Responsive - Sketching (car scene)

 I began this design by sketching in pencil an initial design. I liked the image of the full car, not just the window screen, so took this further.

 Because my quilling feature one main block colour, I thought the car would look good for this, but I wasn't sure I like it. I felt there needed to be a grey for the bumper and inside.







I looked back at a piece of work I did where I layered up different shades of blue to create waves, I tried it with this. The dark colours would indicate it is night time, and the main image of the car and characters looks almost silhouetted. I then added the colour of the seat as described, but this red was to bright, I needed darker red to go with the blues and grey.



I wanted to see what my image would look like if the characters were a different colour, but I felt like the grey worked better, as the white looks too overpowering. 

I played around with colour a bit, adding yellow headlights and making the car navy. the car now blends too much with the blue already there, so I will use grey. I also think there is too much colour now with yellow headlights. I also added stars, these looked nice on my Lighthouse piece of work and think they could work for this as well.

I now have two final pieces for one of the illustration, and I will present for feedback.

This piece will be a combination of layered paper and quilling. the stars will be cut out, and the car and characters will be quillied.

An alternative, is to stick with my minimalistic style, and simply quill in black paper and have one main feature colour, created on a white background.

Telling Tales - Character building

To match Ciara character, I set out adjusting the nose. I deleted what I had done to start again. and from the photo treid to replicate this, which was a challenge for me to do.

I manage to get it to look similar, but I thought it looked too pig like, so went back to adjust it. I widened and flatted the nose to be squarer, as this is how Ciara's is, but I'm still not sure if then match. 

I also made my character's head wider and gave him more of a jaw-line so he looks squarer. 

I'm still not happy, because I feel that characters do not match, maybe adding colour will help them to look similar? 

Telling tales - Character building

Like in the tutorial, I had problems with creating fingers. I think what i'd done is undid some parts, to and extrude and then done noting with it, so when it came to adding faces with the append to poly tool, it did this. I fixed it, but deleting the finger and extruding it again. This time it worked  

When I viewed in smooth preview the fingers were really thin. My character has quite chunky fingers so I selected each finger and made them bigger and wider, and squared off the tips more. 

 I wanted to add some depth to the clothing, but wasn't sure how to do this at first. I thought about how I could manipulate the edge it would look like a sleeve for example. 

I added two more edge loops where the sleeve would be and use the translate and scale tool do adjust it. 

 I took the middle edge loop and scaled it up, making it wider, then took the last edge loop to move under the middle loop so that the edge was a right angle. This worked and gave it more dimension. I also did this to the boots, and when mirrored, the t-shirt neck and waist line.

When mirrored, there was a few bits that needed contecting together, but this was simple for me to do. 

Telling tales - Character building

To begin my character I, began by importing my t-pose images to work from. I followed the video guides from the tutorial character to help me as I still wasn't 100% confident with the tool, and just adjusted to my character. 

I ended up exaggerating his waist, shoulders and muscles and in smooth preview they didn't look as good. But I seemed to be getting along fine in building this part of my character. I even adjust my character by eye if he didn't look in proportion, or something didn't look right in 3d.   

I tried to then create some facial facial features, but wasn't sure how Ciara ha done hers as we need them to look like siblings. I started to play around with creating a nose to get use to building out, while Ciara send me a photo of how she had done hers.

 To create the ears I freestyle again, and I think I'm getting more used to the tools, I simple removed some faces, and extruded like you would creating a thumb.









It didn't turn out too bad, but I will need to adjust this face depending on how Ciara has created hers. 
















Ciara sent me a photo of her character's face, it is very square unlike mine. I can change the nose of my character, but I'm wondering if I should make my characters head flatter, or if she would make her characters face rounder, or we could both edit our characters heads, to find a middle ground? This is something we will have to discuss.

Responsive - moodboard and style

I firstly created a mood board by collecting some images online that would help me visualise the characters more and to help me decide what kind of colours I should be using.

To me the murderer seem to be this, old fashioned mid 30's guy who looks after himself, dives a nice car, is quite wealthy and keeps himself to hinslef, contrasting to the assistant who at first, seems to be a bit of an alcoholic and finds life difficult, so I imagine him to be a bit of a slob and doesn't have much going for him. 

My work

I also gathered some of my paper art, to look back on what techniques I had used for previous piece of work. I'm thinking of combining layering paper and quilling to create my illustrations, but I will firstly draw out a few versions digitally and get feedback before I start on the actual thing.

Maya tutorial - orienting

 

I found it really difficult understanding this, I think I followed the tutorial correctly, but i'm not sure I still understand.









While doing this tutorial I saw that on on of the fingers the joints weren't lines up, I quickly fixed this by holding d down and moving the roughly into the right position, I then did this with the right hand joints.

I continued with the tutorials, and when it came to parenting joint and controllers, for some reason the parent between the shoulder and elbow disappeared when I parented the  joint and controllers. And I really don't know where I've gone wrong. I'll try to continue with the reast of the joints and get help with that bit, when I can.

Responsive - Analysing brief and story

We were given question to help us analyse a brief, so I'm going to use those questions to help me get a further understanding of what I'm being asked to do, and to document what I'm being asked. 

