Week Summary

This week it was independent study week. On Monday, I continued my Zbrush model.

I started to add more detail to the shoulder pieces. Also, I added the wrist gauntlets. More will be added to the gauntlet’s. As I am still learning Zbrush I am finding new ways to achieve parts of this model. I have been finding it a little difficult to get this model to develop in the last week, I find that sometimes it can take me quite some time to get a part to look right or to be done correctly. I am still learning and I believe the more I continue with the model the more I will know. During the modelling stage for the shoulder pads I was looking through some of the different brush tools as I have only used mostly the dam standard brush, clay build up and move brush, I wanted to experiment with different brushes to gain a suitable style for my model now that I had a full version of the software. While doing so I came across some brushes that had already had sculpted elements such as hard-edged pieces to mechanical looking meshes that you can drag onto the model and edit if you wish to do so. I have seen videos online of others using Zbrush and seeing these clean edge elements in their work and always wondered how they created them, now I know sometimes it is done by using certain brushes. Knowing this it will help me develop my model in a more efficient workflow if used in the correct way. Some areas of the shoulder pads have had added parts like the buttons looking objects. It gives my model a cleaner look than my previous attempts. I also added some small but new elements using this method to the helmet. 

On Wednesday, I did go into the university to help a tutor for the women in games workshop. Coming into the university was a group of college students male and female. During the day, me and others from my year who participated had to guide the students through a series of tasks. The theme for the day was to create a positive female game character. First only a select few from my year gave a presentation of their work from past to present, they spoke of how they improved and what the university has taught them and what they would like to do in the future. After the presentation, we were given a task with our selected students to write down ‘What was wrong with female game characters’. The two students who me and my friend (Olivia) had during the day were confident in their views of the topic, we worked well together and everyone had their say. After this we then had to write down ‘How should female character be different’. Both tasks went well and I did find out how the other student’s perceived female game characters. After we had to do a drawing task of the exquisite corpse game. This is a game I have not played since primary school. In doing this task it made me realise how an idea can come together and how people’s differences in design and style come across. I did discover during this task the students did not feel very confident in their drawing skills because they were looking at how us the year 3 drew. This lower their confidence. Me and Olivia did tell them that the drawings did not have to be polished. 

We continued this task till around 1:30 PM. We then moved on to a fairy-tale brief and drawing session which we all had to draw our representation of a character in the fairy-tale story presented to us. I noticed that one of the students me and Olivia were with they were still not confident in their drawing ability and asked for guidance in which we gave them. Because of this I found that this student did not produce as much work as the other student. Overall both students seemed to be enjoying themselves. At the end of the day we put our work from the day up and it was judged and prizes were given. Also, a tour of the University was given to the college students which I also attended just in case questions arise in which I could help with answering them. It was an enjoyable experience. Something that I would happily do again. It was rewarding to give guidance and help to the younger students and to share my experiences with education and progression, and also hearing how they got into art and why they would like to do a creative course in higher education at a later date. 

On Wednesday night, I continued with my Zbrush model creating the arms of the model. I added armour. I did not get too much done of the model that evening, but it was good to get a nicely detailed area done. To achieve the armour on the arms I used the dam standard brush to add a lot of the detail and the move tool brush to achieve the moulded shape.

On Thursday because I was not at university I had more time to complete some of my model in Zbrush. During this time, I added the chest piece. For this part of the model I was fairly lost with how to achieve this so I had to play around a lot to finally create a piece for the chest. Because I was having problems with the masking and then extracting the masked area, it was doubling the mesh for a reason I did not know. Because of this it took a lot longer to achieve the effect I wanted. After having this problem for a few weeks, I have finally figured out why this was happening. 

The reason why this was happening was because I was masking from the bodysuit which was quite a thin mesh. The mask would then be showing on both sides the front and inside the bodysuit mesh. I only realised this was the reason for my problem by watching a Zbrush how-to video on YouTube about masking. To correct the issue, I had to hold the ctrl key and then go into the brush tab, masking subtab and click the backward facing tab. Such an easy fix which caused my model to take a lot longer than necessary I am pleased that I have finally fixed the issue and learning by the experience. 

