Goosing around

So another week has been and gone; Alas Christmas is over and I can no longer move with out help from a crane. But it didn't stop me having a lovely night out on Sunday, but we will get to that later. The holiday is drawing to a close and the dinosaur I promised is no where to be seen, the only thing I have managed to do is learn to knit (my scarf is going strong and I might even get it done by this time next year!). However I am not going to beat myself up over un-modelled dinosaurs because at the end of the day its my holiday and all I have done so far is tidy up and stress over Christmas so I feel that some time off is well due.

Over Christmas I have been trying out my new camera, its not terrible for the price. Here's some pictures I have taken in the last week.

Nothing fancy but I'm not a photographer, I just want to have photos to evoke memories in the future. For Christmas I got a mass of books; The Guardians of the Galaxy artbook, Alien Isolation artbook, WallE artbook and a couple comics to help me procrastinate even more. So don't be surprised if my work in the next term ends up being all syfy orientated. 

I decided to do a later post than usual so I could write about my lovely Sunday night outing with my family; My parents got complimentary tickets to go and see the pantomime Mother Goose at The Hackney Empire. (http://www.hackneyempire.co.uk/3463/shows/mother-goose.html). You may be wondering why we got free tickets for the best seats in the house, well that would be because my parents are friends with the wonderful Clive Rowe, star of the show. The inside of the theatre was absolutely beautiful and made with true craftsmanship; it is truly inspirational. The show was amazing and brought me back to my childhood when my parents would take me and my sister to see pantos when we were little. Clive's performance as Mother goose was outstanding and the singing in the entire show was extremely impressive. The show also incorporated lots of modern day references including lots of south London charm which made me feel right at home. The show was mesmerising and I must admit I got caught up and ended up joining in with the "it's behind you"'s; I wonder if you incorporated the same elements as you do in a panto into a game, whether or not it would work? Well that's one to think about for the future. 

You might notice that that picture is taken from the stage; well after the show Clive met us round by the stage door and gave us a behind the scenes tour; an of course we had to take a selfie!

Me, my mum and sister looking as beautiful as ever. After having a nose through Clive's room and his outfits, we gave him a lift home and had a few drinks round his. I never knew we had so much in common. He loves comics, video-games and Utopia (the best TV show ever), he even lent me his copy of watchmen to read, Clive is such a lovely humble guy and I look forward to seeing him again and I can lend him my copy of The killing Joke (One of my favourite Batman comics).

 Update you again soon after the new year when I am back in my freezing cold flat up north,
Cheerio for now.

Four days remaining

So a week has flown past and I have achieved soooo much! No wait... that's a lie...
I haven't managed to get much done this week so this is going to be a short update.
Since coming back to my chaotic house I have been put on cleaning duty and have spent the majority of the week helping my mum sort out the house for Christmas; The decorations still aren't up and my mum has bought no presents or food! So lets see how this Christmas turns out. I have however managed to finally grasp how to knit! Hallelujah! I've only messed up a couple times by dropping stitches and doing pealing instead of knitting; but for a first attempt I don't think its too bad! But have a look for yourself:

Still got 2 more balls after that one, wish me luck!

I have also booked and bought my coach tickets for the VFX festival; I also need to sort out my online portfolio and get some business cards printed ready, so hopefully I will get those done soon, if and when I get some spare time. 

I have also managed to talk myself into buying a camera, I couldn't resist. It is half price and decent for general pictures and texture gathering, so I thought it was about time I got one. 

It even comes with a bag, SD card and screen protector; so it is very good for the price.

Hopefully it will get here before Christmas so I can take lovely photos of all of my family and friends.

Cheerio, 

I will update you next week with hopefully more things to show.

References:
Camera Jpeg: http://www.groupon.co.uk/deals/national-deal/gg-groupon-goods-global-gmb-h-2011-56/52122758

It's over! Bring on Christmas!

