Art 2: The first two weeks

So this month, we started off with some figure drawing. Surprisingly, the majority of students in the class had never really worked with gesture drawing before, myself included! Above are some of my gestures from the first project's exercises. Here are some cat gestures that I did for another exercise:

But the real project was to deconstruct, repose, and reconstruct some characters based on our new knowledge of gesture work and the use of construction shapes. The shapes are extremely useful for posing because they help you to maintain the proportions and volumes of the different parts of the body. This is very important in making your character more dynamic and believable.

First we started off simple. It was a good place to start because it really gave me a feel for the use of construction shapes and how to pose. I didn't get it quite accurate yet, but it was a start.

Here are the others.

I spent a lot of time improving and refining the super hero woman, as my instructor advised, and here was the final result:

So that was that project. The way the projects are graded in Art 2 is sort of like a game to me. It's graded in tiers. There is the "base line" level, the "novice" level, the "proficient" level, and finally the "advanced" level. So the exercises and simple character re-pose were base-line for this project. Then the little guy I did was my novice level. The hero was proficient, and the sculpture was advanced. (I personally thought the superhero was harder but that's just me.) The thing is, you are only graded up to 70 points for base line, up to 79 for novice, 89 for proficient, and if you can finish the advanced level, you have a shot at getting your 100%.

Of course I will treat it as a game! A challenge! Well, I did it and I got a 99% baby!



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Week 2's project was a nightmare for me! First of all, I didn't leave myself enough time to really work on it. I should have started early since it was a texture based project, and I am horrible at textures. But I guess I was too busy eating turkey and mashed potatoes or something.

The object this week was to analyze different animals and their anatomy and then mesh them together into a believable "creature."

I chose a black-necked stork, a squid and a green sea turtle. Firstly, we were instructed to do some studies on our chosen animals. Here are mine:

Next, we had to do some texture swatches to practice for our final drawings. Here are my tentacles and turtle flippers:

We also had to do some texture studies for our proposed creature's environment:

We also did a few different concept drawings for our creature, but I will just show you my final. So if you ever wanted to know what it would look like if a stork and a turtle made babies and it somehow mutated and merged with a squid then.....drum roll please...!

And there you have it! A Squea Torkle! And for this one I got a 97! Not bad, considering I was really floundering over this one. (Semi-pun was semi-intended...)

Now this week we are doing character creation. Want a sneak preview? Here are the character concepts I've got going on so far:

She's a wild druid woman, living amongst the trees and searching for someone very dear to her. I think I'm going to go with a final version most like the middle concept. I'm having a lot more fun with this project than the last! Can't wait to show off the end results! (I am so going to try modeling my character in Maya during winter break if I have a chance!)

The Low Down on 3DF

So the week is coming to a close and 3D Foundations will be a thing of the past. I am sad. I really loved this class! At the same time, it was pretty stressful. But still, I learned so much and made many new friends.

So the busy month is the reason I haven't posted at all. But now that I'm done, I can sum up what happened.

Well, first of all, we started off with some rough story boarding.

We were able to chose from three actions and three props. (Jump, heavy lift, shooting a gun along with a fire hydrant, a chair, or a shotgun.) I obviously chose a heavy lifting action and my prop was the chair. We could choose any of the three props just so long as whatever prop we chose, it was visible somewhere in our final project.

Our next project was to model our prop. We had a specific structure to follow with given reference images and then we could add whatever details we wanted with our remaining poly count. The poly limit on the prop was 500. My final poly count was 492.

Not bad, eh?!

Then came the character...

Of the 800 poly count limit, I hit 740. I obviously opted for the female character reference. It seemed like the greater challenge.

Next, we textured our character's head just for experience. We weren't actually allowed to use textures for our final movie, but we did at least have to learn about the process of texturing, including UV mapping and texture painting.

This was my textured head, and if you want to know what the flat texture looked like before I slapped it on:

Next, we had to rig our character for animation. That means we add a sort of digital skeleton of bones and joints to the character and then attach them to the character's body parts, or the geometry (as everything you model is made up of bits of geometry).

The reallyyyy lengthy part was the animation. We had to animate 144 frames. Luckily, Maya does a lot of the in between work, but you still have to do all of the main poses. Then you go back and add in some more frame keys to make the motions look more natural.

Then we colored all of the objects and added in lights. Lastly, you render, which is a lengthy process in which the computer calculates all the different elements you put in your scene and translate it into tons of individual images (all of your frames). Finally you can put those images together into a movie and you haveeeee:

So there you have it. A whole month of ridiculous labor translated into 6 seconds of glory that only the creator can appreciate!

Aaaand...I GOT ANOTHER 100% =D

Art 1 Conclusion

Final grade for Art 1: 100%!!!!!

Yay! My first perfect score! And many more to come. I am so glad I decided to go to Full Sail online. I am totally in my element here. It leaves me with an unknown future, as there are no game companies around here, but I am going with the flow. Who knows, since I'm doing so awesome, maybe I'll make a totally hit indie game and rocket launch my career in the middle of my schooling and not have to go anywhere. It could happen. I won't prevent it, that's for sure.

To further my boasting, not only did I get a perfect score this month, but I also got the Course Director's Award for my class in Art 1! Not entirely sure what that means, but I am overly proud of it. I tried really hard in my art class, okay?!?!

Anyways, the above image is my final project in all of it's glory...Haha, just kidding...about the glory part. It is my final project, though. I like the way it turned out a lot! My least favorite one is the busy Times Square one. But oh well. It's good. I got a 100%. So it is good.

Okay, back to work for me! Got some 3D modeling to learn!