Project Post-Mortem

It might be a bit late for this, but since the year hasn't yet ended I'd like to believe it isn't. The end of term was complete chaos for me, filled with stress and panic. I'm not good at managing stress, so being aware of this, I should have made sure I didn't end up in this situation. Therefore, before the year ends, I want to look back on my progress and find ways of oganising myself better. Because, if there is one thing I would do for next term, is manage my time more efficiently. 

For my projects, I tried making a plan, but, as I probably mentioned in the Shop Front Project post, it was quite vague and didn't have specific steps for me to follow in order to not fall behind. I always ended up working a lot for one module and neglecting the others, which in return made me slowly fall behind on most things. So, for next term, I am going to organise myself better and make sure I don't make the same mistakes. 

Though Game Art is hard, it wasn't as hard as I worried it would be. Even so, everything was overwhelming this year. Besides it being my first year at university, a new experience, it was also marked by special circumstances and I think this, combined with the lack of organisation, led me to fall behind, panic, and overwork myself in the last few weeks before the deadline. 

Next term, I am going to make a strict squedule for myself and follow it, making sure I don't ever fall behind on my work again. Also, I will catch up with the writing for the blog and do my best in order to make sure the next term will be better than this one. 

Week 5 - Perspective Grids: Interior drawing

For this, it was my first time drawing something from above. Until now, I haven’t experimented with more extreme angles or perspective, either out of fear it wouldn’t turn out perfect or because of having resigned myself to my comfort zone (something that holds me back a lot when it comes to improving my art skills). In this regard, this exercise helped a lot, by forcing me to draw something new. 

I began by finding three interior design photos and sketched the thumbnails. 

The first one was the easiest to draw, since it had a lot of straight lines and angles, but the composition was quite plain. The third one was the same - plain and quite basic composition - , so I went with the second one. I has the most interesting and complex look. 

Since for this one I forgot to take photos of the steps, I can only narrate my process. I began by sketching, looking both at the thumbnail and at the original photo. I always draw the perspective lines as I go, so I did that here too, constructing the perspective grid all throughout the process of laying down the sketch. It helps me more to visualise the drawing and not get confused by all the lines than drawing all the grid in the beginning. 

In terms of perspective, it went well, though I had a curved line at the top of the drawing, the line where the ceiling meets the wall, creating a fisheye lens effect. I have a tendency to curve the lines, especially with bigger drawings (in the thumbnails, for example, I didn't have this problem). After the feedback, I fixed it.

As for lighting I am really proud of how it turned out. I finally managed to keep the contrast and not make the whole drawing a single tone of gray. An aspect I am quite happy with is the light coming from the window and falling on the sofa. It enhances the contrast and looks realistic. 

This is how the final piece turned out:

Project: Shop Front

Starting the project, I felt a bit overwhelmed. I didn’t feel like I had enough experience to build something as big and as complex as a building in 3Ds Max. It seemed complicated and I was worrying that I wouldn’t manage it. Still, I found that it was a matter of stacking boxes on top of each other and making them look like a house through carefully chosen placement and textures. Checking for unnecessary or weird geometry was also important. 

I wanted my shop to be unique, so I chose to model a fortuneteller’s shop. As always, I started by gathering ideas in a mood board: 

Since fortuneteller’s in most media are portrayed as excentric and unique people, I wanted my house to reflect that: it had to be something very colourful, with an interesting shape. Maybe a bit hippie and overall look intriguing. With the mood boards, my biggest problem is that I get ideas, I know what I want to do with them, but I can’t find the words to write clearly on the page and I mostly need to work on the way I organize my projects. 

Having gathered the ideas, I wanted to get a clearer image of what I was going for, so I quickly sketched something in a random notebook:

From the first page, I liked the idea of a wagon, a house on wheels, because it implies the owner moves a lot, and fortune tellers are usually travelers, moving from place to place. Still, the form of the house was a bit too simple, too perfectly geometrical and I didn’t quite like that. So, in the second and third pages I tried varying the form.

After getting a clearer image of what I intended to do for my shop, I painted my textures, using the references I had gathered in my mood board. 

I started with the brick wall texture:

It turned out fine, without any problems on the way, and I managed to paint it quicker than I had expected. Looking at it now though, I would have straightened out those slightly diagonal lines. I think it would have looked way better, especially when it tiles. 

The second one was the roof tile, which I like how it turned out the most:

It looks colourful, and the flowers give off that magical, easy-going, excentric impression, like the owner of the house is used to living in nature and doesn’t mind a bit of colour and spontaneity in their lives. I don’t think there’s anything I would have done differently for this one, Though maybe I should have checked how it tiles in the earlier phases, since it took longer to correct later. It is something I’ll keep in mind from now on. 

The next one was the plaster:

The colour seems a bit dirty, greish, so that’s something I would change now. Otherwise, it was a simple texture to make and I finished it quickly, though I had a tendency of making the cracks too dark and it looked visually tiring on the model. I had to change the opacity of the shadow layer.

I proceeded with the details such as the wood beams and windows:

I wasted a lot of time on this, worrying about how it looked, trying to make it perfect. I ended up not using some of the space I had on the texture sheet, so that is something I will need to work on in the future. I worried about how the windows looked in Photoshop, they seemed too simple and I wanted everything to look perfect from the beginning, which slowed me down. Turned out, the windows looked quite okay on the model and I was worrying for nothing. I like how the wood beams, especially the ornate ones look, though. I made the grass for the plane underneath the house last, so it looks a bit stretched on the model. I’ll have to organize the space on the texture sheet better and think in advance what I’m going to do with it. 

