Category: Practice1

Practice1: 3D printing.

This is the second time that I used Zbrush to sculpting the head, which I have made the following improvement:

I have divided the ears and eyeball into different subtools.

using the Boolean system to make a hole in the middle of the object.

My end result looks like this

IMG_1134 IMG_1136IMG_1135

waiting for print out by the workshop.

Practice1: Music and Animation in Games

For this week’s task, I had my inspiration from a music album “Elysion”, Elysion is the 4th album from the Japanese music band Sound Horizon, which released on 13th of April, 2005.

Sound_Horizon_Elysion_cover_front
  This album has introduced a new way to connect story & music and art together, each if the characters on the front cover have their own story and music, and their story can be linked together with the time sequence, which became the full story of the “Elysion”.
  And I decide to use this method to connect music & opera and character design together, using my understanding to re-create the characters from the opera and fit them in the role of a music band.
fairytale band 1
  1, The 9th soundtrack El’s Picture Book [The Pied Piper and the Parade]  is where I get my idea of the first character from.
The Piper
2, The little mermaid, I was inspired by the opera Rusalka and the ballet ” little mermaid”. I used their stage costume as the colour reference for my character design.
RUS_0505a-683x1024
Kristine Opolais stars in the title role of Dvořák’s “Rusalka” at the Metropolitan Opera. Photo: Ken Howard
Pieni merenneito; Tiina Myllymäki, Sergei Popov
Pieni merenneito; Suvi Honkanen, Iga Krata, Eun-Ji Ha, Claire Voss, Stefania Cardaci
The Vocal
3，The nightingale, my favourite musical opera , I took the idea of “holding a puppet” into my design.
The Nightingale part of the Canadian Opera Company's revival of The Nightingale and Other Short Fables is storytelling at its finest, writes John Terauds.
Canadian Opera Company
The Chorus
4, The last character, from the madame butterfly. Very classic japanese costume and shamisen ( Japanese traditional musical instrument)
The Bass

Practice1: Light and Shadow

This week’s task is about the light and shadow in an environment, which an Unreal4 tutorial has been given during the lesson.

I followed the working process from the sample tutorial:

1, selecting an engine feature sample under the learning tab:

20181120114502

I choose this template because that’s what we used for the tutorial in class, I’m not familiar with the engine system, so follow the tutorial is an easier option for me.

2, I deleted all the lighting & reflection preset from the original template, the whole environment appears dark.

3, Using my imagination & creativity to set up the lighting: one directional light represents the sun (main light source), point lights on the fire/torch, then the spotlights on the window site, to create a Tyndall effect.

4，In the end, adding some reflection captures (use sphere reflection captures & box reflection captures, the planar reflection are too expensive to use.)

5, My outcome in the end:

 

Practice1: Memories and Nostalgia

This week we have been told to design something based on our childhood memories, and for this project, I would like to start with my favourite toy —— a bunny plush.

[The concept ]

I made the basic low-poly model in Maya, start with two spheres (body and head) then push out different area to make the legs, arms and ears.

Then I import my obj file into Zbrush to add more details.

I have added the eyes, fabric wrinkles, seam. re-shaped her ear to make it looks more fluffy.

In the end, I used poly paint to colour my model up as the concept.

Then I decided to create a theme around this bunny, as level designing and the environment is my weakness, I need to find some resources before I getting started.

I found the game Alice Madness return inspired me of creating the environment, and I purchased the art book for a long time.  There are few pages of environmental concept gives me the ideas to carry on my work.

  I used the “Doli’s world” as my reference to design the level. It uses the doll parts as the main structure of the building and also involves a lot of childhood related content in the theme, such as the lollipop tree. (2nd pic right corner)

My outcome:

I planned to start with an empty island, then gradually building up the structure and layout.

For the modelling part, I again used Maya to make the assets in low-poly (as there are less important than the bunny, I think the low-poly model will be enough for them)

For further development, I would like to learn how to get the UV map of the model and how to adding texture on it.

In the end, I will import and set up my “childhood land” in Unreal 4. reference to the landscape making from week 1.

reference:

[1] 《The Art of Alice: Madness Returns》   Apr 2011 [accessed 10. 2018]

Practice 1 : Places of the Mind

For this weeks practice, I decided to mainly based on concept art and illustrations as this is my main strength.

I also found few artists to look at to improve my style of drawing. there are 2 of them which I think had an influence on my work for this week.

1, Hiroshi Senju

He is a Japanese painter and artist, well known for the large-scale ink waterfall painting. His work usually uses very few colours to illustrate the landscape, often give the viewer a lonely feeling.

