Visual Design: Composition

After watching a fantastic tutorial on the rule of thirds and composition, we were tasked with taking a digital painting in portrait and flipping it to landscape. We had to keep composition in mind whilst crafting a scene that draws the eye across the image in a natural way, focusing on the key elements.


Loving narrative, I decided to incorporate a gunslinger into the image. Finally reaching the end of his quest. What lies for him in that cabin?


This was a very relaxing task and it is always fun crafting an image with a purpose!

Visual Design: Insect Concept Art

For this assignment we had to create a character concept based on an insect design. I instantly gravitated towards some sort of armoured warrior bug. Their exoskeletons drew me straight towards that line of thought and many of them have built in defence mechanisms that empower them in the natural world.



I created a mood board with the sort of colours, textures and shapes I was looking for. Asymmetry, spikes and curves really drew my eye. I wanted to create something sleek and fast looking. Think about how quickly a wasp can go from friend to stinging you in the neck. That sort of reflex action.

I started roughing out character designs based on the shapes that I liked. I found that the more I exaggerated the features, the more I deviated away from what I was trying to achieve. The majority of these looked more like a creature from the depths of hell in Doom as opposed to an insect based concept. I took a few separate elements from these designs and incorporated them into something far more obviously bug-like.

 Next up was the design of a model sheet. This is hugely important in the industry as it gives 3D artists the 360 degree imagery they need to begin rendering characters in software such as Maya.

And finally with that done, it was time to start rendering this bad boy. A big challenge was creating a believable exoskeleton. The insect kingdom has an incredibly wide range of textures and colours so I tried to create a raised look based on research. I went with the tried and tested Feng Zhu method of crafting values out of a strong silhouette. I find this works excellently with organic concepts more often than not. It also allows me to paint in greyscale and worry about colour elements later on, as it is very simple to just drop a colour layer over the top of everything in Photoshop and experiment.

Below is the final piece along with some other colour concepts as many hives have different workers for different tasks AND games love a colour variant on the same model to represent a stronger character! As I reflect and study the finished piece, I do think it looks a little generic and I could have pushed the forms a lot further. Asymmetry works really well in designs and I failed to bring that in to this character concept. The colours turned out really well though as my values were quite solid in the black and white stage. Still I have to be very careful with turning to rim lighting so quickly.

3D Art Production: Rigging

This post may end up being a slight rant.


Following on from Phil's tutorial regarding rigging the 3D model, I began placing mine inside my model.


After lining up the correct bones within the right limbs, I bound the skin to the rig and started to paint in body weights. The purpose of these is to determine what parts of the model are effected by the skeleton when you begin to move and pose it. Suffice to say, I had a ton of trouble with this and it felt particularly alien to me. I tried removing separate accessories like the sword and breast plate in an attempt to make things smoother but alas, this wasn't meant to be.


After a few failed attempts, I tried the Z-Sphere rigging option in Z-brush.


Now in terms of interface, this felt far smoother to me and I think initially it yielded very solid results, but when upping the poly count after the rigging, errors and holes began to appear. After spending a good hour or two solving these issues, the file corrupted when I placed it back into Maya.


Back to IK painting then!


After watching some tutorials I retroactively placed the paints and this worked very well. I simplified my pose a lot and in the end, ended up with something I was happy with. A lot of my struggles with Maya tend to come from the inorganic process of creating on it, but I normally get over this preconception and create something I'm happy with. Still, Z-brush was a lot of fun to use and I can't wait to dig in further next term!

Final Rigged Model:

Visual Design: Perspective Exercise (Speeder)

This week in class we were tasked with rendering a Star Wars speeder in 3 point perspective from a flat concept sheet.



This was a quick one but a lot of fun. Perspective is always challenging but Photoshop's built in pens and rulers make it a real breeze when you understand the fundamenals. I utilized levels in order to photobash an environment and make it fit seamlessly with the painting.


 Here is how far I got in session:

Visual Design: Revisit Scifi Room

This week has a nice and breezy session. We had to watch a couple of handy video tutorials on 3 point perspectives and were then tasked with applying this new found knowledge to a piece from a few months back.

