Previous Drawings

Hello, today I've managed to find my life and still-life drawings from last year and I thought I'd upload them, I've only selected four as these are the ones I am most pleased about. If I do start doing more artwork I shall upload both good and bad works as a means of being able to track my progress.

Glass bottles with charcoal and colours

A drawing of one of my classmates with

charcoal and colour

A drawing of the life model, we were

experimenting with different techniques

on paper.

Another drawing of the life model with

another style applied to the paper.

I'm back! New college, 2nd brief!

Boy has it been a while! I've now moved onto Dundee College and doing an HND in 3D Animation, it's different in the way we do things but this gives me an ability to adapt (which I'm not doing too great to say the least) still I'm getting along somehow. I've finished my first brief (3d aspect anyway) all that's left is the post production.

We've also received our new brief. With this we need to create the three witches and the ghost of Banquo from Macbeth, this however will be divided between four people in a team so only one model per person. This is an important brief as we are doing it for a chance to have our work featured in a theatre version of Macbeth in front a lot of people, their production will tour the country I've heard.

Now for the witches we've been told the director would like something along the lines of the girl from The Ring or The Grudge, so something that instils fear. I personally would prefer something less along the lines of a horror film but not what would also be considered a cliché witch. For ideas I've looked at the Other Mother from the film Coraline as I like the transition from a normal woman to a creepy and thin "witch" like character.

Here I have my first mood-board, I shall post 

more mood-boards and sketches as they come in.

I do like the design of the character Asajj Ventress from the Star Wars Clone Wars television series, she is part of the night-sisters and witch cult within the Star Wars universe. The most interesting features I like are the strong lines that make up the features of the face, giving her a menacing look.

Asajj Ventress Concept Art

For the ghost of Banquo I've looked along the lines of the ringwraiths from The Lord of the Rings and the dementors from the Harry Potter series. I like the idea of him being more of a shadow with highlighted facial features to gice an ominous look.

Hopefully there'll be more updates a lot more often as I believe a blog is a great way of keeping records of previous work and ideas. If I have the time I'll probably do a video blog, this is me for now. Bye!

Movement Studies, Character and Graded Unit Updates

Hello again, almost a month since the last post but that does not mean I haven't been up to anything, due to my abscence on this blog for a while this post will be rather long and include (almost) everything that I have done since the last post.

Regarding the Movement Studies brief: 
 I have finished all renders and animations for this brief and they have all passed. However I did have to re-do one of the animations as the concept of squash and stretch was not properly demonstrated.

Regarding the Character Animation and Modelling brief: 
This brief in my opinion was somewhat of a failure. I had to create and animate an original character in Maya, however in the end I bacame to frustrated with Maya and the weight painting that I transfered the model over to 3ds Max and re-rigged it and animated it, however this was rushed as it was past the original deadline. However I had done enough to pass along with showing an original render from Maya with its deformities.

 Above: Maya render after lifting arm

Below: 3ds Max renders with no alteration to model or textures

Regarding the Graded Unit:
We are now into the third week of the Graded Unit for which I have decided to create a fly-through of a film set. I have chosen to make the set a night club, the main reason being the many lighting options available. I have gathered a few moodboards with reference images, which will guide me in the creation of the scene. I have also done some basic test renders for volumetric lighting.

Volumetric Test Renders:

Regarding the Introduction to Editing brief:
I shall post more on this in another update.

Character Brief Design and Updates

I realize I do not have anywhere near as many updates and images for my Maya briefs as I do for Max so here is another quick update on my character design which includes some drawings and screenshots. Further work is still needed on the model and it still needs its eyes and mouth, along with rigging and animating it.

Scrapped idea

Emotion ideas

Screenshots of Progression

Movement Studies aka Mechanical Arm

I have completed modeling my robotic arm for 3ds Max, the final result is slightly different to that which was originally sketched, this was only to make it easier to model and animate for example the original ball in socket joint that made up the wrist joint was changed to a hinge as in the animation the hand does not need to rotate horizontally. The joints were changed as well and shortcuts were taken when modeling them, this was done to meet the deadline, however I believe that this has not affected the quality in any way whatsoever.

New Year Updates!

It's been a month since my previous update, I've been busy doing... well other things. I've started work on the new briefs that include designing an organic character and a robotic arm.

For the character brief we have to create an original character and animate it to a song from the 20's, 30's, 40's or 50's. I have chosen Blue Skies by Frank Sinatra as the song that will play along to my animation. The character itself is called Beasty. It has a simple story to it, where Beasty starts off walking in an open field with blue skies around him, then it begins to get cloudy and the scene darkens, the camera zooms into his eyes, the eyes seem to change texture and as the camera pans out we see that a doll that looks like beasty is lying in a carpet in a childs room.

The mechanical arm is coming along well, more modeling is required as it is missing the hand section and the wires wraped around the forearm. I am still unsure as to what I shall be having the arm do, and idea was to have it crawling around the floor as though it had just got cut off, pushing debris out of the way, or if I can kick my backside into working mode and finish the model I am confient I could composite it over footage of a real arm, blending CG and live action (not going to happen). It will be a way to test my lighting techniques.

But most of all I have to work on more design sketches for both the character and arm. Here's hoping I can give myself a little boost and finish the briefs.