Life Drawing - Session 05

Wednesday 21st October 2015

Life Drawing Session 5

We started with 5, 3 minute drawings which I think I'm improving at as the weeks go by. We had a different model this week with a different bodyshape to the previous models and I tried to draw my short sketches at a larger scale than I have before with this task. We then moved on to drawing the moving model again, I found this task very difficult again as I'm not great at capturing shape when its changing at a fast rate. This being said I think I managed to capture some movement and shape in the drawing I did get down.

Once this was complete we chose two media we felt comfortable with using, I chose felt pen and a ballpoint pen. I think my felt tip pen drawing was better because of the shape and detail; captured, however the style is very similar in both drawings. Finally to end the session we drew a large square of black in the center of our paper in chalk and used rubbers to block in any light we could see, cleaning the rubber meant we could getting a lighter shade of grey/ white and therefore we ended up with multi-tones of grey, black and white, to create an almost silhouette like piece. I think my second drawing worked better than the first as my proportions and light reflections were better. This technique is useful to understand how light and shadows are cast around and on the body and how they can be portrayed on the page in different ways.

Gameplay and Interactivity - Greybox in Unity

Friday 16th October 2015

Asylum Greybox

I created my greybox in Maya and then used the Unity asset store to download the Standard assets package So I could use the camera and character from one of the sample scenes. I exported out my Maya project and placed it into my new unity project and then adjusted the sizing where necessary. I'm not entirely sure how to  properly add a mesh collider to the entire asset yet, however I manually added box colliders to each wall, ceiling and floor in my scene for this test.

Visual Design - Lava Character

 Monday 19th October 2015

Lava Characters

In Class we were given the task of adding lava into the cracks of a clay rock monster image. to do this we learn various techniques using contrast between light and dark, image adjustments and styles. for my rock monster I first deleted the background and added a black one instead I changed the contrast of the image and then began adding in yellow to the cracks that were biggest in the clay model (Using a hard edge brush). When I was happy I then added in the style that our teacher had already created and then added in a background and changed the contrast again. I also added in a lava image to the mouth and lava dripping from its hand but I think looking at it now I prefer the black background as it looks to busy with a cave background.

For our homework we were assigned to create our own lava based monster. I started by looking at reference images and made a mood board I then sketched out three ideas and chose my final idea to paint in Photoshop. I chose to do a fiery female lava demon, Starting with the tornado I blended colours together to look as fiery as possible I then drew my figure outline from a scan of the drawing and coloured that adding shadows and using the style from before to add in lava. Finally I cut out my character and added in a background that suited the picture better than my classwork. 

Life Drawing - Session 04

Wednesday the 14th October 2015

Life Drawing Session 4

Today we had a new model of a slightly different body shape to the previous two models, his poses were also alot bolder than theirs too. This made for a more challenging session; we started with five, three minute drawings of the model in some adventurous poses and then moved onto attempting to draw the model in motion. I found this task very difficult and only managed to capture a few shapes created during his slow walking movement.

After this we were given three different materials to draw with, I had a pencil, a felt tip and a ballpoint pen. My pencil work was my least favourite of the three as it was very hard to create any shading or shape to the model in the time we were given. However, I like the shading created with the ballpoint pen and the shape created with the felt tip.

for our last task we had to draw the model in the media we used last (In my case it was the green felt tip) and then move onto the easel next to ours and add to the new drawing. The shape of mine stayed mostly the same apart from a leg position, but shading and a face was added with what looks like charcoal or pencil. I think these exercises help a lot to see where our shaping is going wrong or right, as sometimes its hard to see on your own work.

Visual Design - Pixel Art

Monday 12th October 2015

Angled Pixel Art

We used a guide at the start of the lesson to learn how to make pixel art in this style and learnt that we need to turn any anti-aliasing off of the tools we used and make sure we are using the pencil tools instead of brushes; we produced a cube and a cylinder using the guide and then used those objects to make retro toys. I started this project by researching retro toys and decided to make a couple pieces of pixel art to fill the scene we were given.

