Reminiscing on Norway

Since it's the end of term I thought I would spend a bit of time doing a blog on my trip I took a couple months ago to Norway. So during summer I had the opportunity to take a 2 week long expenses paid cultural trip to Norway, with a group of people and my dad being the chaperon were I stayed in Helsefyr but pretty much took the tram to Oslo everyday where I spent most of my time.

I can honestly say my time spent in Norway was an extremely helpful experience for me, not only did it happen to fall just after my first year here at DMU which turned out to be a really difficult year for me. It also really gave me some time to go away to a pretty place and just do some kind of Self finding, which I seriously needed. Another really good thing was I got to have some father daughter bonding time with my dad which I really enjoyed.

Since it was a group trip we would spend the evenings together for an evening group meal trying various restaurants from an Irish pub to a Cantonese restaurant, go for walks around Oslo, the  Docks ect and I also got to go and see one of the new X-men movies that came out while we were there. The rest of the time was really for me to explore either with my dad if he didn't have other things to work on with the others or to mainly just complete some sketches, visit some sites and to take what I consider pretty pictures. I also ended up spending some time on top of the Opera house, which because of the weather being extremely hot and the building being made completely out of marble, I caught the sun. Sure it was pretty awesome coming back to rainy Britain with a tan but definitely not the sever burning I got. I also went to the National art gallery in Oslo where they had the original "Scream", which was definitely an amazing experience in general.

Norway based purely on  my site seeing in Oslo and Helsefyr is a beautiful place. I loved it way more then I ever expected to and I definitely want to go back there. Everything over there was so different compared to what I'm use to, in general the place just gave off a safe and happy feeling.

I guess one of the main reasons that I loved it there and felt it helped me alot to the point it gave me somethings I could use when doing this course is that because it was so fresh and new it fed my creative curiosity, it gave me my drive back, it stopped me from completely giving up especially since last year when I originally started her at DMU I didn't manage to pass. Plus I feel that from the experience there and the photographsIi had collected I have some new insights to use through out my projects.

These are a few of my favorite photos I took in Norway.

Stylized Trees !

Week 11

 This week is the last week of term so really I’ve just been finishing up projects and sort of winding down to get ready for the next term after Christmas.  For my critical studies module I’ve been sifting through my blogs correcting grammar, tidying up things and making sure I’m updated.  For my visual design module I sketched out some trees which I think really helped with my Stylized tree project.

One of my last projects to hand in the end of this term was my to concept and create 2 different trees that fit within the provided village style guide, using a maximum of 2000 tris per each tree model. To texture each tree a maximum of one 512x512 24bit Targa for the tileable map of the main trunk, one 512x512 32bit Targa with an alpha channel each for the tree's foliage. Two additional 256x256 32bit Targa with an alpha channel can be used for any bushes, grasses and flowers if needed.”

To start of the concepting part of this project I firstly began to collect images of various trees that I have found on the Internet, took on my trip to Bradegate or where I have gone out myself and taken pictures of interesting trees. Once I felt I had a fair amount of reference to refer to and inspire me I then began selecting some images and creating various mood boards. I really wanted the trees to reflect my village witch house I completed and for them to all kind of work together as on the witch house lot behind and in front of it there are some large plots of grass.  Once I had played around with getting a final design for my trees I then began to model and texture it.

                                     

                                     

                                      

                                     

This project I feel that I did pretty well of course there is and always will be improvements to be done but in general I am happy with the end outcome of the project.  I feel that my knowledge on alpha maps which was not a strong point for me has defiantly improved and I am more confident with them. I also think that even though my painting skills are still not fully good enough but they too are improving with all the practice and don’t turn out half as bad as before and expected. I am pretty happy with the work flow and time scale of this project to.
Some things I think that I could definitely improve on is firstly looking back now I would possibly change my foliage alpha maps as the initial small branch on them is a little too long I think for the type of stylized tree I was going for. I would also like to go back and really spend some more time going over of the placement of my alpha maps which some could be better placed. I think that my bark texture is not too bad considering my still lack of skills but I would definitely go back and create more time to really refine it and make it a little more believable and add more depth to it.

The village house project

Week 9

This week I handed in my village house project which I guess I have some very mixed feelings about. Firstly though I'll explain the rough brief. For this project I was put into groups, and we each chose a village house/building to model. All of our end models where to be able to fit well within the style guide, together and in the set out village already provided. I made the decision of completing the witches house. All of the buildings had to be modeled within under 5000 tris using 4 512x512 tile-able diffuse texture sheets and one 1024x1024 diffuse sheet with an alpha channel if needed for extra details/elements. 

At first i found this slightly daunting as I wasn't sure what direction to go in, so after collecting some reference and also planning out a colour pallet which was fairly broad but colour picked from two disney movies that exactly followed the style guide. For the colour pallet I had created I wanted it to be able to use for the other projects that were connected with this current village house project so I kept that in mind.

I then went on to create some silhouettes of rough chunky shapes for my base of my building but I found the first majority were too creepy looking and slightly generic. so I moved on to more plump shapes which would reflect the direction I already had in my head for the  rest of the assets we were to create for the village scene. I then sort of got stuck on the one design which I really liked being the round one and spent some time tidying up the design and linking it to references. For the modelling i found it fairly easy and was able to work at a fast pace which I am really happy with. I ended up going back and numerous points and adding extra details and changing shapes slightly for a better look and since I had a lot of tris left almost half my budget to work with.

