Week3_Jelly, Cars and Jelly Cars

Things are cruising along now.  It's a little strange thinking that its only week 3 though, previous terms have felt rather chill in comparison to this terms week 3.  Texturing and Shading was a lot of fun this week really looking forward to seeing how things progress throughout the term.

Just a quick side note, I want to keep this blog about the work I do at Gnomon but The US Government just passed an Executive order concerning Immigration.  Currently I am totally unaffected but it was still a little scary to see it happen. I really hope it doesn't affect the hard working international contingent at Gnomon or damage our chances of getting employed after we graduate :*( 

But anyway back to the pretty pictures :)

This week for Texturing and shading Matt gave us the above car model to texture and the below wine glass.  It was pretty surprising to me to realise exactly how many materials can make up a single object, but putting it all together was a lot of fun and with Matt's lighting rig it all looks soooo pretty!

The glass was kinda fun too, I wanted to experiment a little with liquids so I modeled a martini glass.  The liquid was a little tricky and I'm not sure I got it exactly right so I am hoping to get a little advice in class next week.

Intro to Maya is coming along too.  I nearly have everything modeled so next step will be UV'ing  Week 4's class got canceled though so I have a little more time to refine my modeling before Max teaches us how to UV properly in Maya.

For Digital Painting we were looking at Sub Surface Scattering (SSS).  The assignment was to paint a desert and drink, back lit, to show off the SSS. After a couple of hours of painting this I was super hungry :p

Compositing was all about gaming this week but I still managed to fit in a Bunny :D

For Character Design I refined two of my six characters from last week based on the crit from class.  The class was a little bare since we spent the whole time just looking through homework, I got some great feedback but since alphabetically I am waaaay down near the bottom I tend to get rushed feedback... this has been happening through my entire time at Gnomon.  It's almost enough to tempt me to go back to my childhood name...... but not quite enough (not even gonna write it in the blog :p )

Anyway onward to week 4 complete with fluffy animal painting, VFX presentations, UV'ing, and maybe BB8 (don't know yet but previous terms have worked with him for Texturing and Shading XD)

Week 2_The Circle of Hell

Phew this week was pretty tough.  We all entered the circle of hell this week with Intro to Maya trying to line up our digital cameras to the reference photos.  Its hard to explain but it is a much harder job than it sounds.  In essence there are three main things that can determine if your camera fits the photo: camera focal length, camera position and the accuracy of your geometry.  I managed to get mine finished but it was a trial.

And here it is :D

Thankfully Advanced Digital Painting was a really fun break from Maya this week.  Our assignment was to paint a metal weapon.  I am really happy with the final look of this guy the work I did over break helped so much.

I started off thinking about who I was designing the weapon for.  I liked the idea of using some of Darius's shape language, from League of Legends, but making something a little more playful.  I used the approach I picked up from Advanced Character Design to quickly iterate on some forms before combining a couple together to make the final look.

After that I build a couple of texture balls to represent the different materials in the lighting set up I wanted.  From there is was just lots of rendering.  

Finally had my first Intro to Texturing class after last weeks cancellation.  The homework this week was pretty fun, mostly just playing around in Vray.  We were all given a pretty cool lighting set up so thankfully all I had to worry about was the material rather than all that complex lighting set up.

Intro to Compositing week 2!! I am really enjoying this class, it is so much fun to just play around for a few hours every week.  This week I tried out a teleport effect for bunnies! enjoy!

No Advanced Character this week which gave me more time for Maya phew! This is kinda similar to Term 3 when we kept getting super lucky breaks with class cancellations that seemed to coincide with tough weeks from other classes yay :)  For History of VFX we watched the remake of Jungle Book.... This wouldn't have bothered me if I didn't find out that the other class got to watch Warcraft! Noooooo  I know that a lot of people didn't like the Warcraft movie but I really enjoyed it, I would love to analyse and make a presentation on some of the FX in that movie.  Instead though I have to struggle through awkward child acting and a story that I didn't really like in the original.  I do agree that the CG characters, fur and lighting were beautiful so it's not all bad just super jealous of the other class :*(

Week 1: Picking up speed

This week was a pretty big one.  I had my first intro to Maya class which was really intense! but at the same time very inspiring.  I like the no nonsense attitude of the class, I am sure I will learn a lot from this one!  Anyway onto the pics

For Advanced Character Design I had to design 6 characters based on the same archetypal base.  So I went for the gruff heroic legendary fighter and his physical antithesis.  The relationship I was picturing was a father son dynamic, quite like Stoick and Hiccup from How to Train your Dragon.  For the process the prescribed approach was a little different from my first character design class.  This time I worked purely in silhouette first just picturing the details within the larger shapes.  From there when I felt I had the shape language for each character down I moved onto color and a little value.  This week is pretty rough which allowed me to iterate on the designs quite a few times before settling.  The next few weeks will be spent refining one of these pair.

For Advanced Digital painting we started much like last term with some exercises.  These were focused on replicating lighting scenarios with different materials at different times of day.  It was pretty cool to think of the physics behind how we perceive color and how light changes throughout the day.  Next weeks homework however is to design a metal weapon think WOW or LOL style! So I am pretty excited about that yay!

