Colour Exercise

This exercise was about using a base colour, and base shadow as a starting point. By using two seperate layers, both set to Multiply, and then paint highlights and details on yet another seperate layer on the ver top, colour in this style can be made very quick.

Original Linework by Niklas Jansson:

 

This is my final coloured image:

 

 

This is the desaturated image to help me get my tonal values more correct:

 

 

This is a little test I did to work out which way I had to move the colour picker to get a darker tone without saturating the colour.

UVW Unwrap

In the first example we re-visited the Chick Pea can to make a texture map for it. This was the texture map I made:

The reason for two of the circle lids is that one is the top, the other is the bottom, If I wanted too I could change the look of these to differentiate the top and bottom.


Here is a video of my final t-shirt:

In this lesson we were taught how to uvw unwrap.

I then created my diffuse map from a UVW output render, and pasted a bit of art that I had created a while back onto the front of the t-shirt.

Here are a couple of images to show my UVW Unwrap and the Diffuse Map:

UVW Output Render

As you can see, on one of the sleeves I've had to continue some of the artwork to give a seamless impression.

Diffuse Map

I created the seams as close as I could to a real t-shirt.

Life Drawing / Observation Drawing

So I have yet to post any of the work from our Wednesday afternoon lesson as I have had to wait to be able to photograph them in some-what decent lighting conditions.

All the drawings were done on A2 paper, with either charcoal, pencil, or ink.

I included this close up of the head as I spent a lot of time here. I really like the way I've really made it pop out of the page using the background. But making some of the edges quite strong It helps suggest which are sharp and which are soft, rounded edges.

 After a break a grid was put behind our subject. This really helped create a perspective as we could use the negative space between the grids.

This is a small ink piece where by putting suggestive background shadow helps create the scene's full lighting.

This first page of sketches were all quick 2-3 minute sketches. A very good warm up exercise, and great practice for proportions and breaking down shapes.

The time was then increased to a few 15 minute sketches.

The time was then increased again to 30 minutes.

This final image took a lot of re-working. I constantly kept drawing what I wanted too, however once I overcome that, I achieved a great sense of perspective! Really happy with the results, and also learn a lot. Again using the negative shapes it helps to draw what you actually see and not what the mind is telling you you're seeing.

Working with value and colour

So this post is of last weeks lesson, we learnt a bit more about getting value right and to help us we watched a video made by Feng Zhu.

We were then given the line drawing Feng was using in the video to colour ourselves.

Using a layer filled black on top of all the other layers, set to the layer mode 'Saturation', we can check the values of our paintings to make sure things aren't too bright or too dark.

I didn't go too far into the detail of this drawing, I could have brought out a lot more by concentrating on the main points, adding specular lighting, and sharper edges. Maybe even some horns or spikes would have looked cool. But to be honest I didn't particularly like the drawing.



This is where I left it:

And this is with the Value Check layer on. As you can see the armour looks darker than the skin, this is because the 'Local Value' of the armour is, and will be darker than the skin. As Feng Zhu describes, a black object compared to a white object(ie. a laptop) is always going to be darker.

As you can see, although in the colour image the armour on his left arm looks like it's brighter, but the light values are the same the top of his head as it reflects the same amount.

Gangnam Style!

Shamefully with my Southpark animation I did the Gangnam Style dance.

I had to stop due to issues with 3DS max constantly crashing and a few more issues with child and parenting (moving wrong bits!)

But here it is:

 

 

The model was built by extruding lines, and I created my own condensed texture map:

 



Light Values and adding Colour

So it's been a while since I've added something to my blog. I'm currently working on a few really cool things including a South Park animation, a FPS Game!, and a little bit of programming. So keep checking back and these will hopefully soon be here.

Any way. I've just finished this and I can't wait to share it with everyone as I'm pretty happy with the results.

Today we were given this line drawing produced originally by Jordu Schell:

We were then asked to shade it, and colour it. It was important that we got tonal value correct before shading, other wise it would have looked a mess when we coloured it. This was a very fun exercise and I can't wait to do another. Here is my final outcome:

Light Studies

The topic of the day (keeping perspective in mind), was Light. It was about how light bounces off different shapes etc. Provided with the reference image I've added to the bottom of this post, we had to draw the monster, concentrating on the shading we did, whilst picking out the light.

Pumpkin Man!

The shin bone's connected to the, Knee bone. The Knee bone's connected to the, Thigh Bone. The Thigh bone's connected to the... well, I don't know! It's so confusing!

Adding bones and rigs was the topic of today's lesson. Starting to dive a little more into the animation side of things now it's starting to get a lot more confusing!

We started off with some tenticle work, I went off on a little tangent as I saw my tenticles looking like horns:

But then we were set the task of riging a 2d image of a pumpkin and then animate him a little. Here's my result!

The Starship Enterprise

Ok, maybe a slightly more basic version.

This is a project we were set in our Visual Design (3D) lesson. It was our first model for us to produce using blueprints.

I focused on keeping it low poly, and did some simple textures for it as well.

Here's a nice interactive spin around:

(NB: This will not work in Internet Explorer)



Here's a video for those on mobile devices or if the Sketchfab application doesn't work:

Coconut Game

Today in Games Encounters we created a simple coconut throwing game that grant's you your last battery (if you remember from my last stage in the game).

I'll let the video do the talking, one extra thing I'll add however, is watch how the coconuts fade before being destroyed!

