Dynasaur!

One of my first sculpts using Z brush’s dynamesh tool. Sculpted and painted in 4-5 hrs, I can see this being another badass tool to add to the concepting process, Artists like Ben Mauro have been using this process for a couple of years, I’d heard of how good dynamesh was, but I had no idea how much faster it would make sculpting. This little critter is a Troodon, known for their general dinosoariness and apparent lack of lower teeth according to my model.

VEHICLE PROJECT

I was very excited at the start of this project, as I'm a massive fan of codies’ racing games, and to get a vehicle brief set by them was always going to be exciting. But the brief was so open that I found the idea of choosing any vehicle in the universe to make a little overwhelming, especially for a massive car/military vehicle nerd like me. On the first day of the project I concepted a range of ideas, from racing cars to futuristic military trucks. But I ended up sticking a bunch of ideas together to design a vehicle that combines all of the things I love about cars. Basically an over the top racecar. The general basis for the design could be described as a Max Rockatansky's interceptor having a metal love child with a GT car.

Coat Collaboration

Here’s a short project I did early last summer for a friend who wanted to develop his degree show a little more as his project had been selected to be displayed at the graduate fashion show at earl court.  His project was titled Zero Waste Menswear, and the idea is kind of self-explanatory as the clothes are for chaps, and the pattern designs have zero wastage, meaning that when the fabric is cut for the separate parts, arms, pockets, etc. nothing is thrown away, so every part has a purpose e.g. the semi-circles from the arms cut into the back are used as pocket flaps. The idea may sound very simple but the great thing about his project was that it didn't compromise the design as in theory you could do this with any pattern just by sticking all of the offcuts onto the elbow, but this would of course make it look shit. Anyway, he asked me to 3D model the coat, so it could be animated and cut apart to show this in a clearer way. We only had five days, but we were pretty pleased with the results in the end, there are just some screens from Z brush below, but if you click on this link: http://zerowastemenswear.tumblr.com/ you can see the final rotation animation we created, with together and exploded 360 views. We were unable to animate the “explosion” as there was a slight hiccup during the project, in the form of me being involved in a cycling accident on the 3^rd day of the project, and sustaining a minor brake on my right arm. This was a massive pain in the arm, but I soldiered on with my arm in a sling and managed to throw together an impressive piece of work if I don’t say so myself. Not to offend anyone who likes clothes more than the average human, but It may have gone completely over the heads of most of the visitors of graduate fashion week but there was some definite interest from interest from the tutors of Nottingham Trent, which could be useful in the future if they ask me to get involved in a similar project.

Rooftop

Originally this project was the NYC rooftop project, but after some cool, quite clearly not NYC rooftops made by last year’s 3^rd years the projects brief was widened to any kind of rooftop. I wanted to still create a grounded environment, so I chose an urban, modern day/ near future rooftop. I wanted to give it a near future cyber punk setting, so I’d have a little more freedom on what to design and put into the level, but also so I could experiment with some more interesting colour palettes. I ended up choosing a bleak and quite liner palette and light setup heavily inspired by the Tyrell office scene. Whilst researching I looked a lot at Michael Mann’s cinematography for his awesome night time lighting and screen compositions.

I still want to do some more work on this project, as it definitely needs a bit more clutter, but also some layout changes are needed, as I don’t think I'm really taking advantage of the triangular layout as much as I could. Also some lens flare wouldn't go amiss.

3rd Year

Looking at this blog it may appear that I have faked my own death, but I assure you that this is not the case, I have simply been doing too much colouring in to write anything! (and possibly sleeping and drinking).

Review of the second year

For the second year I knew there was going to be a sharp increase in the workload, and more self-management was going to be involved, which I was quite looking forward too

I was very excited about the game production projects going in, as I knew what they were going to be, and had some tips and tricks learnt from the previous cohort. Also as the projects were to be set simultaneously, allowing us to manage our time independently, I was keen to get ahead, but after I had done a substantial amount of work on the trash project to get it out of the way, I realised I had miss read the brief. I assumed it allowed alphas, as they are a great way of cheaply creating believable ground debris, but it turned out it did not allow alphas, which I had based most of the model on. It was a irritating setback, as I thought I was getting ahead, I was now in fact behind the majority of my fellow students. I then chose to complete the chest project first, as the majority of students chose that first, so it made more sense to work on that as we could tackle problems together and help each other out. The self-time-management didn’t have much effect on the group, as the midterm checks on projects acted as hand ins and as people were working on the same projects simultaneously, everyone still worked roughly at the same pace. This continued through the next two projects up until the start of this year, when we began the dreaded group project.

