Fish Rigging Homework - Visual Design 14/15

For this weeks homework we had the task of rigging a fish based on the one we modeled in our first bit of Maya homework and then animating a swimming motion. In the tutorial we were supplied with a model of the fish hence the different texture from mine. We had to create the joints and then edited the skin mesh so that only the parts we wanted to move actually moved (without this other parts of the body were getting dragged along with it and it looked unnatural).

I believe I learnt a few more valuable tools with this homework and I now know how to apply it to my own personal models.

Tank Homework - Visual Design 14/15

This weeks homework task was design an armored vehicle, I'm quite a big fan of tanks so I thoroughly enjoyed this task.

I set about making a mood board bearing in mind that my final piece had to be in two point perspective and I also had to use the lighting technique that we learnt in our previous session. I put together the following images.

Mood board

Here are my sketches for my tanks, I started off with a few simple ones and tried to re-do them with a bit more detail. I usually do this step in my sketchbook, but I decided that I needed to practice doing rough sketches on the computer with my tablet. I liked the idea of the bottom right tank because It is much like a World War 1 tank and this is something I took great interest in at school.

Sketches 

After picking the tank I wanted to follow up on I quickly set out some perspective lines and set them to an opacity of 10% so that I could see what I was doing, whilst also keeping the perspective. I was happy with my design and was looking forward to adding the shading/lighting to it as I knew this was going to be a good challenge to me because I went for a more rounded tank with wheels rather than a more blocky shape.

Lineart & Perspective lines

I added one whole back layer of a 50% grey and then worked in the darker and lighter areas of the tank. Overall I am really happy with my end result and I think the line art looks great with the different shades of lighting. I left the perspective lines on as required and also added a basic shadow.

Final Design

I was tempted to see what It would look like with a colour over the top so I grabbed a medium pink and changed the layer to colour burn. I feel this really shows off the different shades on the curve of the wheel and the turret. I've also never seen a pink tank... so there you go!

A bit of colour

Turret Rigging (Session 6) - Visual Design 14/15

In today's session we had to animate our turrets within Maya. The process was rather simple, although this animation is only a few seconds long, I can imagine a more complex animation being a lot more difficult.
In my opinion I am understanding the 3D side of the course better than the 2D visual design. So as usual I am looking forward to the next session.

Insectoid Homework - Visual Design 14/15

 In this task we had two weeks to design our own insectoid. My general idea was to aim for a praying mantis, but with wings and blades for hands.
So I got to work on my mood board and researched insectoids as I'd never really hear of them before.

Mood board

I then sketched out the few parts that I wanted my insectoid to have. I was going to have him holding a blunt axe but I ended up going for blade hands as I thought this was cooler.

Sketches

I jumped straight in and got to work with the blueprints of my guy, I am generally happy with how he turned out and I think i got the proportions right for each side. I used Photoshop's rulers to help me see this.

Blueprints - 'Front' & 'Side'

After finishing my blueprints I started on my three quarter view, to be honest I really struggled with this piece and I know this is an area that I will need to improve on in the near future. I liked the design of my insect but there is definitely room for improvement.

Final Insectoid

My insectoid is a Praying Mantis... called 'Prantis', but in a former life he was a human. The only thing that has been carried over from that life was his brain and his leg muscles. Prantis spends his days guarding the Temple of Pretentious Mantis'. He is far superior to his Mantis friends because they are still merely sticks.

Gas Pump Homework - Visual Design 14/15

The week before last we were given the task to model and texture an old American gas pump using Maya to model and Photoshop to texture.
The process took a while as this was the first bit of work we have done from start to finish on our own.
I learnt a lot more about the various tools in Maya including the 'PSD Network' and the 'point light'.
Overall I am happy with my final result and the tutorial from Lynda.com gave me a great insight on how to get a great looking rust texture whilst also updating the bump and specular maps to give it a nice looking 3D effect.

Colour Map

Bump Map

Specular Map

Final Model

Perspective Homework - Visual Design 14/15

My homework this week was to create a one point perspective following a YouTube video that we were provided with. Because I had never done perspective work before I also followed the beginner tutorial and created the room perspective.

I enjoyed this task, but I do believe my beginner task turned out better. I tried to use water colours on my final piece and quite frankly... I think I suck at them haha. This task gave me the basic understanding on perspective work.

This homework task will help me out for later bit of work that require more points of perspective.

Room Perspective

Final Perspective

Minni Maan (Update 1) - Games Encounters 14/15

I have been working on my first game 'Minni Maan'. In my last post about this game I showed my one sheet and a very simple model of the house that I made in Maya that I was going to be using.
Since then I have made a few more models, added a simple animation that will be used for my first triggered event and also a simple script to hide a plane so that the player doesn't fall through the ladders gaps.
Here is the storyboard for my game.

Storyboard

Here are the images of my updates and an animated gif of my animation.

The view when you start

A loop of the ladder animation

The shed

The worktop, sink and drainer included!

A view of the kitchen from the other side

Turret Detail (Session 5) - Visual Design 14/15

In today's session we were given the task to bake a texture map onto the turret model that we had been working on. We used a program called 'xNormal' to generate the normal and ambient occlusion maps. 

I then took the generated maps into Photoshop and worked on it there. This is my favourite piece of work so far as I create bespoke textures for each layer of detail as I thought this would look better than just pasting one texture over the whole thing. I really like the end result and look forward to the next session!

Rusty old turret

Speed Painting (Session 5) - Visual Design 14/15

In this session our task was to copy a picture whilst working at speed in a 2 hour time slot.

Although I didn't manage to finish this piece in the time slot given, I am still happy with the progress that I made considering I've never tried to work at this speed before.

I think I managed to get the perspective of it pretty much right and I also don't think my colours were that far off.

We were told to upload the piece as it was when the time was up.

Original Picture

My piece

Monster Homework - Visual Design 14/15

Our homework this week was to design a monster for Halloween. I put together a quick mood board of a few things that took my interest. I decided quickly that I wanted to sketch something based on a skeleton or bones, but I also though the idea of blood would be good. This would give the viewer the idea that It has only recently died (hopefully).

Before even making the mood board I had decided that I wanted my monster to be controlled by a smaller demon. I don't usually do this, but based on the ideas that I had and the mood board I jumped straight in and did only a single sketch for my final piece, where as usually I would sketch out a few other ideas. I'm really happy with the final result and I can really see an improvement in my work over the last few weeks.

Mood board

  

Sketch

Line art & base colours

Shadows, blood & nails

Finished piece with grunge background