Week 05 - Life Drawing

We started off this life drawing lesson with five 3 minute poses.

We then did the walking activity again where the model walks around and we sketch out some of the movements. I drew more poses this time though most are not complete.

Next was one of my favourite activities. We blacked out our paper with the side of the charcoal. Instead of using the charcoal to draw, this time we used a rubber to the opposite and build up the light for a 15 minute pose. I didn't have a soft enough piece of charcoal to make the page black enough to make the contrast more obvious but I really liked the way this one came out.

I used the edge of the rubber for the larger areas, that's why it looks like square brushstrokes. It's very messy but I feel with more practice I could have made it much better.




We then tried another pose but this time I accidently used some compressed charcoal which meant it was very dark, which I preferred, but because the charcoal was so thick it was very difficult to rub out. This is why this one looks more rough as I had less control over how much to remove.

 

We then chose two different medias for two 10 minute poses. I enjoyed using the red biro but I didn't get the shape of the legs right. I found the ink easier, especially for the shading as I could just block on some watered down ink whereas you can't make large strokes with a biro.



 While looking at this set of drawings I noticed that I tend to stop at the thighs and don't often do the legs. Next session I might try starting with the legs instead.

Week 04 - Pixel Art Assignment

In the class we began looking at pixel art. We first started by practicing drawing cubes and cylinders using the pencil in Photoshop, with only one pixel lines.

We then began designing our own toy to fit in this scene.

This is the robot I made. I tried taking colours from the scene to make it fit in better though the dark grey does seem  a little too dark for it's bright surroundings.



The first scene I placed my robot in was actually the picture with one of the previous students robots in. The picture above is the original. This is the largest quality I could find, however, I found this one very blurry and don't think it looks as good as the first one.

It was good to finally understand how to do pixel art but I can't see myself carrying this on.

Week 04 - Life Drawing - Experimenting with Media

This life drawing session was possibly my favourite one so far.

We began, as usual, with five 3 minute poses. This model had a very irregular body so at the beginning it was very hard to draw.

Next the model walked slowly around the room for about 10 minutes and we had to draw five very quick poses, in a sort of animated freeze frame. This was very weird to do as you sort of had to keep the image in mind as he would have already moved into the next step. I was trying to draw too quickly at first so I ended up with a very cartoon style. We then went around and added any comments on other's work.

This is the part I really enjoyed doing. We were asked to choose three different media's not including charcoal. We then spent 15 minutes on a pose using each of these materials. I chose ink first and though I don't often paint or use paintbrushes, I found this very comfortable and the watered down ink was a good way to add shading.

 My second choice was pencil. As I was drawing a large drawing and the pencil was very small, the drawing looks very small and empty. I usually add lots of details with pencils so it was strange trying to draw roughly and quickly. I think adding some crosshatching would have looked good so if I do this again I might try add some.

Last was the media I enjoyed most, though ink was close too. I used a simple red biro. The pa flowed nicely and I had control over the darkness and thickness of the line which helped me be able to sketch out the position first. The pose was also interesting to draw as the angle made everything flow nicely.

The fact that I was near the end of the model meant I had a lot of perspective to draw. I think most of it worked out fine and it was nice to finally have the time to actually draw the hand.

Lastly we started another pose with the last media we used. We then went around to the easel to our left and carried on the drawing and did the same another two times. This use of mixed media made an interesting effect and worked really well on some of the images.

Week 04 - Walking Simulator in Unity

After seeing how to give objects a trigger I decided to test out my model in Unity with a character.
 

When I first imported in my Maya model it was incredibly small, much smaller than I thought I had made it, especially seeing as my character would be very small. I scaled it but it'll be better if I back to Maya and edit it there. Walking around at the angle the character is at actually helped me noticed lots of little mistakes such as object too far in the wall.

One big issue I found was the fact that you could actually jump onto the steps which I didn't want to be able to as I don't have an upstairs planned. I considered making the character smaller or making the jumping of the character smaller but then you couldn't reach some of the other parts you need to be able to climb so I went back to Maya and stretched the bottom step a little.

Week 03 - Futeristic Weapon Assignment

In this assignment we were asked to design our own original futuristic gun.

I first looked into already designed guns for inspiration. I'm not very good with machinery as I usually draw bladed weapons so I looked for designs which would help me understand the mechanics a little better. The scythe and sword are both two weapons in one so I was thinking of maybe designing a weapon like that so that I could draw something in my style.

After getting together some pictures I started sketching out some ideas. I wasn't sure which direction to go as I had found so many very different designs. I made a rough of most styles to begin with before realising I had a blue pencil so I coloured in some plasma.

Using this I made a rough design for a plasma gun.

As I was designing this blaster to be very powerful, I gave it a stand to lean on so that it could be used as a sniper. I tried thinking of how it would look when being used.

I didn't like the way it looked so I decided to make it a two-handed, carryable gun.

