Final Dance

The biggest news I have is that my thesis is officially over! Things turned out better than I expected and I received an A for the overall project and results. I posted the final shots I have of what the level looks like in the UDK engine on my thesis blog, but I'll repost my favorites here as well.

I've still got some polishing left to do, but overall I am very happy with it!

I've also got some final projects and results from my Lighting and glass class to share.

For lighting I decided to create the storage room for a theater company. As usual, my plans were much more elaborate but time forced me to scale them back. I wanted much more dirt, dust, and maybe even cobwebs, but it's important to recognize when you need to scale back and sometimes you just can't do it all. I'm still very happy with it despite not having everything I wanted.

I collect glass paperweights, so whenever I could pick what to make in my glass class I decided to make them. I actually ended up only making one cup because I didn't find it as cool or exciting.

My first one turned out a little derpy because it was the first thing I made in the hot shop. I had a lot of trouble keeping it on center because keeping the pipe turning at an even and constant rate was difficult with my tendonitis. As a result the top of my paperweight ended up being lopsided.

My second one turned out much better and my teacher let me experiment with rolling the glass into a cone-like shape.

My third paper weight is one of my favorites because of the colors and how the design on the inside turned out. We used a speciall type of blue color that reacts when mixed with other colors, so I ended up with some really pretty white speckles and swirls where it reacted with the purple color. The big silver thing in the middle is actually a giant bubble, and it's really cool because on one side of the globe the color swirls up and kind of hides it. The pictures don't really do it justice.

I don't have photos of the final paper weight I made yet, but it was very fun to make because my teacher let me experiment again with cutting a flower into the colored glass in the center. I also got to use a special crimp on the flower's petals so when I covered it with the clear glass all these tiny bubbles formed from the air being trapped in the grooves on the pedals.

And of course as usual I have a plethora of other drawins I've done in my brief momments of free time to help me relax and just take a break.

I actually spent quite a bit of time on this one, I revisited it several times before I was actually happy with it. The main thing to know about this one is that the female is real, as in she's part of reality. Whereas the mail is more a part of her thoughts and feelings. The whole idea is that she constantly struggling with her emotions and no matter how hard she tries to move on and get past them, they are there toying with her in this endless dance.

 I really like this one design wise, although I'm not entirely convinced I haven't seen it or something similar somewhere.

 I'd like to actually finish this one someday, although I don't really have any plans set in stone for it.

 A quick painting I did. Didn't spend too much time on it, just needed to let off some steam.

I liked this one at first, but now I don't. I think it's the facial structure that bothers me. I didn't really spend a lot of time planning it or making sure it was correct.

Just another drawing where I was playing around with design ideas and photoshop.

Smorgasbord!

~Please be aware that this blog post includes some drawings that display artistic nudity. The last section of the post includes drawings from a Life Drawing Class.~

Update time! Finally! I know it's been such a long time since my last update. I was actually hoping to have this done before Christmas, but I got very sick the week just before vacation and was out of commission for about 10 days.
The good news is, because it's been so long, the number of drawing and random doodles that I have to share has really piled up so prepare for lots of new pictures!

I'm going to start with the best, a disney-ish illustration that I've almost finished. The style is very, very different for me, but I think that's part of what made it fun. It really started as an exploratory sketch that turned into a sort of self-challenge to see if I could actually pull it off. It's one thing to do this as a line drawing, but I don't have a lot of experience when it comes to actually coloring my drawings-which is why I've been trying to practice it.

 Overall I'm considering it a huge success, although I would like to adjust how the blanket is being held up because it doesn't really make sense for how she is gripping it. I'll probably put this one in my portfolio, since a lot of companies like to see that you can draw and in multiple styles. Like I've said it's so different from my usual style, so I think it will really stand out as a good representation of how versatile I can be.

And now for something completely different...
I've been taking a glass class this quarter, and these were my first attempts at sculptural beads (sorry for the less than great photo, I was in a hurry to take it before I left for vacation).

 I'm very proud of them. They aren't master pieces, but for my first try I think they turned out pretty good. From Left to right: Navi from Legend of Zelda, a Guinea Pig, some angry birds, a fish, and some yoshi eggs.

I have a lot of doodles and quick drawings that have accumulated over the past several weeks.  All of these were done for the sake of doing art and just taking some time to relax from all my crazy thesis work.

