Unity: Day One of the Quarantine Rebuild

Well, my whole Unity project was wiped out, somehow, and it doesn't look like there's any way of getting it back. So I spent the majority of today commencing the rebuild of my Winter Project level. Progress is moving on swiftly, and you know, it's probably going to be better than the original eventually. This has given me the chance to add more detail through the implementation of Maya models, and a lot of design choices I would have made in the original if I could have like building interiors and a larger sense of scale. So there's the silver lining. Sometimes, building a better world means tearing the old one down.

Proportions: Elf

Absolutely love how these turned out. I've always been aware of the head proportions rule, but I've never put it into effect or to good use, so when we looked at it closely in class, I thought it would be a good opportunity to give it a chance. I'm very happy with the results, and I'd probably say these are some of the best drawings I've done, definitely the best digital ones. I just felt a lot more comfortable drawing anatomy and the figure when I had the rough guidelines for proportions, which surprised me. I thought I'd feel restricted, but it instead made my drawings much more believable and a much better quality. I'll definitely be using it to proportion my drawings from now on, even when I'm drawing creatures and fantasy characters.

Proportions: Elf Progress

Proportions: Dwarf

For some proportions practice, we had to draw an elf and a dwarf. This is the dwarf, really happy with how this came out. About to make a start on the elf.

Doodle: Abbas

A character from the book I'm writing, thought I'd sketch him out and practice my Photoshop.

Perspective and Halfway to Black Practice - Simple Hover Tank

This week we were given the task of practicing our skills of two-point perspective as well as the 'Halfway to Black' method of lighting and shading. We were told to keep our designs simple, with clean, crisp, straight lines so that we could focus on the perspective and the shading, so as a result, my final design is fairly basic with very little detail. I attempted to add detail and some colour on another layer but it retracted from the clean aesthetic and took the focus away from the main intention of this task. I did a number of sketches in my sketchbook to try out the perspective and move the horizon line and vanishing points around. In these sketches, I had some designs which, whilst more detailed and perhaps more interesting than my final design, were too organic and had too many curves and rounded edges, which made this task difficult to do effectively. As a result, I tried to stay away from curves as much as possible. Here are some of the sketches.

I did like this design, and the shape is interesting, but the curved 'wings' made it difficult to show the perspective well, and they tended to distort. I also made the mistake of drawing the boundaries of the page first, rather than drawing the tank first and then planning the composition.

This one is kind of just a large, aggressive iron. It's pretty horrendous and was the reason I steered away from curves for my final design. Though having said that, the perspective looks okay on it, so that's something I suppose.

This was by far my favourite. The perspective and shading looks just right in this sketch so I decided to take it forward. If I was better at drawing curves in perspective, I would have put wheels on this one to add a bit of much needed detail, but I suppose that'll come with practice and confidence eventually. With my final design, I picked out the key lines and made them clean on Photoshop. I also simplified the shading into flat colours as we were told. I'm fairly happy with the outcome, although this looks a little too basic and generic for my taste, I would have liked to add a lot more detail but I didn't want to compromise the overall aesthetic.

Doodle : Outpost Ambush

Just a little doodle.

Maya: Gas Pump

My textured gas pump. I struggled with this one but I think I'll come back and refine it later on.

Unity: Quarantine Progress

I'm making progress with my Unity level. I've added in some better lighting and I'm beginning to script and animate my sequence. I'm liking how it's looking at the minute, however I want to add some more detail and atmospheric animations like paper fluttering in the wind and leaves falling. I'd also like to find a way to animate my big clock on the front of the building, that would be cool as hell.

Sketchbook: Insectoid

For the past two weeks we were tasked with creating an insectoid creature. The aim was to put together a mood board, draw up some sketches and roughs in our sketchbook, then produce a series of final images; we had to create a front and side view of the insectoid, as well as a final three quarter view. I chose to focus on my favourite insect, the Rhino Beetle, as well as using other beetles for inspiration. This is the mood board I was working with.

Using this as inspiration, I drew up a number of quick sketches and began to find a direction to take my design. I started with a simple beetle, and evolved it into a creature that stood upright.

I was very fond of this design, it looked powerful and intimidating, whilst still retaining the key insect elements I had earlier focused on. Using this sketch, I developed it further and went on to produce the front and side views of my design.

I wanted to challenge myself for this task so I chose to do all of my work digitally, rather than using hand drawn lineart as a base like I usually do. This was difficult for me, but I am happy with the result. I particularly like the front view here, as it helped me to get a clear sense of proportion and scale, which helped to inform my final three quarter view painting.

The final painting was done entirely in Photoshop, and whilst it did challenge me, I am very happy with the result. I decided to add in small hints of environment and lighting, just to add some context to the piece, as I feel my previous pieces and designs have been lacking in context and interesting backgrounds. I initially had some rudimentary weapons and tools being used by the insectoid, but the giant horn seemed to make them feel a little redundant, so I cut them out and made him into more of a hulking brute. - - - The Rhino Beetle Brute is a species of highly evolved, giant beetles. They live underground, carving catacombs into the dry earth below using their large scooped horns on their heads. They are a naturally aggressive species and protect their territory with extreme force. In some instances, they have been used as bodyguards and simple workforce slaves, which further sparks their hatred for all those that oppose them.

Sketchbook: Halloween Monster

This week's theme was a halloween monster. Needless to say, I had a lot of fun with this one. I drew inspiration from my favourite monster games, paying particular attention to Darksiders. Darksiders has incredible monster design and art style, so this was my starting point and featured heavily on my mood board.

I used this to influence my designs and sketched out some pretty grotesque fat monsters. I also did a bit of research on 'what humans find creepy' and 'why things are creepy' and found that a lot of creepiness comes from ambiguity. For instance, masks which show no emotion or prevent us from understanding what the person is feeling, they're creepy. So with this in mind, I also sketched out some creatures in masks. One featured a gas mask which I quite liked but the overall design wasn't creepy or monstrous enough for my taste. I eventually settled on this design. I got to keep the hulking grotesque figure, as well as carry forward a bit of the emotionless face work I did, and hey, I threw in a huge mouth belly, because why not, it's Halloween!

I went through my familiar process on Photoshop of scanning in the lineart, adding in block colour, adding shadow values and then finalising with some extra detail. With this one though, I wanted it to look a little less shiny and a little more gritty and rough, so rather than over painting, I decided to go back to the lineart layer and add detail through there. The extra lines makes the creature look a bit more rough and frantic, rather than a neat and precise finish like my tentacle creature.

This is the final design.