Visual Design: Colour Theory.

This week after watching a couple of YouTube tutorials detailing colour theory specifics, we were asked to apply this new found knowledge to a greyscale image of Yoda.

Below are my final images. The right hand image had to use a complementary and desaturated colour scheme, whilst the left hand image had to be more saturated featuring an analogous colour scheme.

Visual Design: Form Language

In class this week we watched another tutorial, this time focusing on form and it's language. It gave valuable insight into why things are shaped the way they are (familiarity, purpose etc) and how to apply that to vehicle concepts.


Upon finishing this, we were tasked with quickly sketching a set of digging vehicles. One set had to be using conventional, more angular shapes and the other, more organic shapes.


Early idea generation is one of my favourite parts of concept art as it tends to be the most liberating part of the process. As long as it falls within brief, no idea is too out there or conservative. In the end I worked up a more organic looking digger focusing on its bulbous shape and human silhouette.


Another enjoyable and quick exercise considering tech and mech aren't my favourite thing in the world to draw.

 

 

Visual Design: Tree

For this weeks assignment we were tasked with creating a tree with character. Unsurprisingly it is far easier to create a tree with the creep factor, than it is to create a happy whimsical tree.

I wanted to tie this task in with painting a landscape with fantastical elements, creating a narrative of sorts.

I painted three thumbnails to get a feel for mood and shape. I really wanted to create a tree that looked like it could come alive at any point to interact with the humans that discover it.

Frustratingly, I also had some great designs sketched out on post it notes, but the phone the pictures were taken on has subsequently died. Sigh.

I worked with 3 very different colour palettes. The end piece had a cool graphical element that I'd love to use in a future project.

After working on the concepts, I decided to go with an arachnid looking shape for my piece. I decided to make it a mix of horror and the fantastic, using colourful flowers to offset against the foreboding atmosphere. The most twisted Disney princess story you ever did see.

Overall I'm happy with the final image. It gave me an opportunity to use some new brushes and practice photobashing. I had to hand paint the star reflections on to the lake by the mountains which was laborious but necessary to have a coherent light source.

 I need to use less rim lighting and focus on using gestural strokes to build lighting across the image. This is certainly something to work on as I've noticed it across most of my work this year.

Gameplay and Interactivity: Animating Sprites

Now came the laborious part, animating the sprite. Using the timeline feature in Photoshop, I got started on the idle animation for our character. It was incredibly challenging to get the movement feeling natural, even with a simple breathing cycle. It was all about incremental changes from frame to frame. Trying to take shortcuts became abundantly obvious in the animation cycle.


Eventually I got it to a point that I was happy with. In the interest of time, I'll leave it where it is at for now, but there are some leg movements that don't feel particularly natural.

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: