The 'What If?' Metropolis - Thumbnails 1-11

I've made a start on some thumbnails for my project! This is an aspect that I really struggled with during Invisible Cities, so I've made a few changes. I felt like I didn't have much breathing room with the thumbnails and they had to look 'perfect' - be these great ideas inside a little box, e.t.c. However after the first project I know this really isn't the way to work. I had so much trouble coming up with ideas because I was trying too hard! So this time I've going to do it my own way, not focusing on how it should look, and not care about how it's going to look because I'm trying to come up with ideas, not have a finished work of art from thumbnail 1. This time I'm not drawing boxes for my thumbnails (I'll focus on this later on when I have some more concrete ideas) and I'm drawing any idea that comes to me even if they are a bit rubbish! I really want to get to 100 thumbnails this time, so here's 1-11!

Life Drawing

Some life drawings from last week! I really wish I had a way to take better pictures of these.

The 'What If?' Metropolis - Ernst Haeckel

I'm going to start the ball rolling for the project with some research into the artist I've been given! I really like the look of Haeckel's work, and I love the idea of having an organically shaped city based on his art, as well as involving World War 1 influences to include relevant aspects of his life in the city.

Invisible Cities - Research

I completely forgot to upload this! Here is my research for Invisible Cities. As I'm more of a visual person, I decided to create small influence maps for each of the cities to enable me to explore them all.

Toolkit - Maya Texturing

Today we worked on creating textures in Maya. We made 7 spheres and used the hypershade to create different surfaces for each of them. We explored all of the basic materials like lambert, blinn and phong. Here are my spheres:

After this, we moved on to making different kinds of common materials. Here are some of the examples we completed in class. I really enjoyed doing this!

Silver

Chrome

Gold

Glass

Glow

Invisible Cities - Reflective Statement

I found the Invisible Cities project challenging but fun to do. I enjoyed picking a city and drawing out concepts for it. Although I struggled with making thumbnails, I think I've really improved my skills and for the next project it'll be a lot easier. Where I made thumbnails in very uniform boxes, I think it scared me a bit and gave me a lot of trouble when it came to trying to imagine up ideas. I realised, later on in the project when coming up with ideas for Zenobia, that if I didn't draw the boxes I felt a lot more free to come up with ideas, and it made it so much easier. It's amazing how such a tiny difference in my workflow has helped me enormously!

If there is one thing I could change about this project, it would be how I've managed my time. Going from a college course that didn't require any work at home and was only two days a week, to a full time uni course was a massive change for me and took some adjusting. At the beginning of the course, when we first got our brief, I wish I'd have gotten ahead with my work before the pressure really set in! Although I really regret leaving the work, I've definitely taken a lesson from this and will adjust how I work next time. This project was an eye-opener of what uni is like and it's definitely essential to put in more time compared to my old college course!

The main thing I enjoyed about the project was that I've never really done environments before, because I'm more of a character artist. I never had much confidence in doing environments as I've never actually practiced them, but once I got stuck in I realised it wasn't going to be as bad as I thought - it was actually very fun to do, in fact. This was the main thing that surprised me about the project, as I came in a bit apprehensive about how well I was going to do. I quite like my finished designs, and although they could do with a bit more detail, they are a good start to my first year. This is a good starting point for me to improve!

In conclusion I've really enjoyed the first project of uni. I'm excited to move onto the next one so I can take what I've learnt forwards with me.

Toolkit - Maya Alleyway

I have completed the first video for the alley. Here is the lamp post, start of the crate and alley environment.