And once again I forgot to post on here last night, but here was yesterday's Inktober. I was supposed to use the prompt "Sad" and based on the fact that it was October I started thinking about ghosts. So I did a little doodle on what would happen if Pacman stopped being afraid of his ghosts.
Tonight I'll be starting to work on my cabin environment, so some sketches and beginning models will be posted on here soon.
I forgot to post my Inktober from yesterday on here, but I did post on time on my Instagram! The prompt was Hungry, and I had no problem relating. Yesterday was a late night and I ate dinner around 11pm before having to do some more work. Sometimes when you're feeling a little unmotivated you just need a nice bowl of mac n cheese to help you along, so that's what I did! I sketched this out really quick before proceeding to consume the entire bowl. Excellent prompt.
The theme was collect today and I was stuck for awhile on what to draw. When I was younger I used to collect all sorts of things but none of that has really stuck with me as an adult. What I have noticed is that as my level of work increases throughout the semester, I have an impromptu collection of cups that start to surround my desk. Eventually plates or bowls start to get added to it. The quantity increases as I move closer to deadlines.
It's only day 3 and I've already started using my sketchbook more frequently, which means the challenge is working the way it's supposed to! This sketch was posted at 10pm instead of 3am so there's definitely been an improvement in my timing. I don't really sketch in ink too often- being able to challenge myself and work on these quick little sketches without second guessing my lines or perspective and just doing it to do it is reminding me how easy it should be to just put marks on the paper.
Stay tuned for Day 4!
Today's prompt was Noisy, and because I didn't remember to sketch until I was already in bed, I chose to work from my surroundings.
My bedroom shares a wall with the bedroom next door. This building is old and echoes a lot, so when I'm laying in bed I can hear the guy next door snoring. Tonight was particularly loud and seemed fitting to sketch out my current predicament.
I sat down this afternoon to start working on an environment to render my demo reel in. I worked on rendering bits and pieces from Project Sphincter in Unreal Engine 4 this week, and now that I've got the cinematics process down I figured I would just build a new environment to render all my game props in and put it all together.
So I modeled this airplane hanger/warehouse type look and started playing with the lighting and materials in UE4.
Screenshot from my setup.
As I started putting the materials together and playing with lighting I got sucked into some of the finer aspects of UE4. Like building glass. I had never really gone too in-depth with the materials editor and I really wanted to see what was involved. I found this tutorial for creating glass HERE and started following it. The results still aren't quite what I'm looking for, but the refraction is at least looking pretty good. I'm hoping to play with it a little more once I've got more of my models in the scene.
Screenshot of the materials editor after following the tutorial above.
I'll be focusing on another environment project this week but I'll be posting updates from both on here, as well as Inktober!
Anyone who's met me knows that I've had trouble keeping sketchbooks for years. For whatever reason I just couldn't get out of that "IT HAS TO BE PERFECT!" headspace. I think every artist goes through that, where they want their sketchbook to be beautiful. I'm slowly starting to realize that mine is a tool and that the beauty comes from the process. So I started a new sketchbook today and to break it in, I've decided to participate in Inktober!
If you don't know what Inktober is, every day of October you sketch something in ink and then post it online. It's meant to promote good drawing artistic habits and in the past I've never realized it was going on until about halfway through the month. But today that changes!
Today's prompt was Fast. When I think about Fast I think gesture drawing, so I got on Pixelovely and pulled up the practice tools. I gave myself 30 seconds to draw each hand that came up on the screen, and tried not to stop moving or retrace my lines as much as possible. Here's the results:
This went by very quickly but I had a lot of fun doing it and I might start using it as warmups. I'll be choosing the most appealing interpretation of the prompt each day, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes up next!
I did a little ZBrush demo for Family Weekend at CCAD! It pretty much just involved sitting in a room and answering questions or letting people play with ZBrush for two hours. I ended up working on a bust of Sir Patrick Stewart. The Next Generation has been my show of choice these days to use as background while I'm working.
It's demo reel time! I've been working pretty steadily this weekend to render different projects from this summer. Normally this wouldn't be such a huge challenge but since most of my models are game assets, I decided to render them in Unreal Engine 4.
Working on cinematic renders of Project Sphincter.
I'm still working out some of the quirks- I followed a tutorial that used Matinee only to find out that UE4 is using Sequencer now. A few hours and some tests later and I was ready to get into it. I'm also going to be building another environment and using it to create a more dynamic props reel. I like the idea of adding some interactivity instead of just staring at turnarounds and wireframes.
Still shot from one of the cinematic renders.
I found a few errors after the initial render but I've pretty much got the cinematics down for this part of the demo! Next up, building the demo room.
I've finally opened up Unreal and started blocking out the general structure and landscape of my environment. The landscape itself is pretty non-specific, but I mainly focused on getting the cabin in scale. I used the preset third person character mesh to measure everything, and right now I've got the general shape locked down.
I'm still using presets just to figure out the positioning of everything, but my goal for the rest of the day is to play with particles and learn how to create a slightly more believable water system.
I'm working on a big environment for one of my classes using a concept I found on an animation blog. I've done work like this in the past (see Project Sphincter) but never on my own, and never with this precise level of detail. I'm going to be spending a lot of time over the next few months focusing on some high detail game assets in order to create this environment. So naturally that starts with planning:
Original concept by Olga Orlova. I'm linking her portfolio at the bottom of this post!
This presents a couple of challenges for me. I'm using Unreal Engine 4 to build the environment, and I've never tackled water before. Or foliage on a mass level. I'm also going to be creating an interior for the cabin so I get to play wth some of my own design abilities there. So far I've broken it down and created an asset list for the environment.
Environment Breakdown with Reference
The next step for me is heading into Unreal and blocking out the environment to be scale appropriate. I'll be posting screenshots of that, maybe a short video run. And during this project I'll be doing small projects to learn ZModeler workflows and experiments to learn how to tackle water in Unreal. I should have some progress to show tomorrow!
Abby
Olga Orlova: https://www.artstation.com/artist/sheer-madness
https://vk.com/sheermadness_art
This week I finished my first character design project for class! I don't usually do a lot of work with characters so this class has been a bit of a challenge. We had to choose an animal and then give it a profession. Whenever we visit the Columbus Zoo, I always stop by the Flamingo enclosure and watch the group interact. If you stand there long enough you start to realize that they are always starting fights with each other and generally look either angry or paranoid. I thought it was hilarious, so I decided to design a Flamingo Lawyer.
Here are some of the preliminary sketches I did while working on my character design. It started with anatomical studies and went on to playing with shapes and poses, and possible professions.
I'm really focusing on my drawing skills this semester- I have a tendency to fall into the world of 3D and stay there for awhile. Finding the time to sketch these last few weeks has made a huge difference, and I am working on moving away from gesture sketching and into some more detailed concepts. More to come!
Abby
Hello!
In the past I've hosted my blog on Wordpress, but I've decided to move my posts here. My previous blog was sporadically updated and contains work from early on in my time at CCAD. I'll keep it up and you're more than welcome to visit it here, but from now on I'll be posting all updates on this page.
Right now I'm heading into my last semester here at CCAD, and my focus has shifted a little bit. I'm gearing my art towards the role of Environment Artist and I'm working on building up my portfolio. Most of what I'll be posting will be updates from current projects including sketches, models, project planning, and progress videos. But I'll also be showing the development of my personal branding, personal projects and sketches, and research into other artists and studios.
I'm working on some projects that I'm pretty excited about, and I'm looking forward to sharing the journey with you!
Abby