Use of Composition - Sunrise Mountains

For this week's assignment, we had to create a scenery using composition layout. 

As it turns out, my subject matter fulfills two of the various layouts we were provided with - the Golden Rule (also known as the Thirds) and the Pyramids. For convenience sake, I have chosen the primary target composition to be the Thirds, as it's more accurate.

For reference, I chose a view of Mount Segla, which has been a long-time favorite wallpaper of mine. The artist inspiration for the artstyle, specifically the visible strokes, is J. C. Leyendecker.

Use of Perspective - Spaceship

For this week's assignment, we had to create something from the theme of 'Transport' using one of the three perspectives. 

I choose a spaceship as my model. Astronomy has always been a big fascination of mine, and one of the things I wanted to explore with this pipeline was how to make a deceptively complex looking spaceship using 3D tools in as short a time as possible. 

Here's my reference board.

I rather like how this came out, honestly, especially with Arnold as a renderer. I still prefer the renders I get in Unreal, though. 

The background of the final artpiece is abstract, and is supposed to represent how this ship navigates as easily in space as it does on planets. My inclusion of the shadow was deliberate, meant to evoke the two habitats. 

Let me know what you think.

Samus - Concept Illustration

For this week's assignment, we were to take one of the chosen outlines from the previous project, and create a full concept illustration from it. I chose Samus, as I found this particular design from Sunny Zheng to be incredibly detailed.

Value and Contrast

For this assignment, we needed to take three characters that survived the previous round of silhouettes, and turn them into full-fledged greyscale characters, with clean linework, value patterning in the style of the Dota 2 Workshop - Character Art Guide, basic lighting and shading and finally a gradient that brings them all together. 

I borrowed two designs from Jessica Blask and one from Beste Unlu.

As I'm unfamiliar with these characters, I came up with my own backstories of them, based on whatever I managed to carve out of the silhouettes. This turned to be surprisingly a fun exercise. 

BABY WARRIOR

QUEEN ELF

SELLSWORD VENTRILOQUIST

Samus - Silhouettes and Thumbnails

I chose Samus from the Metroid story world as my subject for the silhouettes and thumbnails assignment. I'm not familiar with this character, but I felt that just added to the challenge of working with her, because if I chose to go the concept art route, I'll be working on a plethora of characters that are completely unknown to me.

I modified Samus slightly. Instead of a hand cannon, she now has a 'spike cannon' welded to her right arm that can also work as a spiked mace in melee combat. I also added some spikes to her pauldrons (shoulder armor) and greaves (foot armor). The triangular shapes give her a more menacing look, which is what I was going for, but it also gives her a medieval aesthetic, which I hadn't intended, but nevertheless is a happy accident.  

I feel like the silhouettes turned out better than the thumbnails. This is an entirely new exercise for me - at least from a practical perspective. I have skimmed through the theory of silhouetting characters and environments in video games and the like, and how it is the first step to conceptualizing a character.

I still have a lot to learn when it comes to thumbnailing. 

Let me know what you think!

Pikachu - Basic Shapes

 

For the Basic Shapes assignment, I had to pick a character from the lineup of the original Nintendo Smash Brothers game. Perhaps my choice of Pokémon seems obvious from my previous blog post, where I created Charizard using Block Sprites, but I had another reason that is not so apparent. I already had a physical reference to work with - a Pikachu wireless charging port that I own. 

Technically, I was supposed to break down the character to primary shapes - spheres, cubes, cones etc. But I think this turned into secondary shapes instead, with far too much detail than what the assignment originally called for.

I was provided a Huion drawing tablet and accompanying stylus, and almost immediately, I fell in love with them. They're incredibly smooth and user-friendly.

The tools I used the most were the Pencil BigStrokes and the Airbrush Soft Round 50% Flow from Nick Zuccarello's Photoshop Brush Tool Presets. BigStrokes were used for a quick and easy outline/tracing of the reference images. The Airbrush was what I used to shade. Smudge tool was used to create a nice, seamless transition between the different color shades. I think I was still getting the hang of the tools in the first sketch, but had boiled it down in the second and the third, which is why you can see higher levels of contrast which bring out the nuances of lighting.

I inadvertently relied on the reference for my lighting a little too much, because, as you can see, the specularity is rather high in the sketches, almost making them look a little plastic, much like the charging port itself. 

In hindsight, the lighting could've been a lot better, and I could've actually chosen a better background than a messy desk. Otherwise, I'm rather proud of this one. 2D Art is not my forte, so I challenged myself to achieve this without using 3D models. I suppose I did cheat with the reference. But nevertheless, this is a decent start. 

A Barren Planet Caught in the Gravitational Pull of a Black Hole - Digital Piece