Statue Progress

Personal Sketchbook

Following our guest lecture with Mike McCarthy where he gave the advice of buying a small,really cheap sketchbook to bring around with you and draw whenever you can, I started drawing almost every day. As he had mentioned, when you spend lots of money on a really nice new sketchbook, you become too scared to draw because you don't want to ruin the paper.

This is the progress of almost three months of doodling whenever I can. This is the only place I have been doing personal art but I think it has really helped me draw quicker and refine my style, despite this book being a mix of styles.

Week 23 - Particle Effects in Unity

For this weeks session we learned how to use particle effects to make fire and smoke.

 We were given a simple scene to work with where we added the smoke and fire onto.

 First we created the fire, adjusting it to how we wanted to make it look as realistic as possible. We copied over the fire to create the smoke but changed the image, colour, size and rotation and other aspects so that the particles acted more like smoke.

These are the images we were given to create the two.

Overall this is what the final product looked like. I enjoyed learning this and would like to hopefully do something similar for the waterfall in my battle arena.

Week 25 - Spaceship Assignment

Our break assignment was to create a spaceship design for the near future.

During the lesson we practiced designing spaceship shapes using the curved or straight lined rule. Keeping with one sort of line movement makes the designs look more realistic and make more sense. Personally I found drawing curved lines easier as that is what I'm used to and I feel there is more that can be done that way.

I wanted to keep the design for the assignment as similar and accurate to the current spaceships as possible so I compiled a mindmap of just real spaceships and more official designs.

Using a fine liner as it was easier to sketch roughly with, I created some shapes for a spaceship. I wanted to stick with the more airplane looking design so that it looks more reasonable and feasible.

 Next I made a model of my favourite design in Maya. I wanted this spaceship to look like the shuttles that exist right now but with a bit extra. I added an extra sort of greenhouse part to add a bit of life to it.

The render I made in maya was very bad quality and didn't have the right sort of look so I downloaded RenderMan for some better quality renders.

Week 22 - Creating Day and Night

One of the key elements in our game is the change between day and night.

Cristian painted both backgrounds so I made two different scenes, day and night, as each level has different parts. I don't have the day version of the enemy and player yet or any sprite sheets so I just used the night sprites and made different prefabs with them.

I prefer the way the nighttime looks so far as it seems more interesting and fun. This scene has two enemies as the werewolf version of the player has higher health and attack.

I used what we learned when making menus to activate different levels. We decided to have a countdown of two minutes between scenes. I added this piece of script but haven't yet figured out how to phase between the two nicely.

Week 21 - Tree With Character

For this week's assignment we have been asked to create a tree with character. This is different than making a character as adding character without a face is more complicated and requires a lot more thought.

I looked at some interesting tree concepts to give me an idea on how to make a scene more intriguing as the character would be easier to portray through the rest of the image and it's composition instead of just the tree.

I sketched out a very rough scene so that I could get down the rough composition I wanted.

I really liked the more twisty trees from the mindmap so started working on top of the sketch and built up more of the form of the tree.

Week 21 - Animation in Maya

In this session we looked at animating in Maya and rigging.

First we learned how to animate a bouncing ball. Then made something move along a path. And lastly we looked at rigging a cylinder to make it bend.

It all seemed relatively straightforward but I found it difficult to get used to and get the hang of each of these animating techniques.

Week 21 - Life Drawing

This week we drew a lot, going back on some of the things we've tried in previous sessions.

We began with five quick sketches. For some reason is took me a little longer than usual to get into drawing this body type but eventually, using less and looser lines.

We did a quick gestural practice where we only had one minute to draw the pose. This was to loosen us up and get us used to drawing quickly.

As we had done before we did the animation drawing where the model walks around slowly and we have to very quickly draw the movements.

We drew a lot and although my arm got very tired, I really enjoyed it. It is a very good way to practice how a body moves without worrying too much about it being perfect.

Once again we tried using the circle images on the floor as perspective practice. I drew the body first but because of this I struggled to adjust the perspective and draw the the circles in the image correctly.

I decided to turn the board round to give me a wider canvas to work with. I also started with the papers on the floor this time and very lightly sketched the body so found it much easier.

Once I was happy with everything, I went in and added the details. I'm glad that it worked out better this time as it looks much more accurate than even some of my drawings from previous sessions.

Once again I used the easel sideways and began with the lightly sketching everything. I struggled to draw the stall as the perspective distorted the circular top and I couldn't quite get it right.

Although not as much as the previous drawing, I am still happy with the accuracy of the body. I think this one would have looked better in charcoal as it is easier to shade backs that way.

Most of all I enjoyed the animation style activity as it helps me get the hang of drawing quickly and jotting down what I see in the easiest way.

Week 21 - Insectoid Character Assignment

Similar to the frog character, this time we were asked to draw an insectoid character.

I wasn't entirely sure with what sort of insect to go with as there is such a large variety which all look massively different. I made a mind-map of some of the most interesting looking insects I found.

I tried doing what I had done with the crustacean as I really liked the style they came out in but the silhouette technique didn't work very well for this, maybe because I needed some more human features which was a bit harder this way.

I went back to my mind-map and noticed many of the insects look quite long and especially liked the proportions on the stick insect. I wrote down some words, such as "tall" and "adviser" to give the character more of a personality and a story.

Week 21 - Composition Speedpaint

In today's lesson we looked at how to make a piece of art more interesting by improving composition.

This was the original image we were given. We were asked to repaint it in a different composition using the rule of thirds.

I spent a while adjusting the image until I was happy with the placements though as we didn't have long, I didn't get round to fully painting it.

I really enjoyed this lesson and as I have difficulty with backgrounds, I found this very helpful.

Week 20 - Life Drawing

We began the session with six 3 minute sketches, though I ran out of room in the end as I was only expecting only five.

For the image on the left we weren't allowed to look at the paper, only the model. Keeping my hand very close to the paper on only making small hand movements meant I didn't make too many mistakes, though obviously still very wrong overall. This was very hard for me, and I did accidentally keep glancing at the paper though I never moved my hand/corrected myself.

For the drawing on the left we looked at the model for a few minutes without drawing, then the model moved and we drew from memory. Although I remembered the pose almost exactly, I spent to long focusing on remembering and did very badly at actually converting it into a drawing.

This was a left hand drawing. I am getting more used to this but still lack most of the control I need to draw so find it very difficult.

This drawing was very fun to do. It is all one line, we drew without taking the charcoal off the paper. I turned it round occasionally to get sharper lines but overall it is one thick line. I really like how it looks, even though it isn't really accurate or neat.

Next we used two colours to create depth. I used two very similar colours which weren't really the plan but I liked how it looked.

The model was being lighted by a red light so the pink pastel looks more accurate and the way they blended roughly made for an interesting pattern.

The similarity in colours meant everything blended together a bit too much so I added some charcoal to define edges/creases.

It was difficult to do this without making it stand out too much and it didn't blend with the colours but overall it helped give shape.

We then chose another two colours. The difference between these colours is more extreme so it looks more interesting.

I really liked the way these colours worked together, despite the white being chalk and purple being pastel.