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.