On Friday, because the university have won a TIGA award, TIGA came into the university to have a look around and see how the tutors present sessions to the students. Because of this I went to a session that I have not been to before which was to learn how to create a wooden crate in substance designer. This is my first attempt using the software, I wouldn’t say I am very confident using this as it does use nodes similar to UE4 which I did struggle with, as it can become a little overwhelming with a lot of information in front of me at once. I did manage to keep most of the session but during the end I did lose track. I could see if I used this program more and worked at home in my own time using this software, I could end up producing nice textures, it is something I will consider as I always want to learn new skills. 

 This picture shows what I ended up with at the end of the session.

Week Summary

On Monday, I did not have any university sessions, so I stayed at home and prepared my second pitch for my project 1 (Sci-fi Roman character) for the next day. For this I put down some images of some parts of my work so far that I thought would be relevant. This was mainly concept pieces which are my earlier designs and my Z brush model so far. Also on Monday I decided to buy a full copy of ZBrush. I did this because I have had problems with files not opening in ZBrush core after using a full copy at university, this can be frustrating and worrisome and I feel it has put me behind a little. Also with the full copy I can now work at home if I am not able to go into university as recently I have been unwell with (suspected gallbladder problems) this can be a problem. Therefore I have decided to buy a full copy, still I have wanted to buy a full copy for some time. It will be beneficial over the Christmas term as well as I will not be able to use the facilities at university during this time.

On Tuesday, in the morning I had my anatomy wax workshop session. This session was slightly slow pace than previous sessions. It felt like we did not get so much done in this session but I did add the muscle to the leg and textured the muscle and the muscle on the pelvis area. 

https://blog.fitraq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Leg-Muscle-Anatomy.jpg Leg muscle image shows the muscle added in the session. 

Also on Tuesday I had to present my pitch, this is the second pitch I have done since being in year three. In doing these pitches to the tutors and my group it builds confidence in talking about my work, it's also good to hear feedback ideas after the pitch has been completed. I have been told to look at roman sculptures in more depth with how they are posed and the materials used. I will need to do this as I do intend to pose my model when it is fully modelled. My pitch went well and it seems I am on track so far. My tutors seem to be happy so far in what I have produced and they hope that the rest of the model will be to the standard that the helmet is in. 

On Wednesday, I went into the university for my one-hour session with my specialist tutor. In this session, I went over the dissertation draft of a 1000 words. They gave me some guidance on how to write certain parts such as chapters and what should be added and where. We also went over the grammar as in some areas I did have some grammar errors. They went over my introduction part of this written piece and structured it a little differently with changing some words, as I have used the word ‘I’ too much. This is where my dyslexia show’s strongly. I am glad I'm getting some help/guidance with the written side of this course. I also added my bibliography to my written draft.

On Thursday, I had my concept art session in photoshop. We were told to analyse three images of our choosing from a select range of given images on the VLE. This session consisted of value study of an environment piece. With the three selected images, I had to change the image first to black and white. I then picked the different value of tone from the foreground, middle ground and background using the eye dropper tool and paint the chosen colour into a red box I created in the correct order (Dark to light). I then added yellow lines to show the direction (composition) of the viewer’s line of sight while looking at the image. When I had completed this task I then went into the program Alchemy to create some quick thumbnails of environments. This task had a set brief. The image below is showing what was needed in this task.

At first it took me quite some time to figure out what I wanted my final piece to be. This is where the alchemy thumbnails come in and work well for me to get a clear understanding of what I would like to create. I decided to go with a cave hideout scene that is themed from the Viking era (Matching the brief). I used mixed media for this piece, photo bashing and painted. I would like to think that I have got better in the short amount of time with photo bashing, as at first, I found that photo bashing was quite difficult, especially blending a photo into another photo. In this piece, I think that I have achieved the blending method more successfully in which I’m happy to see. In this piece, I drew in the torches to give a source of light I edited the lights using layer effects which gave the light more of a glow and realistic touch. I added water effects to parts of the piece such as the dripping effects coming off the cave walls. I also added a body into this piece to give the environment a tense atmosphere, this was part of the brief to give the viewer a feeling of tense emotion. I added details such as the blood running into the water and on the wooden platforms. The negative part of this piece that I’m not overly happy with and struggled with was painting the waves crashing against the rocks, I think I could have done this better if I had a more suited brush and knowledge for painting wave affects. Overall, I think this is one of the strongest tasks I have done so far in the concept art sessions. I am pleased that my photo bashing skills are developing and I look forward to practising the technique more broadly. 