To download the game CLICK HERE

To download the scripts CLICK HERE

Church

Today was a little bit of a self-directed lesson. We had a task set to model this low poly church, and texture it using the maps provided.

It was a good thing to do as it helped make us think how to create certain parts of geometry. Also it taught us about symmetrical textures only needing to be half the full image. When uvw mapping you can flip the texture. Being able to do this saves memory and decreases render time.

Generator (Almost there)

So today I worked on this generator. The hardest part was the texturing. This is one of the first models I've built where I've edited a lot of the textures in Photoshop, working them until I thought the looked acceptable.

I could have spent weeks getting the textures right but you just have to take a step back sometimes.

Here's a little video I made of the generator exported into Unity.

I still need to add a few more things to it. I want to add power lines coming out of the generator and into a power box attached to the bunker. As I'll also be changing the batteries for Fuel tanks, and you'll need to get the generator working to open the doors instead. ;)

Silhouettes

Today's lesson was about learning the technique of drawing Silhouettes.

Not much to be said about this other than we were inspired by Feng Zhu, and that I found it very disappointing when I didn't produce work similar to his!

Charging Up

Tonight I have produced a short video showing you around my current Game Scene we're creating in Unity in our Friday 'Game Encounter' lessons.

This lesson was more about scripting, and we created a simple battery that we could pick up. After 4 batteries the door would then unlock for us to open.

After we created our own 'house', in my case a Bunker. This was to practice exporting and importing from 3DS Max, and applying our scripts to those models.

Any way, I'll let the video do the talking (no seriously, I did a commentary). If you want to download what I've done so far, head over to this link, unzip the folder after downloading it, and run the unity file: 

Click Here to download my game so far

Flying Through Space

Ok, so it's not Felix, but this asteroid was built in today's lesson.

The purpose of it was to practice a new modifier called "Noise". Essentially it just randomly displaces the polygons which is great at creating random structure for landscapes and rocks.

In this render I put in a camera and attached the point it follows to the asteroid. Creating quite a movie like scene.

I also put a subtle 3 point lighting system, and changed  their intensities and colour to help represent the solar system lights coming at it.

Some Drawing

So this is a quick post of a few drawings.

Firstly this one. I'm not particularly happy with this one. It was done in our life drawing class, and you probably can't make it out but it's a close up for skeleton ribs. It needed a lot more tone and depth, and took way too long. The only good thing was I counted the ribs correctly.

 This was a small homework task to draw a gun using perspective. I really struggled with this too. I really didn't understand the text for drawing circles in perspective, and I have no idea what to do for angled parts (like the handle). So I shall be asking Steve for some advice tomorrow.

Finally we have a small study on bugs. These were quick sketches on a selection of bugs. I wanted to explore a few shapes for insects; the bodies, legs, and wings. I found a few common trends in the legs and feet, the bodies also. I'm glad I done these and now I'm thinking about picking one bug, and drawing it in several views to then try and model!

I left it there for the night as I was starting to get annoyed with my drawing - it's definitely not my strong point.

Thankfully it's 3D tomorrow. ;)

Turntable render

This is the same model as shown in the last post. However this time it is rendered in a 'Turntable' style.

This helps show the viewer you model un-textured, the wireframe, and textured, all in just a few full 360 rotations.

Take a Break

Just to practice the Multi/Sub-Object maps:

Chick Peas (Multi/Sub-Object Maps)

Using Multi/Sub-Object Maps was today's lesson. We learnt how to apply UVW Map Modifying to our objects/planes, and apply the correct mapping setting to project our texture correctly.

So here it is:

 

30min(ish) Mixed Media Sketch

Just a quick mixed media sketch to get me back into drawing. Shall hopefully be doing 2 drawings/sketches/paintings a week.

Abraham Lincoln

Mediums used:

• Watercolour
• Pencil (2B & 3B)
• Fine Liner (0.4mm)
• Chalk

Lesson 2, Game Encounters

I am LOVING this lesson right now. I'm really getting into creating scenes, the atmosphere, and the interaction between the player and the world.

Today we were introduced to scripting. I'll keep this blog short, but watch the video as I have created a commentary for it!

These are the scripts I created today:

doorCollide.js

cutScene.js

lightingFire.js

Spinning Matchbox.js

Looking forward to the next lesson!

Palm Tree

We were set a small brief to create a textured palm tree using some of the techniques we learnt in yesterday lessons.

The key things we were re-capping with this brief, was applying textures and using an opacity texture to see though the leaves.

The texture's I used weren't amazing, but for a quick palm tree model I don't think it's too bad!

Shiney sweets!

So Steve Brown (My lecturer) suggested making the icing and sweets shiney!

Looks much better :)

This is what my material editor looks like now:

Gingerbread Man

On our second lesson in Visual Design (3D), we worked on a gingerbread man image. We learnt how to extract from a line after drawing around it.

Today, on our third lesson, we went back to using Stardard Primitives converted to Editable Poly's. We then push and pulled verts, edges and polys - as well as extruding and beveling them to create a rough outline. With this then created we applied several modifiers (Such as Turbo Smooth) to fine tune the shape we wanted.

This gave us a much better model to work with, containing much better edge rings/loops, and clearer topography.

I applied a basic texture to mine, as well as a very simple bump map that you probably can't see very well from my render:

 

 Here are my final outputs: