Year 2 - Week 5 - October 31st - November 04th

This week has been a pretty quiet week; we started out week 5 by doing a project that we did last year again: Imagineering a vehicle. This project for me last year didn’t turn out that great; I designed a car based on organic objects in nature. It turned out okay but I fully know well I could have done 10 times better if I put my mind to it. I ended up redoing this project again at Christmas, the final design I though looked better and I had drawn down a lot more ideas though I still knew I could have done better. This time round I understand perspective a lot more and using it in just about everything I do, I believe that anything can be drawn in perspective as some people don’t, I apply perspective to everything now if people like it or lump it. I’ve noticed lately how some people are submitting work on FaceBook were everything looks good and rendered and the perspective looks right as you first see the image but when you analyze it, it’s wrong... I won’t name anyone or post any images however...

I’ve turned into a complete perspective perfectionist, if the perspective I even slightly off I’ll rework it. Anyway this time round I have thought that the brief for my vehicle design can be (if I’m not mistaken) that there is no vehicle that can allow you to fully navigate on top and underwater as high speeds, thus I wanted to create a vehicle allowing the user to do so creating a submarine that can be used as a boat for fishing etc and that can be used as a speedboat also.  Doing so in which allows the user to travel though harsh vast waves of the seas without being in danger of getting thrown overboard or drowning pretty much, if you were to hit dangerous crashing waves you can simply turn the vehicle from a normal boat into a submarine thus avoid danger. It allows you to also explore the sea bed and nature within it at high speeds if you wish however on another occasion you can simply travel the sea in ‘speed boat mode’ or travel at a slow steady pace and use it for fishing if you wish. My initial idea was to allow it to do all 3 things giving the user more option when travelling on water. I think it’s a good idea and I’ve drawn down quite a few plans, this vehicle project I must say is 10 times the idea I had last year and I’m happy with how it’s gone, being more ambitious about it I’ve gone and made a white box model of it.

I thought it turned out really well, it took about an hour and it is really high poly may it be noted. I’ve drawn a lot of ideas and using perspective has really helped in the development, I’ve learnt that perspective does apply to everything and with it you can just about design everything. I probably do a blog in the near future about perspective and talk about my vehicle project more.

Not sure of a name for it.

In 3D we continued with the trash project, I have to say it’s way too easy, I’ve other things on my mind that I want to do and I also want to move onto the next project which is the... dare I say it? Self portrait project! I‘m definitely going to need more time on that as I struggled like crazy with the gladiator project, the rigging was a bitch to say the least, in fact the whole thing was thus I want to get on with it quick and forget the whole thing. I’ve got the trash done and unwrapped which took (and I am in no way am kidding) took 2 days... Just 2 days to make the thing, we’ve been given 500 triangles for it but I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it, mine is about 160 triangles, but what more can you do with boxes, they are just squares that take up about 10 triangles each! Maybe I’ll come back and improve it later.

Year 2 - Week 4 - October 24th - 28th

After having watched the year 3 ideas pitch, I’ve been quite scared to pitch my ideas if/when the time comes. It’s got me thinking about it quite a lot, with it being a year away there is time to think but I shouldn’t be worrying about it just yet. This week we started out with returning to Bradgate Park for the 3^rd time.  Now I’ve previously said that going to the same place is okay for the different times of year as it the colours and scenery changes but we went there just a few weeks short of this time last year, so it’s basically just drawing the same time of year at the same place, but just picking a different area to draw for a final piece...

Despite it being the same old thing again, we got to explore more which was nice though we didn’t really get to see much more as the areas we were trying to get a good shot of were blocked off. Essentially Bradgate is a great place for colour, this week I’ve managed to do a few more pieces of fruit and I’m  glad to say that I’m getting faster, usually I’d spend about 2-3+ on a piece when I was first getting use to a tablet and pen but now I’m spending about an hour or less. One thing in Art is that a piece of work is never finished, it’s just abandoned cause you can always add more if you wish to change something, what I’m trying to say is you ‘abandon’ your work when you feel most happy with it and I’ve been ‘finishing’ my work once I’ve felt happiest with it which originally would take hours now the time is shortening. This week I managed to complete my dinosaur final. It was all about looking at rendering techniques so I thought grey scale would be the best showing positive and negative spaces. I've started to use a machanical pencil in my work which had made my rendering (I think) turn out better.

Prep Work.

