Common Art Week 5 - Use of Composition

 

I sketched out a few designs based on different composition styles before looking at the target artists.  I really liked several artists, but decided on CreatureBox (I especially like the environmental pieces they did for Ratchet and Clank).  Coincidentally, a piece similar to my sketch already exists, but I ended up sticking with my idea anyway - two capybaras on a rocky crystal landscape watching a pirate airship overhead.  The main inspiration I took from CreatureBox is the purple and blue color palette (I found a palette I liked online and then toned down the colors).  My intent is for the audience to look at the airship first, and then stray to the crystal landscape and notice the creatures.  In this sense, the title of "Watchers" describes the capybaras in the scene, but also the person viewing the image.  

3D Art Week 5 - Cannon Start

 

For this project, I'm working on a pirate ship's cannon.  It will have intricate carvings and lots of weathering/wear from years of sea battles.  For this week, I made some renders with Maya Arnold, as well as importing the low-res into Unreal Engine for a quick test render before making the high-poly version that will go into ZBrush next week.  The materials are all placeholders for now.  Top to bottom, the images show the scale, low-poly wireframe, low-poly render, low-poly in UE, high-poly wireframe, high-poly render, and reference board.

Common Art Week 4 - Use of Basic Lighting

I had a lot of fun with this drawing!  The glass material and emissive lighting reflections on the ground were the hardest part to get right, especially with the way the blue light is speckled on the floor in the screenshot.  Some things do still look different between the two, but the drawing looks a lot better than I expected it to at the beginning and I do feel like I learned a lot in the process so I'm very happy with it.

[top one is the drawing, bottom one is the screenshot]

3D Art Week 4 - Animation and Rendering in UE5

 

The demo videos were easy to follow along with, but taking that information and knowing how to use it for my own project was significantly more difficult.  I ended up using a few simple types of blueprints for my model, varying rotation speed and direction separately on each of the seven rings.  I had to render the video from Unreal three times...the first time, the movement froze several times (undiagnosed issue), and the second time there was a single frame flicker (I had split the camera into two without realizing after rendering the first time)!  The third time was luckily the charm.

Common Art Week 3 - Use of Value and Contrast

 

I feel like I learned a lot through this assignment.  I don't have much experience with Photoshop and have never used any of the techniques demonstrated here, so following the demo video took me a long time.  The workflow feels totally different than traditional drawing or painting, and definitely takes some getting used to, but I'm pretty happy with my result and will definitely use this process again in the future.

3D Art Week 3 - Hierarchies

 

I had some fun playing around with textures in UE5, and I especially like the one I found from the starter pack that I used for the floor in the last two shots - the way the light reflects on it is really neat.  It was hard to work around the grain on the lighter textures (due to Lumen), so I tried to play with the lights and camera angles to reduce its appearance as much as possible.

For my 3D abstract environment, I decided to create something based on designs of biblically-accurate angels.  There are many variations in the art references I found, but common elements are concentric rings and eyes, and often a spherical core, so I incorporated these things into my model.  I'm not sure what final materials and lighting I will use once I put this in UE5, but I tested out a few colors and ideas and rendered a few images for this assignment.

Common Art Week 2 - Use of Silhouettes

 

The moment Nick mentioned Frankenstein, I knew I had to re-design the Monster, but with more robotic body modifications.  I've never seen him portrayed book-accurate in a film, and Frankenstein is one of my favorite classic novels.  I started out this assignment on paper since I was feeling a bit stuck on the tablet, and was able to come up with a few thumbnails pretty easily.  However, once I tried to recreate those sketches digitally, I really struggled to create something that looked and felt like the original drawings.  I think I came up with some good designs, but the process certainly took a lot more time than I was anticipating!

3D Art Week 2 - Basics of Topology

 

I had fun with this homework, but did run into some minor issues here and there, especially in the lattice deformer part of the tutorial (for example, it turned out I had to switch live object 'off' before manipulating the lattice deformer, because the selections kept moving in very strange ways otherwise.)  There was also a setting that wouldn't allow me to duplicate/drag out the tail-like object in the first image, so I had to play around with things until I accidentally solved the issue. I like how CatBot turned out - I was trying to come up with ways to significantly alter the shape of the little robot we were provided, and after a few alien-esque iterations it turned into a pretty cute cat :)  I kind of want to 3D print one for my desk now...