Thursday 14 October 2010

Give me coffee, anatomy and Rihanna

Hey guyssss ^_^

Hope everyone is doing well out there in gamer world. I'm doing great if any of you were wondering.

So whats been going on? I've been being an anatomy buff these past 3 weeks. I'm enroled on Scott Eaton's online anatomy course. I must say that I can't recommend it enough. I think the guy is an anatomy god and a great teacher. Though not for someone with a vague-meh-ish interest since it's quite intense and you will spend a lot of time watching and rewatching videos, then of course your assignments. But I'm seriously enjoying it, even more than I thought I would.

Speaking of assignments, that is what I'm working on this evening and I thought I would treat myself to a nice coffee for while I work (I'm a herbal tea drinker 99% of the time ya see). So works and I'm gonna have a nice evening drawing é
corché of backs ^_^



I've also been trying my hand at low poly character modeling this week... I'm not good at it, but I'm trying!! (Can you guess who I used as inspiration for the face?? ... No??! .... I don't blame you, but it's Angelina Jolie)



Then what's with Rihanna you ask? Well, I'm generally not a big fan of R'n'B, but I do think Rihanna is a very talented lady and just oozes cool. Well I just watched her new video Only Girl. Really dancey and feel good, which is awesome. Plus she looks amazing with this marilyn monroe style hairdo, but in stunning red!! Now that is very awesome. It reminded me of a trailer I watch for a anime called Summer Wars. Looks amazing and I must watch it... when I have time >_<

Well, until next time, I'm getting back to work

^_^

Thursday 30 September 2010

Life Drawing

This weekend saw my first full weekend course of life drawing. This is a photo of my last drawing on the Sunday. It was three hours and I really enjoyed it! I'll be doing a more indepth blog post next week, since at the moment I am completely rushed off my feet. It seems everything is happening at once right now!

Life drawing

Friday 3 September 2010

bored..

.....so spam with sketches ^_^




Thursday 26 August 2010

Water well = FINISHED!!!

MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

It's finished (well perhaps some small tweaks but I'm ready to show it to the world at least)

The ever mysterious water well with all hand painted textures has arrived at the other end of the creation tunnel, mostly unscathed by it's ordeal.

well render

It took many hours or working and reworking but it's finally something I'm actually proud of ... and anyone who knows me will tell you I'm NEVER proud of my work, but I feel I worked hard and it shows for the first time. It's by no means perfect but it's still my creation ^_^

Monday 23 August 2010

random find

While looking for some inspiration for my Bestival outfit (tho I'm sure you've seen it already) I found this nice wireframe comparison =)

Tomb Raider Anniversary VariousSee More Tomb Raider Anniversary Various at IGN.com

Friday 20 August 2010

ooooo totally awesome!!!

If your anything like me, at least in a 3D artist sense, you'll know the feeling of always being on the look out for something that would just ooze awesomeness if you built (or in this case wish you could build). And here is my highlight of the week!!



This beautiful piece of sculpture I came across quite by accident during the usual googling for good metal reference images. It is the work of a man called Cory Fuhr and I must say I'm completely in awe! I mean, learning anatomy and rendering it with accuracy is hard enough. But then to craft the human form out of cogs, rods and sheet metal definitely deserves some props.



This is my personal favourite .... but I think it's because I'm fascinated by the human hand =P

You should go check him out: http://www.coryfuhr.com/

Friday 23 April 2010

I have been working ... honest!

Been having a hard time trying to fit in working on my portfolio around my social life. I know that my portfolio should be taking pride of place at the top of my priorities right now, and it is, but it's hard when I lose at least 3 days when I go up to London to see my friends and boyfriend every weekend.

When I used to live in London that was all so easy but now I have to get a train and I can't just pop back and forth like I used to. Not that I got much work done when I did live there since I was always busy cleaning, cooking etc.

However I have been making progress, sort of. I basically got stuck with my VW van, I keep getting strange smooth shading errors from where I have triangles on the wheel arches and no matter how i can't seem to get rid of them.

So I decided to go back to an old project I was working on and go back to it at a later date with fresh eyes.

So this old project? Well, it's a sword. Here's the original concept art, not by me but this guy: http://wen-m.deviantart.com/




Anyway, modelling and such was fine, nothing too head-scratching about it. But then it got to doing the textures ... Lets just say I sat staring at the image for an hour or so just thinking "ok so how the hell do I make it look like that?!"

Done some very basic stuff to rough out what I should put in diffuse and what in spec. But at the moment my task has been hand painting a height map to use to make my normal map. Now any sane and normal person would have gone into ZBrush, but no, I thought that hand painting all the details in photoshop would be more accurate (probably true actually) and easier (not really true at all).