Dinosuar Final

Inverted Version

In 3D I’ve finally ‘finished’ and submitted my Treasure Chest. I’m happy with the outcome, the bump and specular maps really made it what it is, I want to practise with bumps and speculars though to understand them a little more. Three weeks proved to be too little time to achieve what I really wanted to on this project however, there was a lot more detail on the chest I wanted to add but didn’t find the time, mainly due to the legs of the chest being quite a complicated thing to not only model but unwrap. The unwrapping took me 2 weeks to do on top of painting the textures, and I ended up pelt mapping all the legs in the end as it proved the easiest way of doing it but the good thing is I’ve learnt how to pelt map now as it’s something I’ve never done before. We’ve moved onto the trash project now which to be honest seems a little easy but I think it’ll be good to get it out the way to make a start on my self portrait which I’m not looking forward to. Having finished the last project is now given me a little more time to work on some of my own stuff I’d like to do like my football pitch, I’ve taken some references from some parks I’ve seen around Leicester and I’m on the way to modelling the full thing in my own way.

It’s something like this is what I want to do for my FMP (Final Major Project), but I’m asking myself the questions of will people like it etc... I’ll talk more about it in due time.

In critical studies we watched about 40 minutes of the film Paris, Texas. From what I saw it was a really interesting film, it doesn’t have much text to it’s like what was talking about last week how the Art can portray things sometimes better than words can. It’s a sort of very lonely film with the impression of wanting to get away quite a lot. The visuals are amazing with bright colour in literally every scene; I fell in love with it immediately. I definitely want to see the rest of it sometime and probably talk about it later.

L.A. Confidential

L.A confidential is one of those films were you have to watch it maybe a few times to understand it better. The first time you’ll try to understand the plot, the second time you’ll probably understand the environment and settings more and then the third time probably the characters is what you’ll understand more. What I mean is at first you’re always just going for the plot really but after this you’re looking for other things and asking yourself why all the time. As an Artist you would sort of questions things all the time just by looking around yourself, questioning the visual elements in front of you.

In this film, straight away like the Machinist, I noticed the colour palette, it was before the film described to us as very bleached and simply put, it was. The more notable colours in the film were yellows, oranges, browns and reds; it really gave it that 1950’s feel. The first few scenes were enough to draw you into the 1950’s decade set in Los Angeles.

It sort of felt like me as a viewer was there in the scene with them in the city as they captured a really strong interpretation of the time it is set in. When I heard the word ‘bleached’ and saw the different tones of colour throughout the film it felt as someone literally threw a lot of bleach over the finished outcome and what I mean is it felt as if they had captured the footage in a modern specific style with a limited colour palette and then the colours were faded to look less vibrant.

The Art direction was very good, this week we talked about how it’s hard to pull off certain things within a game but how because all the questions in film have just about been answered it a case of picking something you like or want to do and just film it from A to B. In gaming its quite different however, we don’t use real actors or environments or anything real, we have to take environments and characters and re-create them in 2D and 3D were there are certain limitations. In gaming for example it’s harder to re-create and make a character act to how we do in real life.

The characters in the film just sort of float onto the stage without even saying anything they give an almost immediate impact on the view telling you about them. For example the way Danny Devito or Russell Crowe just show up and just from the way they are dressed, their body language and the way they talk tell you their characteristics which again can be very hard to pull off in gaming. On which the costumes were really good in capturing the feel of what a L.A. police officer or detective would look like in them days, it shows that good costume design can show a lot add to how the character is portrayed. It had great Art direction and a great story line to go with it, one I’d watch again.

Year 2 - Week 3 - October 17th - 21st

Since missing it last year due to closure, this week kicked off with us going to the New Walk museum. It in honestly wasn’t as fun as I’d imagine, and what I mean by that is it was full of kids... screaming kids. We just had to go during the half term break didn’t we? Well my idea of what would have been better was if it wasn’t full of kids and was a more peaceful place to draw, it was too crowded, too noisy, too uncomfortable environment to draw in, I prefer something more peaceful where I can sit and concentrate, it just wasn’t possible though. On top of all that there really wasn’t much we were allowed to draw either, there was practically about 5 dinosaur structures we were limited to and a few dinosaur heads to. With it technically being first year work we were meant to look at rendering techniques as this would have come just after one and two point perspective it was nice to get back to a bit of basic stuff actually however since our heads have be bombarded with looking at colour a lot lately. I’ve caught up in visual design though after last week being stressful, my train prep sketches are complete, I’ve worked out the composition, blocked out the colours and ready to go in and detail my final piece, which is a digital final again.

