FF XIII environments

I'm in love with these environments... I want my portfolio to look as good as this!

Makes me feel like a joke, like I'm not serious... boo hoo me.

12

hub exhibition

Arkothy

Another bad painting to pave the way for better paintings

Sunleth

A painting based on an environment from FFXIII

Profile

abstract 02

A little more controlled this time :)

abstract 01

Just an abstract piece, think I'll make a bunch more and then gradually start to push it in some kind of direction... architecture maybe? :D

3dsmax / photoshop / cgtextures

R

Joylon Webb Round 2

Jolyon kindly came and gave us his lecture on the importance of drawing again today. It's the 2nd time I've seen it, and it was a good reminder of the important fundamentals of practise.

He kindly came and spoke to us after his presentation and look at our work, unfortunately he couldn't stay long so he only managed to see a couple of us properly. Luckily I was the first to see him, I felt bad for my classmates who didn't get to see him :(

(I honestly didn't try and hog his attention, it's obvious to see how he gets carried away when it comes to Art because of the fantastic amount of knowledge he has built up throughout his life.)

In summary...

Graft with intensity, really learn to take control of your mind and push yourself to constantly try and evolve to that next level of art.

Try to keep things interesting / exciting whether skecthing, painting, modelling etc. For example, if you're going to draw something mundane and dull, try drawing it from an interesting angle and make it interesting compositionally.

David Frost

Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.

Bonsai

:)

Loving you is easy cause you're beautiful...

skin tone / muscle study

Unearthly drag

Not getting anywhere with my concepts, keep losing interest around halfway through... might just jump in with the 3D and see what happens.

Careers Fair

Today has been a great day! Me and a few classmates went to the Careers fair and we all received a lot of awesome feedback and made some more contacts! It was funny to be recognised by people who I met the previous year, I like how it feels like it has been a good year since last time too.

The feedback I received has given me an overall boost in the confidence of my direction, I have a firm grasp on what I want to spend my final year doing , and know how I can tailor my work towards the companies I'm interested in with relative ease.

At the moment I would like to work for Relentless!! :)

Gonna go again tomorrow! woooooooo!! I feel like my classmates who didn't make it are really missing out booooooooo!

I GOT DA POWEEERR!!!!

tree cloud

I might live here temporarily some time.

Business Card

Designing my business cards... Give me some feedback! Not sure what to put on the back so I just put one of my favourite quotes

different style

Trash Project WIP

Increased FOV - Now the scene puts emphasis on the trash... but I like the composition of the previous render, I'll try get something inbetween. Dinner time! Green Chicken Thai Curry tonight :D

Update! :)



This is more like it, just need to create an awesome rubbish bag and I think it'll be 90% done

tree test

106 tris... this time hand painted instead of using photos, getting closer to realism. I prefer this workflow using painter's image hose, then adding shadows in photoshop. It's cleaner than previous techniques!

Saw Pixar's UP tonight, damn the Jungle was so inspiring... man I love trees <3

One day I will be the KING of trees

New foliage technique test :)

Unearthly Challenge 2009 | 2nd concept!

UPDATE:

Unearthly Challenge 2009! LET'S GO!

Here's my first concept!!! I'm feeling this direction, want to make it more IMMENSE though. Just doing this in my spare time from Uni work, GET INTENSE!!!!!

FINAL YEAR 1st DAY

POOWWW!!! Day one! First project nearly completed. NEXT HYPE! ARE YOU MAD?!

Done for now... next: UNEARTHLY CHALLENGE!!!

Okay this will do for now, might revisit in the future... what's important now is UNEARTHLY CHALLENGE... It's gonna be INTENSE!!! Just over 12 hours to go!

Landscape Concept

Want to make something quickly before Unearthly challenge... maybe this is too ambitious! :D


UPDATE: Not much but it's a start! I'm not familiar with modelling terrains, I feel like I won't be able to make this piece as rich as I'd like to but I'll do my best!