But I'm hoping that the hard work will pay off and I will have a sexy sword to put in my portfolio and *hopefully* get me on the way to junior environment artist!

^_^

Friday 19 March 2010

VW fun

Well, I've been busy. VERYYYY busy working on my lovely little VW van. One of those hippy, 1964, I-wish-I-owned-one-of-those, "shag wagon" type vans. And I gotta say, evening after doing the UVs FOUR TIMESSSS!!! I still like it.

The original idea was too do it as a revamped one, like the one shown below



but in blue and white

but I've been experimenting with adding lots of rust and grime and it looks pretty cool. Hopefully the final outcome will look something like this



but not ssoooooo rusty and falling apart LOL

Sunday 7 March 2010

Fly back to your nest...

... and you may find exactly what you needed.

I have moved back home from London to my sleepy home town. Granted it's only bout 45 mins outside of London but it's countryside that I know so well. More importantly a house where I can concentrate on the task in hand because my computer is somewhere I can call my own space. It's amazing how having your workstation in a communal area of your house (especially when you are renting and have randomers coming and going) has such an impact on your work and general outlook on life.

Point being, I am now back to my home nest with my mum and have finally been able to get some quality work together. Though I can't help feeling that I wasted a good couple of months where I didn't get much done. But I guess it's better late than never.

My biggest journey I feel has now started. I am finally beginning to realise what my aim is and what that means, how to get there and the people I will meet along the way. I never thought of games art as a particularly fine art pursuit. I just thought of a lot of geeks who like to push polys around. But it's so much more than that. I have been playing with ZBrush more and more the past couple of weeks and I have grown to love it more and more as I delve into it. I have since picked up my set of pencils and a sketchbook for the first time in nearly three years. Discovering I can actually draw if I put my mind to it. Studying anatomy and seeing the human body as this amazing machine with different parts all working together. This beauty is taken for granted everyday and sometimes even hated by their owners because they don't fit a stereotype. But ultimately it is still a majestic piece of engineering that should be admired. So still life drawing and hopefully a sculpture course are in order for me in the future. Along with further study of anatomy to add to the basics I have learnt so far.

I seem to have rediscovered the artist within me that has been quashed for so many years. I now feel very scathing toward the education system I was apart of. It seems I have learnt more useful and eye opening things within the past couple of months on my own. I did GCSE art and I hated it. The course itself wasn't bad, not good either though. I have never agreed with people marking other's art work, since art is such a personal pursuit, and that is clearer to me now than ever before. But the focus of my whole school life was getting good grades. That was what was seen as important, which by the end of it all seems useless and pathetic. Because ultimately people don't care how well you did in some exams way-back-when but what you are like as a person. In art we never learnt the importance of basic art skills, like how to use different grades of pencils, forms of light and shadow, gesture etc etc. But then we didn't touch the more important things of self expression and inspiration. In short, we did a page of sketches because it would tick a box. Do an artist study because it ticked another box.

I know now, from looking back on my sketchbooks from that time since I've come home, that by ticking those boxes we were supposed to show our artistic "journey". But this was never the way that it was put forward to us as impressionable students. That is probably why I never felt inspired, encouraged or fulfilled by my work. Most likely leading to my low grade, but it wasn't just me, but my entire class who shared this feeling and result.

Maybe I am asking too much of a school system that struggles enough as it is to meet targets and stick to guidelines. But in schools full of young people, where creative thought and feeling is rife, one would like to think they are encouraged to grow and have the reasons explained to them. Not just a case of "do this and it will tick that box".

My closing thought would be that as an artist I had only been asked "why?" when I was at Escape. Now I find myself asking that question all the time. I feel this is what an artist truly is. Seeking and trying to represent the truth, beauty and ugliness of the world. Creating fantasy and escapism from that world. Always asking why. There is a passion that can't be explained. But all you know is that you do it because you can't not do it.

Tuesday 19 January 2010

New Year means self motivation

My course finished on the 18th December, therefore I have been an unemployed artist for just over a month and I have only just sat down to do actual work. But i'm going with the fact that it was christmas and then new year so I was relaxing and recharging my artist batteries ^_^

I have been messing around with design my website to house my portfolio since I haven't been feeling inspired 3D-wise so have just been stretching my 2D muscles. However after talking to recruitment guys at my college at the bar on Friday night I have had a surge of motivation.

However, it's good to be motivated, but pretty tough when you don't know where to start! As a 3D artist you can make anything, just like an artist. So it's pretty tricky trying to come up with idea on your own, as I am used to people setting me tasks. But I think I have my to-do list down

The first project on my adgenda is to build a treasure chest. I have been clearly influenced by playing to much Tale of Monkey Island the past couple of days =P I have got together my reference material, so we are all set for the modelling process to start tomorrow ... wish me luck!