Visual Arts and Animation: Steampunk Design

It was Steampunk week this week! Praise be! This task was awesome, got to finally visualise a character I've had in my story I'm writing for a long while now. My story is a fantasy/steampunk book, but for the sake of this task I ramped up the steampunk influence a little to suit the task at hand. I toyed around with a few concepts for this one, using a mood board of different steampunk games, films and books, but the largest influence for the style I went for for this one was a comic book I was reading at the time, which is why this ended up having a very distinct comic book vibe to it; this was something I actually really liked and I feel this is sort of my natural style. So for the character of Abbas, the seedy advisor to the King, I wanted a fairly regal and lavish appearance for him, so I made sure his clothing and colour scheme reflected that part of his character. In terms of his clothing, it is very typical steampunk attire, waistcoats, buttons galore, goggles, the usual, but I think I managed to achieve a fairly distinct aesthetic for him. I am very fond of his minature cape, and the general pose he is in; I spent a lot of time toying around with positions and poses, deciding whether to give him any weapons, but I think for Abbas, the thing that should be most evident is that his greatest weapon is his wit and intellect. He schemes and plots to get his own way, and his manipulation of the King allows him to rule the city without anybody knowing. He is blind, and uses a small mechanical bird as his eyes in the city. I quite liked the idea of making him blind, as it adds something to his look that I felt was missing. In terms of colours, I went for a fairly flat, cel shaded look, but I used the method of overpainting and overlaying textures to make his fabric very detailed, just to add some differentiation to the texture of his clothes. Overall, I think this is not only my best design yet, but also my best piece yet, as it feels very personal to me. It's nice to see ideas that I've had for a long time finally see the light of day now that I have learnt the means to effectively create them.

Personal Work: Lego Aquaman

For the reveal of the new Aquaman for the upcoming Justice League film, I thought it'd be a bit of fun to post a Lego version of the character poster.

Girl Walking Animation

Kind of turned her into Harley Quinn...ah well.

Visual Arts and Animation: Lava Creature

This week's last was to create a 'dark, rocky lava creature with a cracked surface'. I really enjoyed this task as I got to design something cool looking and put some of our most recent Photoshop techniques into practice to make something I'm very proud of. The initial design sketches yielded some interesting results. I toyed with the idea of having a lava lizard with rocky scales and a big mouth pouch full o' lava, I also sketched out another creature, armoured and evil looking, but both of these sketches and ideas felt more like individual characters rather than creatures.

I'm actually very fond of both of these designs, and I'll likely work them up in the future and use them for something else. The design I settled on for this however, was something a little more traditional. I went for a lava rock golem, as I felt it best showed off the lava aspect of the creature designs. I also like how even from the sketch, it looks as though it could have erupted from the ground with cracks rubble covering its body. This, combined with the opportunity to test out the skills we learnt in the most recent lesson made me choose this design.

I then went about recreating this pencil sketch in Photoshop. I started by laying down some flat grey colours, and using a number of Multiply layers to add in different levels of tone. The addition of shadow really made the flat, sharp edges of the rock pop out, and the highlights helped to make the shapes more defined and detailed. I began toying around with the colour of the rock, and the lava within the creature.

After deciding to stick to a traditional colour, I used a combination of painting, lava textures and images and layer styles to make my lava. I then found a nice stylised lava environment on the internet, which I dropped in the background to add some context and sense of place, and it really completes the image. I definitely want to create some of my own landscapes and environments in the future, but for this piece, the one I chose works very well.

The Molten Golem Brutes are sentient lava beings wrought from the core of a volcano and enslaved, used as a personal army for the highest bidder. The creatures are naturally aggressive and dangerous; their ability to shift and change their shape due to their molten lava core makes them a lethal opponent to even the most skilled fighter.

Visual Arts and Animation: T Rex Preliminary Mesh

For Robin's Maya lesson we started to model a Tyrannosaurus Rex. This was a basic low detail, low poly mesh, but the shape is already present which is quite nice. *UPDATE* Managed to finish modelling the T Rex, struggled with the hands so I decided to leave them rather than compromise the overall quality of the mesh and the tidy edge flow. Very happy with the result.

Visual Arts and Animation: Lava Creature - Lesson

Here's the lava creature I created in the lesson from the reference picture. I'm pleased with how he looks, as he's very close to how I first pictured him when I saw the picture. I think the lava effect and composition is very effective. I do prefer the version with the black outlines; it looks like a Borderlands creature, a style I'm very fond of.

Lego Marvel Characters

Sortie: One Sheet

Just finished the first draft of our one sheet. We have settled on the name Sortie, as it is a flying term used to describe a solitary mission with one ship, which sums it up pretty well. Also, compared to our other names, it's great. Happy with how this is looking.

Project Balloon: Marco 3D Model Rough Model.

An initial foray in Mudbox, tried sculpting Marco but it didn't go so well, think he'd be better suited to being modelled in Maya. Excuse the nakedness.

Visual Arts and Animation: Mudbox

We had a guest teacher in today who gave us an introduction to Mudbox and sculpting. I have been waiting to start sculpting more organic shapes for a while so I loved this lesson. I was very pleased with how my dinosaur turned out, and even the little test sphere came out well; I turned it into a planet because why not?