UPDATE:

woooooooooo!! Get crunk yeah!

Totoro progress 05

getting closer!!

Totoro progress 04

EDIT: And some more... away for the weekend, will finish it next week with a final push and move on to my next piece :D



EDIT: A little more...


Still have some tweaking to do on the trunk, I'll come back to it once I get the rest of the scene filled in, quickly modelled some trees for the background and threw in a couple omni lights to get a feel for the lighting.

Hopefully I can wrap it up this week so I can get stuck in with Unearthly Challenge!

Totoro progress 02 & 03

Edit: Improved the geometry and added more alphas



----------------

Silhouette on the alphas need fixing... just threw an old texture I made on the tree to see how it looks... still got a long way to go with this piece, doing a lot of back and forth trial and error at the moment.

Okamiden

£££

Needed some so I decided to steal my house mates monkeys...

Totoro progress 01

This tree is enormous!!! I'm quite scared about how messy it's going to end up once I start putting alphas all over it! Started playing around with some shrubs too :P

I am going to try a new painstaking method for creating the alphas! I have a feeling the results will be good!

My brother makes me laugh...

I showed him this song (You can listen to it HERE - it's called 'CLOUDS PULL')

And he says...

wow that sounds nice
especially the ride
sounds like an advert
you can imagine a running narrative
"The road...."
"I walk it everyday..."
"Searching for freedom..."
"Searching for new ways to be me."
logo comes on screen... "Nike. Just do it."

Totoro start

Going for something more ambitious... (painting by Kazuo Oga)


It's a start!

Plant textures

Presentation crit please! :)

Plant Showcase

Does this work? The the wall and floor look quite bland but I think that helps keep the plants as the main centre of focus, I'll probably punch up the saturation on the foliage a little more but I think it's almost done, I'll have to try chuck it in Unreal soon too! :)


@Chris: I would make the leaves a little transparent but then the stems would go transparent aswell :P Definitely something to play with in the future though! Cheers

Plants

Need a bit of help!

Okay I've started production on my portfolio... starting with the things I'm already confident I can do, I'm going to do a couple scenes with insignificant assets since that's what I'll probably start off doing when I get a job!... I want to showcase the assets in simple mini environments.

Problem is I'm not sure what kind of scene to put these in, originally I was thinking of having them for sale with the tri counts as their selling price... it'd be nice to make a shop front but I think the amount of detail that would require would take away from the plants being the centre of attention.

Suggestions?

Poo 1

Time: 15 hours
Software: Photoshop&Corel Painter
Textures: CG textures
Reference: You

This is an early concept for the final boss for an upcoming secret AAA+++ title codenamed $h1T_T

Unreal help...

HELP PLEASE... how do I export this idiot? He's so happy because I can't export him... I just want a good reference to use as scale in Max.

I tried exporting it all as an OBJ but all I get is everything except HIM. GRRrrrrrrr!

blue

A little more farting around :P

Eat it

go on... eat it

You win some you lose some

This evening I lost...

I was about to take my dog for a late walk and my sister called me, she said she felt bad and something bad had happened to her.

She was riding her bike on the pavement and some guy told her to ride on the road, she said "no" and the guy grabbed her bike and slapped her in the face. I know she shouldn't be riding on the road but what kind of fucking reason is that to hit someone.

I get so furious when shit like this happens to my sister (I know we all get angry when our family gets hurt but my sister is especially unique and dear to me among my family members), she can't protect herself like other people can because she's special needed. And it breaks me that I'm never there to protect her when stuff like this happens, It's so difficult to accept that it's out of my hands. What kind of fucking loser hits a girl...

I generally see myself as a pacifist and avoid fights when I can, I've never had a serious fight... what would you do if someone important to you got hit and you were there?

I know for certain that I wouldn't hesitate to protect my sister, that's something that I believe is absolute as long as I have control over my body.

