Independant study - Week 1

Whilst on our break, I decided that for the rest of second year at university, im going to be doing zbrush studies every week and painting studies every week (whether this be breaking down another artists work and talking about their method and colour theory or painting my own piece).

To start off with, Ive just made an alien head from an idea I had which I plan to go back to and create a full character design, so body, clothes, equipment, weapons etc

I didnt use many tools for this model, only the move tool, clay build up and smooth/mask

For painting this week, I follow a youtube series called Brush Sauce Theatre, they have a different theme every month and this months theme was High Lord of the Gardens. I didnt get round to finishing the painting this week, but below are the ideas I generated for the theme.

My favourite are the 2 ideas on the right, the bottom right one I like the most but the top right one fits the theme much better, so I plan to continue top right image for the theme but the bottom right one for a personal painting of mine.

Interchange

Interchange project

I orginally picked the day trip/talk on tuesday, and the lecture on failure for wednesday but ended up changing my mind the day before because I really wanted to do the architecture session (which clashed with the tuesday trip). In an ideal situation I wanted to do all 3.

Architecture - the reason I picked this class is because I've always been interested in architecture, but never got the grades to take it up as a career as a lot of universities wanted a Mathematics and Physics as an A level which I didnt have. I also wanted to take this opportunity to learn more about architecture and hopefully trasnfer this knowledge into my paintings and designs. We learnt about the 5 (+1) elements of architecture, they were the:
- Floors, here you can play with shapes and dimensions of the bulding/floor.
- Walls, for internal and external space, seperating the floor into rooms and from the outside.
- Openings, ventilation, windows and light, you need to take into account where the sun sets and rises when considering window placement so the room/interior can get a light source.
- Doors, they have a symbolic meaning, can be considered a 'big entrance' which is why some buildings have their front door connected to the main room for this grand entrance, means interior doors aswell leading into other rooms.
- Roof, this is the last elemnt but also one of the most important, it creates the shelter for the house

And the (+1) element are people, you need to make the building suitable for the people that are going to use it and suitable for the people you are making for, otherwise it will cause issues and complications (for example, not taking into account disbaled access and slopes (instead of stairs) when making a house for someone who has impaired movement). As well as accessability you need to take into account the visuals and aesthetic of the building, a law firm for example wouldn't be in a building made of colourful spheres with a wacky maze like interior, it would need to be organised and flowing.

In small groups we were asked to make a building prototype out of card and other materials, in my group we decided to create an open space for students, so a modern media lab where it was open and spacious. We also wanted to experiment with diagonals in the building because a lot of buildings work with squares or rectangles and wanted to see how we could incoporate diagonal dividings in the interior.

Lecture on Failure - Due to illness, I unfortunately wasnt able to attend this lecture as I would have liked

Research Report Ideas

When we were told about making a research report, I decided pretty quickly that I didnt want to do an extended essay and would rather do a report that compliments my studio work or helps me understand the industry more, so a technical report or an industry report would be great for me.

I havent spoke to any tutors yet so I dont know everything that each report entails but here are the positives and negatives for doing each in relation to the report itself and my studio work.

Technical/Reflective report:
+ Will help me develop much more as an artist
+ Achieve a better understanding in creative processes
+ Will help me choose what I want to specialise in
- I enjoy 2D, 3D, particle effects, blueprinting, painting and modelling and the impression I get is that I have to pick a narrower path for third year instead of doing a bit of everything

Techincal/Reflective Report Ideas:
- Complete character design from concept to creation, 2D to 3D then into UE4
- Same as last point but also designing an envionment for the player both in 2D and 3D
- Creating an envionment, then designing creatures, wildlife, plants and trees for that location in both 2D and 3D
- Asset Creation 2D to 3D with blueprints and particle effects if necessary
- A complete game prototype, painting, 3d and blueprinting, everything

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Industry report:
+ Will get a much better understanding of the games indsutry
+ Will potentially make connections in the games industry if I get an interview
+ Can focus my practical work in third year about a specific company making me more employable to them
+ Higher chance of getting a job from that company as we'll be communicating a lot and they'll be seeing my work and might be interested
- Its not guarunteed I'll get an interview for my report, company might not reply to me
- Company might not be looking for an artist
- Doesnt compliment my practical work as much as other reports

Industry report ideas:
- Big name companies that I'm a huge fan of like Square Enix, Naughty Dog, Bandai etc and focus all my studio work around a company, probably won't hire me but it gets my name out there
- Indie studios/smaller studios that are probably looking for team members, focus all my studio work around that company, they may hire me if interested

