Week 24: Painfully unproductive

This week was certainly pretty slow-going. The amount of time given for this project made me lazy, and days ticked on where I didn't really do much work on it.. or anything else of that matter.

Fortunately I made some progress on my concepts, trying to add some looser and more interesting ideas.

More zombie concepts

I think the only productive thing I managed to do this week was a couple of paintings:

My first non-study in a considerable amount of time

This painting was originally starting out as a study but I decided to push myself and do something more challenging and put in a lady wearing it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it gave me some faith in my own abilities.

Bouguereau study

 I've started to consider focusing on character art since that is my strength at the moment, but I still want to improve on other areas so I'm leaving it a little open for now since I am only in first year!

Noticing I was behind on my truck I decided I needed to get my act together, and after a weekend at home to recharge my batteries I started working again!

A day's work

I think this project has certainly showed me so far what I should and shouldn't do with an extensive amount of time, and I'm going to remember this for every project we get after this.

Week 23: Toyota pickup

This week we were set our final(?) project of the year; a Toyota pickup truck which we will then be zombie-fying. Being an avid fan of the Walking dead I was pretty excited to get started on this project.

Our first task was to model and texture the pickup in its standard form. We have been given 3 weeks to do this as well as doing our zombie concepts alongside. I wasn't overly concerned about planning my time very well; my initial plan was to spend a day modelling and see where I was at so I could test the waters so to speak and then work out my workplan from there. After two days I had almost finished my model with just a few details left to add in.

Considering we have so long for this project I decided that I was allowed to work on a whim for now; when I woke up in a painting mood I decided to give myself the day at home concepting my zombie version and painting things- convenient!

First few concepts

Concepting was actually quite different to what I expected it to be. It was suggested that we work over the example model and start with some rough sketches before moving onto photobashing. I originally had a lot of ideas floating round in my head, going through all the zombie films and shows I'd seen and working out what you would need in your truck. Although when I started with my sketches a lot of the little bits and pieces weren't really relevant since I was working with bigger shapes and structures, not all the food and weapons and blankets and bags you'd need to survive the apocalypse!

I decided to break my concepts down into sections; survival, defensive and attack. Survival was going to be a truck that would last a long time, so it had to have a mix of defensive and attack but also needed to be full of supplies-something that isn't easy to show off in this early stage. Defensive was more about making the truck more fortified so no zombies could get in. Attack was obviously going in guns blazing and ramming down the zombies. Looking at my ideas so far I think they're all pretty bland and I could have thought about the practicalities a little TOO much too early on, rather than reeling in a cool design later.

I want to set my Toyota in 'The Walking Dead' world which gives me a pretty good style guide in itself. I want to avoid anything too extreme or unbelievable as well as stay away from the comedic and overly violent.

So far judging by these designs my choice of style guide could effect how 'cool' my pickup might look so I think I might try some wilder designs and worry about the realism later on down the line.

But so far I think I've got a comfortable amount of time to work with! I'll be finishing off my model on Monday and hopefully start unwrapping/texturing it while I work on my concepting in my own time.

Week 22: End of character project!

The end of this week marked the end of the character project. I've learned so many things and I think I've definitely impressed myself with the work I've produced.

Final texture and model

Final model and texture with wireframes

Unwrapped texture

I've already written a lot about my model over previous blog posts so I'm just gonna insert my reflective assessment to save me typing it all out again!

" Overall I’m very pleased with my model and texture, especially considering how much of a struggle I thought this would be. I learned a lot through the process and feel like I could do the whole thing a lot better if I started from scratch again (unfortunate time constraints).

I spent a lot of my time concepting going in the complete wrong direction and it was only during the last week or so of allocated time for concepting that I actually decided to go back and change my original idea to something more appropriate. I think my issue was I knew that my original idea wasn’t very strong but I kept pushing it further in the hopes that it would just ‘work’ after I’d put colour on it etc.

Although I am pleased with my final design I wonder how much further I could had developed it if I hadn’t spent so much time developing in the wrong direction.

The topology of my model isn’t the strongest; I had difficulty getting it right for the face and I always seem to be quite messy when it comes to modelling and since I know texturing is more of a strength than modelling I think I get lazy and leave things as they are hoping that the texture will sort out my faults. I feel if I had used my topology more efficiently I could have a better model and nicer textures.

Since some of my modelling was bad my unwraps weren’t as clean and tidy as I had hoped they would be, leaving myself some nasty seams and overlaps that I spent a lot of time going back in to re-model and unwrap (time that would have been saved if I modelled my character more carefully in the beginning).

