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.

Artificial Light

It's been a while since my last post, so I thought I should go ahead and share some new stuff.

This quarter I'm taking a lighting class along with my thesis, and while I don't really feel like my first assignment is worth sharing, I'm really happy with the latest one so I wanted to post it.

I had much bigger plans for it, but for the time being I'm having to put them off until I'm done with my thesis. I wanted to have some weeds growing near the fence and put some big rocks in the ground that kind of lead towards the shed. I also want to eventually sculpt the ground a little bit so it's not just a completely flat plane.

But considering the amount of time I had to work on this, I'm really happy with how it looks despite not having everything I wanted. I think the lighting turned out really well, and I'm happy with pretty much all of the textures except for the ground. This is definitely  a project I will be coming back to to fix up for my portfolio.

Aside from my lighting assignment, the rest of what I have are just quick drawings I've done to help myself relax and take away some of the stress from thesis.  Most of them where done in under and hour, usually 30 minutes.

Dreaming is definitely my favorite part of sleep.

The More I look at this one the more I dislike it. There are a couple of strokes I wish I hadn't put in, but it's okay.

 I don't title my work often, but I've been calling the drawing above, "Fear."

Can you tell I was stressed/frustrated when I did this one? Pretty much all of that went away once I was done drawing it. It's really great to be able to just get rid of all that negative energy by doing a quick drawing.

This was actually one of my favorite drawings from high school that I decided to color. It's funny how easily I can recall the original image I had in my mind even though it's been 4-5 years. She actually has a feathered tail in the original drawing, but I didn't have enough time to color it and it looked weird leaving the pencil in so I took it out for now.

I've always wanted to do a large scale painting of this, I'd still like to some day. I think the anatomy might need a bit of adjusting first though.

Self Reflection

I'm back and with a final update on that self portrait I was making for my Modeling Strategies class. Last time I shared any progress on it was just after I had done the initial sculpt in zbrush. Well it's finished now and I have a turn table of it from my final for the class.


Modeling Strategies Final from Madeleine Rabil on Vimeo.
So basically the turn table shows off the model with normal map applied, the wireframe, the actual normal map, and a quick paint over I did on the UVs in photoshop. We weren't required to color it, but I decided to do one anyways since I knew it'd be easy and take hardly any time. Actually the color turned out better than I was expecting, except I think I could've done a better job with the transition of the top lip. But I'm ok with it for now, since I was really only doing that part for fun.

I've got two more drawings to share, both of which are kind of just the result of a lot of self reflection lately.

 This first one I've just been calling, "Scars," for obvious reasons. I tend to reflect a lot on the past and analyze how it has affected me in the present, mostly because that's the best way to learn especially when it's something that doesn't have a clear cut answer. Although the drawing definitely has a more negative feel to it, I generally find that past experiences, good or bad, have made me a stronger person in the long run. Which is why I think this image is more about the process of healing and still coping with whatever has happened rather than the final end result of it.

It seems a little silly for me to say "I think" about my own images, but a lately a lot of my drawings are the result of just that, drawing. I haven't really sat down to think about them, I've just been kind of doing them. It's kind of a weird feeling at the end, like when you wake up from a dream and suddenly think, "Okay, what am I trying to tell myself?" Unless, I'm the only one who does that, haha.

 I kind of did this one at the last minute today. I haven't had too much to really think about it, but lately I've been feeling kind of torn between two worlds, but unable to fully partake in either one because my other self holds me back. It's actually been kind of insightful though about who I am as a person, so I don't really know that it's a bad thing, just frustrating some times.

That's all I have for now. I'm hoping to find time to take some photos of the work I did in my figure drawing class now that the quarter is over. I would scan them, but scanners and charcoal aren't really a good combination so photographs are really what I need.

Life Size

It's officially mid terms which means of course that the quarter is in full swing for me. I've been running around between all my different projects and my two jobs so things for the blog are naturally off schedule. I'd like to say that I can get back to weekly posts, but I don't foresee that being realistic any time soon. Nonetheless, I will be doing my best to update as often as possible.

I had a rather exciting last two-weeks art wise. I got to do my first ever life-sized figure drawing which was also live (meaning in person from a model), which was the most fun I have had drawing in a long time. 