The way I had sketched the front of the blaster it was at an angle but the rest was in side-view. I had already started painting so I had to edit and deform the back half which meant the angle was 

Week 03 - Walking Simulator Planning

Before making our walking simulator, we first had to come up with an idea. I couldn't really think of anything straight up so I decided to brainstorm so that I could organize all the ideas a bit.

I wrote down everything I could think of and picked out some I liked coming up with the idea of a horror game based in a school where you wake up in an empty classroom and have to search the school before finding out you are actually dead. I didn't like the sound of this idea as it seemed too typical so I carried on adding to the mindmap before coming up with a completely different idea.

This is the final idea I came up with. It's a very simple idea but I thought seeing everything much larger might be interesting. I researched for a faerie name and found the name Nissa which I like.

I had already started planning a bit of the previous idea on the top half of this page but stopped and started with the new one. I sketched out some of the scenes and interactions I'd like to include as well as the rough size I would like the character to be.

I made a simple storyboard to help give structure to my idea. I wasn't entirely sure how every step would go but this started me off.

I made a map in birds eye view as it is based in a home and it is easier to see this way.

I then made a 3D map of the main room and the path you would be taking to help me when I get round to making it.

Week 03 - Life Drawing

In this life drawing session we drew a lot more than previously.

 

We started with five 3 minute sketches to warm up.

 

 We then drew with an outstretched arm with large, flowing movements. We had 5 minutes for each pose. The drawings on the left were drawn first using my right hand. The one on the right was drawn in the same style but with my left hand. I really like how this style looks and is a good way to quickly draw a pose while learning the way the body flows.

 

We were asked to choose which one we liked most and which one we liked least and write why. We then all went around the classes and wrote if we disagreed with any of the others choices.

Next we tried drawing with only the side of the charcoal spending 10 minutes on a pose. We went around again to look at others work and were asked to try again using another style. Both times my work was recommended which was really nice. I really enjoyed doing this as I hadn't had much time in the other sketches to add shading. For the second picture I would have preferred having a softer piece of charcoal to make darker marks.

 

 Lastly we tried drawing to different styles of music, one slow piece and one loud rock piece. I didn't have much to work with in the first pose as the rest of the models body was covered so I added detail to the hair as which worked well with the flow of the music. The second piece was slightly harder to focus on due to the music and I didn't get the shape of the body right.



Week 03 - Elf and Dwarf Body Proportions

In this lesson we looked at proportions using heads for measurements. I knew about this scale but never really used it before.

We had a scale of nine and a half head for an elf and only four heads for a dwarf. As I've mentioned before, I haven't had much practice with drawing digitally so while I have drawn people for some time, I found it very hard to draw in my usual style and keeps all the proportions correct while zoomed in especially as you can't see the whole image.

These are the characters I ended up with in the end. As I draw tall females often, I didn't find the elf too difficult. The dwarf however felt strange to try fit into only four heads.

Week 03 - 3D Column

 In this week's lesson we made a 3d column using reference.

 This is the image we used. We used it as a texture on a plane so we could model next to it.

 

This is the model I made. Some parts are off which I didn't realize until after I had made it such as the indents on the ends which are too deep. This was good practice for me as I'm going to be using columns in my arena, though these are Greek style so I would need to make them slightly differently.

Week 02 - Crustacean Character Silhouettes

Following and online tutorial on YouTube we were asked to design three crustacean inspired creatures. I have never used the silhouette method before or had much practice painting on Photoshop so this was especially difficult.

I began by searching for any weird and interesting crustaceans as well as some anatomy pages to help me design something as realistic and believable as possible.

Following the tutorial I started blocking in some characters using the features in my mood-board. It was very difficult to imagine what to draw without adding any details.

I then stretched and distorted the characters to improve their shape and made them lighter at the top to help colouring as well as scribbling some highlights to give me a bit of shape to work with.

I then went in to adding details. It was hard to get used to as I had to build on the layers (though I did it all on the same layer) instead of working your way in from an outline. I wanted to create different creatures with opposite looks. The first one is designed to look like a human though if you look closely there aren't really many human features. The second one I spent most time on as I wanted to try another painting method. I saw that a lot of crustaceans have dots over there skin because of the shell texture so I tried to imitate this. This is also the one that looks closest to a normal crustacean but it is my favourite. The third one is actually the one I designed and painted first. It is very dark as I wanted a dark one colour shell but because of that there isn't much detail. The one thing I really like about it is the weapon as the sketchy style and design looks good.

Lastly I moved around and re-sized  the creatures so that the shapes fit together better. I then added a colour layer with some colours inspired from the pictures I found. I am still not used to colouring like this so I don't like how bright and solid the colours came out, especially the blue, but as I had dark characters to begin with, there wasn't much I could do.

I later went back on Photoshop and played around with the levels and changed the background to just simple grey patches.

I enjoyed this activity even if it was difficult for me but I'm sure I will use it again.