Rigging turned out to be a bit (a lot) of a shambles. After many attempts to do it while I was mid-way texturing I kept abandoning it because I ‘didn’t get it’ and it ‘wasn’t going right’. I’m not sure why I thought anything would change if I left it till last! I really feel like my rigging let me down because I was just so lost with it and didn’t leave myself enough time with it, despite knowing it would be difficult.

As well as this I neglected to model an accessory, despite having one in my concept. Part of the time I simply forgot and then the rest of the time I thought ‘I’ll do it later’, which ended up leaving me with no accessory!

Although my model and my texture are of a relatively high standard (for me) I think it’s definitely overshadowed by my awful attempt at rigging."

This week was also review week in which I received some really positive feedback on my model/texture as well as ways to improve it. I was also told I was working at B level at the moment and if I keep improving I should be on track for a first. I know grades aren't everything but it's nice to know your hard work is paying off and you're not quite as awful as you thought you were!

Study of Frederic Leighton-Pavonia

I managed to do a quick study at the end of the week and I'm really happy with how my digital technique is coming along- just need to start doing my own stuff!

Week 21: Texturing

This week was pretty straightforward as it consisted of getting my head down and texturing my model.

We learned the basics of rigging but I decided I'd leave that till after I'd got my texture done as I knew that was going to be the most time consuming and important part.

I'm very nearly finished my texturing and I'm pleased with how its turned out so far although I have bumped into some issues which I think could have been down to my thinking of 'a good texture will cover up bad modelling'.. which is wrong is seems. I wasted a lot of my time because I had to go back and change my model and then re-unwrap to make it easier for myself (which I ended up scrapping because I'd got so far in my texturing it would actually hinder me more to start again for little gain).

I've learned a lot so far and have in fact learned a lot from this, I like to think I'll give modelling my own personal characters a go in my free time.

Week 20: Modelling

This week marked the beginning of the daunting task of modelling my character, something that I'd managed to forget about when I got so caught up in the concepting.

I started by essentially wasting(?) a whole day attempting to model the face and getting the correct topology which ended in my going home frustrated and with nothing to show for my day's work. Although the next day when I came into labs I took a different approach and finally did it right! I tend to find this happens on every 3D project I do, so I should probably start accommodating more time for it.

I wasn't 100% sure on things such as deadlines as things had been changed around so much and I'd lost track so I decided to just work as fast and effectively as I could and it paid off.

Front view of finished model

Back view of finished model

I'm pretty pleased with the way the model turned out, especially considering how awful I thought it was going to be.

Even the unwrap went well!

There are a few bits and pieces I need to work on but I've decided to slow down for now and wait till I can get a tutor to look over it and check everything is okay before I trip up and make a mistake later on!

Life drawing

I also produced one of my favourite drawings in life drawing, focusing mostly on foreshortening. I feel like I managed to capture the foreshortening in the leg really well as well as have enough time to put some detail in the drawing.

This week in critical studies we were told to peer assess each other so we teamed up and assessed each others work so far. I actually really enjoyed giving in depth feedback to a peer because I felt like I was confident in the advice I had given them from what I have learned since I have been here which shows how far I have already come in just a few months.

Week 19:

Last week was pretty disheartening for me in terms of feedback but I was determined to improve on it and find out what I did wrong.

I think the most important advice I was given was that I didn't make enough dramatic changes between concepts which was certainly true, and that I should try to make my character look more like a main character than a NPC.

Some re-iterations on my previous final concept.

I decided to try and follow the advice and worked into my 'final concept'. I got some interesting directions that I obviously hadn't considered before.

Colour variations on the new design

Quickly moving on I started working on the colours (after I'd done some value work of course) and even started to come up with an idea in my head for the character's personality; the dress was starting to look very young so I instantly changed to the idea of 'Mayor's daughter'. I then needed a reason for her overskirt to be tied up in such a way when I figured she could be a girl who enjoys going off on walks and picking flowers, pulling up her dress like this to reveal a shorter underskirt stops the mud from ruining the hem of her dress!

Facial variations

Since I also didn't include any face stuff in my first submission I figured I should probably start working on that too. I wasn't quite sure how to work on it because I didn't particularly enjoy looking at my own face for an extended period of time...
To combat this I simply traced over a photograph of me and then worked in the colours and accessories. I felt like the flowers in her hair would give hints to the idea I had in mind for her.

My final concept

After a few tweaks I arrived at my final concept! I'm really pleased with it especially after everything. I'm still waiting on feedback so I can make sure I'm definitely and then its onto modelling.... save me.

