Master's Project: the last four weeks!

 Last four weeks of work till the submission date,  and I'm making good time with the painted assets,  which I'll arrange separately for the pdf submission aswell as within the composited avi. Something like the page below.

For the initial shot where it begins as lines drawing themselves into ruins, then colour brushes itself over, I've come up with some quick thumbnails; with a focus on space and light. Personally, I've been really trying to keep things loose with visible brushstrokes and blocks of colour. Its quite challenging for me to stop before I overpaint it so this has been a good experience in itself.

The previous blogpost is sparse with information because I was in a hurry and needed work online to show easily; the first few gifs preview the line drawing idea that I mentioned above. Then there are some early city concepts, and a further developed but still loose idea, some early set pieces and a short video clip of everything in 3D space. 

a quick mockup of how I want the upper city and tower to scale to the very detailed lower city. Though the tallest tower should be much more slender in the painted version- closer to the video example below. 

Lower city clip previewing an early camera movement and wave animation with 80% of the lower city assets completed.

A silhouette asset of the meteor strike that destroys the city- resulting in the ruined version you see at the start of the clip. 

Back in business!

After a long week of Animex talks, workshops and networking events, I'm finally back at my computer to update this blog! It slipped by the wayside as deadline for the first semester drew near, so I'll start off with some of the finished paintings and speed paints from then, and at the bottom I'll show some of my Animex sketches.

These are a mix of character and enviros from the Excelsior brief as they appear in the final submission, along with a compilation of sketchbook work from the visual development. 

Gryphon final painting- This was a somewhat arduous painting. I can't say I'm exactly a fan of painting fur and feathers and somehow mixing the two. 

Taken from T.S. Eliot's "Preludes" - the line "The Shower's Beat" inspired this painting

Now that that semester 1's briefs are all concluded, We have three more (with a fourth yet unknown) for the second semester. So far we have received assignments from:

1. Pete Amachree : The "what if" roman history brief, of "What if the Romans discovered and developed practical uses for electricity?" 
2. Ron Ashtiani : NeoRacer brief, Car concept with weapon variations, or Eden environment race track
3. Shelly Page : Dreamworks character brief, design a character from the list for a new setting
4. Jack Couvela : Mysterious Ubisoft brief ~~

 I'll be updating at least once a week now for the next semester with work any of these assignments (or anymore that we receive.)

Edit: I forgot about the Animex sketches, I'll add them in during the week since I don't own a scanner :)

I return to education! But first! A recap!

I guess I'll just have to accept my fate as an unpredictable blogger, who often leaves large gaps of deadzone between well documented..uh.. "stuff". (Stuff that we're going to call work.)

Most of the work I've done since June (the last update! oops) has been life drawing and the world-building concept project I mentioned in the last post, Oculus Sclera.

These can all be found in my portfolio site at, probably, higher resolutions. I never decided whether this would be a game, animation or comic, so I just designed and wrote til I got an idea of the world I wanted to make.  Basicly, a peacekeeping force known as Oculus protected a royal family of the largest kingdom, but they got betrayed and all but destroyed. Years pass, and it falls to the two characters Howland and Jessica to take back the kingdom from the evil faction. 

 

The Oculus Sclera is the reborn organization, of which Jessica and Howland are the main members. I decided early on that Howland would be a talented magic user, while Jessica's ability lay in her martial prowess, and together they could pull off combos and synchronized fighting styles. 

Another thing I knew from the get-go was that, while Jessica would be the melee combatant, she wouldn't be totally heavily armored. But she wouldn't be boob-window, here stab me in the midriff, chainmail bikini clad. So I tried to come up with some alternate styles. The first is the ceremonial Oculus clothing which is very similar for both male and female- coat, sash and boots. Though the male version includes a blindfold (for plot reasons). 

They would each have the basic "?" looking staff weapon that would transform into, in Jessica's case, swords, bows and polearms and for Howland, a series of elementally themed staves. art wise, I came up with about 15 or so silhouettes but only developed this one, Siren. This was the first time I had attempted anything like this so it was an excellent learning experience. It certainly gave me focus, to have all the pieces drawing from a single world concept. 

