Common Art: Week Seven

 Digital Painting Final Illustration

Initially I wanted more restrictions just so I'd have a place to start, but in the end I appreciated how open-ended the assignment was. I ended up being inspired by some Shadow of the Colossus fan art I saw, plus some illustrations by Stefan Koidl:

A lot of his stuff is very ominous. With this image, I liked the cages that the giant had, and the implication that they were for the humans. I scaled up a mannequin and gave them similar inclinations. I tried to keep our previous lessons in mind, and I think I have a well-distinguished foreground and midground. I'm not sure if this counts as three-point perspective, but I think it's at least similar.

I would've liked to have spent more time on it, but Industry Review dominated my time this week.

Common Art: Week Six

 Use of Perspective

For this week, we needed to make at least four assets, and use them for kitbashing. With the scene we created, we got renders of one-point, two-point, and three-point perspective.

I created these buildings and added some emissive to them for interest, since they're pretty rough and simple. I also used the mountains from the composition assignment, since having the city end so abruptly looked awkward.

From there, I rendered my three different perspectives, and then chose the two-point perspective to add to in Photoshop.

One-point

Two-point

Three-point

Common Art: Week Five

 Use of Composition

This week we looked at Phil Straub's guide and learned about composition approaches and implied forms. We needed to kitbash a scene in Maya and then composite it in Photoshop.

I set up a separate camera in Maya to frame my scene and then used the perspective camera to look around and move things. I added in a rickety bridge and had a few of the UE4 mannequins cross it.

I was using Sylvain Sarrailh's works as a reference for my composition and color scheme. I was originally trying to do an iconic composition, but I think it ended up more like the pyramid/triangle composition.

I tried to mess around with the lens blur to create a depth of field, with the midground being what I wanted to have in focus. I couldn't get Arnold to render a z-depth pass, so I had to make a knock-off version in Maya Software.

Janky z-Depth

Depth of field

 

    

Common Art: Week Four

 Use of Basic Lighting

For this assignment we set up a three-point lighting system in a Maya scene, and then rendered a few images using Arnold. We also needed to render our Lego figure.

I had more fun rendering the models we were given than rendering my Lego astronaut, since there was so little surface information compared to the busts. The colorization also ended up a little flat because of this. 

I'm glad to have a lighting set-up that I can use for future models.

Common Art: Week Three

Use of Value and Contrast

For this assignment, we were given maps rendered in Maya and had to layer them in Photoshop and create a 2d scene. The map I was most interested in was the Z Map: 

I'd never rendered or even heard of a Z Map before, and don't know what they're used for in a 3d context. But I thought the foggy look of it was interesting and kind of dramatic, so I wanted to use it.

I thought I could use the lighter portion of the map to make those regions look like they were glowing, like the interior and undercarriage of the vehicle were lit.

Grayscale:

Common Art: Week Two

 Use of Silhouettes

This was a fun assignment, and I see the benefit of using it as a concepting tool. I tried adding white lines in post, but thought that it looked worse than the plain black silhouettes, so I left them blank for the final image.

The issue is just my linework; it's not clean enough to add to the silhouettes. If I were stronger in 2d, though, I'd definitely like to add those details.

My final designs:

I also got images of the wireframe, just to show what was going on with the model.

Common Art: Week One

 Use of Basic Shapes

I'm not that great at Photoshop or 2D stuff at this point, and definitely found myself relying on Maya as much as possible. For my references, I focused on two pieces by Sparth:

I wanted to model this ship, but I really liked the color scheme of the landscape, and wanted to use that for my reinterpretation.

I did my blockout:

And here's where I think I cheated: I rendered out a normal map, AO map, and a metal map and used them as layers in Photoshop. I used the AO as a Multiply and the reflective map as an Overlay. The normal map I used as my base color after messing with the hue and color balance.

I wish I had had more time to model some of the smaller structures and add more linework, but I think I learned a lot.