Weekly assignment - Sci-Fi Spacecraft!

 

Moodboard, many different designs here that i really liked. some sort of one man fighter is something i'm going to base my ship around.

Didn't manage to get work in progress of my ship design a long the way.
Either way here is a back view of my ship, several thrusters on back for flying.

 Here was my first ship design in maya, really wish i spent more time rounding it off and not making it look so square. It was closest to my initial sketches so i kept it how it was.

Here you can see that i set up exactly where i wanted my ship in the scene and the background planets. 

Here you can see properly the ship design, i was going for the 80-90s type look on the ship (well maybe not intentionally) 

 

I made my own planets and space background using Photoshop (various tricks and tools a load me to do this, lasso tool, stroke tool, blur and glow) I was semi-pleased with the final outcome, wish i spent more time on the actual ship design and the colour scheme, the colour job was a little bit lazy but that's because i felt like i spent way too much time on the background when it really wasn't needed to be honest.

Sculpting assignment - Sculpting a dragon!

Here are dragon heads that i was looking at, really liked some of these designs and wanted to do a big kickass beast, thick jaws, sharp teeth and spiked backs.

                                                   .... Then decided to do a Chinese dragon, yeah!

Some early ideas and concepts.

Here i tried doing a simple, friendly dragon to warm up a little. 

Tried going for the more serious approach here, didn't really like the outcome so this was when i decided to do a Chinese dragon, obviously because they are much cooler. 

Another quick mock up and it come out looking like Disneys dinosaur. Might like to work more on this in the future. 

 Here was the start and the basic layout of the Chinese dragon i wanted to sculpt. I made sure at this stage i was 100% sure of the size and shape of my dragon before i added any more detail. 

 Muscle tones and extra detail on the head were added.

Finally added some legs and more muscle structure.

  Side view.

 I was happy with what i had on the head so fair but if i was to go back i would add much more detail, including tiny bumps and scraps, veins and scales.

I was very happy with my final design and really enjoying sculpting for the first time, i learned quite a lot and realised the amount of detail you can get from sculpting. I will enjoy in the future to practice more sculpting and maybe going back to this to do more. In the future i should remember to model a basic mesh first to save time and to get the starting shape quicker.

Weekly Photoshop assignment - Santa Christmas card special!

This weeks plan was a design a Santa Christmas card. Big mood board to inspire and generate ideas.

I liked the idea of a 'cool' Santa, or a stylized Santa, i liked the shape and deign of the lower sketch. This was my main influence and choice on design for the majority of the my final piece. 

My first draft was blocked out with the basic colours and a simple silhouette, quite liked the pose and the general layout so my final design looked pretty similar to this. The tools i used was just the lasso tool to quickly achieve a blocked out main shape. 

 Started again based on my first rough draft, started with grey scale to get the values and shadows in. I thought it was coming along quite nicely at this point. I was also happy with the composition and the overall layout, I wanted a heroic pose with under proportioned body, carrying a giant sack of goodies. 

Added in the same and most of the little details, didn't really know where to go with it after this but i was pretty please with it. 

Here are my (two) final pieces  i personally wasn't too fond of the colour and knew that i completely ruined it and didn't know anyway around it so here is grayscaled version too.  The coloured version again came out looking washed out, i believe this is once again because i did grey scale first. In the future i would like to attempt this again but doing it straight with colour. The floor could of also had a bit of work to give the picture volume and not soo flat.

Photoshop assignment - New York Plane crash.

(I did have many more designs and rough plans but i show how lost though in editing the blog.)

 

 Here are some original sketches and ideas for different shots and composition, most of these resemble my final piece and can easily see this was the main idea that stuck in my head.

 

More of a final sketch to help me get the right idea and perspective, the plane was too small in size to the building taking into account that it is meant to be a Boeing 747.

  

 Here you can see a Boeing 747 model in 3DS max to help me work out the angle and size i would need to use in my final piece.