Lakeside Morning light by Hiroshi Senju on artnet

I think this style might apply to my project, because in my opinion deep in our mind, everybody is lonely.

2,Electroillusion

Electroillusion is a Chinese freelancer, she uses multiple colours in her work, but those colour blended in with each other very well. I used some of her work as the colour index in mine to understand how to balance out the contrast of different colour.

http://electroillusion.tumblr.com/

MY WORK

I also have done some practice on Zbrush

This is my first head sculpt, I have used this as a base of my illustration.

I took a screenshot of the head, and drag it to Photoshop, by using the Gradient Map tool, I have been able to add colour automatically to the grey model, hence I can add some cool effect after.

Reference:

[1]exhibit-e.com. 2018. Hiroshi Senju Studio. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.hiroshisenju.com/. [Accessed 09 Oct 2018].

[2] Tumblr. 2018. Tumblr-electroillusion. [ONLINE] Available at: http://electroillusion.tumblr.com/.

Practice 1 : Red VS Blue [2]

I began my project with some simple design of characters.

I designed them based on different themes, for example:

Chun-Li and Ada Wong, the fairy tale theme ( Alice and little red riding hood), cyberpunk girl and Lava girl. Qing dynasty princess and Japanese foxy witch,  Harajuku style high-school girl and a typical princess design.

In the end, I picked the fairy tale theme as this weeks development.

I choose to make my characters in 2D, at this stage 3D modelling isn’t my strength. During the character development, I split the character’s body apart to make it easier for animation.

To work on the simple animation I used photoshop, by using the puppet tool I can move her arms and legs around.

The result:

Map and platform creating:

My project is based on the fairy tale and lots of girly elements, I decided to use musical score and notes as the mean map theme. I haven’t done much with my platform design because I don’t have enough time for adding all the details, the platforms just a simple musical score PNG with the transparent background.

Programming in Unreal4:

This is my first time using Unreal 4, I used 2 tutorial as an example to develop my game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooEhCuPClww&t=1369s

This tutorial is a simple devlog, I followed this tutorial to insert my character and platform, but I realise I need 2 characters in my game, so I looked up another 2D fighting game tutorial by Wazza Tuts to help me in adding the second character and character control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzv4xVEImKE&list=PL4vARnfO6MOh42pNcEvf1nyZixzpzoPgK

I will upload the game video when I found a valid online video host.

Reference:

[1] YouTube. (2017). #1 Detailed devlog/tutorial – 2D Sidescroller – Unreal engine 4. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooEhCuPClww&t=1369s [Accessed 5 Oct. 2018].

[2] YouTube. (2017). Unreal Engine 4 2D Fighting Game Lesson 01 : Setting the Scene. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzv4xVEImKE&list=PL4vARnfO6MOh42pNcEvf1nyZixzpzoPgK [Accessed 5 Oct. 2018].

Practice 1 : Red VS Blue [1]

As I’m new to the game art course, I never had a chance to working with 3d software and 3d game engine. Seems everything has to start from the very beginning:

I started my project Red VS Blue with the most fundamental tutorial on Unreal 4, Unreal essential training by Craig Barr[1].

With this tutorial, I have been able to build a landscape within the engine.

(for some reason my Unreal 4′s toolbar is half Chinese and half English)

I am able to import models, scale and place them around on the landscape.

By editing the material property, I can make the flashing effect of the lamp.

By link the Texture coordinate and Coordinate panner with the cloud texture sample, I can give the lamp a flashing effect, to make it looks more realistic.

At this moment I only know very limited knowledge of  3D modelling,  all the models that I’m using for this tutorial are downloaded from the tutorial, which created by Everett Gunther[2] the environmental artist.

In the end, as my course adviser & tutor Neil Gallagher suggest, this is not a time-consuming project, I need to work on my strength: concept art and 2D designing.

The second step, I will temporarily stop my learning on Unreal 4, and start designing the characters in 2D for project Red VS Blue.

Reference:

[1] Barr, C. (2016). Unreal Essential Training. [online] Lynda.com – from LinkedIn. Available at: https://www.lynda.com/Unreal-Engine-tutorials/Welcome/424941/461111-4.html?autoplay=true [Accessed 20 Sep. 2018].

[2] Gunther, E. (2018). Everett Gunther – Environment Artist Portfolio. [online] Everett Gunther – Environment Artist Portfolio. Available at: https://www.everettgunther.com/ [Accessed 25 Sep. 2018].