For Intro to Maya the first weeks assignment was to collect a series of photographs to use for the Midterm project which is a replication of a photograph as a 3D environment.  I am going with the above image which is an interior shot behind the bar of the Green Dragon Inn from Hobbiton! The set actually exists and is a tourist destination in New Zealand!! Since I am still grounded in the US for the next two years I will have to settle for visiting it digitally for now.

Our Texturing and Shading class was cancelled this week so no update on that but I am looking forward to seeing what our syllabus is for that class soon.  For Intro to Compositing the brief was to build something in After Effects that uses a countdown but is also entertaining.  I went through a few ideas before I settled on the above video.  I think I am really going to enjoy this class. My uploads will probably be very low resolution though because of bloggers limitations but you will hopefully get the gist of what I was going for.

Anyway back to work!

Year Two Begins!

First day back at Gnomon after a great break and after my first Intro To Maya class I am pretty fired up!! So here is a quick post about some fun mini projects I did over break before I dive back into Gnomon Life.

I got a BloodBowl Starter set for Christmas and I spent quite a few hours painting some of my new Ork team! The classes at Gnomon like color theory, viscom etc actually helped a lot! comparing these guys to my previous stuff I can see a big improvement :)

Over break I did a little work including working along with Kelvin S Tan's Gumroad tutorial on hand painted textures.  I didn't quite find the time to take it to fully finished but I learned a lot about painting in this style.  I may pick up this guy again just to try to take it further before I start doing my own models.  Since I do want to get a lot better at this style of modeling and texturing I will probably be doing more of these personal projects when I can find time :)

Finals!! woop!!

So tired... Just handed in my last project for this term phew! It's been a tough couple of weeks getting all this done but I made it and now I get a couple of weeks rest before I move into Year 2!
That feels really crazy to write down! Year 2 it really doesn't feel like its been that long since my very first post here at Gnomon! but looking back I can't believe how much I have improved! Well onwards to Term 5 and Intro to Maya! Wish me luck

Creature Final, Just like for the midterm the final was just refining the value painting but adding color and textures.  I still think that painting colors on top of value seems to go a little muddy, its more obvious in the below paintings for my Digital Painting class.  Still I really like these two creepy spidery creatures! They were a lot of fun to design and render.  Creature class has been so much fun this term! Kyle was a great teacher and I think the class was structured with enough freedom for us to really experiment with some cool creatures while simultaniously being controled and intense enough to really push me to the next level.  Combined with the foundation from Zoology last term I feel like I have created some really cool kinda nasty monsters!

This term I really tried to step away from cute and bunny like for my work just to see what I would come up with... Seems like the opposite of cute for me is gnarly and spider like.. makes sense! :p

A little more work on my Midterm but most of the last couple of weeks were spent on the final

This was a much more fun scene to design and paint! Thankfully I have improved a lot since my digital painting from Van Arno's costume figure drawing final!! I went straight to color with this one, after doing a small value thumbnail.  I think this preserves the colors better but takes a lot longer and is trickier to think through.  I hope all this practice will help though when I try out hand painted 3D textures in the future!

Alex was a great teacher, I really feel like I got a tonne out of this class in terms of color, presentation, composition and story telling! It am pretty proud of my final work though I really am looking forward to advanced digital painting next term to see how far I can take it!

Film history finals were really fun! We all had to give a 10-20 minute presentation on a chosen film.  I went with one of my favorites 'Requiem for a Dream' and focused mostly on Aronofsky's story telling style.  I think I may have grossed people out by showing the scene where Harry injects his infected arm with heroin though... but it was really crucial to the point I was making :p

Everyone gave really cool presentations and it made me want to go back and re-watch a few of my old favorites! I especially liked the review of Megamind and had to watch it that night while I was working on my vehicle final.

Jay also left us with some great finishing words about life and what it is we will be providing the world with in the future.  I wont spoil them by paraphrasing them in this blog but trust me they were pretty inspiring.

I went for a post apocalypse pick up truck style car for my final.  It is a kind of light Mad Max style.  I turned the car round from the thumbnail to show off the front rather than the back and I redesigned it a little to feel more unified.  Vehicle has been a pretty tough class this term but I have really learnt so much.  I am so happy I took this class and that I had the time to really commit to the homework and get as much out of it as I could.  The reviews in class were also really helpful, I was so glad that Shawn could give me such honest reviews.  I get the feeling some teachers at Gnomon will sugar coat their reviews so it was a nice change of pace.

Environment took a little bit of a back seat this term.  It was a great class but just because it was scheduled so close to vehicle class I really had to try hard to schedule time other than the night before to work on the homework :p  Most weeks that wasn't too tough but a few times when my files corrupted it was environment that suffered the most.  Still I am pretty happy with how these two finals turned out.  I resisted the temptation to combine my vehicle final with my second environment painting.  It seemed like a good idea but I guess I wanted to get a little more mileage from this term so I decided to try to cram another painting into finals week instead XP 

Both pieces are from my Skaven origin story.  The top one is from the Skaven sabotaging dock equipment in a human city where the second painting is the summoning of the Horned Rat Deamon (the god of the Skaven).

