Tuesday 26 January 2016

File > New...

It's been a while since my last blog post (sorry!) so there's some things to catch up with for this one.

The main thing being the focus of my MA and where I'm going with that, so let's talk through that first - you may want to sit down, I'll make you a cup of tea, you help yourself to biscuits, etc...

So for my previous project I was focussing on AR and making characters out of objects in the real world. I had a lot of fun with this but I'm realising that I really can't get close to the results that I was hoping to achieve. There just isn't an app out there that does what I need and I'm not capable of making one on my own. ): Though it was a fun concept to work on.

So now I'm going to try focussing on a similar thing, just in VR. I still adore the idea of hiding places and little characters hiding where you wouldn't expect, so what I want to do is make a calming forest that you can walk around in, with hidden places to explore. Now this is much more work than my last project, but it's a challenge I'm willing to take. ;)

To do this I also want to get a good grasp of ZBrush so I can make some really nice character models to put in there, and have been learning the ropes with a Low Poly model I made of Pinecone Boy in Maya and imported over. Here's a screenshot that's kinda out of date but turns out to be the only one I have on my surface oops:



He's progressed a bit from there so I'll add an updated screenshot when I get home. :)

Then in unrelated but still-somewhat-related-because-it's-a-study news, here's a crystal study that I painted:


It's been a while since I did a study like this and I really wanted to focus on improving my colour theory, so a crystal was actually a pretty great subject. I learned a lot painting this, so will definitely aim to do more in future!

That's all the visual stuff I have to show for now, but I'm going to be doing some sketches and hopefully some 3D work this coming week, so look out for that if you're interested. :)

That's all for this entry, thanks for reading and have a great day. <3

Sunday 3 January 2016

Igniting 2016!

I realise that I now have to use another fire extinguisher title for my next blog post otherwise I'll end up leaving a safety hazard open for all future posts. :(

Anyway, happy 2016! I hope that the year is filled with wonderful memories and happy times. <3

As mentioned in my last post, I've been working on a fire extinguisher character in Maya. The last post only showed some character sketches and the base model, but since then I've UV mapped and textured him so am ready to show the rest! Here he is:



I've also put the model onto SketchFab so that you can interact with it if you wish to do so. Here's the link. :)

I learned quite a lot while making this guy - he may look simple but I tried to challenge myself to use a few new techniques that I previously wasn't too comfortable with. Making smoothly curved objects was one of them, so I'm very happy to have been able to learn and use that technique on this model!