2D Art Week 005 - Perspective Assignment

Perspective Assignment

  Kicking off Week 5, we tackled the ever elusive concept that is perspective. Artist John Berkey was our point of inspiration this week, and utilizing Maya as a tool to aid us in nailing our perspectives, we took a piece of Berkey's art and recreated it in concept form. I chose this neat little space ship -- an engaging, and ultimately, challenging piece, but I broke it down to simple shapes to build it's form.

Using Maya, I layered a bunch of super simple shapes together to give me the general shape of the ship, and positioned the camera in such a way that somewhat mimicked the two-point perspective that Berkey achieved with the piece

I brought the image into Photoshop, and went on to trace this bad boy

Referring back to the reference image, I adjusted my linework to be more faithful to the form of Berkey's original vision

After that, I blocked out my values

Finally, with my ever faithful smudge tool, I proceeded to blend the darks and lights, and continued to add details to the piece until it was complete. Honestly, Berkey's original piece held so many minute details, I couldn't get to all of them. For the sake of this project, I tried my very best to capture at least the essential aspects of the piece

3D Art Week 005 - Cannon Proxy Model

Cannon Proxy Model

  This week we got to modeling a good 'ol fashioned cannon. The first step involved modeling a proxy version of the auxiliary weapon, and I followed along with the provided reference of the optional design of a cannon, while also referring to some another design I found online.

 

 Inspired by the second image, I modeled the first reference image out completely, and then accentuated and exaggerated it's features to, more or less, resemble that of the second reference image. Here lies in the result of that pairing of ideas and concepts

Behold! Here is the wireframe version

Then I plopped my cannon into UE4 and admired it in all its glory

2D Art Week 004 - Composition Assignment

Composition Assignment

   Next up this week was composition! Along with studying the various forms of composition that a work may utilize, we examined the famed art style of Drew Struzen, whose renowned works involve dozens upon dozens of movie posters, such as Star Wars, Blade Runner, Harry Potter, E.T, Rambo, Hook, Back to the Future, and many more. Choosing a piece of Struzen's, we were to recreate it to the best of our abilities, and identify the form of composition, or compositions, it contained. I chose Struzen's Darth Maul-centric poster for Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace. Besides my bias for Star Wars, Struzen's use of radial composition, along with how he played with scale in this piece, almost immediately caught my eye.

I started off with sketching out a rough of the piece, getting the basic shapes and identifying the positions of key shapes in the work

I then went in and lined it properly, still gauging positions and determining forms

Next up, I blocked in solid color. Since a majority of the piece predominantly utilized the color black, I painted those parts accordingly and then filled the rest of the space neutral gray

Then came the most tedious part - determining the appropriate value for every shape. I broke it down section by section, eyeballing the lights and darks, doing my best to ascertain their values. I left out doing the DM's left eye because I was still trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to do for it

Once that was completed, I whipped out my handy dandy smudge tool, and got to blending. I tried replicating Struzen's style, but gave it a twist and emphasized a harder hand painted look.

Oooooor it was just a happy accident :)

Also, I decided to paint in DM's eye. It was bugging the crap out of me

From there, adding the effects was a neat little challenge. I'd dabbled in painting and creating effects before, but this piece really worked me hard. Thankfully, it didn't take much time to do

And last, but not least, I added color for kicks and giggles. I really liked the black and white version, but there was no way I wasn't going to not paint that infamous zabrak sith lord's red-toned skin

Honestly, by far, my favorite project to date. I'm really proud of it, and put a Herculean effort into it. Seriously, ask anyone. I pinky promise you, it's the truth. I know it can be improved, but this piece really helped to refine and improve my digital painting skills

Also, it looks badass ^_^

3D Art Week 004 - LEGO Project Pt.2 LOTR Catapult

LEGO Project Pt.2 LOTR Catapult

  Continuing from last week, we moved forward in creating the rest of our LEGO pieces needed for our big piece. The theme of the project was Lord of the Rings, and as a class we chose to recreate the Battle of Helm's Deep. As part of the Vehicles and Mount team for our class project, I worked together with another student, Christian, in tackling the catapult.