 The other day I felt like I really needed to just set my mind free. The image of some one with wings on their head is definitely lacking originality on my part, but for a quick drawing I really love the way the wings came out. Plus, when something's for fun, who cares if it's original? I had a lot of fun with this drawing and that's what matters.

 Not much to say about this one other than that the first thing I did was scribble on the page and then decided the scribble looked like and eye- which led to me creating the rest of the picture.

 I did this in about 5 minutes, but I absolutely love it. I kind of wish it was an actual water color and not a digital piece.

Again not much to say. I like it, I wish the perspective on the elbow coming forward had turned out right. I managed to do an okay job of faking it, but it stands out enough to bother me every time I look at it.

This one was supposed to be in my last post, but I couldn't find the file at the time.

Again, just trying something different for the sake of it. I really like this style and I want to keep playing around with it when I get some more time.

Alright, all that's left are the photos I took of some of my drawings from the Life Drawing class I took last semester.

Marker and Conte Crayon. I loved trying out different materials, and more specifically mixing different ones together. The photo/computer doesn't give a good sense of it, but I really loved the texture I got from putting the white conte crayon over the marker.

I found I enjoy drawing muscular people best, for some reason I have a much easier time re-interpreting what I see on to paper when they are. However, I really think this one turned out nice, even though I had a hard time getting the right shapes at first.

I need to re-photograph this one. This is one of my favorites because unlike most of my drawings I actually kept my pencil strokes nice and neat and it turned really great because of that.

In my defense, the reason I end up getting messy is because I have tendonitus in my hand/wrist/elbow/shoulder, and it's usually hard for me to control the pencil for small/fine details. I found that accepting the messiness and learning how to use it to my advantage tends to work better than trying to fight it.

I have the same feelings about this one. It needs to be rephotographed and I love the pencil strokes I used to shade it. I did my best to clean it up well enough to share now since I have no idea when I'll get around to photographing it again.

Whew, that was a really long update! I'm done for now, and hopefully it won't be so long before I'm back for the next post. As always, please feel free to leave feedback, ask questions, or anything else along those lines.

Countdown to Finals

There's only one week left of classes for the year and I'm still in over drive. I've been working to hammer things out so that I wont be down to the wire come next week when I have to present my work for final critiques. As of right now, things seem manageable but based on past experience I know I can't let that distract me. The unexpected is always possible and I can't afford to let any thing throw me off.

I am currently working on balancing my rendering final with my Project Pipeline Final. It's been tough because I can never be at the same point with either of them. Working on one means putting the other one off and they are both equally important.

Right now I'm behind on rendering as I made a big push for progress with project pipeline. This week I textured almost my entire character.  Unfortunately not everything went as planned with the character and I was unable to practice painting normals in mudbox.

 Right now I just have the flat color worked out and I'm really hoping I'll have time to add some bump and fix up the specular map, but I can't say for sure. Ideally I'd want to continue working on the color as I think it could stand have a lot more details but I'm having to put that off for now in order to get this thing done.

Rendering is turning out well, but I'm not as far as I wanted to be at this point. I have the displacement maps almost done, some of them need to be fixed up some more and I've only just begun the colors.The issue was figuring out exactly how to get the look I wanted, which took quite a bit of trial and error in terms of painting the displacement and colors.

 The Ottoman is not the right color and I will absolutely be changing it. I also need to change the pictures on the wall.

I was hoping to have the whole thing textured by the start of this week, but things did not work out that way. My plan is to finish them tomorrow so I can begin working on the lighting and the render settings. I also want to add some special paint effect toon lines to give it that outlined look that Van Gogh often used, but I am unsure as to whether or not I will have enough time.

Despite the crunch for time I'm extremely happy with the direction things are going and I'm staying positive about the outcomes. We'll find out after next week if things worked out or not. I am confident however that everything will be ok and I'll be able to manage my time effectively enough to get things done.

Painting 3D

Only two more weeks until the quarter is over which means I've been stepping up my game and going into over drive mode. I spent the weekend designing a UI for Galactose, as well as hammering away at my rendering final. I'm crunched for time and will be until the end of the quarter so my posts may be a little later and or shorter than usual. Still, I will try to keep things as up to date as possible.

For rendering we had to draw out our composition for our final. Mine was pretty easy since I'll be using the same scene from my last project and pretty much had the composition set already.

I did move some things around as well as add in a few new objects. I tried to give somewhat of a sense of the look I was going for, although I'm not quite sure I pulled it off as well as I could have. 

Aside from that I also started working on the displacement maps which are going quite well. 

