The Moss Fox: Unreal Engine 4

It has finally reached the final stretch! With all my textures, skinning, animation, and assets done. I placed all of my work on the group file along with making my own small display of my character.

Group's Submission File

I started by making all the materials in my work and importing them into the shared folder of the group's content, inserting my little creature into the scene alongside my friend's environment.

The lighting setups

Warm lighting with purple light to create contrast with the scene (Potion)

Fox’s assets add colour to the scene (mushrooms/Crystal/Mask)

Just a little guy sitting on a chair

Beauty Shots

My Own Submission File

The lighting setups

I focus on the bloom effect and the glow on the fox from the emission layer, that's why I use high atmospheric fog. To make it have a similar vibe to the group's environment, I place my fox in a warm evening setting to make the cold pallet of the fox stand out.

Beauty Shots

As the project comes to an end, I can not help but feel relief and happy with how my how has improved throughout the year. This project has been a joy to work with and I am very proud of how it turns out. The presentation points and my little animation that adds to the overall look of the fox is my favorite part of this project and if I can improve more upon what I have I would fix on the Fox's anatomy itself. But because my group's aim is to use a stylized cartoon aesthetic in our work, I think my work works out just fine.

Boss Monster: Rendering Process

This took me a long while to finish but I am very proud I have finally reached the last part of my work!
  The process of this is quite long and was carefully rendered.

Process 

sketch lines

 I push myself to work from a greyscale first on the Fabric part because of how multicolored the fabric could be, it can get overwhelming. 

Base colour multiply over monocolored shadow layer

Using texture from the stage to indicate the material of the cloak is the same as the Arena's wallpaper

I use Photobash to add in the fills of the neck to reduce workload.

The back of the boss was rather easy as all I did was flipping the front side and fill in the blue part of the cloak to cover the section that is hidden by the cloak.

I finally added the cross that tells the story that this Boss is a puppet

Finalizing and adding lighting.

Final Piece

And my boss character is finished! I am proud of what I made. Due to the art block and my fuel to continue the work reducing rapidly during the last stretch of the work, I can not help but feel like I can improve a lot more of the colouring and shading. Especially the rim lighting that I used to enjoy doing is rather not well executed in the final product. However, because this is a type of character I never have tried to create before, and has been a huge step out of my comfort zone. I am rather proud of the design.

The Moss Fox: Animation

The rigging and skinning of the fox was the hardest part I did throughout the entire project so far. The bip tool was used to create human anatomy's character. Because I am making a fox and the only way I know how to rig is by using a human's skeleton.

I turned the two-legged skeleton human into a fox-like body with extra spines and a tail. Forcing it to be on all four.

I can sense that the bip bones don't take a liking to it. Throughout working, the screen managed to blue screen me as well as file corrupting and lead the skeleton to be in weird positions.

In the end, I get it to work and with all limps stretched and moving in the direction it should be.

By watching the tutorial from year one on how the animation slides and key set work, I begin to slowly and slowly work on the animation of my fox.

Final Piece

The end result of the animation came out rather quick but it was intentional! I was making the animation to be short to save my self and storage space on animating more frames and reducing the file size. With UnrealEngine4, I can speed up and down the animation created on 3dsMax. My little guy is now alive and well, I feel like a proud mother.

Realism and Art Nouveau

The last task of this term! In this session, I have to produce one drawing in colour. I was not well equipped with the medium used;  dry pastels, colored chalk etc., and my collections of them are limited in colour, so I find it hard to complete this task to make the picture more accurate to a live model.

The lighting was not as bright as I'd liked during process pictures due to the studio lighting.

Process

I started with drawing in the sketch with a pencil.

Adding in the details, I make sure to draw out the folds clearly. I did this because once I start coloring with pastels, the smudging would block out all the details if I did not draw enough of them.

I started off with the skin. I made a few mistakes and use yellow for the skin, I fixed this by adding warmer colour like pink, magenta and red with small bit of blue to balance out the tone.

