Alien landscape

This weeks brief was focused on designing and creating alien plants around the environment and landscape they would belong in. I liked the idea of venus fly traps and plants that defend themselves so i looked heavily on dangerous plants and this gave me most of my inspiration.

I started drawing many designs, i liked the idea of a viney and dangerous plant that many attracts others with fruit or berries. I was also looking in to some sort of egg design that was rooted into the ground, this would be how it would feed and would this was a interesting concept. 

I then decided to do some silhouettes taking human scale into account and how they would weight up to a standard male height. 

This was the main idea i liked so i added some detail and some other colour effects.

I started to model and design this plant in Mudbox.

before i knew it this started to prove difficult and my computer simply could not handle it.

Program crashed, in the future i shall make a basic mesh first to save myself more time later on because of this the program crashed.

Unfortunately it appears that i had quite a few problems with mudbox, i believe it might be because i got to the point where i had to constantly subdivide to get any sort of detail, after a while my pc died. In the future i should try making a basic mesh in maya first and see if mudbox handles that any better. 

Weekly Photoshop assignment - Wrinkles...

Wrinkles moodboard, i liked the idea of some wise old man. Maybe a buddish. Or a big beard, beards are good.  

Few sketches of old men, was planning on doing the idea of a cloaked man. Maybe master Sensi, wax on. wax off. The idea of wrinkles made me really look into how the skin is formed around a face and made me think about where on the face wrinkles are likely to appear and why.

I started by blocking out the basic head, getting the shadows and form in before i started. This time i actually tried going on straight with colour. 

added few shadows and details, got my colour palette set up as-well so i can could get nice contrasting colour and a good colour scheme 

Even more detail and lighting, really started working on the wrinkles here and getting some of the bounced lighting off them.

New eyes and more colour

Preying hands. Praise the lord.

huuuuuu

Didn't know what one looked best but i liked the final outcome either way. Maybe could of worked on the shadows and lighting a bit more and his left shoulder does look a little out of place. Would like to work on a background at some point in the future, whatever would fit. Either way i think the composition is fairly decent and i am please with the outcome. Shall defiantly use the skills and techniques i learned here and apply to my work in the future. 

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.