DMUGA Week 25 - New software to learn & presentations... Scary!

Hey guys, this week has been pretty interesting! We've handed in our final 3d model for this term, repeated a project from the start of the year, introduced to the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), and had a 2 hour long critical studies seminar in which we were told about a presentation we will have to do next week (Oh my).

Monday - Visual Design

Well, repeated the project 'kind of'. As mentioned in the previous blog, we went to re-visit the National Space Centre, however, as it was Monday... It was closed. I expected to only draw the outside anyway, so this didn't really affect my intentions of what I wanted to do. I think it is good that we get to do this again because even though I was satisfied with the pencil & fine liner drawings the first time, I want to see if I have developed and in what ways.

Straight away I noticed that I was getting the perspective faster and more accurate than I did a while back. Even as I was drawing I realised that I was taking into account the relative sizes of the objects from my perspective a lot more. I still got this a bit off at times, but I saw the mistake and knew what was wrong with it. In addition to these, the process of which I went about drawing was different too. Originally, I began and finished basically the whole picture with the same pencil and for the majority of the time, working with a fairly blunt end. This time, I began with a sharp B, and worked into the shadows with a 3-5B, then for really dark areas I used the 7B. Thing is, I was doing this without really thinking about it so I have now adopted this as the norm.

I still think that I need to sharpen my pencils even more than I currently do and I need to work on relative sizes, but I can definitely see an improvement - They are more refined.

Here's a couple of pictures:

Tuesday - Game Production

Oh, how it was a relief to finally hand in that gladiator! It was the longest project we have been given so far and despite feeling fairly good about the outcome, there were so many things that were bugging me about it (as explained in the previous blog). I just couldn't get rid of those seams due to constant crashing on 3DS Max's behalf. Like all of my projects so far, it was a good learning experience and I am glad that I have changed my mindset o going about the modelling process.

I haven't actually got the images on me to post the final renders, but this is generally it:

After the last hour of bringing all of the necessary files on disk, it was a good feeling to hand it in... Aaaand move instantly on to the next learning curve in 3D: A game engine! I have been so excited to see what my models would actually look like 'in-game' and now we are able to import them into UDK and see how they fair with the luscious lighting. I did say the gladiator was our 'final' model, and it is, but this week we were told to import all of our models into one scene file for UDK. I'll have to find out exactly what we have to do as I left to get a backup file for the gladiator and missed the brief, but as of now, I am making the collision meshes for all my models and ensuring they are all ready for exporting.

This for me is really exciting and I can't wait to see what they all look like! Learning how to use 3DS Max at the beginning of this course was slow for the first few weeks and I have gradually gotten faster, but my goal here is to learn the basics as soon as I can and repeat them constantly so the muscle memory is there. This time I want to approach it a bit differently - Imagine that I already know kind of what to do and don't be scared of pressing all these new buttons. There is a lot to learn, but it will be fun and hopefully I will know my way around the processes in no time!

My first textured project... The famous wheelie bin <500 tris, only a diffuse map:

Wednesday - Critical Studies

Today was an unusual extra-long seminar instead of the usual 1 hour split between lecture & seminar, so I imagined it would be something really big or related to the group project. However, it was actually about 'Art Direction' and I found it particularly fascinating! We were shown images of a recently released game (Can't remember the name but that's beside the point), and within those images were some paint-overs. Starting with the blocked-out layout of a forest scene, and seeing how it changed to make it more aesthetically pleasing and 'grounded' with the original conceptual art was rather cool.

The lesson then proceeded with the images we were asked to bring in and many people got to describe the reasons why they were drawn to them and analysed why they worked well. These included varied drawings of batman across the ages, to artwork from Metal Gear Solid. Something I thought which was literally jaw dropping was the video of visual effects for the film 'Life of Pi'. I have seen these type of VFX breakdowns for other movies and every single time I see one of these I can't help but chuckle in amazement! Almost everything you see is not originally there/modelled/composited and it is mind-blowing how well people can put together these sequences and make them convincing to the viewer.

Our homework for this week is to pick an image and analyse it, so I have decided to pick the one I have on a small A5 canvas in my room:

By Anne Stokes - Water Dragon

I saw this canvas in a small shop at Leicester city centre and thought it was a lovely. It is clearly 'Gothic' styled and for whatever reason (I do not know to this day, why), I've always loved the artwork in the Gothic genre.

'Rule of Thirds'

As a piece, your attention is drawn to her face and then down towards the dragon. This is because the colours of almost everything in the picture are dark blues & greens, creating a cool atmosphere and drawing less attention in contrast to the warm skin tone of the female. Personally, my gaze primarily goes from her arm, towards the face, down to the dragon, followed by the blue archway and finally the bright water below.

In terms of the composition, the 2 bodies are equally spaced from the sides and the height parameters of both are offset towards the bottom of the picture. This frames the image very nicely and obeys the rule of thirds to a good extent - Not only in the positioning of the bodies, but also in the horizon line. In addition, the archway in the background already sort of frames them, and makes you focus even more on their faces because the darkness within makes them stand out.

There is also emotion in this image, portrayed through the facial expression and the way in which she is holding the dragon. By holding the dragon in this way (almost like an infant), it expresses some sort of bond between them which is further backed up with the female's facial expression; to me it shows love & care.
Furthermore, the saturation of the colours is quite high, making for a vibrant image. I think that if it used less saturated colours, it would take out some of the emotion.
Overall, I personally love this image for the reasons described and the Gothic theme is just my personal taste.

Personal

I think I have said this before but recently, I have been looking into speed painting and it keeps making me want to produce some of my own, but haven't really done much. However, I hope this will change soon as I remembered a suggestion for someone to look at which is 'Feng Zhu'. His work & tutorials are so amazing that I think it has kicked me into actually doing some. So, my goal on how to spend some of my free time is just to literally practice and play about with things; I most likely won't post things I am not proud of though.