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.

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.

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.

Surreal for Breakfast

Before I get into posting new work, I have some very exciting news to share. I found out this week that I am a semi-finalist for the scholarship I mentioned in my post, Spring Is Here!. My art/essays passed the first test and now I'm up against roughly 40 other semifinalists for the grand prize. I am extremely excited and honored to have made it this far and I will be sure to share any updates as they occur.

And now on to the art!

First off, I finished the doctor and I have a quick turn table of him to share.


I am very happy with how he turned out. I only wish I had enough time to make a scene to go with him. That's something to save for later though as I already moved on and finished the next rendering project.

The only project requirements were that we use displacements in our scene. I didn't really have an idea of what I wanted to do for this assignment but for whatever reason I started thinking of a dry desert with cracked earth. Then that somehow led to me looking at surrealism which eventually led to me  putting together this quick concept of what I wanted to do.

I only had a week to do the assignment, so it's not that crazy or out there in terms of surrealism. I made several changes in the composition though once I actually started making it in 3D. 

It's definitely not a portfolio peice or anything I'm too proud of. I wanted to put a lot more time into it than I was actually able to so it ended up falling short of my expectations. I'm glad I changed those awful arches that where in the original concept I made in photoshop. I never really liked them but they at least gave me a sense of what I wanted to do.

I really wanted to be able to get the metal texture that is on the front hand in the concept, and I had a texture that I was going to use. But for whatever reason the shadows just weren't working right on it and I didn't have enough time to investigate so I ended up just changing the texture all together.

I feel like trying to make something be surreal in 3D is cheating because it's so easy to get that look to it. Even more so since I could add things in in post and play around in photoshop. The weird part is despite all that I still didn't really get it to be what I wanted.

That's all for school work at the momment, but I do have a little something I did last night on the side.

I was done with work for the day and decided to do a quick self portrait in photoshop based on a photo I had. Nothing too fancy but I thought I'd share anyways.

That's all for now!

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!

Characterization

Recently I've been doing a little research on character design for my Project Pipeline class. I need to model a character for my project, but I've been having some trouble trying to come up with an actual character. I wasn't originally going to make a whole character but my professor really wants me to do one so I'm trying to put together a plan for it. I had originally planned an entirely different project and I had that all planned out, but I'm having trouble trying to turn it around an come up with something new. I've been trying to pull together images for inspiration but so far I'm not really feeling it. I've done a few quick sketches but they all seem to be going in different directions in terms of style.

 I want to keep the outfit simple because it's the first time I'll be trying to do normal maps in mudbox and I don't want to get in over my head. I think the simpler it is the more I can really practice and get it right without having to worry about having to get a whole bunch of details done. The issue is I really just don't have an idea of who my character is so I'm having trouble being able to invest myself in developing them.

 I started making some t-pose references, but I don't really like what I have so I'm still working on coming up with something different. I have to have everything done by Wednesday, so we'll see what I end up with.

I'm also taking a rendering class this quarter and I'm almost done with my first assignment. We had to make a maximalism themed piece while focusing on 3 point lighting, so it had to have a lot of detail. I took inspiration from the various rose windows you see in gothic cathedrals. 

We can only use shades, so no color, but I think it's turning out pretty nice. I'm not crazy in love with it though. It's nice, but I don't think it's going to turn out to be a portfolio worthy piece. I try to aim to make all my projects good enough to go into my portfolio, but they can't all be winners. Our next project is going to be on procedural shaders, which I am already familiar with from my shading class last quarter. I'm pretty excited to see what I can do with it. I have an idea in mind but I'm not sure how possible it will be.

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.