Use of Composition

 

For this project, I used the classic rule-of-thirds composition and was inspired by Sparth as my target artist. Sparth does a lot of portrait framed environment concepts. I notice they like to split the horizon and make it very apparent. I tried the same technique and tilted the frame a bit to give a more dynamic view.

Reference: Sparth's "River" hue experiment

Cannon Project (Week 1)

Stylized Cannon Reference

Proxy/Low-poly currently at 9,828 tris. Still need to model rocks and rope.

Use of Basic Lighting

 

I'm really proud at how this turned out. I consider myself bad at digital painting, especially with color and lighting. I blocked out the shapes and gave each shape it's own layer for: colors and highlights. I masked out the shapes to give them a base color that I can manipulate. I mainly used the blend tool and airbrush to shade my objects. think I spent about 7 hours on this project and gave myself neck pain by staring too attentively at my screens.

Reference Shot

Hierarchies in UE5 Animation and Rendering

Rotating Movement

Add Local Rotation

Add Starting Location, Rotation, and Scale via the Construction Script

Random Values Using Random Float in Range

Material Array and Material Index

Complex Hierarchies/Set World Transform

Timeline with Lerp Node

I started this project excited to animate and light my scene, but importing to Unreal Engine without proper UVs and not centering each of my objects at the origin before exporting from Maya made animating with blueprints insufferable. Despite my lack of foresight, lots of anguish and cursing, I think my scene turned out okay. I wish I got the light shafts to appear more prominently, but lighting with volumetric fog is extremely difficult.

Use of Value & Contrast

This project taught me how to use value and contrast to help guide the viewer's eye through a composition. I always thought value and contrast was used to distinguish levels of shading and highlights, but I'm glad I learned its additional uses and design mechanics. I will definitely consider using these techniques when compositing future projects.

Use of Hierarchy

In part one of this project, I'm parenting objects to animate and practice organization. For the animation, I was inspired by Pixar to bring inanimate objects to life. Since the crane looked kind of like a dinosaur head, I based it off of velociraptor.I also applied some basic materials to the crane.

Next, I exported the model as an FBX into Unreal Engine 5. I learned how to create and customize materials using different parameters. The goal was to render a few shots of the crane with lighting. I think my shots turned out quite nicely. The emissives was cool and fun to set up.

Lastly, I created an abstract scene based on my PureRef (below). I wanted to convey an oriental landscape with fantasy elements. Our goal is to later animate and export it into UE5 for rendering, so I thought floating rocks would animate nicely. I also wanted to capture a strong silhouette of my scene, which led me to put the sun behind my environment. I'm pretty content with how the design turned out.

Use of Silhouettes

Initially I struggled a bit to design 8 unique silhouettes without just posing them slightly different. In order to begin, I had to distinguish the features that make Charizard's silhouette unique. Those features came down to: a long neck, two horns, wings, and of course the flaming tail. From there, I followed the advice of a quote to "start with a marker first" and brainstormed my ideas before going into Photoshop.

During the creative process, I was challenged to redesign an iconic character without taking away its identity. As for the results, I think my designs were successful in that regard. Overall, I'm proud of how my redesigns turned out and thoroughly enjoyed this assignment. Moving forward, I'm definitely going to continue using the marker trick more to thumbnail my ideas onto paper.

Basics of Topology

There were a lot of neat tools and techniques I learned throughout this project. I'm glad I got to learn the use of duplicating special objects and its hotkeys (Shift+D) to create a scorpion tail, it was simple, but effective. Similarly, mirroring objects across the world axis makes symmetry very easy without having to worry about symmetry being messed up. 

Hard-surfacing modeling was always something I wanted to touch up on, so I'm glad we got to learn a technique closely associated with it. I also learned how to use the hypershader a bit more in-depth with assigning reflectivity and HDRIs' to materials. I think my example turned out pretty well.

NURBS curves and surfaces was a subject I was already familiar with. It was a good refresher. Latice deformer I've also used in the past before, but not a tool I use often. Overall, this section of the project was nice to practice my knowledge.

Lastly, the robot kitbash. I applied all the tools and techniques covered from this lesson onto my robot. I like to call him "Mini-Mad-Max" because of his menacing design. I think he turned out pretty cool.

Creature Concepts Using Basic Forms & Shapes

 

The goal of this assignment was to create original creature concepts using basic forms and shapes: circle, square, and triangle. The circle creatures are intended to be cute-little-ghosts with the ability to evoke human-like emotions and have malleable bodies. The square one was inspired by the idea of a "lava alligator" for one of our class exercises, but I shifted the idea into an earth-dragon/dinosaur. Lastly, the triangle is a water dragon that is capable of diving-bombing into deep ocean waters from the skies. Overall, I think my project was successful in designing appealing, yet unique and distinct characters.

Simple Animation Test

For our first animation assignment, I wanted to test my skills as an animator and apply as much knowledge and experience I have into a simple render. Based on feedback and my own observations, I can tell that I need to improve my spacing and timing. I should also push some poses during key moments to sell the weight and power of my characters/objects.