Collaboration Project with Fine Art

Day 1 - Monday

On the first after we were given our brief, we walked out the lecture together and headed to The Playhouse to discuss ideas over a drink (depsite being 2 members down at the time). We discussed many ideas about our theme 'Rabbit' and were thinking about what we could relate it to, we discussed fur, other animals and anthropomorphic rabbits (human like rabbits). We also discussed films that have any relevance to the white rabbit so Alice in Wonderland was the first thing that came to mind and also the first Matrix film where Morpheus tells Neo to follow the white rabbit. After finding the relevenace of the white rabbit in films we looked into the meaning of the white rabbit as a symbol and it symbolises knowledge, searching for knowledge and wanting to learn and this meaning is clearly shown in both the Matrix and Alice in Wonderland. We decided that this is something we want to incoporate in our video. After we got a lot of ideas down and discussed a lot, we walked to the antique shop to look for anthropomorphic rabbits because that was the orginal idea we were going for and I took some reference images for the team and uploaded them to dropbox with a sharable link. After looking here we decide to go to the castle to look for objects or any thing else we might have missed involving the white rabbit. Though we didnt find anything beside taxidermy rabbits, it did make us think about other cultures, specifically the chinese interpretations of the white rabbit which symbolizes luck and also the quest for knowledge. After spending most of the afternoon with eachother we all parted ways and said we will have a meet up tommorow to discuss our ideas with our full group.


Day 2 - Tuesday

We met up and filled in the other two members who werent at the briefing what ideas we had and what we were planning to do. After further discussion we decided not to go for anthropomorphic rabbits and instead stick towards the idea of a quest for knowledge and wanting to learn more. Unfortunately due to interchange, I wasnt able to stay for the full conversation, after an hour I had to leave for my architecture session. Afterwards I messaged the group chat that we made on facebook and the idea that we pretty much finalized is a white rabbit, in a room made of fur, going into a blackhole of some kind. The rabbit will keep going into the blackhole on a loop to show that once youve learnt something, theres still more to learn, learning doesnt stop which was a cool idea. However, I asked my group what they needed me to do for the video (beacause we werent filming we were going to make an animation) and they said I didnt need to do anything, which I didnt like. After me messaging the group saying that I didnt want to do nothing for this project they said I can make the 3D model of the rabbit head but I have to base it on one of their sketches and I'm not allowed to create too much depth or texture it, which again, I wasnt too happy with but at least I actually had a job to do.


Day 3, 4 and 5 - Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

After tuesdays meetup we all decided we would spend the rest of the week workin on our parts for the video, and would arrange a meetup if any problems popped up. Everyone seemed to work well with their jobs and we were planning to meetup Friday however, I couldnt attend due to illness. Prior to this meetup, one member of the group was given the task of making the room made out of fur in 3D (which I mentioned I could do on 3 seperate occasions on both monday and tuesday) and they said they were struggling to do it. I offered to switch roles or to give me the task of making the room since we were running short on time and they said no its alright. On sunday they messsaged the group again stating they couldnt do it and we'd have to settle for pictures of fur on the 3d room isntead of rendered fur. This did annoy me a little, I offered to do the job and said I was able to do it, I even offered to show that member how to do it in the media labs but they refused.


Day 6 and 7 - Saturday and Sunday

By this point most people had finished their tasks and we were to assemble th video of the weekend. I sent the animator my 3D rabbit and and over the weeked he began to create our video ready for monday.


Summary and Thoughts of the Project

The members of my group were very friendly, I couldnt have had a nicer group. The fine art students we had in our group showed a lot of passion and had plenty of ideas, ones that I and other games student probably wouldn't have come up with. Though I was happy with my group I felt like they didnt listen to me at all. When we decided we were going to incorporate the fur room into our video during the meetup, I said I could render fur in 3D three times and they all said that was cool and it will be helpful then to be told the next day in the meetup (that I had to leave early for due to interchange) that there wasnt anything for me to do, despite one member stating for the whole week they were struggling to create the fur room. It was a little frusttrating, I did all I could to help and offered to show that member how to do it in the media labs and everytime it was as 'no'. I felt like I could have done much more for the group but wasnt allowed.
Despite this, I am happy with the outcome and did learn a lot about fine art and their way of thinking, theyre always thinking out the box for unique and wacky ideas and I really like that. At the start of the week I was sceptical of the project and was dreading it, as we progressed through the week and met up with my team they were all very nice and easy to talk to and realised  I had no reason to be worried about the project.