I almost cant believe how much progress I have made with Environment and Digital Painting this term! Thank you D and Alex!!

D was also super cool for our last class and bought us all pizza! I also found a little time to bake some cookies for the final class!

The last sculpture class was pretty chill in the end.  We spent the class working on filling in the left hand side of the torso and then tweaking a few things before we left our models to be graded.  This was actually a pretty cool class I am glad they schedule it the way they do with the Sculpture 1 class being much more intense and demanding.  This class felt more like a master copy exercise, with a whole term to focus on just the torso and face and having everyone do the same so we can critique each others was a great learning experience.  I feel far more confident working in clay now, I can't wait to see how it translates to Zbrush!

OK time to sleep now! C you in 3 weeks!

Week 8 Catchup

Just a quick post to catch back up, Finals is in full swing here with 2 weeks left to do 6 paintings 1 sculpture and a presentation :p

 Gearing up for the creature final I had to come up with a creature description, kind of like a project brief, describing some of the physical characteristics of my creature.  I decided to have a little fun with that and designed a data log from a character in my creatures universe who is reluctantly hunting these things.

 These are some of the preliminary sketches for what direction I want to take my creature in.  For the final I have to design two separate creatures that both fit the above description.  I am thinking of going with the far right and far left of the bottom sketches.  I will probably tweak these designs a little and push them to fit the description better.

 For the official midterm I had to finish 5 renders.  I chose to take a few of my previous designs and fix them based on the class feedback and then try to polish them a little more.  I am pretty happy with the design work in both the hatchback and the sports car but the tank is by far my favorite!

More development on my Digital Painting midterm.  Not a whole lot more to do to finish this painting off.  I will probably add some more textural detail to the highlighted elements in this painting and maybe try to push the vines to be a little more 'viney'

The other part of this weeks assignment was to develop some thumbnails for the final painting.  I am going with the end of the Blue Light story where the protagonist summons the mannequin to exact his revenge on the king and royal guard.  I am tweaking the story to push the sense of danger here so rather than summon a little dwarf character I want my protagonist to summon a deadly golem.  Either as a large muscly looking creature or a nimble deadly one.  Lastly I really want to have all three characters in the composition the knight, king and golem.  I think the best comp for this is probably the top left but we will see.

I polished up my midterm for Environment, I went with the dining scene for my infrastructure but I decided to add a little more gross to it with the strange warpstone infused goo being served to the Skaven yum!

Sculpture and film history have been going well too, I am going with Requiem for a Dream as my final presentation and since my midterm paper on Donnie Darko went so well I will probably stick the the same formula.  In sculpture the torso sculpt is coming along, the initial block in was tricky but from there the rest is much easier.  Hopefully I will remember to take a photo of it soon for the next post.

Week 6 : Midterms

Week 6 was another pretty intense week.  The vehicle midterm was pretty tough! but I managed to get it all done :) I have probably mentioned it in this blog before but at some point it is expected for Gnomon students to have to sacrifice work for one class to do their best in another.  I agree this is probably the way to go since I think it is better to be really good at a few things rather than be mediocre at a lot.  Still I have not had to make that choice yet (despite coming close a few times) but this term has really helped me accept that reality and I hope I will be able to make that choice in the future when the time comes.

In Creature design we are done with our 3 little guys we have been working on since week 1 and before we start the Dark World project we were given the assignment to transform a portrait photo into a creature.  I went with a mermaid theme and all those years of texturing things for my architecture class really helped :) I am pretty happy with the final outcome I was even brave enough to push the color saturation a little rather than stay in the safer muted color range :p

Digital painting bugged me a little this week.  I was really looking forward to this assignment and after the self portrait I did last week I was really hoping for a good result.... I am really disappointed with this work :( the thing that bugs me the most though is that it looked better before I tried to pull it all together a lot of the face planes got blurred out with lighting and color correction and I didn't notice it happening I don't really have the time to go back and do it again but I might try making a few more corrections before class. Still I have a lot of other assignments to do, maybe I will just do a few more exercises like this over break instead.

The Vehicle mid term was pretty tough this week I spent a long time iterating on each of the above themes before I settled with these three designs.  Still I am really happy with the end result I am still impressed with how much I am improving in this class.  The skills are also totally translatable to product design and to rendering and sketching in general.

Environment design was pretty fun too.  I am starting to get a better grasp on working with color.  I tried using overlay layers for color this week instead of using my value as a hard light layer.  The results are a little muddy but I think they are good enough for color experiments and now I can paint on top of these layers for the final piece.  The thumbnails are still all set in the Skaven universe but the assignment was to design 'infrastructure' pieces as a world building exercise.  My favorite comp narratively is the Skaven nest, the strange green glowing pots pouring liquid warpstone over normal rats to transform them! but the composition is a little flat and repetitive so I wont be taking that one to a finished painting.  I will probably pick one of the kitchen pieces instead.

In Sculpture 2 we finished the head and will be moving onto the torso next week :) I still have a few things I want to fix on the head but I am quite happy with where it is now.