Now I'm worried about my sister's safety, what if she comes across the guy again and he recognises her? Considering he done it in the first place what's to stop him doing it again for no reason at all? My mum's going to take her to see the police but in today's society can I really trust them to protect my sister? I think not... I can only pray it won't happen again.

I know worse things happen around the world, but that doesn't stop this feeling from being one of the worst emotions I've felt.

Gatsby

My hair product tub... urgh bad perspective

mmo style treee

Wanted to make one before bed... can anyone recommend some 3d painting software so I can clean up my seams? :)

Grids & lego

A bit of practise using the grid and creating lego like pieces... does anyone know how to keep a curved piece on the grid when using the bend modifier?!

Minor assets for 360/PS3

What do you think? too many tris? ...it is just a book, no one would probably be able to get this close to it... are the edges chamfered on everything next gen?! (or current gen whatever).

256x512 D / N / S

Learning high to low

I think this is my first successful high to low bake, I've quite a hefty amount of practise to do to get my workflow up to speed though... but I'm glad to say I understand it! Cheers Del ;)

3 directional lights, and I used the AO for the diffuse with a few quick tweaks... could be textured muuuuuch better but this is just a practise piece

Can you believe it...

I'm not sure how to say this...



I woke up this morning and decided I'm going to be a character artist... can you believe it? I can't... That's probably because it's not true bwahahaha! I tell you what really happened, the other day I met this guy called dreamer and he showed me how to sculpt by pushing my fingers in to my monitors... crazy huh?!

Ehhhh I'm just trying to familiarise myself with the tools, so you can excuse the disgusting anatomy errors...what she has no hands or head? What you think I'm scared of making them? DUCK OUTTT!!... but go ahead and cuss me for it anyway chumps. I pixelated her chest because I don't want creepy people around here, but yes she does have fantastic nipples YOU PERVERT!

Seriously... why am I learning zbrush? Because I feel like it's the one of the main areas which I am lacking, I've become confident with low poly modelling and all the basic fundamentals, so I think it's time to enter PS3/360 realms, if I can get it down in time for my portfolio for the career's fair, I think it'll add another coin to my professional worth.

I'm quite excited about trying out some high poly environment stuff. I have a feeling that learning what alpha brushes are and learning how to make and use them is probably gonna change my life... Like the next time I see you I will probably alpha brush your face INNIT!

Fieldscarecrow signing out! Environments4LIFE! biaaatCH!!!

... just kidding I'll learn how to make characters when I feel like it, after I've succeeded as an Environment artist. Woooooooooooyyy!!!!! lol those knees look so disgusting

February 2007

haha I found this while scrawling through one of my old blogs before Uni... I'm actually quite impressed with myself! At the time I decided to transform my room from a mess in to an environment I could study in.

It's quite funny, every now and then when my room becomes too messy, I do a huge clean up and make an oath to never let my room get that messy again... I've done that like 5 - 10 times now in the past bunch of years?! lol

What a terrible lack of commitment...

Fatree

Here's the fat one I mentioned... I'm quite happy with the progress I'm making, should look good when it's finished, the alpha arrangement is very sketchy at this stage... just wanted to test it out

(Max render - 2 omni lights)

John

A John Constable study... about 1 hour, I've learned a little more about colour from this one. I hate the way paintings look when you first start them out lol

Edit: Looking at it 30 mins later, I think the clouds are lacking form so that's something to work on!

ekokid

I've been scared to do things straight from imagination for quite a while... because I know there will be mistakes or bad choices made with the lighting, colour theory, anatomy, etc...

I remember in the 1st year I would look at concept art and think to myself... damn, a lot of these guys just work straight from their head and it still looks right!!! And then I had similar thoughts recently.

Somewhere along the line I forgot that they got there by making lots of mistakes and then corrected them as they progressed. I forgot that I would have to go through mountains of crap drawings to make those mistakes myself and learn from them.

If I'm always using references to make sure I don't make mistakes, then I'm probably spending more time copying than learning!

So I decided recently that it would be a good exercise for me to do paintings purely from my imagination, so I can make the mistakes!