I knew I wouldn't have enough time to shade the whole thing supper neatly and perfectly so I decided to just have fun with the materials instead. I end up doing a ton of smearing with my hands just whenever I felt like it. I then kept some of my shading untouched so that the strokes were still clearly visible and in the end it came out with a cool mixture of both.

 I am over all extremely happy with it, except I think the shoulder area and back of her kneck is not quite right. Unfortunately, that's because my view changed a little bit after the model too her first break and that was the one area I hadn't clearly mapped out in the first 30 minutes. There are a few other minor issues, but I am still extremely happy with it. It's also really cool to have a drawing that's literally as tall as I am.

 I've been working on creating a self portrait in 3D for my Modeling Strategies Class, and I've been having a lot of fun.

On the Left is the photo I took of myself. Since I'm not doing details just yet I decided to go ahead and mirror my face and work from it like that. Once I get closer to the end I can switch to working asymetrically, since no one's face it's perfectly symetrical. 

I think my profile view isn't as strong in terms of the accuracy of the model, but this has only been the first week so there is plenty of time to make adjustments. I'll be spending a lot of time fixing the nose which is almost entirely wrong in terms of shape. And I need to work on getting my cheek's bone structure right, it's a little more fleshy (for lack of a better word) than how I have it on the model at the moment.  I haven't touched the eyes at all so they are off in both the front and side views. 

I also started a new digital painting that will mostly likely end up on my never ending pile of unfinished work. In terms of time and access to the right tablets, it usually just isn't realistic for me to even be starting these, but it is something I really do want to get better at. The only way to get better is to practice, so I try and fit it in when I can.

NA big difference here though is that unlike most of my other digital drawings I started this one from a sketch I did in pencil. I'm much more comfortable and better at drawing characters from scratch in pencil. I have improved at it on the tablet, but I think it'll be a long time before I can surpass anything I can do on paper just because I have so many more years of experience with paper. It's turning out pretty well, I think her waist/hips might be a bit small for her upper body, but that's easily adjustable. I like how the fans turned out, although I'm not too sure about how convincing their angles are. We'll have to wait and see how this one turns out.

The rest of what I have this week are mostly just doodles.

I've been getting back to drawing in pencil, I think drawings done on paper always have so much more life to them than ones done digitally- at least in the case of my own work. He's unfinished as I'm still trying to visualize what he's wearing. I pretty much had the idea of the wolf hat (unoriginal, i know) and drew him because I wanted to draw that, but now I don't know what to do with the rest.

This is a Drawing I did of my friend Ben really quick. I like it because it looks exactly like him. 

And finally, whatever this thing is. Don't ask because I really don't know.

Catching Up To Summer

Now that I'm back and ready to roll, I thought it would be nice to take a moment and post all the stuff I did over the summer. Although I was mostly busy, I did find time to fit in some artsy things every here and there.

But first, I should also mention that I did hear back about the Girl Gamers In Real Life Scholarship

Competition, unfortunately, I did not win. But that's okay, I had a lot of fun participating and the overall experience was worth it. I'm still excited to have made it to being a semi-finalist, even if I didn't win. 

Something I spent quite a bit of time on this summer was preparing for my senior thesis. I did a lot of conceptual work, mostly with quick models in Maya. 

But before I get to what I did for it over the summer, I want to mention that I am keeping a separate blog of my progress which I will be updating each week. I added a tab at the top of the page that will give easy access to anyone who's interested in following it.

That being said, I expect to be very busy with my thesis this school year, so if there's ever a week that I can't update this blog, you can check my thesis one and still see what I've been up to. I'm working two jobs on the side of school this year as well, so there's a good chance I may have to change from my weekly posts to something less frequent.

Anyways, back to the art!

As I mentioned earlier, I did a lot of conceptual modeling for my thesis, but even before that I did some experimenting in Zbrush to help me decided whether or not I wanted to go for project focused on characters or on environments.

This summer was the first time I ever got to use Zbrush, so of course I started off with some online tutorials and just playing around. My goal was to learn the basic tools and just get a feel for the program overall. So I ended up making a face from a simple sphere shape as I watched the tutorials on the different tools and tested them out.

