Week Summary

On Monday, I went into the university and saw a specialist tutor for my dyslexia in the session we went over my dissertation looking at different ideas going over sources that I have already found, we   correctly picked out different parts which may be beneficial to me. In this session, the focus was on the research side for my dissertation and picking out the most relevant for my idea. What I have found since going to these one hour sessions a week is that my ideas have been changing slightly but I do know that I want to look at narrative and environment collapse and how environmental story telling can be betrayed in fallout 4 and dishonoured 2. After this session, I went to the library as my specialised tutor recommended me to try and find the books that we discussed in the session, I could not find the books I was looking for but I did come across three that may be useful, and I will look into these books in more depth soon, I do hope to pick out some good information from them that would relate and help me on my way to start writing for my dissertation.

Also on Monday I went to the Castle Museum in Norwich and decided to look at some of the Roman costumes. I took a few photos of them as this may be good for my research for my sci-fi Roman character. I also went into a toy shop in Norwich and they happen to have some armour pieces that could be used as referencing, I got some photos of the glove pieces. 

On Tuesday, I had my anatomy session, in this session I continued with the big scale model and I added to the pelvis I made the pelvis slightly thicker and cleaned up the pelvis slightly but it still needs to be smoothed out later. I also added to the hip area of my model this now looks more realistic to an actual bone structure of a hip and the main aim for this week’s session was to add the knee joints, these two will need to be smoothed out later. Just adding the knees and the detail has given the model more form already and you can really see it coming together and looking more like a skeleton piece.

Also on Tuesday, in the afternoon I went into the media lab for my session and a friend of mine who is also doing a character model piece in ZBrush recommended me to watch the ZBrush character creation summits on YouTube, these videos are very useful, while I was watching these videos for the whole session I wrote down a lot of notes on tips that will help me when it comes to finally putting my model together in ZBrush. I should have watched the summit sooner as they were very useful I will continue to watch them in my own time. 

https://youtu.be/JL75R0K_j7g

On Thursday, I had my concept art session. In this session, we done more material cubes but we had less time to do these cubes as they had to be finished the next day but we only had to do two of them. We were told to do a pumpkin material cube and a candle. I did really struggle on the pumpkin in the session but I knew I would as I did the week before on these material cubes, this is a task that I’m not confident with that I would like to improve. We were told to look at how the light shows through the object like transparency, this was difficult. I use the same method as before in the previous week I got some reference imaging of pumpkins and candles that were lit so they would show the light passing through and how this can change the colours of the surface. I then created my own cube using a perspective technique that we were taught, from that I had my cube ready to be painted on, I put down solid basic colour first then from that I drew rough line on top to get the form of the pumpkin that I wanted and then I added the colour to gain more of a desired shape and form. I used a hard brush on the pumpkin built up colour and tones in areas that were necessary. Gradually it came together with difficulty. 

 

The candle I had to do at home as I ran out of time in session, I decided to go with a standard cream like colour as this I thought would show a nice representation of light coming through its surface. I think the candle was easier to do as I found it had less detail and it was easier to display light that is passing through using different brush techniques and colours. For the candle, I used a harder brush in some areas more at the bottom of the piece and I used a lighter softer brush for the top portion of the piece. Overall, I wasn’t too happy with the outcome but being the first time painting a transparent like surface it could have been worse, it will have to be something I would have to work on in the future.

After my concept art session, I went to the anatomy lecture which was looking at the head. I drew using a black pen and white pencil again as I found this gives the best effect on the slight brown paper I use. 

 Some of the drawings are incompete because the tutor was too quick on some slides.

On Friday, I had a group session in which we spoke about our dissertation ideas again and I got a chance to speak to my tutors about my dissertation idea, they both gave me some sources to look at one being ‘Henry Jenkins’ as he wrote a book on environmental storytelling, I think this will be one of my main sources for research I will try and get this book in the library or online. I was also given more sources to research especially ones based on film as this will be beneficial with the film ‘Stalker’ that I will be analysing. I may compare the film and Fallout 4 with its environmental storytelling and how they are similar in design, build narrative etc... It will come together in due cause I aim to start writing my draft next week. I also found out that the specialist tutor I see for my dyslexia has cancelled my next session they will not be in for a few weeks so I am now having to see someone else, hopefully I can pick up where I left off and it won’t be too confusing for me and the new tutor to carry on.