Life Drawing week 2

For my 2nd week of life drawing we had to focus on the different positions in which the model decided on. This session's model was male, so it was refreshing to try different body shapes and sizes, as this model was much taller and skinnier than the model we had last week.

 

Using silhouettes in Crustasion character design

The task given to us for this project was to come up with an imaginative concept for a minimum of three 'crustacean-like' creatures being created by using the technique of Silhouette on Photoshop. This would give a shinning effect and will work well with showing darker shapes and tone. We needed to: complete a moodboard, do some sketches of the creatures and decided which three favorite sketches to be developed to be your final design on Photoshop.

 moodboard and tutorial:

We had to watch a tutorial of a tutor showing a quick 2 part video, of how to create creatures using a silhouette. Though he machined in the video that it is a quick thing to do and should take about an hour or two, I strongly disagree with this, for it took me much longer than one or two hours to do. Though I suppose he is more experienced and it must seem more natural to him. As for my final three pieces of work, I was pleased with the results, though as you can see, I tried to experiment with one of them and unfortunately it is (I feel) the weakest one out of the three.

Final 3 designs:

 

 

 

Battle Arena

Mood board for arena

After my first encounter with Maya, the second lesson was to create a battle arena with Maya. Thankfully I am beginning to get the hang with modeling on Maya so lets see what happens.

To begin with we had to create a moodboard of what we would like our battle arena to look like. For my moodboard, it was to be based on a Nordic/Celtic style. with old ruins, temples, carvings and statues. I would like it to be located in a snowy mountain as well, just to stick with the true Nordic theme of having the white space.  

Rough drawing for idea:

Okay this may not be the worlds greatest drawing ever, but the point is that its for me to have a rough idea of what my battle arena would look like. Now using my moodboard and my rough sketch, I will begin modelling my battle arena.

 Designing My Battle Arena:

Now that I have an idea of what my battle arena would look like, it was time to start working on Maya and shaping the arena. This would be a perfect opportunity to try and get used to modeling on Maya. The pictures bellow shows the progress I have made with my arena thus far.The first two images shows what my pit looks like. I got the idea from this image showing a cave with wooden blanks and a dark snowy cave.

This image shows my idea to try and add different levels and steps in my arena. This would allow the players to move around in different parts of the area. For example if one of the fighters would be cornered, then he/she would try and escape by sprinting up the planks or broken stairs to fight in the open. I had this idea from the picture that shows the cave in the mountain, shows a path at carries on going up to the top.

The last two images show what I wish to make the outside of the arena would look like. It is to be a plane white snowy area. Either in the mountains or in the wood. Showing at the front (where the player/players would start) and show at the back the trees and a tomb. In the middle of all this is the ruin of an ancient temple. I got this image from the picture showing a warrior looking into a mouth of a sinister looking cave.   

Practicing colour on photoshop

 

For my second lesson on visual design, We were given a task to copy a drawing then go ahead to colour and shade the entire figure. Though I was still a bit rusty on Photoshop, I was confident and began to enjoy drawing and colouring the alien.

I think my attempts of the colouring in was well done, changing the normal settings and adding  'Multiply' on the Photoshop canvas. This gives you a better shading effect on the normal colours and will also help with using tone. Though I was pleased I couldn't help but look around and saw other peoples work. This had widen my eyes and I knew that I need to practice on my shading technique.

 

Perspective homework

I was given the homework to try and improve my perspective drawings. Firstly I was told to look at the link on MyUca and read about what perspective is and how to draw it.

 The Second thing we had to do was to follow a tutorial video on YouTube where the person teaches you the basics of prospective drawing and how you can improve your own drawings.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCW9D2GytHo

The drawing shown bellow is my attempt to try and draw a similar perspective view as the tutorial showed. Though I felt like I did everything correctly and in the right prospective, I can see that I could have made it look even better. Unfortunately I didn't have any watercolours to experiment with this piece. Si I had to use a lot of tone. I was pleased by the way it came out though, and the hole drawing has the right prospective and I am heading the right direction.

Life Drawing week 1

Week 1:

This is to be my first try on life drawing.  At the moment we are looking at drawing simple lines and shapes of the body. We where told not to give any detail on the face. We where also told to draw with our weaker hand to experiment how confident we are with it. To be honest I did struggle a lot with my weaker hand, though strangely enough I was told that it showed better results that with my stronger right hand. The reason I think this could be the case is because I had thought about it for to long, and then rushed the drawings at the end. With my weaker hand I had known that it will be a mess, so I was more comfortable and showed lack of caring. Which resulted in my left handed sketches being the superior of the two. On the other hand it was still a strong start for life drawing, as I am sure that as I progress throughout the year, my figure drawings will get stronger. 

 

Barrel

Creating a Barrel on Maya:

The first week we where given the basics on how to use Maya to work on creating an object. That object was to be a barrel. Going through the steps with my tutor in class, I managed to create a barrel and was then told to bad some texture and colour to it. I did this by going on Photoshop and looked at basic wood and steel textures on Google. Then I imported the texture onto Maya and went with that effect. 

 

Though I did struggle to come to grips with using the Maya program at times, I slowly managed to get a rough idea on how it works. And though it seems like I still have much to learn with Maya, I can still feel satisfied with creating my first barrel. This was my first try on Maya after all.

Concept design for robot

 Week 1:

A few days ago we were given our first bit of homework; which was to create a "bad-ass" original robot. I decided to go for a scrap metal/ decal punk feel as the last picture bellow shows. The first picture is a robot concept which combined animals and humans to a life of metal and steam. An example of this is the dog or crab. I tried to experiment a little with the animals, and though I loved the look and ideas, I thought it best to stick with a normal man-like robot. As can be shown in the next image which shows a half man, half robot. My last rough idea was a small pile of junk with a lamp post as a head and metal sticking out that looks a lot like arms and legs. This was a random sketch as I couldn't come up with what my final robot could look like. So I decided to combine the pile of junk and the human-robot together. Which led me to my final concept, a tall fairly human shaped machine bearing a claw like hand for his left arm and a large gloved arm on the right arm. His chest having a telephone box which protects his engine 'heart'. And finally his head having lamp post.

My Robots backstory:

The backstory for this bit is that he is an alien life form who are named the "Zadracs". He was captured and tortured for committing a crime and had his spirit forced out form his original body. Having his soul banished through space and time, the Zadrac was trying to find a new form in order to survive. He eventually landed on a planet called earth and had crash landed in a junk yard. Hungry for a new body, the Zadrac's spirit corrupted a human to rebuild him, using all the spare parts and scrap metal from the junk yard. Now gaining a new form, the Zadrac wishes to build a new world for his kind on earth, in a feel for redemption.



Painting start

Week 1:

For my first day at university, I started with the visual art workshop. I was given the basic idea of using Photoshop for designing characters for example using different brushes, changing the opacity and so on. My class was then given an image of a robot and was told to copy the figure within less then two hours. Using different tone and texture I managed to get a rough image done. The result of my efforts can be seen bellow.

This was a very good start for me to get more comfortable with Photoshop as well as trying to add more tone effects to my digital drawings. I felt like I could have done more with the robots leg texture and the lighting. But hopefully I will improve with more practise on photoshop.