Last week I was close to finishing my albedo and I am glad to say that this character project is over; however I am glad to say I am happy with how my character turned out! (I know shock horror!) oh and pre-warning this is going to be a massive photo spam blog.

I spent a total of about 3 days working on my textures for my sloth character inducing an albedo, roughness, metalness and normal map. Here is a load of finished beauty shots in 3DS Max, UE4 and Marmoset...

After finishing my sloth I had a day left so I debated rigging him but this not being my strong spot I decided that I would model my other character instead, in threat that I wouldn't get the rigging done in time. Another factor that drove me towards not rigging was that I had deleted faces where the head sits into the ruff, which means that if I was to rig it when the head turns you would see a gaping hole in the back of his head... opps... well at least I know for next time aye?

So with a day left I managed to get my other character modelled: as shown below.

This model also came out at just under 4000 tris; with the time left I managed todo a quick paint over and get my presentation ready for the Thursday.

I did a quick paint over just to show what the two would look like together.

So lets get onto the dreaded presentation; Truly it wasn't that bad and I am getting a lot better at them. I got some decent feedback on my sloth character, that I should revisit the shape of him by looking at more reference because I lost the sloth feel; this is something I might revisit during the holiday by doing paint overs. 

Overall I am really happy with how the final duo came out considering I lost love for this project within the first week of being given it, but anyway now onto the crucial Q&A.

Q: What went well?
A: The overall modelling went very well I finished both models in a total of just over 2 days, which meant that I had more time than anticipated. The texturing also went well, although it took 3 days I do believe that it is my strongest texture work so far.

Q: What didn't go well?
A: I rushed into this project and went with one of my first ideas, I didn't leave myself a lot of room for iteration; however I don't believe that this was entirely my fault because the tutors pushed us to do things quicker than we do normally. I tend to spend a lot of time concepting so that I come up with the best idea I can; so if I was to do this project again I feel that I would take into account what the tutors say but at the end of the day listen to myself and do what works for me best.

Q: What did you learn?
A: I have learnt how to paint textures a lot better and how to draw orthographics better; I also know how I should make a model in order to rig it. I have also learnt to listen to myself more and how to take criticism even if it is harsh or childish. 

Q: How would you approach it next time?
A: I would definitely spend all the time I need on concepting to get a solid idea and then work on that rather than choosing something and getting lost halfway though. I would have also made a timetable so that I would know how long things would take and then plan around that.

Q: What can you take from this project and apply to others?
A: The new texturing skills I have learnt and overall being more confident in myself to do what I think needs to be done. I will also push to do something more realistic and possibly human next time to push myself even further because I feel that I was made to play it safe. 

Wooo so now that's over we can talk about Christmas! I have just gotten home and have been surprised with a redecorated room thanks to my lovely parents so now I have no excuse to not want to be in my room doing work. Over this holiday I am planning to model a dinosaur; I am still unsure whether I am going to be able to Zbrush him (being a Zbrush noob) and rig him... but I will try none the less. I am also going to spend lots of time with my grandparents and sponge up all of their knowledge, I am going to try and learn how to knit for the 20th time and possible do some woodwork while i'm at it! 

Anyway I will update you soon! 

Keep up the Christmas cheer! 

Cheerio!

References:

Dinosaur cat image: http://rebloggy.com/post/cat-dinosaur-robert-downey-jr-robert-downey-jr/67709624628

Christmas cat .gif: http://www.tumblr.com/search/christmas+cat+gif

The last stretch before Christmas; swing, scary sloths and horrible jumpers

This week has been a drag and I can truly say I am ready for Christmas and ready for this character project to be over. This week I have gotten a lot closer to finishing this project ready for the hand in on Wednesday but there is still a lot to do.

