DMUGA Week 20 - Creating characters!

This week's agenda: Characters. I really do love how they've structured the course so that both our 2D & 3D projects run alongside each other in terms of relevance. Don't get me wrong, of course they're interlinked, but in terms of the subject matter. Also, I think that I'm still making improvements in general which is obviously a good thing, it's just not at the speed I need it to be. I'm keeping on it though, and always trying to be better than the previous week.

Monday - Visual Design: 

Final Model View #2

Final Model View #1

I recall that in my last blog post, I didn't actually post the finished model for my vehicle so here it is alongside the digital painting (just to save you the effort of flicking back to see it):

Final Digital Painting

Baring in mind that for the model, I thought I had much more paint than I did, so I therefore had to use it very sparingly. In addition, I looked through my art set to find that I also didn't have any light blue paint... Which meant I couldn't even paint on the 'highlighted' paint pattern on the top of the model. You can't quite see in the picture but I can assure you that the propellers were made too using modelling wire, card and masking tape to fix them to either end - just needed to slide them inside the tubes. I think it turned out alright though despite my short supplies.

Moving onto the actual project for this week, Chris introduced the 'Interesting character' project for us all to do. We'd have 1 week to come up with the character, and the second week we will model them (I'm thinking clay, Plasticine etc. However, in order for us to make this character, we had to go out and find people who looked interesting and draw them quickly, trying to capture the essence of them. Now, this can either be fine - just take a trip down the local pub and draw. Or, it becomes a very laborious task of actually finding someone interesting and sketching them without being suspicious or annoyed that you're watching them. Alas, I did get quite a few which were nice, but the other half were quite bad.

On the way back, we spotted a homeless man, and having seen Chris' photography project on homeless people, we thought he'd be great for a character. This did mean taking an inconspicuous picture from afar, but he portrayed such emotion just with his expressions that we just had to capture. Here's some quick drawings of him:

Homeless man sketches

As I said, there were quite a few interesting people I came across, but in the end I decided to mix a bit of the homeless man's face with another face and this is what I got:

Mix of sketch #16 & #22

Wild West-styled character

I know that I'm not exactly the best at drawing people, and the pose could 100% be much better; I was going for the default pose for models, but then changed it when I got to the feet... No idea why and now it just looks odd.

Tuesday: Game Production

This is where the modules link, we finally handed in our van - Here's some pictures:

Final Van - Iso

Interior - Wireframe + Material

Wireframe + Material

Wireframe

I was pleased with the outcome, but a few issues I couldn't fix which I mentioned in my previous blog. This week however, we got given the 'Gladiator' Project; 2500 tris for the character, plus an extra 300 for any props/apparel. I thought to myself "Yeah, this is going to be really good fun, definitely possible". Now, as the week got on and I spent more and more time working on it, I came to the realisation that I most definitely will run out of tris for the body. I made the mistake of leaving the head until last and now I have gone way over my budget:

My character so far - 3DS Max

I think that in order to overcome this, I will need to severely reduced the loops around this thighs and hands, but I will finish the face first and see what I have to work with. My aim is for him to look like a centurion, but because we can't cover the face, I'll try and do a variation of one with less apparel.

 Wednesday: Critical Studies

Well, we had a lecture about our blog tasks, and I know that I completed all of mine... Or so I thought. It turns out that we had to produce drafts before our final blog for the 'personal enquiry', but I had just gone ahead and produced a final. Although I obviously went through the process of deciding what to write about and what to include, I just didn't write 2 blogs about it. Which means I'll probably have to do that which I hope to do this week... Keyword there is HOPE :) The lecture made it clear on how the module was split for marks which was good, I didn't even know until this point.
Beforehand, we were required to print off our most recent blog post for the seminar, and I predicted right with what we were going to do with them. We marked each other's blogs using the marking criteria and gave each other feedback on how to improve. This was also useful as it was pointed out to me that my blog was rather 'bland', which I can quite clearly see is applicable to my recent ones. I think this was a reaction to what we were told early on which was to keep them professional and not go over the top - I seem to have definitely changed my style since my first one. I don't want to seem uninteresting and motionless, so i will be trying to put more emotion into my writing from now on... Again!!

Extras

Just a couple of extra things that I haven't included that you may be interested in, I've been having a lot of computer problems in terms of speed and just general application loading (especially 3ds max). I know my computer can handle 3ds max fairly well, but it freezes on me 3-5 times before allowing me to use it properly. In addition get this... I got the blue screen. I haven't seen that since my Windows 98! I had to boot it in safe mode, back up all of my work, and perform a system recovery, but I'm still worried as it does still freeze from time to time.
I won't be posting it for privacy reasons, but I have been practicing on my new graphics tablet recently, and since Valentines day was coming up, I thought what better way to practice faces and using the tablet? By drawing a portrait for a friend! I have to say I spent around 15 hours on it to make it the best I could (12hrs drawing +3hrs tweaking) and it turned out absolutely amazing! I am very pleased with it and am developing a greater interest in digital painting.

I hope this was a good insight as to how my week went, I'm definitely enjoying things, it's just a matter of will I improve fast enough? Time will tell, but in the meantime, bring on the next week :)