My portion of the assignment consisted of the base framework of the catapult. So I got to work in creating all the additional special LEGO pieces this model required that did not already exist in our Student LEGO Library

Once I completed that task, I dove into creating LODs for each piece

After completing the LODs for each piece, I imported the FBX files into UE4 and made sure all the pieces were good to go

Then, it was a matter of the catapult itself being assembled in UE4. With the help of my partner Christian, we were able to construct a catapult for our contribution to the recreation of the famed Battle of Helm's Deep

2D Art Week 003 - Value Assignment

Value Assignment

  Value was our point of focus this week. We took an lined illustration from the artist Frank Frazetta, and utilized lights and darks to produced value where we believed light fell on the subject. I chose this cool Barbarian and his pet panther (totally head canon.)

   First off, I blocked out values with solid shades of gray, determining what would be a lighter or darker feature of the Barbarian

  Once I filled in all the values accordingly (like a high level coloring book), I determined where my light source was coming from (the top left corner) and began adding dark tones and shading curvatures as I saw fit

Then it was onto the lighter tones, in which I focused on highlights and where light hit the brightest. Once implemented, it really broke up the flat tones I laid out previously, even more so than when I just did the dark tones

I tweaked a bit more, then added a gradient background and produced shadows

All in all, a fun little project that really emphasized the importance to lighting and shadows, and how they work on different forms

3D Art Week 003 - LEGO Project Pt.1 Unique LEGO Piece Assignment

LEGO Project Pt.1 Unique LEGO Piece Assignment

  Evolving from building structures with simple, textured cubes, we delved into the magical world of LEGOOOOOOOOOS! This assignment was broken up into two parts. For this part, we chose a unique LEGO piece that pertained to our eventual build of something from the world of Lord of the Rings (more about that later.)

  Focusing on that, the goal was to create a piece that didn't already exist in our Student database of LEGOs. For my piece, I chose the LEGO expertly named the "Technic Pin Connector Plate with Two Holes." I know, a mouthful.

Using this image as a reference, I first built up a proxy model of what would eventually become my final version. A crude, but effective means of having something that was representative of a final product, but would serve adequately as a placeholder in a working project if needed

I then went to work on sorting out the geometry, cleaning up edges and adding bevels to soften the edges. Following the reference as best as I could, the end product was more or less an accurate representation of the unique LEGO piece I needed for Pt.2 of our assignment

Here's what it looks like in UE4

Next up - BRING ON THE CATAPULT!

2D Art Week 002 - Silhouettes Assignment

Silhouettes Assignment

  This week we dove into silhouettes -- their importance and what to pay attention to when creating a silhouette, and in turn, a distinguishable character. It goes to show that your first design might not be what you end up going with. This assignment in of itself was a great exercise in stretching my creative muscles, and putting an emphasis on interation. For inspiration, we studied the work of Brian Froud, a fantasy illustrator most notably known for his work in The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. We were to choose a concept and derive various silhouettes from the initial piece.

In my search for a concept, I zeroed in on this little...thing. It was ugly but cute, and super weird, and found that its silhouette could give me a lot to play with

I found myself picking out key features and manipulating them with each rendition, such as the ears, hands, feet, and body shape

I don't know if I'll ever get that creepy little thing's face out of my head, but drawing various potential versions of it was a definitely joy :3

3D Art Week 002 - Minecraft(ish) Level Assignment

Minecraft(ish) Level Assignment

  Hot on the heels of our first assignment, this week we worked with --you guessed it-- MORE CUBES. However, this time around we went a step further with textures, to give our cubes a more unique look then the standard UE4 materials.

Starting off, we created our cube in Maya, and then laid out its UVs so prepare our work on the cube's texture map

Each square of the UV spread represented a side of the cube. Basically spreading out a 3D object to become a flattened 2D representation, or 'map' of the object

Hopping into Photoshop, I replicated the UV spread and went to work on creating the pixel-style texture akin to the world phenomenon known as Minecraft. I generated 4 variations-- Grass Dirt, Water, Clay, and Stone

As a test, I applied it to the cube in Maya to make sure the texture fit properly

Jumping into Unreal Engine 4, I went to work creating the material

Once that was set up, it was just a matter of creating material instances of the other textures, and getting to work on laying out the cubes