I've got about a 3rd of the displacements done and I'm hoping to finish them and color the scene this week. I decided not to change the rug like I have it in the drawing and just kept the one I had before. I am also not too happy with the displacement on the ottoman, so if I have time I'd like to go back and redo that. We'll see how things work out though.

One last thing before I go. I did a quick doodle the other day in about 15 minutes for fun. Just thought I'd share it as well.

Vestibular System

Ok before I start the blog post I thought I should probably explain the title. Basically it's just a very bad joke (if it were a good one I probably wouldn't feel the need to explain it) about the fact that I spent a lot of time this week trying to balance out my work and that my next rendering project was somewhat inspired by Vincent Van Gogh. Everyone knows (hopefully) about how Vincent Van Gogh cut off a portion of his ear. So the joke is that the Vestibular System is what helps people control their balance which coincidently happens to be in the inner ear...funny right? No, not really but I decided to keep the title anyways. 

This week has been busy, but what else is new? I noticed recently that the amount of work I was doing for each of my classes had started to become a little unbalanced so I spent this week trying to redistribute my time and focus to try and get everything back in balance. Which meant spending less time on rendering and more time on my production pipeline project. Basically I told myself that I couldn't spend any extra time on rendering until I get the model and UVs for my character for production pipeline done.
Considering how excited I am for my next rendering project it seemed to have worked really well because I actually managed to finish the model very quickly and efficiently this week. I don't know why but all the other times I tried to work on it just went painfully slow, which was frustrating since I knew I was much faster at modeling than I was actually going.

And thanks to the Maya Bonus Tools that you can get from the Autodesk Area, I have managed to UV more than 80% of the model in less than 4 hours. I think that must be my new record for UVing an organic object, particularly one this complex.

I just have to mirror over the boot and arm and finish up a few small pieces and I'll be done! Which means I can really start having fun with my rendering assignment.

I am very excited about this assignment because I'm going to be using it to lead into my final project for the class. I started out in fine arts, and ever since I started doing 3D I've been wanting to try and find a way to make it look like my models were painted. I've done a lot with painting on textures by hand, but obviously that's not enough to make something look like it's made out of paint.  So my hope is that with my final project I can really explore some of the possible ways that I can add thickness to the object in the way that it looks like thick globs of paint brushed on. I've been working out several different options in my head for a while and I'd really like to finally try them out to see if I can make this happen.  I have a feeling it's going to fail miserably but I really want to try it and see.

I've painted in a lot of different styles, but I always really enjoyed expressionism/impressionism and this is what I'd really like to try and mimic in 3D. For our next rendering project we're required to create an image using Global Illumination and Sun and Sky. My plan is to create an interior scene that I will then use portal lights to pull in the light from the sun and sky for the Global illumination I set up in the room.

I decided to take inspiration from some of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings of interiors, specifically the ones he did of bedrooms. Van Gogh often painted entitre rooms, but due to time constraints and the amount of work I have this quarter I decided right away that I wanted my scene to be very small and really just a portion of a room instead of the whole thing.

This painting in particular inspired me for the set up of my interior, although strangely it hardly has anything in common in terms of the furniture or set up. Believe it or not it was the green he used in this painting that caused me to suddenly visualise the set up of my scene.

So far I only have things modeled and UVed, but I plan on getting to the lighting and eventually the texturing before the end of this week. I have to finish the UVs for my character though before I can start. Hopefully I'll be able to begin work again tomorrow.

Fishes are so Delicious

I have quite a few updates and new things to share. Let's start with the updates on projects from my last post.

First of all I completely redesigned the character I am making for my project pipeline class. I realized that I didn't have a clear idea of who my character was and it was really holding me back in terms of being able to let her inner personality show through in my work.

I'm really glad I decided to rework the design. Going back and doing thumbnails really showed that I didn't have a style really nailed down, and even as I started to form a better image of my character in my head it still took me several tried before things started to become more consistent.

She's still very simple design-wise. I mentioned last time that I really wanted to keep the design conservative so that I could really focus more on building my skills instead of spending time making everything really complex. My professor pointed out that something I should really work on is trying to make a unique profile for her so that she's more identifiable. While I was purposefully being conservative, I think my professor was bring up a really important issue. Right now she doesn't really stand out at all, and if I can find a way to change that while still keeping her simple I think it would







I spent a lot of time playing around with hair styles. I knew I wanted her to be a more butch and serious looking female, but being a girl myself, I know how many different things can be down with hair. There is no such thing as just "short hair," there are hundreds of different styles and types of short hair.  But there are ways to limit options, luckily, and since I wanted her to feel more professional and serious and it was pretty clear that anything too wild or messy would send the opposite message. Not only is she a professional, but she's also very rational. I decided she's the type to keep her hair short not because it looks good but because it keeps it from interfering with her work as a soldier. really help.

