Material study: 4

 The final material study! I was so relieved I can finally finish this project. The piece starts off a bit weird and then I refined them after because of the break I took between the last material I did. I was also ranging out of ideas on what material I can do so this list was quite random.

Leather chair

Snake scales

Raw meat

The raw meat was very fun to make both doing the marbling on the greyscale and adding colours in gradients. All of this batch work used gradient map and not manual colouring and for the colour to come out looking this neat. I think I did quite well with the value.

Crumpled paper

Spider trapped in amber

Final Piece

Grey value material study sheet

Final material study sheet

Anddd done!
I have a love-hate relationship with this task but in the end, I am very satisfied with it. The task itself teach me a lot of methods and make me go outside my comfort zone to explore textures I never tried out before. This also gives me a lot of opportunities to use gradient maps and relies on value and I just realized how fun it is. After this, I will definitely use and adapt the method to my personal and everyday work.

PBR - Fireplace: Retopology

 The retopology didn't take as long as the other process and roughly ends with me using the same blockout shapes from the pre-sculpted version of the work. The wooden floor, logs, cloth, and bottles are all new retop since they took in a new shape.

Importing high poly version of the model to retop.

Using Alt + x to make them transparent so I can see the colour of the retop.

I thought the retopology for the floor was a bit weird but it ends up turning out ok.

Final Retop

I was running out of time and can't really do everything piece by piece. I was not sure if it was going to be alright but hopefully, it doesn't mess anything during baking...
The task of retopping is repetitive and I wasn't enjoying it as much as other tasks.

Material study: 3

I start picking up material study again after feeling burnout from doing other projects and other assignments. It was helping a bit and I did enjoy making this set a lot. This set also made me realise.

I'm bad at making liquid material and took me too many tries.

Wine in glass

Water

 other material where I rely on the grey value of my piece. I manually colour/paint the water material because I try many times trying to achieve the waves and it does not look translucent. It took me 3 times to draw the water material and it started off as an ocean wave and ended with regular water.

Toasted marshmallow

Fly agaric/Red cap Mushroom

Orange
The latter set can be said that I was making these in the middle of the night and I was hungry. I am very proud of the orange and the mushroom it looks great in both black and white and colour. The marshmallow was fun to make the toasted part but I may use too much soft head brush on it.

Blog Task: 4

Lighting Characters
One of the most important tools for telling a story, setting a mood, and connecting with an audience is lighting.

Key Lights

High-key

- A high key photograph is bright, with a well-lit object and background, and a light tone balance. Overall, there isn't much contrast.

Low-key

- Low-key lighting produces photos that are very dark and have high contrast. They're made with the intention of creating a dramatic and strong environment.

Fill Lights

- A fill light is in charge of exposing the features of a subject that are hidden by the main light.

Rim Lights

- A rim light is positioned behind a subject and lights the subject's outline or rim. This lighting highlights a subject's outlines and gives a dramatic and mysterious appearance.

3-point light setup

- Three light sources are used in three different lighting positions in three-point lighting. A key, a fill, and a backlight are the three major light sources in every 3-point lighting setup. 

References
https://shotkit.com/high-vs-low-key-lighting/
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-fill-light-photography-definition/
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-rim-light-photography-definition/
https://vimeo.com/blog/post/your-quick-and-dirty-guide-to-3-point-lighting/

Future Tribes: Final rendering and process

This project took me longer than I would like and it took a lot of energy out of me. I started the project thinking I would love making characters then found how hard it was mid way. I was starting to hate it then ended up loving the end result anyway.

Process

Sketching  the character and adding clothes

Base tone and prepare base colour

Painting skin and hair

Adding shadow to the upper part of the costume

Adding shadow to the pants and adding in the gears

Adding and shading hands

Using a base colour from earlier to overly on top of the value, followed by the rest of the character.

Final Piece

Colour Character reference sheet

Grey value Character reference sheet

As much of a love-hate relationship with every work I have for term 2 so far, this has to be the one that made me feel the most exhausted from burnout but having to push forward and finish it. I questioned myself whether or not I should still consider the character design route. Well, that's for my future me to decide.
Overall, I really like how this piece has turned out and I love the warm tone I use on my character.

Architecture. Urban Landscape (field trip 2)

    The last work for this term was to produce four preparatory sketches on location and develop one final piece of the Guildhall. The time spent there was most to find a view and room to sit and draw

Thumbnail

. I was mostly on the upper floor of the house in the library zone but I did make sure to explore the outside and the main hall too. The bookshelves are what I am most attracted to in that place. It has decent lighting from the window with natural light coming in and a candle chandelier so it's a perfect piece I chose to use for my final piece.

