Wednesday, January 30, 2013

More recent stuff

Thought I'd better post a few recent works before I forget about them later.


  Just finished this one yesterday. Purpose was to exaggerate a pose and design a character based on a live model we had during class.

  Exaggerated sketches based on live model. I also liked the pose of the one in the bottom left corner. I might go clean it up and color it as well.


First assignment in costumed figure class. Silhouette of roman soldiers.



 Assignment was to pick 5 track & field poses, draw given character references into the poses. I've done a similar assignment a year ago, but this one was much more challenging. I think if i was asked to do this assignment last year, I wouldn't have been able to do it.

 Taking a game pipeline class (basically learning about the whole game production process and making game assets). We had to design a game asset for our first assignment. These were my designs and proposals.



















Works from last term's concept design class. We had two weeks to do a master copy. Basically we had a choose a background scene done for a real animation and copy it as accurately as possible. We were not allowed to sample colors, trace, etc. The bottom version is my finished copy. This is a background from Disney's Pocahontas.
I was shocked by how much I learned through copying a piece. Before, I've always had this mindset that copying was pointless and a big no-no.  But now I realized that copying as practice is probably one of the best ways to learn and feel a piece from the perspective of the original artist.

And then we had to design our own environment based on the style of our master painting. This is my finished version after getting a helpful critique from my instructor. He thought this was one of the weaker compositions out of all my other thumbnail sketches. He also preferred the version without the house.
My digital painting skills still needs a ton of work...eek
 From last term's digital matte painting class. Assignment was to add lava to a scene. I posted an unfinished version a few entries earlier. Here is the finished piece.
 Final matte painting was a fantasy environment. Not particularly proud of this piece although it took a lot of work.  Had a very difficult time finding the right castle to fit into this piece, even now it looks a bit awkward.
Midterm assignment was to expand the given image. I didn't bring in any new images, just used a lot of cloning and stamping. I didn't turn in the assignment with the teletubbies, it didn't hit me until I looked at it again and thought there must be teletubbies there.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Carrots & Happy Meals (old work)

Since I've finally found a place to upload powerpoints, I can finally share the short story I made during my very first term at Ai (which was like 2-3 years ago). The original included sound effects and short melodies, but the file was too big to uploaded so I removed all the sound files.

 It's nothing amazing, but some people may find it entertaining :) Maybe I will make something like this again to see how far I've come during these last few years?


Monday, January 14, 2013

Missoula Flood PPT



A powerpoint presentation I did last term for Earth Science. There is a mistake in the speed and capacity, it was supposed to be 65 miles per hour (not 35 miles per second). I did all the illustrations (in photoshop) to make the presentation more entertaining. Here are better quality pictures of some of the illustrations. Each one took around 10-15 minutes to draw total.





This one was supposed to be punny.









Thursday, December 13, 2012

Dresser competition

(edited 2/4/13) - I made a mistake in the winning entries orders...its updated now.

Results for the dresser competition are out. I didn't get placed, but life moves on right? ahaha
So I would be lying if I said I'm not disappointed at all. I spent a lot of effort on this... but I won't even get to keep the dresser. You could say I've grown a bit attached to it. However, I also know that the winners spent just as much time and effort (maybe even more than I did) on theirs so I think everyone had an equal chance of winning. I definitely think the winners deserved the win.

Here are some progress photos of mine.




Cream brulee latte is back for the holidays! Had to get some Starbucks for dinner...

The top and bottom are actually painted dark reddish brown, but it looks black in my photos. When I first heard that these drawers were to be auctioned off, my first idea was to aim for a practical design. Something that was simple but not too simple, something that should look good as a decor piece in any room. Turns out, the judges were looking for something radically different hahah


























First of all, I have to apologize for the horrible quality pictures. It definitely doesn't do any justice to how great these pieces look in real life. If I get a chance, I will bring my real camera to shoot some pictures and re-post this. These are dressers designed by other students. I don't have everybody's name down so I'll just post pictures..

If im not mistaken, this was the first place winner. Painted with a very very nice shiny lacquer-like surface. The artist was smart about using Ikea products for it. The eyes also lights up.





This is third place winner if im not mistaken. Once again, picture doesn't do it justice. This one is pretty crazy!! The artist carved out all the silver lines and the white area is actually some sort of white plexi glass. The drawer includes this really hi-tech remote where you run your finger through and the entire drawer lights up and changes in color. You can kind of see it in the last picture. Very impressive.

This one was designed by a faculty member so it didn't count for the scholarship. It looks amazing in real life and really took the spotlight. I would totally buy it.























This one was made out of old ties!! Very creative! Looks even better in real life.



This one had some really beautiful details on the peacock's feathers. I thought the concept was very nice as well (using the dresser's knobs as eyes).

Second place winner made their dresser into a tree.

More 3d stuff

I'm almost done with the term...it's been a ridiculous two weeks and I'm happy to be able to get normal sleep again. This term was by far one of the most intense terms I've had (although im sure it will be worse in the future). I loved and enjoyed almost all of my classes, but I've been pretty disappointed in myself throughout the whole term. I felt like I wasn't able to do as well as I'd thought I would. I feel a bit hopeless when I look at industry standard work and realize how far behind I am. Art is definitely an endless journey of hard work, dedication, and new discoveries. I don't think anyone can ever reach the 'top' as it doesn't even exist. If there is anything I discovered within these two years, it is that I will never be good enough and I should never think I am. Well guess its time to keep climbing.

I'll be updating again later with other works, right now I'm still iffy about them so im not in the mood to post them up. For now, I'll post some of models I've been working on this term. I'm proud to say I no longer fear Maya (well for modeling and rendering anyways). I've definitely become a lot more comfortable with modeling although im still nowhere near great.















I've posted this one up before, but I re-rendered it using a new method which turned out a lot better. I'm not sure what happened to the shadow but oh well.


















One of our project was to model something assigned by our instructor. .I was assigned to model a Hobart meat slicer. The annoying thing about this project was that almost every meat slicer was different (even though they are the same exact model number). For some pictures, due to angles, I could only see part of the pieces.

















For our final assignment we had to design our own Lego figure. It must be something that hasn't been released by Lego yet. My original idea was to design a set of Disney's villain characters, but I really wanted to model some weapons so I went with Final Fantasy XIII (Noctis and Lightning). The hair was probably the biggest challenge...as well as the hole behind the lego's leg (which you cant see in these renders)

Based on this picture. (Lightning is the best female game character ever designed imo)