Visual Design - Character Design

Monday 5th October 2015

Elf and Dwarf Character Design

For this assignment we were asked to create an elven character of 9 heads tall and a Dwarf of 4 heads tall. I started with my elf and found that it took an incredibly long time as I'm currently still getting used to using both Photoshop and my drawing tablet. I drew my elf from scratch and coloured it all in Photoshop, using some reference images for inspiration.

As it took so long to create the elf I'm posting this as an update with my Dwarf drawing complete. I based this drawing off of my character in World of Warcraft and it took considerably less time to do (Possibly due to more experience and a smaller image to draw and colour). I did have some issues with colouring the piece as I forgot to create a multiply layer and had not saved the image as a line drawing so therefore I had to colour of the main layer and use subtract layers ontop to create shadows.

To improve both drawing if I had more time I could have added highlights and better colour to create a more 3D look.

Life Drawing - Session 03

Wednesday 7th October 2015

Life Drawing

We started again with five fast 3 minute drawings and then moved onto a new technique I'd never tried before; it involved using loose strokes of the charcoal and focusing on shape rather than detail, this required us to stand away from the easel move our arms from the elbow and to look at the model at more than our sketch. I don't think I produced very good work using this technique and I found it hard to get any shape correctly drawn. We did 5 drawings in this style and then moved out to using the side of the chalk to produce a more detailed drawing style. I found this technique a lot easier to do when the chalk was small and managed to create some shaded sketches that I think look quite good. I especially like the dark shading portrayed in the first side chalk drawing as it really brings out the image more. To finish the session we listened to two pieces of music, one of a fast tempo and one of a slow tempo, to see if our drawings were altered by the sound. I chose to use the side chalk style again for my drawings and found that when listening to the fast music my outline was very erratic compared to the slow music. The shading I created on the slow tempo drawing was also a lot smoother and better in my opinion.

Best Out of Drawings

Worst Out of 

First Side Chalk

Second Side Chalk

Visual Design - Weapon Design

Monday 5th October 2015

Weapon Design

We were given the task to create a futuristic weapon. I started by searching for images of existing guns and concept pieces and found that I liked the idea of a flamethrower type of gun I also looked at images of dragons to add into my gun design as well as some hand held devices that fire flames. I sketched 3 ideas and then drew my final design; I scanned this onto the Pc and then used Photoshop to colour the piece.

Gameplay and Interacivity - Gameplan

Friday 27th September - Friday 4th October 2015

Onesheets, Maps and Storyboard

We have been assigned a brief to make a walking simulator/ short tutorial level for a game. within the game there must be  at least 3 events and the whole piece must last 2-3 minutes. We started with an exercise in class where we chose 2 words at random from a box in groups of 3/4 and had to design a Onesheet for a game that involved the two words. In my group we chose 'Timetravel' and 'Museum', this was a lucky choice as we were already given a scene and something that had to happen within that scene. We chose to create a first person crime adventure game for PC.

We then had to create our own onesheet for our actual game Idea, I thought about several ideas such as escaping an airship or walking down a road at night but decided to design a game based in an asylum in the 1950's. Once the onesheet was complete we then had to generate a storyboard and a map design for the game. I started by making a floorplan map and then went on to create a dimensional map to communicate my ideas better.

Onesheet for Asylum Game

Storyboard for Game

First Map Design

Second Map Deisgn

3D Art Production - Rock and Column

Monday 5th Obtober 2015
Column and Rock

Today we looked at the Curves and Sculpting tools in Maya and followed another guide to produce the two models below. We tested some of the brushes used for sculpting as well as the smoothing tool for the rock and also looked into using curves and an image as reference to create the column.

3D Art Production - Jungle Moodboard and Greybox

Monday 5th October 2015

Jungle Battle Arena

I collected images for a moodboard to use as inspiration for an arena themed around the jungle. I looked into arenas that already exist in games as well as other buildings and shapes/ objects that might fit well in the scene. I then started building my arena and when I was happy with a base idea generated I took screen shots and made a grey box which elaborated on what I definitely wanted to use in my work.