Character Design #1 - Typical Body Types

Task 1 - Change a given character (Minion) to be more cartoonistic/realistic, happier/nicer/evil etc remembering base shapes, triangle, square/rectangle and circles used to represent. 

My first sketch was a more "realistic" minion, my theory was they're just a blob of skin, no proper bone structure to hold them up, with tiny arms and legs that cant possibly hold their weight. 

Storytelling and Commission - Soundscape - Blue Box Images

Life Drawing - Sharon with Heat Lamp

 Initial poses, 5/10 minutes each. I think the first one is my favourite (top left), I tried to loosen up today and come out of my comfort zone, hence the pro markers which Ive not really used much before, but I feel I went a bit too "messy" with the other 3. I used the red and pink to show the intensity of the red light coming from the heat lamp, also the red scarf the model was wearing, then the lilac and occasionally grey to show the cooler, darker tones, but still keep in a warm-ish colour scheme. 

2nd pose, 25/30 mins. I tried to place the figure on the page by really quickly adding a floor, as well as the rays from the heat lamp that were shown on the wall behind, kind of. I feel the proportions went quite well in this one and like the juxtaposition of the strong blue of the cloth over the stool, and the bright red of the scarf over the more delicate body and setting colours. Also I really enjoyed drawing the hair as the models hair isnt perfectly straight or all one length, so its quite interesting drawing all the different curls and adding tone. This is something I did quite a lot of in my 1st year of A-level fine art when I drew a lot of "creepy dolls" (mostly uaing pastel however) and was something I enjoyed coming back to. 

Last pose, not sure how long. It was freezing in the room so the model put clothes back on, and we could choose a specific area to focus on or draw the whole form again. I wanted to focus on the head and hair as I enjoyed that in the previous pose. I used two different greys for the majority of tones, wanting to keep it quite neutral to starkly juxtapose the bright pink, showing where the heat lamp light was shining on the face. Originally I "finished" the study like this, but still had a little over 5 minutes left before the end so instead of starting a new piece I went back into this one.

Maya Tutorial - Texturing and Shading 1 - Shading Networks: Sampler Info Nodes

1 - Double Sided Shader

Textured front of page

Textured back of page

2 - X-Ray Shader

 Translucency (X-Ray Lambert)

 Added Colour

 Adjusted Ramp

 Added Ambient Light

Added Glow to X Ray Lambert

3 - Rim Light Shader

Grey Model (first 4 renders I forgot to render through shot cam whoops) 

 Original

 Ramp plugged into incandescence on blinn

 Swapped ramp black and white

Ramp black set 0.5 

 Grey model colour set on ramp white

Softened Light

Colour Model

 Original

Coloured ramps plugged into incandescence, but not hair, shirt, jeans

Shirt, hair and jeans ramp colours plugged into blinn incandescences 

Shirt colour gain increased, lighting refined/smoothed

What if? Metropolis - Crit Presentation

WIM Final Crit Presentation

Higher resolution final rendered scene:

What if? Metropolis - Final Rendered Scene

Its finally done! 

What if? Metropolis - Ambient Occlusion and Updated Lighting

I realised I had completely blanked on setting up ambient occlusion before my lighting, so went back and did that.

 

 

I then also took a full render of my scene with the lighting now it has the ambient occlusion node. I'm still quite happy with it, I like that it's not as dark, and especially like the two tonal quality to the water and buildings with the added pink directional light, but I feel I need to deepen the blue shadows around the edges as the blue is almost completely faded now. I think I'll texture the scene first though before doing final lighting tweaks, to see how it interacts with the colours and bump maps. 

What if? Metropolis - Lighting

I started lighting last night, but didn't save the images of the process renders  properly and they came out really dark, but I picked it back up this morning and I think I've finally found a lighting setup I'm happy with, but after texturing I might come back in and tweak it with.

Good "sunset" lighting but no blue complimentary shadows.

 
Too much white light

 
Not enough blue.

 

 Too blue/ too dark.

 

 Still too dark.

 
Getting better but still a little dark.

 
Front is better but needs more light form the sunset.

 
Too bright, too yellow

 
Added a slight pink, happy with this lighting.

 

What if? Metropolis - Scene Setup

Positioning all my buildings in my scene, I also had to make duplicates and flip items now that all types of form are UV'd.

 

I completely forgot about the ground so mad to make that too.

 

 

I also applied their UVs and cleaned up the UV of the top of the outcrop as it was a little stretched.

 

 

Including some on the tubes running around a building that I got fed up with last night. I tried a few ways but the best result I got was with a planar focusing on the part that would be seen.

 

 

Finished tube re-UVing, I want them running in an opposite direction to the main body because it will be a different texture, and also to perhaps look more as if its grown around that way.

 

Finished UV scene

With background and water planes

 

What if? Metropolis - UV Mapping Complete

After a lot of stress and issues, all my models are finally UV'd! 

UVs 

Wireframe

Shaded