On Friday, in the morning I went into University to see a tutor to go over my dissertation topic as this was suggested to me. I am very pleased that I did book a session as my tutor really helped with how to structure my dissertation in the right format through its chapters. They also gave me some sources and recommended a book from the library which I did manage to get hold of.

Week Summary

On Monday, in the morning I had someone come to mine from DSA for my final session with them to go over my equipment that helps with my dyslexia. Later on that day I started to draw out some rough helmet designs for my character. I drew the designs in Sketchbook Pro as it has a useful symmetry tool. After I laid down some initial designs I opened see Zbrush Core and started to sculpt out my character. I did use the built in human anatomy model as I was told by a tutor this should be fine to do as long as I edit on top of it. As I have already attempted a sculpt of a human body in ZBrush Core using zspheres I wanted to show that I had still attempted my own. At first the helmet sculpt took at least 2 to 3 hours to get right in what methods I wanted to use and best way to sculpt the model. I went by my rough initial design of the character I liked best with changes added, I knew that as soon as I started to sculpt my model it would change quite a lot as I could add more detail in this process. With my first attempt at sculpting the helmet I use the extract tool by masking the area. This method worked well but the result wasn’t really what I wanted. I inserted a sphere and edited that to create my helmet design. I extracted areas by masking certain areas, used the Move tool a lot and adjusted areas to shape the helmet. I also use the dam standard brush to create the refined details and the clay build up brush to bulk out some parts of the model. I managed to get a near finalised state to the helmet. I will still need to work on the helmet in areas.  

 On Tuesday, I had my anatomy session, making the big scale model. In this session, we added the wire head and arms, we did not place wax on these areas in the session. The focus of the session was adding the feet and muscles to the pelvis area. The muscle’s added to the pelvis was using a coloured wax that was a light salmon colour that represents the ‘Psoas Major’, ‘Iliacus’ and ‘rectus femoris’ muscles in the pelvis. 

Also on Tuesday I added the shoulder armour to my model, to do this I used the same method as the helmet with masking an area and extracting. Before doing the shoulder armour I masked areas of the body where I wanted the spandex like Suit to be placed I use the same method and extracted the area making sure the thickness was right for clothing which was roughly 0.01 thick. This created a bodysuit for my character that I can model on top of.

  

On Wednesday, I went into the media lab’s and used ZBrush. While using Zbrush I noticed that every time I extracted a piece from my model it would double even though the settings were not set to double the mesh. I spoke to a tutor and he managed to sort out the problem using the grouping section of ZBrush. At times, I still struggle with some of the technical side of Zbrush. I believe the more I use the software the more knowledge I will gain and hopefully be able to tackle these kinds of problems. I decided to change the style of the shoulder pads. As my old shoulder pads were doubled this benefited me in some way as I could use them to generate other pads for the arms. I also attempted to add a neck piece to the model that is still yet to be edited. 

On Thursday, I had my photoshop session for concept art. In the session, we were told to create an environment piece that was based from a brief given. Here is an image below of what the brief consisted of.

We were told to use the software ‘Alchemy’ to create a few thumbnails of environments. I’m not the strongest creating environments but I have noticed since doing these tasks I have seen slight improvement especially from when I did an environment piece in year one. Also with these tasks the hand in is getting shorter each week. This task had to be handed in the same day (Night). I did manage to complete the environment piece in time which I was pleased about.

In my environment piece above we could use any method with liked, I used the photo bashing method to gain the realism of the environment setting. I then added an army, at first, I only added a small amount of characters in the piece, but this did not feel full enough as it stated it needed to have an army of characters or animals whatever our choosing. I decided to duplicate a few of the characters to give it a fuller atmosphere. I then painted over parts of the piece especially the characters. I then added an effect on some of the areas to give the painting differences in style, this worked well for the army. Overall, I am quite happy with this piece and in the time limit that I had to do it in. I now feel more confident in doing tasks like this. 

On Friday, I was meant to go into the university in the morning to see tutors for a group meeting, I could not attend as I have been unwell recently. I did manage to watch the DVD ‘Stalker’ that was recommended for my dissertation. The film was quite long, it was two odd hours and only in English subtitled, but I did get a lot of notes written down which should help me with my dissertation and I’m glad I watched this DVD as it does match my dissertation theme with the environment style and it will be a big part of the comparison between the film and games.