The method I used for clothes are smudging since smudging a line with pastel would benefit me more than colouring the entire section.

I added the blue of her jeans last which caused a little problem when the darker colour smudged into the light colour of the flowers. I fixed these mistakes by blending out the yellow and brown to the jeans area and trying my best to erase the mistake with rubber putty.

Final Piece

I am quite proud of the light and shadow on this piece! The paper is yellow in tone which creates a warmer tone and controls the overall pallet of the drawing while helping the cold colour (blue) to stand out.

Boss Monster: Iterations and Colour Iterations

 I took quite a long break from working on the Boss and I came back with a blank mind. Confused about where to start. I use the shape language that I used when I first planned my boss arena as a guide before looking at my mood board at start working

Iterations

I start out with basic shapes and ideas that came into my head and use my references. I decided to use the one on the middle second row with 3 heads. I imagine it's machinic where the puppet master with 3 faces can switch their head around. The one on top is the one in control of the puppet that they deploy. Each head will indicate a different face as referenced to the theatre masks. Which also makes them have a different pattern of attacking.

Once I choose the iteration design I like, I make more iterations of the design to expand more ideas. At first, I was going to base it on a clown or a jester to indicate how they are in a circus setting. I soon get the idea of utilizing props and stage decoration to be a part of my design and create harmony between the boss and the arena.

Final Iteration Design

In the end I choose the design of a cloaked monster. My idea was that the Puppet master will manifest itself from pieces and assets of the arena after the Hero kill the boss in its first stage. This design is phase two of the boss. The material it is made of then will all be based on and reused from my boss's level.

Colour Iteration

Because it is based on the stage, I create the colour iteration based on the colour of the boss arena, mainly the hero assets and the wall/cloth around the circus theatre. 

Classicism and Neoclassicism. Focus on Human Figure

During this task, I get to break away from using colour and back to using pencils. The task is to create a tonal drawing, three-quarter-length portrait.

Process

I first start my sketch with thumbnail ad basic shapes with measurements.

After the proportion is correct I start and add the details

Rendering the sketch to be cleaner

I was given feedbacks and adjustments to my drawing to create my life drawing to capture the character of the model.

I begin shading the piece with mainly cross-hatching as the main method. I soon find it difficult to fill in the entire space of trousers area so I colour it instead

Once the colouring is no used, I use charcoal powder to smudge in the large area that needs dark value.

Final Piece

I have been using a mechanical pencil to create finner detail on the face structure for sharper and cleaner lines. I think with that method helped me a lot in this piece and I am quite proud of it. I would improve further on the value and create more contrast but I also can't help but feel it is already finished. I have more understanding of the body structure with this task along with getting more used to this model's facial structure.

Boss Battle Arena: The Hall Process

it took me a while to pick myself up to finish this piece. I started out the block out and left it for so long to start on new projects and focusing on other modules but now I finished it and it was a blast. 

Process 

I started of by using the zoomed in of my stage into the room to use as a base for photobashing and painting.

by outlining it and recolour the shadow in to a shade of purple to match the tone and aesthetic of the hero prob I did earlier.

using base colour and the base colour from the iterations

I copy pasted the texture and patterns from the already existed wall textures and hero prop I made.

I added more details to the wall and make the contrast colour of the white stars on dark navy. The stars could be use to narrates it is a children-ish friendly place which contrast to the boss and give it the edge. 

I photobash and retouch the horses in for the carousel. Along side objects that you can see in a circus. 

I added in shadow and lightings so the pictures are blended well in to the art.

Painting down direct spot lights for performance aesthetic 

I ten keep adding more details and rendering the place to look uniform.

Final Piece

The final piece of this work is a colourful place with small hints of weird scary feelings to the atmosphere, which I think I did quiet well with the colour pallet and it's coordinates shadow colour. By using warm colour as the main colour, the shadow are made with blue or purple tone to balance out the temperature of the picture.