Process

I decide to use charcoal for this piece to change up the pace after using so much pencil. Because of its value and how dark it is to apply. I think it was a neat choice and it made me a lot more confident to map out the darkest shade to the lightest.

The only problem with charcoal I have was that the powder flies everywhere... and it smudges a lot without me intending it to.

Final Piece

Tool used: 2B pencil, Charcoal stick and putty eraser on A3

I would say I really like the value of this piece and it clearly shows the darkest part of the wood. I leave out the lights from the window to be the whitest/not shades and leave out some space on the bookshelf to indicate the light reflecting on the window of the shelf. The part where the light did not reach the shelf is all black to create depth. I couldn't execute it as how I thought it would be but on the bright side. It looks good when look from far away.

Perspective Project: 3 pt room Sketches & colour pallet

 After feeling satisfied with the mood board and its overall concept, I then make sketches of the room's concept. I start off by making a top view of the room before using a transforming tool to make the room flat in perspective and build up walls from the layout.

I made 3 of them with 2 different types of room. The first two is a studio space where it will show the character's interest in plants and art along with their hobby collections. The second concept for the room is a cozy plant bedroom with the same theme carried into it.

Layouts and thumbnails

I made thumbnails to help myself visualize the details corner of the rooms which will help me later during the rendering process.

Colour pallet

I want the room to have a warm tone that will contrast with the cool green of the plants and make them stand out from the room but at the same time harmonized with the environment. Using both gradient maps I made and colour picking the pallets. I ended up with two choices at the end that may work well with the green.

Finale Pallet

PBR - Fireplace: Sculpting on ZBrush

Process

I import the file from 3Dmax into Zbrush to begin sculpting but because I was too worried about how much the tris would count I made it so the fireplace was hallowed. I deleted some faces that won't be seen as how I did with my other 3D projects. I just know that it was not necessary and makes it unsculptable.

Zbrush won't show the back of the models if its a plane

So I went back into 3dsMax to fix and make the floorboards, walls and bricks to be a solid block again. There were also more details added to the bricks to add dimensions to it.

Fixing up and patching the model in 3dsMax

I import the model in again and begin sculpting for real this time. There were so many times the project crashes, that I was panicking about whether or not I can do this work in time. It was due to Drive C storage being full and I managed to fix the issue later on.

I start fidgeting and figuring out how the control is used in Zbrush, it was very confusing. So I started with doing small lines and details on the cloth to test out the brushes. I use crease on the edit option to keep the sharp edge of the model when I smooth the surface out.

After marking the creased and adding geometry, I began using the brush provided to make the wooden floorboard. I shipped away the wood to make them look old first before adding the texture to it.

It took me 3 tries and the first version looks very ugly. I can see myself improving each time I redo it.

There was not a lot of change in the decoration bits but I created the texture on the anchor to look worn out a little and make windows on the lighthouse model.

My favourite piece would be the wood logs. I made only one with high details and duplicate it to save time.

Finale Piece

I look over other people's work and am not a little anxious if my work is detailed enough. However, since this is my first ever piece on Zbrush and I am still confused with the control. I am very proud of how this turned out! I will surely try this program out more in my free time.

Composition and Compositional Principles (Part 2) - Landscape

Picture taken during session outside

First of all, I wasn't be able to take a lot of process pictures a lot during the session but the experience was very lovely and drawing in not so cold weather is a blast.
The view I was drawing has 4 cars parking and they keep going in and out so, in the end, I drew the only two in the front.

Process

I started with thumbnails and sketches down the view in front of me and adding shadows/texture last

I first started with 2B-5B pencils but because of the large shadow cast on the street. I felt like using charcoal would make it easier to cover the ground. After shading the building shadow I put the texture of cobbles and bricks on them and finalized it with pencils.

Final Piece

I didn't like the look of this picture as much it was a bit wonky and the lampost was not straight. However, I think I did great with the composition that leads the eye from the street to the archway. I would like to fix the char as it looks too stylized but at the same time. It really was that round? I wasn't sure why it looks weird as a drawing.

Material study: 2

 Part two of material studies. I try to change up the pace and try out more unique textures apart from the first 6 materials that can be seen a lot.  I'm starting to use a lot more gradient maps and rely on grey values to do all the work rather than manually painting on the object and picking out my own colour like the last work.

Stone path texture

Ice cream texture 

amethyst geode

D20 dice

Edit and fix up on my last work. The feedback from the fur made me realise I can render it more and with stronger lighting so I did just that. It did look a lot better I'm glad I did a little fixing on it.

Animal fur material