I'm not discouraging the use of reference, I'm just saying that the way I used it in the past was not as beneficial as it could have been! I limited my creativity and stunted my learning...

This feels more like a post I would have made in the 1st year, but I'm not ashamed to admit that throughout the course my head has been really foggy at times and I seem to have forgotten some of the most simple and fundamental aspects of learning.

Here's something for you to cringe at... I won't be posting many of these in the future, as they're purely for me to improve - and honestly they're pretty embarassing! In the past I've always wanted to create Art that 'looks good' and have missed out on a lot of the 'practising'.

ThREE D

Hurray for bad titles...

Was making some leaf/branch alphas for a big fat tree I'm making but wanted to quickly test out their diversity on a thin tree :) ... 2 types of alphas, there would be a ton more planes to make sure it looks good from all angles, but it'd look like something along these lines... I like the sense of 3d volume the foliage has even though they're just flat planes. (Ignore the poor trunk texture and floating leaves for now).

That big blue thing up there with white fluffy stuff

I've never been too hot at painting clouds but I'm happy with this! :)

Jack

Was originally some keys next to it but I feel too exhausted to paint them... perspective is pretty sloppy but I'll take more care next time! :)

Fresh

Frederick

"Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it."

Just thought I'd post this here... because I know I live like this at times, I get so excited about something that talking to other people about it and hyping it up creates a seperate procrastinating energy which I begin to feed off of instead of actually bringing the 'striving' journey to life. So watch out for it...

Luna Online

Today I decided to spend my time indoors with my housemates, they introduced me to an MMO called Luna Online. I've always tried to keep a distance from MMOs as I have been a victim to their addiction in the past.

Despite this I thought I'd give it a shot anyway, and I'm glad I did because it's been a while since I've immersed myself in an enjoyable game (mostly because I struggle to find good games... or the majority of games out there aren't very good!)

I like the community and social interaction of MMO games, engaging with other nerds possibly 1000s of miles away with their gaze locked on to their screens, grinding their souls away with the rhythm of their mouse clicking. And although I've already stereotyped these people as being 'nerds' trust me just about anyway can be a nerd in these times, so you never know who you'll meet! :)

It really confused me the last time I went home-home and my Dad's friend, a family man and a policeman was talking to me in great detail about World of Warcraft, even losing me at times with the games terminology!

More importantly it reminded me how much I really like stylised painted textures! It requires a great amount of skill, and I'd like to spend more time in the future developing those skills. I definitely want to have an environment piece with purely painted textures in my portfolio for the Career's fair coming up to demonstrate diversity.

LunaOnline screens

... and here is my character!

Do you see what I see?

It's 4:30am I unintentionally fell asleep for 4 - 5 hours in the early evening yesterday so I've been having trouble getting back to sleep.

Around half an hour ago I opened my curtain to see how light it was outside, out of curiosity I tried to see where the Sun was rising to figure out...

*ahh just had a really strong moment of deja vu... like I've visited this moment in time 4 times before!...strange*

Anyway, I wanted to figure out where East was and found the general direction the sun was rising along the horizon, then I realised the Moon was still up which also indicated the direction of the Sun.

For no particular reason I began staring at the moon, and I began to notice that the surface was shifting...! Until I realised that my eyes were being fooled by some wispy clouds passing through my line of sight making it appear like the surface of the Moon was doing something crazy! hehe

It captivated me and for the first time I felt like I truly acknowledged the presence of the moon... This enormous rock (apparently 81130112483711990000 tons), hundreds of thousands of miles away; orbiting our planet absolutely beyond human control. Incredible!

After a good 5 mins my gaze returned to my foreground, and I felt like the way I experience environments had changed.

The silence of this hour of the morning appeared beautiful to me, and looking at the trees outside I felt a new appreciation for them. I haven't researched why we plant trees in our streets but my first guess would be because of the beauty of nature and the ways we benefit from it.

