2D Class Week 05 The Art of John Berky

This week was a study in one, two, and three-point perspective. The artist to study was John Berky, known best for his sci-fi heavy concept art. I was tasked to choose any of his pieces and then choose an element from that piece to re-create using Maya to assist in achieving form, lighting  and perspective through camera.

I decided on this piece and wanted to focus on the space cruiser:

I took the image and imported into Maya as an image plane in order to create a template for the base of the structure and then began building:

Once I finished building the primitive mesh, I then applied lighting and camera in order to replicate the piece: 

I then imported the render file into Photoshop and painted over it, using what I made as a template for the 2D piece. Final Product: 

3D Class Week 05 Modeling A Prop

This week we were tasked with modeling a prop Cannon in Maya and importing into Unreal (UE4).

I first set up my scale and then set to creating the proxy for this Cannon using image planes to guide my sculpting.

Duplicating mesh to create instances: 

Mesh cleanup and reducing faces:

Once in UE4: I was able to add a collision so the player doesn't clip through the mesh of the Cannon:

Imported into UE4:

Final Wire Frame Render:

2D Class Week 04 Composition and Layout

This week we were tasked with recreating a piece by Drew Struzan in order to better analyze the layout and composition in the piece.

I chose a Star Wars "Return of the Jedi" poster.

The Layout used in this piece is the Rule of Thirds. Most focal points on the piece are at the crosses. The main focal point is in the lower right corner, centering on the battle between Luke and Vader. 

Final Piece:

3D Week 04 Lego Project Part 02

This week consisted of the second half of building our class Lego project based on the Lord of the Rings. Being part of nature team, there weren't many bricks to build and so all we needed to take care of was cleaning up our bricks and building their LODs.

So, I started with taking my Boulder brick and re-topologizing it to have cleaner edges.

I was tasked with making a low and high poly version of the brick in order to create the LOD to export to UE4. 

Low Poly Version has 533 Faces:

High Poly Version has 645 Faces: 

I then created the LOD group in Maya and exported as an FBX to import into UE4. Once in UE4, I was able to create an instance of the basic lego material and rename it for the boulder and alter the color specs. Once I finished with the material instance, I started staging them in the scene. 

Current/Final placement of the Boulders used in dress setting:

2D Class Week 03 Value

This week we're taking a piece of Frank Frazetta's line work and using what we've learned about value to shade the illustration. Using the same principles we used in shading hard-surface objects, I will apply value to an organic shape to define volume and structure.

I've chosen to add value to one of Frazetta's Barbarian pieces:

The line work limited where I was able to put my light source, but, I was able to add value and build some volume to the figure:

3D Week 03 Lego Project Part 01

This week we got together as a class and broke into teams in order to create assets for an Unreal Lego Model from a location in The Lord of the Rings franchise. I'm part of the Nature team, so we're tasked with mostly modeling the terrain. My chosen unique Lego model is a boulder. They're stats set them at 4x4x3 Lego bricks. 

In order to build my brick, I imported a pre-made mini-figure and prongs from out Unreal Lego Library to assist me in scale. They're aren't many photos of this piece online so i didn't have much reference to go off of, but, I think I got the molding on the boulder pretty close. I started by making a cube with 4x4x4 subdivisions and then adjusted the edges to fit the profile. 

I then just went at it by pushing and pulling vertices. I made sure to clean up my mesh and went back in and modeled my own prongs.

Here's the completed mesh:

After completing the model, I went ahead and imported it into our library. Here it is in the scene. There's a couple bugs regarding textures, but, I figure once the UV's are done, that should clear up any issues. 

2D Class Week 02 Silhouettes

This week in 2D class we focused on iconic silhouettes in concept design. Whether it be in vehicles, environment, characters, or props, an iconic silhouette is conceptualized before any finalization in design. A design can go through many iterations to profile and design before finally settling. To better understand how silhouette can affect a character design, we studies the works of  Brian Froud.

I was tasked with finding a character concept piece by Brian Froud and creating iterations of it's silhouette. The piece I chose was one of Froud's fairy concepts:

I then traced a silhouette of this character concept and created 8 iterations of this character's silhouette.

3D Week 02 (Minecraft-ish Level)

So, this week I'm tasked with creating a Minecraft level inspired piece using cubes I created and edited with Maya. I then had to texture them in Photoshop and Import them into UE4.

So, first up was creating my cube. It needed beveled edges and proper UV mapping in order to apply textures and shaders to it. I created my textures in Photoshop and then made sure they were lined up properly with the UV's in Maya.

I then went ahead, after making all of my textures, into Unreal Engine and imported my assets. Once done, I went and created my materials in order to apply to the cubes.

Using the materials I made, along with the cubes they were applied to, I created a scene, lit it, and added a fire and fog effect.