DMUGA Week 27 - Trip to Guildhall, UDK doesn't like me & Game art conference day!

As we've come to the end of this week (and the end of term 2), time doesn't just slow down, if anything... It speeds up! It is Easter time, but unlike the Christmas holidays in which I took 2 weeks off, I'll only take 1 week off this time as there is so much to do! A very interesting week yet again though, from the trip to Guildhall, to the Game Art conference day:

Monday - Visual Design

Having just visited Bradgate Park and the National Space Centre again, it was nice to see a new interesting place to draw, with a different atmosphere/feel to it. During this day we went about as normal gathering some texture photographs and quick thumbnail sketches from different places to get a sense of composition/perspective. I love the way the building looks, although the structure is rather 'weird'.

Here's some of the 5-10min thumbnails I did on the day: I later went back to get a line drawing for the final piece of the outside and get my perspective lines neatly drawn in + any details on the building - I got quite peckish so decided to finished the shading off at my flat instead.

However, seeing as I need a lot of practice in digital painting and having seen the amazing ones done by a previous year's group, I went ahead and spent a rather a lot of hours trying to get a 'decent looking paint. As I'm new to this, I know there are so many different ways to go about painting and have tried the 'line drawing + colour' method for the vehicle project (which turned out very vibrant), I decided to try the grey-scale to colour method this time. I think this produced a far better result and I personally favoured this because it meant I could control the values of a whole general area and not worry about the colour. Until I get a good understanding of how to use the right colours/colour pallets, I think the grey-scale method will be my preferred choice for now.

Initial quick sketch

Blocked in some values

Value correction

Added details

Final - Added colour

For this, I used 2 brushes, 1) The standard Ps chalk brush 2) One I found online which is a tree branch - I know it's random, but I felt it added some texture to it; this aspect of adding texture is another thing I need to move towards as it can create a much more depth/atmosphere. Even though I have spent far longer on this than I did on the others, it is a whole lot better than my other digi-paints to this point and I hope to continue making progress in this way.

Tuesday - Game production

Oh my, 7 hours worth of work... 1 hours worth to show for it. There really ins't much that can be said about today. I spent literally hours trying to get the collision mesh for my building to work and in the end I just gave up as it wasn't worth the time investment. I'm still stuck with this problem:

Collision mesh works for everything but these front walls

Still an issue if I add a collision walls here

It only occurs if I add any more geometry to the collision mesh itself. The secondary problem was the van's smoothing groups not showing when I went to re-size it in 3DS Max. Obviously I exported it into UDK with smoothing groups but they weren't showing in UDK, so this caused a lot of trouble and a couple of hours wasted and decided again that it isn't worth the investment.
The whole day wasn't a complete waste though, I now have the majority of a collision mesh for my building and fixed the texturing problem for the van & trees. I also imagined some other assets I'd like to create over the Easter break to make it more interesting but you'll have to wait and see what it is when I come back! Hopefully it'll turn out well, I have high hopes but may not get the time to do it all.

Wednesday - Game Art conference day

I wasn't too sure of what to expect from today, as I thought it would just be a couple of sessions advising us on how to go about what information to put in and how to lay it all out properly. However, it was far more helpful than initially thought because we actually did some activities to get us thinking about it in a new way.
The sessions I attended were:
-Word art: Using words creatively
-Shaping your writing
-The tools of visual practice
-Have a go!

To quickly summerise the sessions, I enjoyed all of them collectively, although, I definitely found 1 in particular much more helpful than the others.

'Word art' consisted of analysing an artist's image and trying to think more creatively about how we use words to describe artwork. I'll be honest, it was alright but it wasn't anything 'new' to me and didn't see how it will influence my future blogs.

'Shaping your writing' was initially random for me and I didn't see how it would help with my blogs, however, after the message "Convey a main point to the reader through your use of writing and images", I realised that it is important to focus on a couple of important things only and keep it easy-to-follow. Coming up with a short comic strip was rather interesting and it yielded a funny result but has good meaning behind it.

'Tools of visual practice' was the most helpful session by far as it demonstrated a new way that I hadn't considered before which helps drastically in imagining a scene and being able to describe it in-depth, without thinking too hard about it. I most definitely will use this technique and I think I get produce good things with it. Not to mention the mind-blowing concept art that Mitch created within 2 hours... Literally jaw dropping and I must know his method of digital painting!

Finally, 'have a go!' was just to finish up the day by looking at what still needs to be done before the submission date, but also to look into where my blogs are weak/lacking and hopefully improve them for future posts.

Personal Work

As I mentioned earlier, I wish to improve greatly in digital painting and in order to combat this, I have spent many hours looking into as many different methods that other people use to get a good result. My thinking behind this is: To observe how greatness is achieved, adopt a preferred technique, and practice endlessly. Chris recommended I looked at Feng Zhu's work as he also has many tutorials... I have to say that it blew my mind how fast these concept painting are made and to a very high standard. From watching some of his videos, I think I'd like to start small and to do this I'll just work in grey-scale and try and design things from silhouettes, then add details using the values. By doing this I don't have to worry about colour yet, but I can still get the hang of working in this manor, plus, if it turns out well I'll build confidence. So, I am setting this for me to do in my spare time and it will be (at this moment) the main task over the summer. By the end of the summer I want to be in a position where I am confident that I can produce some sort of 'decent' concept art if asked to.

In addition to this, I'd like to just have mini projects for myself in 3D. For example, go out and model my whole garden which will give me practice in foliage. Or, better yet, model something for someone else! My dad has requested that at some point I model one of his motorbikes; this will also give me more practice in vehicles and give me a texturing challenge with the metallic textures.

Anyway, I wish you all a lovely Easter and get a well deserved 1 week off! Blogs will continue when I go back to DMU. See you all soon :)