Because magical penguins told me so

Queen

2007-06-06T23:20:00.000+10:00

It has been awhile since I last posted an actual update to this blog. I have been doing a lot of work, I just haven't had much free time to post.

Today Julie-Anne gave me a couple of her finished drawings to colour. I happily accepted them since I enjoy colouring, Photoshop and Painter.

Here is Julie-Anne's original drawing:

For the colour scheme for the clothes, I used this reference image of a Maori grandmother with her granddaughter. I chose it because the colours looked rather regal as a lot of dye would

Here is my current progress. I cleaned the image up for presentation. I work rather messily.

More to appear soonish.

Maori Names

2007-05-31T09:50:00.000+10:00

Here are some links to lists of Maori names and their meanings.

Link 1

Link 2

HUGE Index of names, slightly more authentic

I love Google.

Attn Group

2007-05-31T09:45:00.000+10:00

I sent an important email to everyone. Please check your inboxes!

I'll post interesting stuff on here soon.

2007-04-19T14:18:00.000+10:00

Lots of time being spent on assignments. For Mark's awesome class I've been doing a lot of work on storyboards. I'm finding a lot of difficulty getting a shot that I like. I know the sort of placement I want to put people in, but I keep changing my mind on the camera angles. I guess this is what Mark was trying to prepare us for earlier this semester. I do draw thumbnails for the scenes, but I've ditched a lot of them. So more work to appease the indecisive mind.

Then there's CGI modeling. I've come to realization this week that our group has been slacking quite a bit. While we do have a lot of work done on the characters, the environment itself is pretty much nonexistant. (Though we have plenty of bamboo!) So after class on Tuesday I spent some time quickly building a mountain valley using the knowledge I had gained from my research on mountains in China, randomly moving vertices around to make the piece of terrain look natural, but at the same time ensuring that there was a sense of balance. I was surprised at how quickly I ended up modeling the terrain. I thought it would take longer. I then spent more time on reducing the polygon count from roughly 1000 to just over 400, since for this assignment we have to keep our polygon count low. The next step I will take is paint the skydome and a mountainscape. I actually look forward to digitally painting those. It has been a long while since I last used Painter/Photoshop. I know that I have improved a lot since then.

For the next hefty assignment after this we are doing an artbook featuring a Grimms Brothers' fairytale. My group chose "The Devil with Three Golden Hairs". (Yes, the Devil has more than three hairs.) However, we are altering the theme of the story from a medieval/fantasy to a Polynesian island location, as suggested by Damien. I think the change is good and will give us plenty of imaginative options. After all, no one likes drawing the same old, boring stuff. Also we're changing the age that the boy is said to marry the princess from 14 to 18 since times have changed from the Grimms' days.

Bamboo ho!

2007-04-10T11:44:00.000+10:00

I finished the stalks a week ago, but I'm lazy when it comes to updating things.

29th of March
I started with working in Adobe Illustrator CS2. Vector lines are my friend and make it easier when it comes to duplicating and adjusting the bamboo. Also, I chose Vector lines because since I will be using transparency with my bamboo and I want the border edge to be as nice as possible. No fuzz no fuss.

I started with two separate layers for the stalks. These layers will be separated and placed unto two separate image planes in Maya with some distance between them to create depth. Also, notice the colour of the stalks in the second layer. To improve the feeling of depth I chose to keep the front layer saturated and to desaturate the second layer.

30th of March
I adjusted the stalks as I was told that the bamboo segments actually increase in size as you look down. Again, I am glad that I produced this design in Illustrator as it made fixing the issue relatively easy.

30th of March - 3rd of April
I imported the Illustrator file in Adobe Photoshop CS2 to begin shading it. I struggled for some time with finding an appropiate style to match the game design that my group decided upon. I didn't want to go realistic when the design was exaggerated and simplified. After about five different attempts, I finally found a style that would give texture and life to the bamboo, but at the same time simple enough to become apart of the world. It took me over the course of five days of my busy life to finish shading them.

10th of April
And finally, I brought the images into Autodesk Maya 8.0 for a test render. This is using four image planes. The second and fourth planes are mirrored duplicated of the first and third respectively. I added in a simple textured plane on the bottom as a test ground plane. For now, these little bamboo stalks are done. The leaves, on the other hand, are a completely different story.

Bamboo Research

2007-03-27T17:56:00.000+10:00

In preparation for a day of bamboo painting on image planes for our 3D game design assignment, I have once again used Google Image Search for all of my research needs.

I saved this first image for a couple of reasons. First, our game's colo(u)r (American in me) scheme is rather bright. Here the contrast is extremely high and I think that these bright greens would go in well into our world. Another reason why I saved this image is because there is real depth here. There certainly are a lot of layers of bamboo. For our bamboo patches we will use multiple layers of image planes to add in a sense of depth without adding too many polygons. The last plane will need to really recede into the distance so this image will help me paint that.

I love this image of the random guy. I have no idea who he is or what he's doing. I can only imagine that he has completely lost it.

Random guy aside, I saved this image as height reference. The location we are designing is a Chinese garden. The bamboo would be left to grow fairly freely so it is likely the bamboo would be nearly as high as the bamboo in this photo. Therefore, when we bring all of the elements together, including our humanoid character, we will need to adjust the bamboo accordingly. Also this photos shows me where the leaves of the bamboo start.

Dead bamboo!

Like all things in this world, everything must die one day. Even koi fish. Not to sure about the Bush lineage though... they seem to keep spawning.

