Fun, fun, fun

Man, it sure has been a while since I updated this blog. This semester has been a super productive one for me. I have never churned out such a high volume of artwork in such a short span of time before. I've learned tons of new stuff, with major improvements made to 3D, time management and people management (will elaborate this on subsequent posts). Most importantly, I've learned that it was humanely possible to live with just 5 hours of sleep everyday.

The below are some of the artworks that I've created over the course of this 15 weeks.

Porsche 959

The first assignment for 3D modeling class was to model a car. The choice of vehicle was determined by a 'lucky draw' system, and I was lucky enough to land the Porsche 959. This is the first time I modeled a car from a real life reference, and the first time I've touch the Spline modeling tools in Max.

MEDIC - from concept to final model

 The second assignment was a little more personal, as we got to model a character that we personally designed. As we were told that we would continue to use this model for future animation classes, we were advised to not go too crazy with the design. My original concept was to create a character similar to Lara Croft, a girl who isn't too afraid to get down and dirty, but with a slightly cuter appearance. In the end, her face turned out to look more like Midge, a character from a previous projects class. Nevertheless, I am quite glad how the lighting and final render turned out. One step at a time I guess.

Skin Tone Studies

Ear Studies

Portrait of Vincent under 3 point lighting

Portrait of Jacky under monster lighting

Self portrait under top-down lighting

These are exercises done for digital painting class. All of them are done within a short duration, with the idea of improving on my painting speed.

 

Character painting pipeline

 Next, I worked on a character piece, transforming a life drawing that I did last semester into a fully realized original character. To be honest, at this point of the semester, I was running pretty dry on ideas, due to the heavy workload from the projects class (which will be discussed in another post). So when my lecturer pointed out that the figure looked like it could be the monkey king after seeing the initial life drawing, I immediately jumped onto that idea. I experimented with both the Chinese variant (Sun Wukong) and the Indian variant (Hanuman) before finally settling on the latter.

More Life Drawings

As the spring semester draws to a close, I have managed to compile the remaining figure drawings. Here are some of the samples:

I've included a PDF file if you wish to see more [link]

Enlightening Read

http://endling.deviantart.com/journal/39433043/

Lighting

My friend once told me that "rim lighting can make anything look nice". While that's not entirely true, I must admit that the statement ain't too far off. The reason why rim lighting often 'lifts' the object out of the scene is due to the high contrast value that is created when the light color meets the dark background.

The important thing to note when painting is that you have to envision the object as a real-life 3D model. Imagine how it would look under a proper lighting set-up. While I am not a lighting expert, I do understand, and try to establish, the classic 3 point lighting.

The hues I used for the foreground character and prop is similar to that of the background. To bring attention onto the character, I tried to play with a stronger value contrast and added a medium intensity rim light. Of course, there are many other depth cues in play, but those were the main ones utilized.

The Case Against Video Games

I was reading Digital Art Masters Volume 4 a while ago and came across the article by Weiye Yin for his artwork Fly Together. He was talking about how he was inspired to create the image from a wooden toy from his childhood. As discussed in an earlier post, i believe that inspiration comes from everywhere. But I think that we often get inspired from past experiences and events, particularly from our childhood. And that got me thinking.

Kids this days play a lot of video games, whether it's on a PC, a console or a handheld device. Don't get me wrong, I grew up playing games too and I am glad I did. Video games (or at least, the good ones) transport the player to a brand new fantasy world, thereby stimulating the imagination. The only problem is that the experience is predetermined by someone, often the game designer. This person is the "God" of the universe that takes the player plays in, controlling what can or cannot be done.

This is different when kids interact with a real life toy. They create their own rules. They determine which toy is the protagonist and which is the antagonist. By mixing up the toy components (Lego, anyone?) the player can create their own environments. They are the "Gods" of their own universe. They create their own stories and scenarios. Now you could argue that games these days also encourage user generated content like Little Big Planet, or take a more sandbox approach like Grand Theft Auto where the player can do whatever he wants. But with all due respects to these games, I think it would be hard for a kid to intuitively and quickly establish his or her own world through the medium of video games.

In contrast, the sky is the limit when interacting with real life objects. Back in the day, me and friends could come up with more than a dozen ways to have fun with a ball. Its this kind of limitless possibilities that is lacking with games right now. And it is this factor that really opens up the kid's imagination and cognitive abilities.

I was lucky, growing up in the '90s and getting to experience the best of both worlds. I hope this post isn't one of those "old dude trying to diss at the current generation" rants. But maybe next time you should think twice before introducing that iPad game to your 5 year old cousin.

Figure Drawing - Part I

I guess every artist knows this, but I want to emphasize:
Figure drawing is IMPORTANT!
It helps, even if you have absolute zero interest in creating characters (which should not be the case, since all stories involve characters, and all medias deal with stories)in honing your speed of drawing and your observation skills.

The following are some of the figure drawings I made during the first half of Spring Semester this year. I will be compiling all my figure drawings for this semester into a pdf. Hopefully I can find somewhere to upload to and share it around.

2010 Art

2010 was a year whereby I explored more in the areas of 3D character creation. I've learned a lot, especially from forums like polycount. However, due to the scope of 3D, coupled with the increase in intensity of the workload during the earlier part of the year, I wasn't able to produce too many artworks.

September 2010 marked an important point in my life whereby I completed my National Service and immediately transited back to a life of a student. I am currently taking up the BFA in Animation course in Digipen (if you don't already know this). Some of the artworks I've uploaded here is based of some assignment in school.