• What problem(s) are identified by the brief? The company need artists to create illustrations to accompany the short stories in the Anthology.   
• What is the brief asking you to do about it/them? I have been asked to create 3 illustration in the requested style of quilling/ layered paper.
• Who is the audience? As the theme of the short stories is 'Crime and Punishment', the audience will be those who enjoy reading this genre. 
• How will the message be delivered? I will try to create a paper illustration that will suitably accompany the story I have chosen to work with. 
• Can you foresee any problems in responding to the brief? No, I am free to email the company to get feedback, as their opinion is as important as mine about my work.

To analyse the brief further, I read and highlighted the bits that described the environment and characters so I can start sketch what I believe parts of the story to look like. 

I have picked out 3 sections I would like to illustrate, and will soon be starting to sketch my ideas.

 

Telling tales - T-pose

To help me create my character in Maya, I drew him in a t-pose. I've not added much detail to the sketch as colour and things will be added when I being uv mapping. I also took on the feedback given in the intrim crit and made his head slightly smaller and made his shoulders boarder, which you can't really tell in this pose. 

I think the only way to stylise him to make him look more like the girl character is by having the same colour style, which again I'll come to when uv mapping.

Responsive - Company Research

I was approached by a new publishing company, Odd Type, to produce 3 illustrations. I started by doing a bit of research into the company and found on their website that:

'Odd Type collaborates with independent artists to create engaging content for print, video, and audio'.

As this is a new company, there wasn't much else to find out other than what the company are wanting to achieve, which is to bring together independent artists and writers to create "engaging content." 

  

Maya tutorial - shaping and placing

I had to do this section 3 times, as for some reason it did not save or didn't open what I saved when opened on my home computer or uni computer. The third time I had to re do it, it wouldn't let me change the number of vertexs of the circle to create the hip controles and the mouth control. I even tried to look for other ways to change the vertex amount, but this did not work. I just went as far as I could for now. 

I went back later and was then able to change the number of vertexs in the circle, to complete this section of the tutorial.

I followed the rest of the tutorial fine, but when it came to colouring, for some reason it would not let me colour some of the controls. I'm not sure why this was, but when I went back to it on a different computer it would let me.

Responsive - My brief

I received a commission email, from a company called Odd Type, asking me to design 3 illustrations for a short story that will be included in an Anthology.   

This was perfect timing as I can now use this live brief with the Responsive Modual. 

The company saw my quilling and layered paper art, and have requested for the artwork to be in this style. 

I emailed back asking for more information about the brief, and the short story I would be working with. 

Here is some of the information included in the email of what is asked of me to do. 

I selected one of the two short stories sent to me and now need to further read through and analyse it to begin selecting parts of the story to produce.  

Telling Tales - Intrim Crit

Ciara put together the presentation for our crit, going though the proces of what we had done so far, including the animatic she'd done.

We received a lot of feedback from the interim crit. Two of the main things were the characters and the environment.

With the character it was suggested that Ciara's character should be smaller, so there is a clear view that she is the younger sibling. Also as I had said and included in my developing design for the girl, her head was too big for her body. Her eyes should be a bit bigger to get arose her innocence and age, and it was said her limb should be thicker too, as they were hard to see with the background. 

The male character I did, it was suggested that make him more stylised like the girl character, and I should exaggerated his shoulders more and make his head slightly smaller. Something I noticed it that my character has different colour eyes to Ciara's character so this also needs to be adjusted. 

With the environment, it was said that we should start in the tent already to save designing a complex background of the busy fair ground. It was also pointed out that fair grounds are busy, so how would we create the busy atmosphere? a way we could do this is with sound or add in some 2d blurred background characters in some shots.

Maya tutorial - UV mapping

I really enjoyed this part of the tutorial, as I were able to add my own colour to the character.
I cut seems down the character, so that the mesh would unwrap for colouring. It was important to select the loop, or section you wanted carefully so that it wouldn't unwrap wrong.

I position and spaced out each of the sections, so when i came to colouring I would know which part it which.

In photoshop, I used the marque tool to select round the area I wanted to colour and then simply filled it in which save time, rather than carefully painting trying not to go outside the lines.

I simply modeled my uv map based on the pyjamas I was wearing. I didn't want to create anything too complex as this was my first time doing this.

Maya tutorial - skeleton

Creating the skeleton was quite simple to follow. All you had to get right was making sure you created it in the right point of view so nothing was distorted and that every joint had the right parenting.

A little adjustment was needed on the fingers, making sure they were in the right place. I learnt that you should never rotate a joint because it would affect the way it would move, so to always move it by holding d and drawing, or press w to move.

After I created the head, spinal controles and the left limb joints, I simple mirror over the arm and leg joints, renaming them 'R elbow' etc. 
I then put these on the same layer as the rest so i can select the whole thing.

Maya tutorial - mirroring

Because I couldn't select the body of my character after I had made the eyes. I continued the tutorials with the unmapped character that was available to us on e-studio.

As the unmapped character is a full mirrored character. I used a previously saved character of mine, to complete this step. At first there was a gap when I mirrored it, but this may have been because for some reason my character wasn't directly centred. I moved the character and this time successfully mirrored it.