In the patches of bamboo I plan to create, I will include a couple of less lively stalks of bamboo. For whatever reason, parasite, foolish man with sword or level 5 water restrictions, they are no longer with us. For this reason I need to understand how they change in color. These particular stalks are much yellower than their green counterparts in the first photo. Also lines separating each segment has browned. In some parts the bamboo has deteriorated a bit more than in other places, which seemed to extend from each line separating the segments. In order to recreate these stalks in my paintings, I will need to use these imperfections to my advantage.

In other news, I went browsing through Borders a week or so ago and came across a nice sale on photo reference books. I ended up picking up a couple of books on animals in general, a book on penguins (big surprise) and another book on symbols from different regions of the world. Of course, I should've bought them after I finished walking around the city instead of tugging them all over the place. Eh.

Chinese Mountains Research

2007-03-19T19:46:00.000+10:00

For our CGI class we were asked to design a game environment with at least one main character, four props and a background. Since our group is designing a Chinese garden I have been looking up research material. I volunteered to design the landscape image which will surround the entire location. Now I know that mountains on different continents look very different. After all, different rock is found in different areas so that mountains in two different areas will not look the same. So I did some searching on Google Image Search (so handy!) and found some photos that other people have taken. Here are some that I collected:

I will use these images as reference when I go into Photoshop to create our background mountains.

2007-03-15T11:29:00.000+10:00

At the moment I'm designing a very simple webcomic. The main character, Lucifer, or Lucien as he prefers to be called, converses with God, who is represented by a glowing ball. That's right, only one character to design and at the moment he remains in the one location, so only one location to design. The emphasis is on the conversation between the two and their gesture. Plus it means I can manage this project more easily to fit between my many university assignments.

Lucien
Fairly physically immature and greatly misunderstood demon type character as in the beginning of the comic he is suddenly borne into existance. By mortal standards, he'd be an young teenager. For that reason I have to draw him young with short, stubby horns on his head. His hair is messy considering he spends most of his life in a rather hot place. I'm giving him hoofs for hands to further the "Devil" look, but still giving him a flesh tone. For clothes, he will wear a dark leather outfit made from the flesh of the dead mortals that surround him.

God
It is common for people to avoid depicting God since there is so much contraversary over Him. I chose a glowing ball of light to depict him. Many people are familiar this symbolism so I think it will be effective. His light will have a slight hue to it. Most of the time it will be blue, but when He gets angry or annoyed it will change to red. The glow will also vary in size depending on his mood.

Location
Despite Dante's last circle, last zone of Hell where Lucifer resides actually being a frozen lake, I still went with common belief that Hell is a fiery wasteland. Stalagmites and stalactites populate the location as a cue that we are in an old, underground cavern, built over thousands of years. Magma covers most of the ground to let the viewer know that we are deep within the Earth. In the background, there are rottening corpses symbolic of those cast out of Heaven and sent to Hell. As far as color goes, a lot of red and orange hues. It is an unpleasant place, devoid of water.

I know that not everyone appreciates such pokings at religious beliefs. My goal is show the viewer that there are two sides to every story. We, as a society, are so quick to judge before we even view the evidence.

Distancing One's Self

2007-03-14T19:37:00.000+10:00

One of the hardest things I find with any type of artwork I do, whether it be drawing or photography or even writing is distancing myself from my artwork. I try very hard to not become too emotionally attached to my work so I can take critiques, but sometimes I get so into my concept that I can't help but feel hurt when people react negatively. I understand that it is normal to feel this way, but how do others overcome it?

Concept Artists (2) : Inspirational

2007-03-11T11:02:00.000+10:00

Here are another few artists to look at if you haven't already, which you should have by now. Whenever I look at their artworks I am in total awe, but at the same time it inspires me to be just as creative. They're always worth a good look.

CORO36INK
Jason Chan
Julie Dillon

Inn References

2007-03-11T10:19:00.000+10:00

My concept design of the 15th century inn I used what references I could find on the internet. Unfortunately, searching for images on the internet is not easy. I did manage to find a website for an inn that had 360 degree turnarounds from several points throughout the inn. However, there were many modern elements included. I had to examine each portion and decide what was original and what was modern.

I mostly used this reference for the architecture, for example, looking at the ceiling and at how it was supported. Since wood was a abundant resource during this time period, much of the inn would have been built with it as shown. The only difference is that the wood has been refurbished over the years.

I also used the reference for decoration purposes. Farming was a big part of everyday life so it is likely that it would reflect in the decoration as well. Also inns were a good place to post wanted posters and town notices since inns were such a public place.

I did take a look at the floor plan and how it is arranged. The bar is the central point in the inn with tables scattered around it. This particular inn is rather large, most likely expanded over the years with the expanding population or possibly took over the competition next door. Looking at the most central bar the bartender can see every table. It was important for him to keep an eye on all of his guests.

Bell Inn - Virtual Tour

For the bartender and bar maiden wardrobes I looked up costumes from around that time period. Again, there is a lot of garbage out on the internet, but I managed to find a site with several costumes from that period. I used these as reference for the type of clothes people were wearing during that period.

Costumes

Poll

2007-03-10T08:01:00.000+10:00

I added a poll to the side to make the place slightly more interesting. I'll change the poll every so often. They might be a touch more serious or they might not.

Concept Artists (1) : Environment

2007-03-10T07:06:00.000+10:00

I could go and list all of my favorite artists, but that's not very engaging. So instead I'll post a couple now and maybe some more further on during the semester.

On topic with the recent DVD we watched on matte painting, here are a couple of artists whom I think have amazing world designs, but then again considering I'm horrible at inventing backgrounds and so forth, perhaps I'm just jealous...

Vision Afar
Lynda Mills

And for the 3D side of things...

Medieval Worlds

Go forth and conquer!