Some perspective lines, i kinda wish i did a piece with 2 point perspective to get more of a dramatic shot but once i was already most of the way through i felt it was far too late.

As we got asked to do day and night, here are both versions. Could of done so much better i believe, i wish i spent more time on the final piece  as much i did the planning. Either way i was semi-pleased with the final result, could of spent more time on the details and the environment but the main goal here for me was to get a decent looking perspective.

                                                       

Perspective task - Boxman!

Boxman! Perspecive, you win again. Took me 6 hours of constant rubbing out and ruling up o finally get one that i was at least okay with.
I was so determined to get it as exact as i could but ending up spending wayyy too much time on this.

Weekly Photoshop assignment - Halloween!

After a weekend of playing many games with special Halloween events (Guild wars being the main culprit here) I should be full of ideas, candy corn, pumpkins and anything else spooky in-between  I like the idea of maybe creatures dressing up as there real counterpart. 

I first sketched up some deigns, i wanted to work more on the character. i tried to get a good pose or a character that i would be happy with. I liked the main two designs on this one and is defiantly the design i would like to base my final design on. 

Here are a few more character designs that i wasn't too happy with.

Here are a few Photoshop sketches that elaborate more on my ideas i drew earlier. One of these designs is what i would of liked to do my final piece on but unfortunately didn't have enough time. This is defiantly something that i would like to attempt again in the future. 

Weekly Photoshop assignment - Tree!

They come in all shapes and sizes and believe it or not also have their own proportions and sizes much like humans do. All week i've been staring at trees wondering what my final piece should look like, how hard can it be, trees are trees right?

I first gathered research and deigns of what sort of sign i would like to do. I realised after that the brief was trees with character, the moodboard here is showing tree as character..mostly.

I liked the idea of a giant woodland creature, friendly of course. Got a few ideas here but like i said i realised trees with character are not allowed. 

Going back i first i tried out going to bare basics of drawing a pine tree (Simple trees because they go straight up and have a pattern in branches) then fleshed it out with some leafs and finally beefed it out a bit more.

Here are a few silhouette, exploring different shapes and sizes, dead trees and tropical trees. I liked the design of most of these so i decided to work on some of my favour designs more and try different colours.

 After i did these, i felt a little stumped. 

I was quite happy with the final design, i liked the actual tree and the spirally roots and branches. I feel i might have ruined the final outcome by adding the little white house, at the time it was to add more character and fantasy. I think i could of also worked more on the background/foreground, added more to give it depth and a better overall picture. 

Weekly Photoshop assignment - Surreal!

When we first got this assignment i was super excited, surrealism.. How can you go wrong! The strange, the weird and the wacky, with surrealism, anything goes and because of this it felt like we had a lot more freedom with this. The more i realised how open and broad this could go the less and less ideas i got, until some time over the weekend a dash of ideas sprang to mind, all triggered when i saw a man walking a dog in a pushy trolley looking thing. Swapped heads? Dogs with human characteristics? the possibilities are endless.  

Once i had a few things flowing (Time and a teapot in this case) i decided to do your typical surreal-desert-dream state-messed up-doesn't really make sense-sorta thing and quite liked the result, need to work out and design what that cluster of arms and legs are doing in the middle but if i can perfect a few things with this then i might go ahead with this for my final idea. 

Same sorta idea again with this one, just trying out different techniques. White noise and faulty tv signals were my main goal and effect for this one, mainly just a test to see what could be done. 

I liked my original idea so decided to work more on that. The aim was a digital surreal time driven cyber desert of strange-ness. Yeah chucked all my ideas together really and this was the result. I guess i am pleased with it, could've been painted more i guess and worked more on the body but hey, it's surreal right?

This was my more 'final' version, felt it was a little cluttered. I was quite happy with the actual design because it is pretty much exactly how i pictured it, i only wish i spent more time actually painting the details and shadows, obviously the main focus here is quite flat. Other then that, this weeks task was interesting and a pleasure to research.

Glitched out world, binary and missingno, shaken not stirred.