I suddenly felt fascinated by Nature's power, although we planted the trees we didn't decide the growth patterns of the branches, twigs and leaves, we didn't choose for the roots to break through the pavement... it's Nature's process.

The Moon and Trees both play huge rules in our World; yet they are only a fraction of our Universe as far as we know it! I think that's amazing!

You might think there's nothing spectacular about these things, but until now I feel like I've overlooked them for most of my life just because I see them so frequently, and these are just two of the infinite amount of remarkable things in our Universe that have become so ordinary to our eyes.

I have a feeling that having this kind of a fascination is a part of what drives Environment artists to enjoy building the world, even in its everyday form.

Here are some low quality pictures I've taken recently and over the past few months on my phone which fails to capture the light and colours of real life! (I can't be bothered to adjust them)

Reach by Luke Randall

A moving piece of animation!

Stereo Images

I can't believe I only just came across this now and it was invented in 1840 lol...

I've seen magic eye stuff before but this material is far cooler!

read this first: link

Then check out this art by *OmeN2501 using the cross-eyed technique!



There's loads more out there...! I think it's great :)

Project Trico

HARLOT - FINAL

Nearly

Still got quite a bit further to take this... I wonder if I'll finish in time, looking doubtful but I'm not going to stop!

Bringing her to life...

I told Del and Cam on my way home that I wanted to make Harlot have the most beautiful face in Domwar, this is what I have so far...!

Dress concepts

Just some quick cheeky photoshopping, any favourites?

Hair

I've tweaked the arm proportions since this update but I just wanted to post it for the hair :)


Here's an update... printscreen is working now, it looks better and I've added a touch of tint of brown and some highlights :)

A little more

Not sure about the shoulder decoration, supposed to look graceful and be made of fabric... does it flow with the rest of the design?

paintover and heels

No more hamster hands, the face looks strange to me... needs some tweaking!

Legs

It's getting there!!!

Prettier :)

Best head model to date! I never thought I'd be able to make faces, this makes me happy!

Haaaaaaaaaaarlot!!!!!

I started this a couple days ago! I wonder if I'll finish on time.... OF COURSE I WILL! I'm just going to use diffuse, specular and alphas! no normal maps!

So my plan is to model it this week and texture next week :)

more fanboying

There are 9 vids in total!!

Noctis

My opinion on this game is so biased... yes I confess I have a weakness towards badass characters with cool hair and a billion swords!

... but isn't this awesome? I mean they're just talking but I can believe in them as characters. The motion capture is brilliant, the way they move their hands and facial expressions etc... and although nothing epic is really happening, the music makes it moving for me to watch. I really hope this game turns out as good as the trailers!

Android Jones II

"it's not about searching for new horizons; it's about seeing the same horizons with new eyes"

This is the one! :)

Android Jones

"I'm the kind of guy that likes to try something twice and fail rather than do the same thing that works."

I think I spend too much time doing the same things that I know work instead of trying new things!

How about YOU?

Dan H - Pass

Yakushima paint

Life Drawing

Really happy with the top studies! :D

Rosa

Juliet

DS Environment

:D

Shoryuken Tree improved

After getting some feedback from Mr.Chomper I dedited the normals on the branch to make the transition smoother where it interesects, increased the darkness of the core of the branch alpha and added more grit to the paving slabs. I think the piece is at least 10% stronger! but it's an essential 10% that makes it hit the £££! hehehehe

Bloooooooooooooooooooood

Bleeding alphas

scratch

Tree concept

A quick concept based on Ta prohm, a temple with trees growing out of its ruins!

Sketchy

Sakura Tree

Thought I'd practise my presentation skills. Looking for advice so do comment!

Apparently leaving a bit of white space at the bottom allows the eye to focus and stop rolling off the page. You learn something new everyday!

Harlot update

This is much closer to what I had in mind for my Domwar concept :)

Cultural Walks

For this project I have decided to design a stage inspired by the Dance United Project. They have a vision – that dance can be a wonderfully enriching and transformative experience in people’s lives.