Due to the extension I managed to do some other things rather than Game Art this week... I know heaven forbid! I have sorted out a trip with a couple of mates to go to the VFX festival in London in January. This is a brilliant opportunity to meet lots of people, get contacts and give out business cards and if I am lucky some CV's. The show is mainly about visual effects but there is also going to be a few games companies showing off some of their new games. So fingers crossed lets hope this goes well. I also managed to get dragged along to a swing night at the cookie (a local cafe/bar) and we all loved it! The music was amazing the people were all lovely and the dances were beautiful! It was so enjoyable we met a lovely man that teaches it ever week; who actually studied Animation at DMU before going into dance, so we are looking at going to those after we get back from Christmas. But until then here's a little taster...

Anyway lets get back to business and talk about the character project. I managed to finish my orthographics over the weekend as hoped and got straight into modelling on the Monday. 

I can now see that my orthographic were a little off, the arms were too long and they don't match up entirely but it was still helpful to block in the design and then work from that. I managed to get my modelling completed within a day and spent the next day putting in deformations and refining the mesh; checking for any Ngons and unwelded verts.

Here's the final model; it comes up at just under 4000 tris. One thing this project helped me with was pelt mapping; I have finally learnt how to pelt map hallelujah! Its only taken until second year... anyway I got the unwrapping done in a day and went on to thinking about my final design in the next.

UV Unwrap

Here is my final reference board for the sloths outfit; as said before I was unsure on the overall colour scheme when I was doing my colour variations. So I spoke to one of my tutors and together we came up with a prison issue outfit made with a thick fabric such as Hessian, covered in dirt and blood. It is very important to me to try and not make this look like a concentration camp outfit due to my colour scheme being blue, red and cream; I feel that the darker blue I have chosen does not show this. I quickly painted this to then use as reference later on; as shown below.  

After coming up with a final design I started texturing and I am still working on this at the moment. I have decided to go with a 1024 32bit targa for an albedo, roughness, specular and normal map. Below is my texture sheet at the moment and a quick render of the front and back of my character so far.

I should hopefully have the albedo finished tomorrow ready to do all of the other maps on Tuesday and if I am lucky I can hopefully either rig him or model my other character on the final day. Wish me luck!

I will be so glad when this project is over and I can't wait for the final week to start so that I can wear my truly horrible Christmas jumper! 

EVERY ONE SHOULD GET ONE THEY ARE SO HIDEOUSLY FAB!!

The scary clowns and strong men continue

Last week I showed you the start of the Character project and how I moved onto a circus theme instead of a king and jester idea; continuing on from last week I have managed to get to the orthographic stage. We have also been given an extension on this project which means I won't be stressing and overworking myself too much, but anyway lets get onto looking at some work.

After finishing the sloth head variations last time I went onto doing the same for the tamarin:

I got feedback on these and the favourites were 1, 5 and 6. After getting this feedback I spoke to one of my tutors and he suggested I looked at bears and big animals and how they move; this threw me off and I got lost. I ended up drawing bears for the rest of the day:

However this wasn't a complete loss of time, I ended up looking at the shapes of my characters in more detail and decided to draw up some new silhouettes and then draw over the top of them.

Here's what I came up with originally, as you can see I still hadn't decided on the Tamarin's head at this point; this whole process helped me out a lot and I feel that my final designs shown bellow are better thought out and overall more visually appealing.

As you can see I didn't change the sloth much but I explored what the back of his suit would look like and for the tamarin I went with the blocky headed one and slimmed him down, gave him knobbly knees and elbows, I also made his arms a more realistic length, gave him little muscle bumps and sweat stains.

After this I drew my characters up and started to do value studies:

Number 3 for the sloth and 4 for the tamarin were chosen to go forward. After going through this stage I went onto looking at colours.

As you can see I have a lot more colour variations for the sloth; this is because I found it harder to find colour combinations that I liked; I originally looked at colour schemes often found in the circus (red, blue. white and yellow) but I'm still not sure which I like or feel that would work well with the tamarins outfit. However for the tamarin I loved them all but I ended up going for number 9 because the colour combination works the best and the gold dumbbell shows off his personality better.