With all of this in mind, I've decided to go with hair style number 2. My second choice would be number 6. I'm going to begin modeling her today so I should have more to share next time.

Now on to rendering!  I finished my last project. It's not too different from the image I posted last week, but the lights are better and there's some AO in the picture too.  It's still not the most exciting thing I've ever done, but it's not too bad.

I've also begun my second project for rendering in which we have to make an image using only procedural shaders. I decided I really wanted to challenge myself for this one, and boy did I pick a challenge. I decided to make a gold fish, which doesn't sound too bad but if you've ever had to make scales using procedural texturing then you'd know it's no picnic.

It took me three hours to get just the shape of the scales alone. It took me a while but I finally managed to get the shape using just ramps. I then added a bump map, color, incandescence, and some other attributes. In the end I used mostly ramps for a good portion of the entire shader.

The next challenge was getting the texture for the fins, particularly the tail since the lines need to follow along the split "Y" shape of the tail.

They're still not perfect, but I need to work on finishing the rest of the scene and the eye before I play with them some more. It's due on Tuesday, so I should have a finished image to share next week.

Before I go, remember the doctor concept I created in my post The Doctor is In? Well I'll be using him for my next rendering assignment, so make sure to check back to find out how he turns out!

Outer Space, Doors, and Ice Cream

Woot! I'm done with finals! Which means I have a ton of stuff to share! Seriously, I have so much to show it's not even funny.

First of all I finished the textures on my character.

I still don't like a lot of things about it, but at this point the issues I have have more to do with the model than with the textures. I am extremely happy that I managed to do the entire thing with procedural textures (with the exception of the patterns on the belt which I drew by hand in photoshop). I think that the wrinkles in the white shirt turned out extremely well for being a procedural bump map.

So remember way back in December when I said I was going to be assisting some seniors on their thesis projects? Probably not because I haven't mentioned it since (click here to see my post, "Working Toghter"), but I'm actually done with that as well now.

I was working with Skybase on his film The Door to Tomorrow to make some of the settings for his scenes. I modeled a very simple Hospital room and hallway which he then rendered and painted over before adding the animations.

I've got some renders as well as the painted over versions that Skybase was generous enough to allow me to share. I did the models but he did all the rendering and painting.

Please note that the renders are purposefully noisy because of the process he was using to paint over them worked better when there was more noise.

 He presented the finished film last night and it was absolutely beautiful and I am so honored to have been able to have been a part of the project. As far as I am aware the full video isn't currently available online, but he has several trailers which you can find here on his Vimeo. I highly recomend paying it a visit as the stuff he's been doing really is amazing.

I also worked with my friend Kyle West on his senior thesis. He created an asset package with a character and vehicle. He developed this really cool idea of an ice cream man with a special customized ice cream truck. My job was to make the logo for the ice cream company, which he had a pretty specific vision for so it was more just making that idea a reality in illustrator.

He really wanted the logo to be simple and straight forward so the overall concept was always pretty set. He knew he wanted an ice cream cone, for obvious reasons, and that he wanted the company name to be on a banner. So the things I played around with was the style of the cone and ice cream as well as different shapes and placements for the banner.

We came up with the idea of the bow tie because the character wears one as part of his work uniform so we thought it would be a kind of cool way to add a little branding to the company. I think we definitely made the right choice in the end. I wasn't a huge fan of the soft serve cones I was comming up with.

Another thing I did was make the eyes, teeth, and eyelashes for his character.

I know it's a pretty creepy render. He looks like he's wearing a ski mask, haha, but I didn't want to post up Kyle's face model, so I just used the parts I used to match things to. The eye lashes I modeled one lash and then animated along a curve and had it generate copies as it animated.

And one last thing I have is yet another digital painting I've started, hoever I'm going to be finishing this one. I'm doing it for a scholarship so I'm hoping I can finish it up well enough to have a shot at getting some financial aide for college. I've only put four and a half hours into it so far so it's not done, but I'm extremely happy with how well it's going considering I'm not extremely experienced in digital painting.