The part of the group project I was most worried about before beginning was the group itself. As I dreaded a group of lazy people, or people who lacked initiative. But I was pleasantly surprised by my group, and found them very motivated and good workers, well for the first few weeks anyway, but as the project went on, we fell back as a lack of a strong plan made some people lose their work ethic and initiative, making the project as a whole stutter. I’m not happy with the final outcome of our group project, as I don’t believe it shows the work of seven creative people work over nine weeks.

Coming into the second year, I had heard about “the second year blues” which I was determined to avoid, by using good planning, but this was kind of took care of itself as the group worked together up until the group project. I really enjoyed the first stages of the group project, but later I lost my enthusiasm as much of the group’s efforts waned, and I had to increase my own workload to make up for it which caused some stress.

This summer is going to be a very long one, and I don’t plan on wasting any of it, so I have already planned numerous projects to complete over the summer, with the goal of producing a portfolio of at least 6 new, professional quality projects. Also I have started a new blog separate to my critical studies blog, where I want to show personal work, and show my progress on projects throughout the summer and beyond. The projects are primarily hard surface modelling projects, leaning towards vehicles, but I also want to create a character, building upon what I learnt in the mortal engines/self-portrait project, but this time utilize the current standard character workflow, of a low poly base mesh to high poly sculpt, then retopologised and baked to the final mesh.

Life changing or career building

This is a very interesting topic that I have discussed a lot with fellow pupils. As the complimentary mix of traditional art and 3d art is the main reason I chose this course, as I believe that at least a basic understanding of things like art direction, colour theory and composition are needed for even the hairiest of asset monkeys.

Striking a balance between the traditional liberal art learning, and game production can seem like a tough job, as they are very different disciplines. But after the first few technical hurdles of learning the main 3d skills, modelling becomes a much more creative feeling task. I definitely feel as though our course approaches teaching our subject in a very successful way, although there could be a little more direct teaching in game production of new methods, such as retopologising, and high poly modelling, as these are widely used methods throughout the industry. The course does get around this with the fantastic student social learning, where new skills, techniques and ideas are passed around, effect making a constantly evolving curriculum. If this continues at the same rate it is currently at, there shouldn’t be much of a risk of students skills becoming irrelevant to industry standards, at least for the students who are more in touch with industry news etc. and I think the effectiveness of our course, and how relevant it’s curriculum is to industry can be proven by our skillset accreditation, and our reputation among some close British game developers.

Our art based course can also give us an edge in mastering inevitable new programs. As when the technology and software change, those only versed in the programs, will be left with nothing. Where I believe that our more art based teaching gives us the skills to be more versatile, and pick up new skills, workflows and programs much faster. A key skill we learn in visual design is artistic judgement, as learning to draw, is primarily the skill of “learning to see” .This is where we learn to break down a seemingly complex thing, and work out how to recreate it with line and tone on eh page. To help us do this we learn about complex topics such as anatomy or how light reflects and refracts of surfaces. This gives us a knack on telling if things look correct, as we develop a much more vigorous way of evaluating things visually, complementing our modelling skills, even when working from ample reference material. I see things frequently when playing games where assets look slightly off. Even in triple A titles like Forza Motorsport, where developers get direct reference images, blueprints and even 3d models and scan data from manufacturers, artists can still mess up, making cars that look a little off. In understand in that case, modelling cars perfectly can be difficult, as cars bodies can be very subtle in design, but it is still quite shocking to see in a multi-million dollar game. Probably the worst triple A developer for this is Bethesda. Where frequently assets have comically disproportioned scaling, or poorly made speculars, making metal look plastic and wood look like, well plastic again.