I am particularly interested in the Destino Project which is helping female young offenders back on to their feet by placing them back on the right side of the law using contemporary dance.

A new study has found that the root causes of crime for women are often different to those for men. The figures seem to support the fact that the further you go into the youth justice system, the more likely you are to re-offend.

The programme is very disciplined – They must be in on time and concentrate in class. There is no compromise of the rules. The girls begin to build a lot of skills for life – confidence, negotiation, self-control and teamwork.

“It is designed to take them away from what is expected of them, where they are expected to be belligerent, problematic and where they expect to fail. Instead, we can put them in a place where they can succeed.”

“Almost three-quarters of Dance United’s participants have re-engaged with education or employment.”

Still a Work in progress!

Air Land Sea

This is still in development, I should finish it off sometime this week and make it less ambiguous :)

Queen’s project Report – Team Auditorium Strike!

From the first day things looked positive and 8 weeks later we have proved to sustain and nurture that energy to build something grand.

Positive outcomes

- Smiles and laughter
- Positive attitudes
- Completion of project to a satisfying level
- Great communication
- Consistent attendance
- Successful meeting of deadlines
- Strong team ethos
- Good management and organisation
- Successful problem solving
- Clear Art Direction
- Good overall learning experience

Negative outcomes

- Poor computer equipment
- No fights or drama :(


What I learned

Throughout this project I was able to prove to myself that I am a good team player. I believe I successfully fulfilled my role of providing art direction for the team and committing myself to the overall production of the project. I have learned that like at Valve, no one really fulfils one sole role. We put all of our general skills and knowledge to use and crossed over quite frequently. From constantly knocking out low poly assets, unwrapping and texturing, my 3D workflow has improved in terms of speed and quality.
Keeping things simple is definitely the way to go, from the beginning we decided this and our result is a fine example of how effective it can be.

How would I improve it?

I think the experience could have been broadened by placing someone in the team with an attitude problem so we could all learn how to deal with it! I also think the project would benefit with computers which don't crash on a regular basis.

In all seriousness there are quite a few things we could improve if the project were repeated. I think the focal point of our scene (the missile) doesn't read how we had initially intended. We still succeed in telling the audience that 'something has happened' but to discover the cause they have to inspect the destruction to find out why it happened, I guess in some aspects this can be seen as a strength as it gives the scene some depth and mystery. To improve the initial idea I would make it more like my concept and have the missile catch the sunlight and shine as the hero piece of our scene. (I'll post the concept later).

I also think we could have improved the textures by using a higher resolution bringing it closer towards next-gen specs however I'm not sure if the lab machines could handle it.


In the words of Borat the project was a GREAT SUCCESS! And I would like to thank Cam, Dave, Si, Tom and Leon for being brilliant team mates.

STRIKE!!!

Queens, Harlot & Shoryuken Tree!

The Queen's project is complete! I'll post a report on it later.






I decided to enter Dominance war IV it's pretty exciting! My character's name is Harlot and she's a healer, hopefully I'll have the concept wrapped up this weekend with something crazy!!! :D feeedback wanted!



Here's a tree I HAD to model after I saw it about 20 - 30 mins from here in Leicester. It's the Shoryuken tree! Just a bit of tweaking to do and it'll be done, I want to make it more dramatic any ideas anyone?

My first bake

Some bits look a bit funny like the cap and where the carton goes in but otherwise it's not bad! I wonder if something as insignificant as this would have a normal map, it makes quite a difference!

Moodboards

The origin of these moodboards is Fashion Culture.

Parallax Mapping... early days

Just playing with the Cloward normal offsetting shader. Would have put a texture on there but the Uni machines are poo! and don't display shaders properly...

Life Drawing: Session Four

Better than last weeks turn out, chose a more difficult angle this week. Need to shift into R-mode more frequently!

Colour!!!! part 1

I am Loving this book!

More Debris

I'm getting better at this!