I'm not completely happy with my texturing since I feel they need a lot more work and there are a couple places where I placed obvious seams in the wrong place and they need to be lighter I feel. I guess for a more personal satisfying feeling I plan to go back and re work the textures and there seams.

Here is an example of one of my texture maps, being for my extra props and elements that I felt added to my final model.

Trip to bradegate !

Week 9

This week we went as a year group to bradegate park, to get some sketches and pictures. Going to Bradegate is definitely something to look forward to. It's a really beautiful place, a huge contrast against the busy city that is Leicester. Since we went in November the weather was pretty dull but it really helped to see the change that a season does to the landscape. From the colour change, the lack of leaves actually on the trees and mainly scattered on the floor.

To help create a folder of references to use for future projects I also took a fair amount of pictures of Bradegate. I wanted to have a variety of information to refer back to such as trees, foliage, colour changes in the autumn season, landscapes in general, ect.

One of the main focus I decided to look at and gather reference for was trees since my next project after my current witch house building is two stylized trees. So I took some pictures of different tree types, close up of the textures and colours of the bark, the foliage and the general shapes of trees.

Also I think for myself it was a really good character boost since I'm a away from home and last year was already a bad one it definitely gave me a sense of peace and sort of soothed me. Bradegate is very much like home is with the fields, clean air, open space and its a place where you can hear yourself think in peace. It's a beautiful place. 

Game art conference day !

Week 8

This week for critical studies there was an art conference day put on to help the development of my critical analysis skills, since it's a big aspect of  my course and the industry. Since I had some appointments to go to I only managed to make one session which was the confidence boosting session.

During my session there was a small group where we talked about various types of confidence, how it can come across or be shown, areas that show lack of confidence, how we can improve our confidence and how it will reflect from us when we do gain confidence. We then also did a couple exercises where practiced as a group introducing self and holding our self up in the power position .

The game art conference day is a really good idea, it definitely helps you with things and its really good that you can pick sessions that you feel will help you most since you lack something in them. I'd really like it to be a termly thing, because I found it really helpful the first time round and was able to really take things from it.

Also this week I have been trying to push my village house project further because I feel like i keep getting myself stuck at a dead end, sch as general ideas and shape of my model.

Moving on with my drawing

Part 1 

 

I've always loved all sides of drawing and always wanted to keep getting better. However like most I guess I have my preferences and I had the things I wasn't very good at drawing so I'd avoid them as much as I could. Mainly it was drawing people and landscapes, I tended to be decent with the outline work and getting proportion good, I guess mainly I found the shading the hardest. No matter how I tried my drawings lack enough depth, 3-D form and didn't seem to flow, since I couldn't help but go to heavy with the rendering from the start not leaving enough tonal range.

When I knew for sure I wanted to be in this industry and that traditional skills in all areas would be just as important as the 3-D modelling side of things. I began practicing a lot in the areas I knew I'd been avoiding, mainly with people’s faces. I found myself some patience since I seem to lack it sometimes, some better quality pencils and paper and began sketching a picture at random of a few youtuber I liked. I thought it would be a good idea to record myself drawing so that when I looked back I would be able to start spotting things I could do better or ways I could start better. 

Once I started drawing making sure to take breaks so I don't overdo it, I realized where I'd been going wrong and how much I was improving by practicing more regular than usual.

Rocks, Rocks and more rocks.

 Week 7

So this week was mainly focused on a stylized rock project I got in game production. The aim of this project was to create a stylized rock that has been design with a purpose and to fit loosely with the concepts provided to help with artistic direction. The rock is to be created physically first and then translated into a functioning game asset, within set specifications of 600 tris and 2 512x512 texture maps one for diffuse on the rock and one for an alpha map if needed.

As I wasn’t provided with reference and concepts to work from I began by creating a mood board to help come up with some basic shapes for my rock design. I looked at general rock shapes I liked, crystals and there colours and examples of drawings on rocks. I then created some blocked out shapes for silhouettes to begin designing my rock, before developing a design and experimenting with colours. Once I had my design I began to model it in 3ds max, which I decided on a rock and crystals to symbolize Life, and family.

Generally I feel that this project went pretty well and I already feel that I have improved on some things, such as my time management which for this project and even though there still not amazing I still feel my skills and knowledge has improved a lot on Photoshop and creating my own textures. I’m kind of happy with my unwrap and Uv map, I feel that I spent are fair amount of time on them trying to get them easily readable and tidy, as well as making sure there would be no major smearing when my texture was applied, as I had to make the decision to have my sides separate to prevent smearing. I was pretty comfortable concepting my own designs and working form them and I think creating a physical model really helped understand how to build it in max.

Some ways in which I think I could improve my work would be to practice my Photoshop/texturing skills a lot more as I’m still not very skilled and feel my end model still lacks some on the texture side. If I had more time I think that I’d go back and forth between Photoshop and 3ds max to check my textures a lot more. One thing I noticed was there were still a fair few faces that could do with the smoothing groups being changed on the curved edges, so I would possibly change that next time. One last thing I think I would change would be to play around with some more verts to give a little more dynamic to my rock.

Wire frame shots of my finished stylized rock

 Beauty shots of my finished stylized rock.

 

Here is my Uv template and Texture Map.