar to the original concept. I made his eyes and mouth smaller too, to take away the pouty look he'd been adopting before. I changed the shape of his eyes as well, to make them look less friendly. I also angled the eyebrows and changed the shape of the nose, which had originally been a bit round looking.

 



   I think the look of the character now is miles better than what it was. It looks a lot more like the original concepts, so I think the alterations went really well.
   After I thought I had got the changes as close as I could, I went on to creating a biped and applying a simple rig to my character.

 

 

    I tried to set up the rig to position the character as close as possible to the pose in the concept shown. I also changed the direction that the eyes were pointing to make them similar to the concept which, strangely, dramatically changed it and made the character really look alive. I really like the character now that he's in a pose.

 

   These are some of the final renders for my character. I also put my character into Marmoset to get some beauty renders. I'm really pleased with these and I think I did well to turn this character around. I think he's gone successfully and I'm really proud of what I have learnt throughout this project.

 

 

   I'm also happy to say that the presentation seemed to go quite well. I think I enjoyed it more presenting to a smaller group of people and felt a lot calmer. From the feedback I received from the presentation, I'm going to focus on the little girl now, so I can put them together and have a solid portfolio piece. The boy is right now, so the little girl just needs some of the same attention and editing to capture the same cuteness that's in the concepts. At the moment she's quite creepy, especially from the side, so that will be my focus in this project now.

 

   After the presentation though, Amanda, Lucy and I immediately started Christmas celebrations and made our own little Christmas dinner! 'Feeling so festive! I hope everyone is having a great holiday!

 



Week 10: Texturing and Physical Model

    So, following on from last week's blogpost that I wrote about three days ago, I have continued texturing the little girl. I think she's mostly finished now, I really just want to make her hair a little less shiny, because she looks a bit plastic at the moment. Her cheeks could do with toning down a bit too, to be honest. I'm really pleased with how her eyes look, I think they make her look quite cute. The details on the poncho look quite good too, but they weren't really that difficult to make, just a bit fiddly.

   Yesterday I decided to make a start on the teenage brother, so I unwrapped and started the textures for him. Unwrapping was a lot easier this time, and I think it's because a lot of the elements between the brother and the sister are rather similar. So, for instance, while I was unwrapping the little girl, I spent a long time trying to unwrap the face well. Their face structure, although a different shape, was built fairly similarly, so I was able to identify early on that I would need to unwrap the teenager's face in the same way I had for his sister. I used the same texture I had painted out for the eyes of the little girl, because I want the style to stay as consistent as possible. I changed his eye colour, but I'm going to try it with the same eye colour as his little sister to see which looks better.

   In the screenshots below that I have taken of the model in 3DS Max, I have put a specular and glossiness on, purely to see how the eyes look with a shine in them. I've found this has been really useful in checking to make sure the eyes look alright. I'm going to do my best to get the textures finished this weekend, so that on Monday I can rig at least one of the characters. 

    I haven't yet included any pictures of my physical model! So here it is! I started by making the wire armature that we were taught to make in Chris's class. The first time I tried to build this, I didn't wrap the wire around enough, so it wasn't very strong. When I put the sculpey on the model, it bent and fell at the legs. So, with a sigh, I took the sculpey off and built a second, stronger model.

   I was sad to put sculpey on to the model, because I thought it looked actually rather cool the way it was. However, I wanted to focus more on modelling details of my own character. First I flattened a small base for the armature to stand on. 

   I very haphazardly put Sculpy onto the armature, building the basic shape of the armature, before I sculpted the more refined details of the model. At this point the sculpture stood well, it wasn't until I was refining the details that the model all of a sudden decided it was all too much.. and face planted the table.

   It did the same thing whilst it was in the oven, resulting in a very flat nose and a broken base. I sighed again. 

   Following this, I carved into him a bit, to put back in some of the details that were lost when he fell over in the oven. I think he looks quite good! I really need to work on my physical models, though I enjoyed calving into the model afterwards.

Week 9 : Modelling the Sibling Duo

   Well, week 9 and half of week 10. Last week I started modelling my characters. I am extremely glad of the extension we've been given, I was certain I could get one done but because of the extension, I've been able to give my attention to both characters. I'm really glad because I like them both, and would have found it difficult to choose one to develop. If I'm honest though, I'm disappointed with myself. I feel like I spent too long on the modelling stage, because I wanted to perfect the style of the face, while keeping the topology flowing well. I found this fairly difficult though; it's something I still need practice with.
   I started by building the teenage boy. Even though he took too long to model, it was good because this prepared me for building his sister, which took half the time. I started by building a simple blockout of the boy, then going on to make it more interesting. Aside from the face, I think it was the hair that I found the most difficult. It was tricky knowing where to start, and how to do it. I decided to build it like a block and make it quite angular instead of using alpha planes, because in all of my concepts the hair is blocky and I think it suits the style I have chosen better. It was here I was able to use smoothing groups to my advantage as well, to be able to flatten off the hair in sort of blocked out strands.

      Building the little girl was a lot easier because I had already modelled her brother. I was able to use parts of the face and re positioning the verts so that they're how they're supposed to be for the girl. I compared the faces of the girl and the boy throughout this. I think that this has gone really successfully so far, because the two faces look like they're from the same stylised universe, but already have completely different characteristics.

   I went on to build the rest of her head where, again, the hair was the most difficult bit. The fringe was horrible to do, but that was mostly because it was really fiddly. For the fringe I adopted the same method that I had used for the boy's hair. I compared the two models continuously as I went on, to make firmly sure that they fit together well. 

   After I had completed the head, the rest of the body was fairly easy to model in comparison. I'm a bit apprehensive about rigging this to be honest, because of the poncho. If worst comes to the worst, I may have to do one positioning with the poncho and a more complex one without the poncho. 

   After this I unwrapped the little girl so I could start to texture it so I can make sure it's finished. Unwrapping her face was hell, but some of the results of the pelt map I tried to do made me laugh so much that I came out of unwrapping not quite being able to breathe. Anyway, eventually that was solved by unwrapping halves of the face separately, stitching them together and repositioning the verts.

   So today I've been able to go on to texturing. I had to edit her eyes a lot in the textures, making the iris smaller and repositioning the eyeballs in the head until they looked right. 

^ Bloody hell, keep it away. 

   
   To be honest, so far I think she's looking pretty cute! I tested it with a gloss material in Max, just so I can see what her eyes look like shiny, which makes them look even better. So tomorrow's task is to continue and finish the texture on the little girl, and her teddy, of course.