After that hard decision I decided to move straight onto orthographics because of the lack of time left on this project and I want to ideally have both characters modelled; So I skipped out a final concept piece.

As you can see the tamarin is finished and ready for modelling however I am still working on the sloth but should have it done before Monday so that I can get straight into modelling and texturing.

This time next week I will hopefully be polishing both characters and getting ready for my presentation. Wish me luck.

Out with the cat's and in with the Sloth's

So last time we wrapped up the sentry turret project and now its time to introduce the newest project assigned to us last week Thursday (which I only started late Monday due to overlapping projects). Without further ado I bring you the dichotomous duo character project...As you might already know I'm not a fan of humans and character projects are my most feared assignments but none the less I ploughed through this project in the beginning of the week to get ready for a presentation on Thursday; this wasn't easy and left me feeling exhausted due to not having a break after the sentry turret, but what are you gunna do? Anyway so I started off looking at a couple things on Pinterest and made a board full of cool inspirational pictures; of already created dichotomous characters, cool styles in which I would try and replicate and finally of course a hell of a lot of cute animals.

Inspiration Moodboard

Style Moodboard

Reference Moodboard

Opposite word board

As you can see on my reference board I added a load of sloth's and Emperor Tamarin's; at this point I also looked at how I could make my characters opposite so I looked into making them a king and a jester or a Victorian master and his butler. I also made a list of opposites so I could choose a couple to add to my characters traits later. So after coming up with a few ideas I rushed into doing some drawings so that I had some work to show for Thursdays presentation; in hindsight I should have spent more time worrying about iteration rather than the presentation. Here's what I came up with;

My initial ideas

I looked into a doing Mafia cats and a sheriff and bandit but decided to stick with my original king and jester because it was the most unique and I felt that It suited the animals and project better. After deciding on the sloth and tamarin I looked into different styles of drawing the characters and I also experimented with the Master and butler idea.

Style exploration

I decided to stick with my original style because I feel like it is the best design overall and fits my characters better than the others. I also stuck with my king and jester idea because the butler and master drawing wasn't as strong. 

More in-depth sketches

After deciding on the king and the jester I developed the characters a little further by looking at them as block shapes. I made the king very geometric and spikey whereas the jester is made of round shapes and curves; this is to portray their personalties and show their differences. I then went onto analyse their differences as shown below:

Characters personalities

After coming up with a general Idea of what I was doing I decided to go into doing some quick silhouettes to get some feedback on which design should be my final.

Silhouettes

After coming up with a final design I drew up a quick sketch for my presentation.

Final design

In my presentation I got some decent feedback telling me that I should go back to the silhouette stage which now means I am quite far behind. After getting this feedback from the tutors I went into looking at the circus, due to one of the tutors saying that the Emperor Tamarin would look good as a strong man.

Circus Moodboard

After making as quick moodboard I got straight into doing a few quick silhouettes and then some thumbnails; as shown below. 

Silhouettes and thumbs

I then got feedback on these thumbs and people liked them a lot more than the originals; next I took note of peoples feedback and put pairs together that they felt would look good. 

Second set of thumbs

After doing this stage people felt that 1, 6 and 8 were the strongest pairs; I still haven't decided on the final for the tamarin yet so I decided to start doing some more development for the sloth clown as shown below:

Sloth clown development

I decided to work on the sloth's face to see how I could make it look scary; due to me wanting to make the sloth a scary character that just wants to make people laugh and the tamarin a funny character that wants to make people scared, thus showing a clear dichotomy. I got feedback on this too and the two most popular are 5 and 6; I am probably going to go with 5 due to it not being as scary as 6 I want to keep it so that the sloth looks like he isn't trying to be scary on purpose. 

Overall I am now behind on this project due to the set back from the presentation but I should be ready to go in to modelling for Tuesday if not Wednesday, which gives me plenty of time to get the project finished in time for the deadline.
Cheerio for now...