I only had enough time to try it out for an hour when I did this, but for my first try I was pretty happy with the face I managed to sculpt into the sphere.

I felt comfortable enough to the program to decided to sculpt off of a base mesh, so I spent an hour of free time every couple of days making a bust for me to sculpt off of.

But by the time I finished and found time to work again I had decided to go with environments for my thesis and abandoned the bust for another time.

 When it comes to characters I prefer to draw rather than model in regards to conceptualizing, but I found that since I have less experience drawing architecture it was much easier and faster to model the concepts than it was to draw them. 

This was my first scene that I created in roughly 8 hours to help me visually create a style that was cohesive.
A good example of this is how I changed the bridge in the top image to the one on the bottom because I realized the first one felt too big and bulky and just didn't fit in with the rest of the scene. I was planning on remaking this scene for my thesis with better models (these were mostly just blocks that I quickly adjusted to get the look I wanted, so model-wise they are not something I would actually want to re-use), but then I realized the number of models and textures I would have to produce would just be far too much for me to actually finish in time. So instead I'm using this has a sort of style guide/inspiration for a smaller scene with the same idea. All of which you can read more about here.

After spending about two months working on my thesis whenever I had time, I decided one night to do something different and picked up that bust I had made earlier. I brought it into Zbrush and just started playing around. I didn't really have an end vision or goal, I just wanted to see what I could come up with.

I ended up making her into some sort of alien species. Again, there was no real goal other than to just have fun, and I think I spent maybe 2 hours on it.

The rest of the stuff I did consisted mainly of sketches, so there's not much to talk about. I just did them for fun.

I have another one somewhere that I'll have to find and post. I know I scanned it, but I'm not sure where I saved it to on my computer.

The End of Junior Year

It's the last week of school and everyone is intensly focused on their final projects and studying for exams. The end of the year is always bitter sweet for me. I want to go home for the summer but I also want to stay at school and keep learning. It's important to get away though, so I am looking forward to hopefully having some time to relax. We'll see how things turn out.

Anyways, I need to get back to working so I'll try to make this quick. As usual I've got some updates on my final projects. 

I'm done with everything for project pipeline except for the turn table, which hopefully wont take too long. 

I spent last week finishing textures and making her hair.

 It's the first time I've ever attempted hair cards, and I will admit, I was pleasantly surprised with how they turned out. Unfortunately I made the face way too low poly so if I ever want to use this project for anything I'll have to redo it. I'm relatively happy with the rest of the project, but I don't think it's on par with the level of detail that professionals are able to make. I wish I had had more time to work on it but things just didn't work out that way.

What I'm really excited about is my rendering final. The project reached a whole new level once I was able to add in normals and so on. It's pretty close to spot on to what I envisioned there are a few issues with the quality in the textures.

I purposefully put an ambient light in the scene to help flatten it out. I don't want it to look entirely 2D but I also didn't want it to look too 3D. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I'm happy with it either way.

I also finished working on Galactose, the game project I mentioned earlier this quarter. We have some videos of the game up on the Galactose Blog, so please check it out. The game came such a long way and I'm so proud of how it came out.

All that's left now is for me to add some small touch ups to my rendering final and make the turn table for my character and then I will be done for the year! 

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.

A Good Book

I've been feeling ill on and off all week so I'm going to be keeping this post short. I mostly just want to focus on the updates with my rendering project which I finished. Last week I mentioned that I wanted to find a way to recreate a painterly style with the room, which I did quite a bit of exploration for. However, I decided that due to the amount of time I had I wanted to save that for my final project in rendering and just focus on creating a traditional living room scene for this week.
I still spent quite a bit of time on the assignment though because I wanted to make all of the textures by hand in photoshop. I had a lot of fun with it and I'm very happy with the final outcome.

I think that if there's anything I would want to work on more it with be to make the lamp and picture frames a little dirtier because they stand out as being more "3D" than the rest of the image.  The lighting was done using Sun and Sky and bringing that into the interior scene using a portal light. I then added in Final Gather and Global Illumination to give it that nice soft look and feel.