In the spare time I've had I managed to work on something quite different; League of Legends splash art repaint:

I'm ever so pleased with the outcome; its the first painting in some time that I've actually put over 3 hours into and I feel like it really shows. Its given me the confidence boost I needed to do my own (relatively) original works more often!

Week 18: Underwhelming approval

So this week we got some feedback and approval/disapproval of our characters, as I mentioned in last week's blog post I'd really been enjoying the project so far and felt like I'd responded to my house feedback really well and done loads more concepting than I had previously done before.

Some very late stage colour concepts

Since last week I did a lot more colour variations and also changed my dress slightly to fit better with the style guide. I was really happy with the amount of work I was submitting and although I hadn't done any photobashing I felt that I had achieved what I wanted regardless. The only things I hadn't really done much work on were the face and hair- I was a little unsure on how far to take the face as we were told it would be after our own likeness.

So when we got feedback I was pretty disappointed. I scored 'adequate' across the board, which to me says 'yeah I guess you tried'. I am very aware that we're not meant to take any feedback/critique to heart but when I felt really confident with my work it was a bit of a slap in the face.

I'll try and pick apart my feedback and hopefully address what I think I can improve on:

-Research/Mood boards

My mood board

Is it the best mood board in the world? Probably not, but I felt that I got a wide variety of good quality sources that I knew would be relevant for the character I had in mind so I didn't have to extend my search incredibly far. I had written a few little annotations on some photos but I think they were actually hidden in the PSD file I submitted which is probably my fault for carelessness. In the additional comments it was mentioned that my mood board 'should be organised and annotated to clearly show your idea generation and development'. I think perhaps I should have started on a broader scale perhaps? Rather than picking a 'Mayor's wife' straight away.

-Conforms with style guide

An example of one of my colour variations.

I felt that I had worked very much with the style guide in mind which is why I made a few changes to the dress quite later on. I'm aware that the costume and the model aren't stylised but we were advised to work realistically first and then stylise. I think this is certainly one of the parts of the feedback I'm most confused about as I'm not sure what I could change to make it conform any more with the style guide. Since I had chosen to do a slightly richer character than a lot of the 'peasants' the dress was going to naturally be a bit more glamorous but I felt like I was giving information about the character through the clothes she wears.

-Idea generation

In my previous blog post I posted just a few examples of my idea generations and felt that I'd actually done a better variety/quality than I had for previous projects. Part of my feedback said that I 'could afford to be more exploratory at this stage, you seem to have settled for one idea very quickly with nothing to compare and contrast it against.'
I wasn't 100% sure on what this could mean at first but after looking at a few of my peers photobashing I saw that they had done a wide variety of hoods, cloaks, trousers, equipment, jackets, hair etc etc and I found that I had been quite refined in my initial idea generation; I jumped straight to the dress as I knew that would be the most important part of my character considering I didn't think we had to do much else to our faces/bodies. Since I had picked my type of character before I started concepting I knew that she had to be wearing a nice dress to put it simply; I didn't see the point in adding any cloaks, overcoats, hats, hoods, aprons or anything simply because of the restrictions of the character type and the village scene she was supposed to be going into. I wonder whether I should have concepted these anyway JUST IN CASE, even though I knew they weren't going to be relevant? In terms of just the dress design though I thought that I had done quite a wide variety of different dress types from different time periods just to explore any features that I might like.
I disagree that I settled with one idea quickly as I explored 3/4 dresses further before picking one and then refining that one down too.

-Anatomy

Unfortunately I'm not quite sure what exactly I or anyone else was being marked on here; a lot of people used photobashing and their own orthographic photos of themselves to bash over the top of. I decided to draw out my own pose just to model dresses on and so referenced a stock image from the internet. I don't think anything is dramatically out of proportion in my drawing so I will definitely need to try and find out more information on what this section covered and therefore how else I can improve.

-Aesthetic quality of work

Down to personal preference I suppose? I hadn't spent long on my initial concepts as I was keen to get them down on canvas but when I started refining my ideas I made sure they looked good. So again, something I need to find out more about before I can work out how to improve.

I am well aware that I sound like a whiny student because they didn't score very well in their feedback but it certainly came as a bit of a shock when I thought I'd been doing okay. After speaking to a few of my peers I still can't quite establish exactly where I went 'wrong' or just 'didn't do as well' but I thought it was important to try and break down my feedback.

I'm definitely going to speak to tutors about this feedback and try and work out how I can improve on this or improve next time because I'm still pretty lost in where I go from here unfortunately! Any insights into my feedback/my response to it is welcome!