New Over Old

Oh man, this is going to be one of those blog posts where I'm going all over the place in terms of what I am working on.  I do so many things that are considered art each week that sometimes it's hard deciding on what is worth sharing and what is not.

Before I start sharing some new pictures, I'd like to direct your attention to the blog for the new video game project I've recently joined. I mentioned it in the last post, and I've yet to determine where I should be posting the work I'm doing for it so for now I'll be refraining from putting anything here on my personal blog.

Ok, so I have some new things and some old things. Let's start with the old.

Remember this?

I did a little more work on her face. Fixed the nose which was off to one side too much. Added more detail to the hair and to the face as well. Fixed up the overall shape and made some other adjustments to the placement of things.

I've realized over the past few years that my general style for drawing people and in particular faces has become more and more set in stone. By that I mean, it's not evolving as much as it used to in the past. Possibly because I've become more comfortable and confident in how to draw faces and I'm not erasing and rearranging things as much as I used to. Either way, there's definitely a consistent and noticeable similarity now in how I draw faces (except of course when I am purposefully trying to stylize things), and I have yet to decide if this is a good or a bad thing.

And now for the new!

Well kind of, actually everything I have to show this week is work on old/previous projects that I'm improving. But, it's new to this blog, so I'm counting it as new.

I originally drew this in pencil and ink over the summer. This week I have started trying to color it digitally. I am constantly starting new digital drawings mostly because I'm trying to develop the skills and techniques for doing them. It's something I've always wanted to learn but have never really had the time to devote enough energy towards to become consistently efficient at it. I decided to try a different approach for making the base skin tones in this one and so far I am very happy with it. I quickly realized that same method would not work as well for the cloth unfortunately and ended up with the not-so-successful pink sash around her waist. I'll have to redo or at least change up the cloth so that it looks better, but for now I have to focus on my 3D.

Which brings me to my shading final. I'm repurposing a character model I made earlier this year in my high poly class and will be shading it using mostly procedural and some image based textures.

She's not my favorite model, in fact I actually kind of hate the model. I just don't think I did as good a job in making her as I could have. I fixed her up some for this project before UVing her. I am still not happy with her fingers or her feet (although her feet used to be much, much worse) but I am hoping that if I do a good enough job on her textures then I'll be more inclined to salvage the model.

This is my first time using sub surface scattering, and in my opinion I have not been very successful so far. I've gotten it to a much better point than it used to be, but she looks more like she is made out plastic than actual flesh. I am not trying to make her 100% realistic, but even so I really just don't like how her skin looks.

I still have a lot of work to do on her, and every time I work on it it looks better which is always encouraging. I'm still not in love with it yet, but it's getting there. Hopefully by the time I have to turn her in two weeks I'll be at a point where I am happy with it.

The Doctor Is In

And I'm back with some new developments! First of all I am in the process of putting together a demo reel which is part of the reason I have been so busy lately. Most of my free time has been going towards the demo reel now that I have my portfolio put set up. Which, by the way, you can find here. I'll be sure to post it once I have the finished product all set to go.

Secondly, I finished my interior for my last shading project. I'm not a big fan of it, unfortunately. I would've liked it if it had turned out better. I always strive for perfection, but I may not always turn out perfect work. However, I think that's something everyone can relate to because no one is perfect. It's good to aim for the stars, but it's never good to beat yourself up when you don't quite make it.

It's definitely an improvement over the last image, but I think the lighting still needs some work. I don't have enough bounced light and some of the objects are getting lost against the back wall. If I hadn't taken so long to decided on what I wanted to do I would've had more time to polish.

Starting a project over entirely can sometimes be a good thing, but you take a huge risk in that you lose a lot of the time you would've originally had to make the piece really stand out. In this situation, I think starting over hurt me more than it is helped, but I am okay with that because I am still learning and the best way to learn is by making mistakes.

In other news, I have joined a new video game project that some Game Design Graduates at RIT are developing as a part of their Capstone project. I'm very exciting about the project as I will be modeling and texturing several assets for the game. I am also excited to be working on another project that involves teamwork. I know it's not the first time I have mentioned it, but I really do love working on a team. You learn so much more when you are able to share your experience and get feed back from others. I don't have anything to show as of yet, but I am excited to see where everything goes.

I also recently signed up for classes for next quarter and one of the classes I will be taking is the rendering class. One of the projects for rendering is going to involve cell shaders, which is the perfect opportunity for me to work another character into my portfolio. The biggest critique I get of my portfolio is that it's split between characters and environments, and while I really like both I need to decide which once I like best and focus it on that.

 After a lot of thought I have decided I would like to go more towards character design. The hard part is finding ways to work that into my assignments at school as most of them aren't open and don't involve characters. I've been taking everyone opportunity i can to do a characters this year, and so far I have done three of them, two of which are already in my portfolio. The other character I'll be fixing up for my shading final and texturing with the goal of making another portfolio piece out of it.

However,I really want to be able to show a variety of different characters and styles, so I think it'd be really great if I can make a simple yet interesting character to cell shade. So while my computer was busying rendering I drew up a quick concept of an idea I had.

Basically my idea is this: He's a somewhat eccentric looking doctor. And although he has good intentions, he is completely ignorant of his trade and usually makes things worse rather than better. As a result the majority of his patients end up dead because he has no idea what he is doing and or talking about. I picture him as being a small town doctor where he is literally the only doctor and people dread getting sick and having to call on him. If they even do call on him, I think he's more the type of character that just shows up at people's door and enters their house uninvited. Then when they try to get him to leave he of course never takes the hint.  A Fun way to think of it is that the people in town would rather have the grim reaper show up at their door than this guy. 

That's all I have for now, I'll be working on my shading final soon though so hopefully it won't be too long before I have something to show.

Lady in Blue

Well I was hoping to have some new renders to share but they're not done just yet, so while my computer was busy rendering I got on a different computer and did some digital paintings to post instead.

I've been very busy with school lately so I won't be chatting things up like I usually do. Hopefully things will calm down soon and I can get back to my regularly talkative posts.