While I had a pretty good idea for the OS magi, the Mundus remained pretty badly described in my notes. So while exploring the idea of what was originally a mecha design for something else, it became more of a weird magitechnical golem. The Mundus then solidified as faction that combined technological advances and previously known magical enchantments, while holding firm "mundane" beliefs. ie, magic users shouldn't rule as "absolute power corrupts absolutely" etc. The above golem would be piloted remotely by the Mundus leader, a surprisingly young man who was disfigured and has turned to experimenting on himself and others for "the greater good of the kingdom".

Anyway, moving on from the OS work, as you can see if you checked out my portfolio, it was only a means to an end. Getting into my choice of masters of art course (MA). I was successful in my application! (huzzah!) And I'm now living in Middlesbrough, in the North East of England. The course title is Ma Concept art for animation and video games, and I'll be studying here for 12 months to graduate next September.

Classes are to start this coming Monday and I'm very excited! I'll be bringing this blog back to life as I write about my experiences and reflect on what I've learned during the week.
I've set a rather lofty goal for myself, however. To work my damnest and during easter 2014, submit my work to imaginefx to see if I meet the standard. I have a few other goals in mind, but each is more distant, and at the moment they would be impossible for me. First, get into imagineFX, then to paint a MTG card design, and finally, someday, work for Arenanet. Getting a degree out of this course is a nice side effect.

-Sam

Ps. If I get a spare chance, I'll update the layout/background of this site, its just a liiiiiittle bit dated I feel.

Akropolis final state

I've not had much time recently to update with all of the preparations for the exhibition and between that and working on the visual diary/extended essay...well Time has been short indeed. Ive decided to name the three towers Metrolpolis, Cosmopolis and Akropolis/Acropolis- Im not sure which spelling is the English and which the Greek. Chosen because they're all general terms for types of cities and my images for this each have  certain type of city about them.

I've got the moon from Majora's Mask stuck in my head reminding me that time is growing short. :I


still to do

• Essay
• visual D.
• Portfolio [got plenty of things d.w]
• name cards for each print
• business cards
• sort out mounts
• If the chance to work on the Aluminium plates presents itself, seize it. :I

 Alt

Checkpoint!

Tower Plate #1 

I've finished drawing/etching this plate.(the 2nd picture) All I need from it now are some good prints I can fill my portfolio with and get one excellent one for the exhibition. It was certainly a pain though, the first time I drew into the ground, my needle wasn't sharp enough and it was only after i had etched it and taken off the ground and printed it, did I realise the lines weren't deep enough. So I redrew it twice and then went through the process of; draw line art> etch 5mins>draw foreground in>etch 10 mns>draw and detail center tower>etch 15mins draw background walls+details > etch 10mins.  

Tower Plate #2

The other plate. It ended up not really being so much a tower as a towering castle. But all the same, I kept the same sort of line-only style so that it would look something similar. I found myself thinking in this one "mmm....heres the market" and then "no, that size of hourse is impractical to the peoples means!!" haha Perhaps thinking about it far too much. The last photo of this is a bleed print - a print taken by putting down pieces of paper which are smaller than the plate so that you dont usually get the embossed border around the print. I was mostly just trying out colours on tan paper.  The drawing process of this one was somewhat different. I researched a ton by looking at various concept arts; Guild wars 2, Prince of Persia, Lord Of the Rings (Minas Tirith/helms deep) and just generally trolling about the internet for related images-Can you say "tower of babel"? And I grounded/drew it all up as one. then gradually added details like the rocks and roofs of houses. The water and shadows to the right (on the prints) were left til last. 

I have a third plate in the works with me over Easter, hopefully I'll get into the studio in two weeks and get it etched and finished. And along that, I have a selection of small aluminium drypoints.

In non-exhibition and more about after university news, I've found an MA course I'd like to pursue- Concept art for Animation and Video games at Teeside University, Middlesbrough. I'm not sure if I've missed the application deadline for it though, as I only found it recently.
-Alt