The last texture sheet was the one for the props, which I made after I finished modeling the house, unwrapping the objects first and using the method we used for the treasure chest:

In my opinion, the texture sheet looks messy, but the textures looked alright on the model and since I didn’t have that much time left on my hands anymore I left it like this. Doing the texture for the crystal globe was the hardest part (that and organising my layers, if I’m being honest), since I didn’t really know how to properly unwrap a sphere. In the end, through trial and error, I managed to make it look right.

As for modeling, I first brought my textures into 3Ds Max and made the main body for the house: the walls and roof. Then I made all the other pieces: wood beams, door, windows and wheels and put them all together. I still didn’t have an exact image of what the shape of my house would be, just a vague idea, but I moved the pieces around until I was pleased. Before the first feedback, my house wasn’t well balanced: if it were a real house, it would have collapsed. So I followed the advice and added more pieces to balance it:

I then proceeded to build up the rest of the house, add more beams and do my best to match the tris limit. I then modeled the props and the plane on which the house would stand and, after finishing the props’ texture I added that too. The most difficult part was reaching the limit and respecting the budget. I also had some unnecessary geometry I had to erase, and it caused problems when it came to the tris and polygon count. I will have to remember to always check for that during the process and not only at the end. I also had some shading problems with the roof after I cut out the 3D tiles, but I solved it by detaching the tiles and erasing the cut out forms, flattening the roof. 

This was the final model:

Overall, it turned out better than I expected, though I really need to organize myself, make a plan for projects and stick with it. I had made one, but it wasn’t a clear, structured one and, though it helped me figure out what I still had to get done and how far I was behind with my work, since it wasn’t a fixed schedule, I always ended up not following through with what I had decided. So organization and a cleaner workflow are the things that I need to work on the most. 

And this is the model after I imported it into the Unreal Engine:

Week 3: Treasure Chest

Everything about game art being new to me, I didn’t know anything about texturing, about working in Photoshop and then applying it to the 3D model, so all of this took a while. At first, it seemed overwhelming, like I couldn’t take in all of the information. There was always another problem waiting around the corner, but following the tutorials I managed to finish the treasure chest and understand the steps of texturing an object.

I first made a mood board to gather some ideas, figure out what I wanted my treasure chest to look like:

 

I set up my solid base and added a brown colour to the background for the padding, since I knew my treasure chest would be made of wood. 

I then started by blocking out the silhouettes of other details and adding some shadow at the base of the chest:

Then the shadow and implied lighting. Besides the fact I had to be careful to not go over the line with my selections, there were no problems with this step, just me figuring out more about Photoshop:

After this, I made the wood texture, starting with diffuse shadows and darkening them, then adding the lighter parts. I had a tendency of going too dark with my shadows, exaggerating them. I was careful to get a new layer every time I was darkening them so I could turn down the opacity if need be.

I then added the details for the metal:

And the colours, using gradient maps. I had problems figuring out how to apply the gradient and it took me a while to understand how it works, which gray corresponds with which colour I applied and so on:

Also, I drew the coins inside the chest separately, then duplicated them to cover the base of the treasure chest:

 

I admit I could have been a bit more creative with my treasure chest, but being new to all of this I first wanted to understand the basic steps following the tutorials and make sure I would finish the project in time.

Week 7: Cube World

 

When we first started the Cube World project, I honestly had no clue what I wanted it to be. No concept, no aesthetic, no idea. So I browsed for inspiration and slowly, the idea came: since we had the isometric grid and floating base, I wanted floating islands, maybe something that would inspire the feeling of a mysterious forest, trees with overgrown roots and maybe a round faerie gate, taking you to other magical places (or, in the case of a video game, another level perhaps). 

I started gathering images in my mood board and jotting down ideas, the main things I wanted to convey through my drawing of the Cube World, and also the ways I might be able to do that: 

After the mood board was done, I started sketching some ideas, figuring out what exactly I wanted my mysterious floating islands to look like. I knew I wanted them to seem like they have been dislodged from a bigger piece of land. I also wanted a tree that would grow over the stone gate, some floating steps that would lead from one island to the other and some details, some kind of objects that would make the space look less empty. this way, I ended up with my first sketch:

It was nice, but a bit simplistic and didn’t portray the sense of mystery I was looking for. Plus, it gave me a bit of a childish vibe. So I made more sketches. The second one, I went for a similar form, but linked the two islands through the roots. I made the tree a bit more massive and the foliage flatter so it fit in with the composition:

The third one, I went for a slightly different approach, to see how it would fit: 

It resembled more of a temple entrance, hidden into the trunk of an old tree, merging with its surroundings. I liked the idea, since it gave off an eerie feeling, making you ask yourself what could be hidden behind that entrance, but I wanted to keep the original one of the faerie gate. I was conflicted, so I placed them all on the same page to figure out which one I liked most, which had the best composition and conveyed what I wanted.

For the first one, though I liked the form of the tree hugging the gate, it was the first idea and it seemed too simple. The two islands didn’t connect enough in the composition, something that the other two did well. The second one I liked, especially the way only the base of the tree could be seen, extending upwards and disappearing, conveying the massiveness. Still, I liked the third one in the picture best, due to the way the islands are linked to each other by the roots of the tree, making the composition flow nicely. 

I took the sketch and started painting over it, starting with the flat colours and working my way through the drawing, building up the shadow, the light and details:

Some details, such as the floating stone to the right, the bird in the tree and the changing in the stairs' positioning were added after getting feedback, and helped make the composition more balanced and interesting.

While working on this project I had the chance of getting out of my comfort zone, since drawing environments has never been my strong point. I always prefered drawing characters, rather than places. I was scared at first, thinking that I would not succeed creating anything, but I worked on it and pushed through. Though still a bit messy, my workflow has improved a lot too since the treasure chest project, helping me work faster through this one.