What I did for the collaboration

- Took references images of different rabbits around Norwich for us to use in our designs, dropbox link here at the bottom
- Created the 3D rabbit head that was used in the video
- Was one of the few members that turned up for the brief where we discussed and nearly finalised our idea
- Briefly talked about the process of the 3D model in our presentation, about how I referenced one members drawings, scultped it in 3D on ZBrush and then was referenced for one of the fine artists physical clay model (which we didnt end up using in the video unfortunately)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vg2em11oe6u8dkd/AABoWM-IWamULo3g3kiYpJBRa?dl=0

Job roles I'm considering applying to:
- Character Design
- Environment Design
- Marketing Illustrator
- ZBrush Character Artist
- Texture Artist
- Fantasy Illustrator (Magic the Gathering/other trading card games)

5 Job specifications:
- http://www.allartschools.com/graphic-design/illustration-job-description/
- http://www.splashdamage.com/node/108
- http://www.creativeheads.net/job/13509/zbrush-character-artist-in-burbank
- http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/savor-flavor/getting-job-wizards-2012-03-13
- http://study.com/articles/Fantasy_Artists_Information_About_Becoming_a_Fantasy_Artist_or_Fantasy_Art_Professional.html



3 Professional Portfolios
- Jason Nguyen:  https://www.artstation.com/artist/jasonn
Im a huge fan of Jasons work because you can look at any of his pieces no matter what the story of the image is or what the painting is focusing and you'll always be able to tell that its his work. I have seen work similar to Jasons from other artists but he never tends to use more than 3 colours and doesnt just paint the image he uses intricate patterns aswell.

- Peter Mohrbacher: https://www.artstation.com/artist/bugmeyer
Peters work isnt anything less than incredible and what I aspire to be like as an artist. His paintings are so unique and rendered to a really good quality with his abstract fantasy style that he has in his work. This is the kind of style I'd like to achieve.

- Ramses Melendez: https://www.artstation.com/artist/ramsesmelendez
Im a huge fan of skulls, zombies and anything else that resembles death or otherwordly creatures from the underworld. Ramses's depictions of grim reapers or ghostly beings in his work arent anything like ive seen before and inspires to paint and create ideas to the same quality that he does.



Work I'll be producing over the next 3 weeks:
- Week 1: A final Piece, ideas and development for the final piece, 2 value studies related to the final piece one focused values and the other on rendering and values
- Week 2: Finish off anything left over from week 1 if any, A final Piece, ideas and development for the final piece, 2 value studies related to the final piece one focused values and the other on rendering and values
- Week 3: Finish off anything left over from week 2 if any, A final Piece, ideas and development for the final piece, 2 value studies related to the final piece one focused values and the other on rendering and values



Update
- I lost a lot of time in the first week confused about what to do, so ive decided to fall back and just do 2 images, id rather finish 2 images completely than have 3 that arent complete.
- One section will be based around geisha girls and their poses with a couple of value studies along with a final piece. The other section will be based around zombies and their poses with a couple of value studies and a final piece.

Bamboo Rush Altered Sprites ( from feedback) - Indie Dev

Personal Studies + Making My Own Brushes - Concept Art

Studies

Value Studies

Sketches

Coloured Pieces/Getting used to painting on photoshop

Brushes

Ive experimented making a variety of brushes in Photoshop where I can learn all the brush effects/tools in the software and hopefully make some useful brushes I can use in the future. Ive managed to make a couple I have used, and also a couple I havent used but know how I'll use them in the future if such a painting pops up. My process of creating brushes involves the fractal software Apophysis that I enjoy messing around on, I experiment with different fractals to create some useful shapes and then render them so I can edit them on photoshop. This is how I've made a lot of my brushes from Apophysis and the result of them I'm very happy with. Below are some examples.

Personal Zbrush Sculpts - Zbrush

Here are some sculpts I have been doing in my own time using Zbrush:

Here is an Imp like creature I was scultping, also my first sculpt of year 2. Really happy with the outcome as proportion wise the face looks pretty accurate considering I wasnt using any reference images.

Here is a Martini glass I was sculpting. Because I always ended up scultping something organic I thought I would try and sculpt something more man made and the idea of a martini glass came to mind. I like the result however I need to do much more work on the umbreallaas the underneathe of it isnt that great and the edges are polished enough.

In my most recent zbrush sesssion we were introduced to a cylindrical symmetry tool. Here im trying to explore this tool using my own idea of making a chalice. I like the idea but the only downside is that I belive the chalice is too thick and my attempts to make the top of the chalice thinner but still keep its shape didnt work out that well.

Here was another exploration of the cylindrical symmetry tool and thought I'd give making a candlestick a go. I am really pleased with this and made it pretty fast compared to my other sculpts too.

In this sculpt I was trying to make a different variant of the Scuttle Crab from League of Legends. Its not complete as I still need to sculpt the lower half of its body and add some legs.

Here I was trying to create something similar to that of a Genestealer from Warhammer 40k, but still something quite different. I believe I succeeded however the sculpt needs much more refinement for me to be happy with it.

Here I was scultping some weird alien jellyfish that you would see floating in space. Im not too keen on this sculpt but it is an idea I would like the revisit and recreate to a better standard.