3 point perspective is excellent for building scale and depth, If anything, I far preferred how my room looked, sketched out in this perspective. I made some changes to the design of the room, to bring it closer to our current tech and aesthetic - make it look a little more grounded.

This was a fun session and reminded me of just how important the fundamentals are. We weren't tasked with finishing this outside of class as we have been given a separate homework assignment, but fingers crossed I get a chance to take this a bit further.

3D Art Production: Helmet

Yeesh, I just can't get the horns on this helmet to work and look weighty. Looking at the UV, these will be an absolute nightmare to texture too. With that in mind, I may need to look at an alternate version of the helmet in order to maintain quality across the model.

3D Art Production: The Torso and Legs

To be straight up, I think I'm starting to get the hand of this. After setting up the fiddely reference, it was quite fun to begin modeling the main torso area. Now, not getting ahead of myself, these structures are rather simple and tubular in comparison to the complex and head but still, it is starting to feel more smooth.


I wanted this figure to be strong and athletic as opposed to a hulking mass, in line with my reference and modelsheet designs. The romans were very image conscious, yet if you look at many sculptures they tend to be the idealized form of man as opposed to a totally fantasy design. The hips have been a nightmare to link the torso and legs together and may take a bit more work to do. If I can't get them working properly, creative posing may be in order.

Visual Design: Steampunk

Gah! Steampunk.

This isn't one of my favourite aesthetics when it come's to sci fi and fantasy. Its Victorian routes and reliance on obvious gears have never truly appealed to me. The closest thing I enjoyed was the look of Full Metal Alchemist - A manga series with a look very similar to that of the staples of Steampunk.



However, it IS a staple of this industry and I took the challenge head on. I wanted to create something maybe a little bit more subtle and ominous looking. To begin with as usual, I assembled a mood board of images I liked. I gravitated more towards hints of antiquity and wealth within my character. I wanted to create a villain who is clearly human in form but has that form shrouded in secrecy.

I sketched up some character designs and ended up cherry picking my favourite elements from each. I definitely wanted a helmet and some sort of weapon. He had to look regal, as he's the David Cameron of the Steampunk world. I wanted him to exude wealth and power. With these done, I noted my favourite elements and got to work on the grey scale image.

I tried a number of new techniques whilst painting this in black and white. I wanted to subtly use textures and used the warp tools to make sure they matched the form of the clothing.



Overall I'm stoked with how this one turned out. I'm tremendously proud of the coat and cloth textures. The claw could maybe look less Crab like and a bit more three dimensional. On a second pass, I'd love to introduce some more cogs and overtly obvious steam punk elements. The helmet could also be a bit bigger as this guys head must be tiny to fit in that thing.


Next time!

Visual Design: Speedy Concepts

In class this week, we had to create a character using Fish as inspiration. The time limit was 1 hour per design. This wasn't going to be Nemo!

I instantly searched for images of deep sea fish as they tend to be the most alien. But I couldn't escape the imagery of a hammer head shark - Those things are built for carnage. We had recently had Mike McCarthy in for a lecture on concept art and he showed some inspiring images of characters that inhabited ports and pirate ships. With that in mind, this guy quickly showed up.

I call him Bruce. He is an ex-captain looking for a new crew to ride the seven seas with. The big smile and bizarre arm really aren't helping with the recruitment process.

Visual Design: GIF

In this weeks session we were tasked with creating a short animation in Photoshop using the timeline tool. This is handy to create GIFs and sprite sheets for use in 2D games production.


This proved to be invaluable as the game we are developing in Gameplay and Interactivity uses sprite sheets for all the main characters and animation cycles.


Steve gave us a simple image of a girl and we were tasked with adding frames on the timeline to create an animation sequence. I decided to add a background and some fun elements to make it a bit more charming.


there are a few challenges with this way of working - mainly that it is extremely laborious and unforgiving if you move an element to drastically from frame to frame. But

in the end the results speak for themselves and it is very rewarding creating seamless animation. It is certainly something I couldn't do before.