Finished painting!

Finished the painting a couple of days ago, spent yesterday merging and splitting layers and repainting small sections that only get seen for a few seconds as the camera moves. I've currently got around 30-35 layers  that made it through to aftereffects. As a bonus,  a screengrab of my workspace in Aftereffects, with a nifty 3 quarter-ish view of everything- almost in place. 

Today I'm focusing on the camera's path and getting some of the smaller particle systems in place. 

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 :)

Character & Environment design Brief: Excelsior and Blue BeetleCurrent progress

"Scenario:A science fiction or fantasy world. This world may be futuristic or may have a feel of an ancient culture.
In this society the population is divided into the rich and the poor.
The city is built on a platform and is supported on some kind of series of pillars. The rich live on top of the platform and the poor live below.
Among the poor exist the gangs and there are lots of these all radically different from one another.
In the upper city there is a monastery where the religious rulers of the city live. The monastery is not built on the platform but hovers above it.
The Hero:Joeb is a young monk from the monetary. He belongs to a part of the order highly-trained in martial arts.
His mission is to go into the dangerous under city and meet with a mysterious individual who has a box for him to collect and take back to the monastery."

I started out in my sketchbook with a few ideas for how I wanted my city to play out, next I built a  (too complicated) model in sketchup

After messing around with the camera, I got a few good angles and plenty of ideas, so I blocked in the basic forms and added some stone cliff texture

(Sunset variation? I was experimenting with how dark I wanted it beneath the platform; the sky and lighting on the furthest pillar were happy accidents.)

As of today, this study is finished, I think that next time my workflow will be (hopefully) faster

But since I'd gotten across the feel from the undercity that I was hoping for, I moved on to some of the designs of the gangs. First off, the shadowy group "The Dusk";

I had a pretty strong image of them in my head, robed- with capes, hoods and concealment. Kind of like a ninja gang but without the implicit honor. 

These are the initial designs for the Religious group that live above the platform city in their floating shrine/monastery. I picked up the idea of the masks from japanese festival masks. The monks all wear them, I tried to make them seem somewhat unnerving/uncanny. Since I want the lead monks to be either spirits/demons/whatever but not human, just humanoid. For the main character, I'm thinking he'll be a young acolyte at the shrine, wearing a mask too, but only because it's traditional. 

And now a brief update on the Blue Beetle Brief from the first week- its been put on the back burner while I get into the swing of things with all this time management.

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.