In 3D this week, I continued to unwrap my treasure chest, it’s really tedious as the legs to the chest are annoying, I ended up having to pelt map them which seemed the easiest way to do so, and I had to look at a video tutorial on how to pelt map, to my surprise it’s really easy, I thought it was something complex. I’ve gotten the point where I’ve pretty much unwrapped the full thing and gotten most of my textures done and it’s just finalising it. I managed to even take out a lot of triangles from my previous model and got it down to about 1300 triangles used on the model itself, which in terms of trying to use as least triangles as possible, I’m happy with but I could of used the extra triangles to add more detail in, I definitely want to revisit this project soon. It will be nice to move onto the trash project next, just to do something different and maybe a little easier by the looks of it? I think the next project will be an easier one I think, so I think that getting it done quickly will allow me to catch up on other work and hopefully get more time to do personal work I’ve been wanting to do.

In critical studies we talked about planning and concepting again along with Art direction. Art direction is what is coming up quite a lot of recent. We talked a lot about selling things visually, for example how can we tell a story without actually saying anything/talking about what it is or what is going on. How can an environment have an impact on the viewer, how do we give an impression of what characters are like immediately without having to explain it. We looked again at how we manage time this week, looking at how much time we spend doing something and how much it adds up to, I think a lot of people found out in the end that they wasn’t spending enough time working in the week and was forgetting what they were doing at certain times. I myself am constantly working, even on the weekend; it just feels as if when I’m not working, I’m constantly falling behind. We was told how on a weekend we shouldn’t really be working and we should be having some free time to yourself, however for myself I get up and all I do is work though having a break every now and then. I’m not complaining or anything it’s just it feels like all I’m doing is working and not having the time I want to do some personal stuff.

Anyway I did manage to draw a piece of fruit this week. I’m using the fruit as a way of trying to get me to work faster, as in the past I’ve spent ages on drawing a single piece of fruit, this time I didn’t spend as much and I was really happy with the result. I’m also using it to improve my colour theory as well, one technique this week I’ve looked as is using darker tones of a colour to make shadows instead of always going for black which is what I usually do. I use black to darken things up in areas but I had again I used a small colour pallet for this.

Tangerine, not an orange!

After a couple hard weeks in visual design by the end of this week I’m glad that I’ve finally been able to get quite a lot of work done, I feel better for it to and ready for next week.

Working Time

After writing a list of allocating myself time to work, I’ve found that my working timetable comes up to about 60+ hours...

On a Monday I have visual design from 10-1pm then again at 2pm but usually we out and around so I basically just continue working with a few small breaks in between until about 3-5pm. When I get back home every day I usually take about an hour out for dinner, relax for a bit and get ready for some more work, though I might note this is what I usually do each day around the same time, 5-6pm is usually an hour break. I’ve planned my timetable to give myself something to do on the night. Everyday I’m trying to do some visual design weather it maybe just drawing a piece of fruit or an object to keep me going or getting on with my final piece for my projects. I take the time to also maybe write a blog if I find there is time.

On Tuesday it game production, all day, literally. Second and third years are not allowed in the game labs on a Monday so we are limited to 4 days in there each week from 9am-5pm giving a maximum of 32 hours per week, so I am trying to use that time as much as possible. We’re there at 10am on a Tuesday from 10am-1pm then again at 2pm-5pm but I just stay there the full day. I take a couple of minutes break here and there just to have a rest from doing work as continuously working can be extremely stressful and take about 10-15 minutes for lunch, so maybe I’m losing a little bit more time there, maybe half an hour to an hour when you add it up? Afterwards I will work for maybe another 3-4 hours on a night doing visual design work and or doing blog work.

Wednesday pretty much works the same way as Tuesday except about a couple of hours out to watch our film at 2pm, usually the film will end about 3:30-4pm so I can make it back to the game labs for an extra hour of work until were kicked out. Again I repeat the same thing on a night doing visual design or blogging, though this is quite repetitive if I need to work on my game production making textures or just tweaking some geometry I’ll find the time to do that to maybe take a break from visual design.

Thursday again is just like a Tuesday/Wednesday though we have an hour for critical studies. Basically sitting in the game labs all day, I should also mention that I may take a few minutes out to scan some of my drawn work in. Again on the night I will go through what I need to, I’m attempting to balance it out almost.

Friday, again will be in the game labs all day which I should also mention that our FaceBook network does seem to get in the way, but however it’s not really in a bad way as we are looking and commenting on our and others colleagues, though there is some time taken out for that maybe up to an extra 20 to 30 minutes possibly? On the night I’ve allocated some time to draw a piece of fruit which is what I’ve wanted to do each passing week so being the last day of the week I’m drawing one piece and basically ending the week with that.

Its odd how this week we were told that we should be having free time to ourselves on the weekend however when I wrote my timetable I tried to make everyday count. I’m basically letting Saturday’s be my blog day; I do pretty much do nothing on a Saturday so it gives me time to think about things more. We were told that the internet is the biggest distraction ever created and I strongly agree, in 3 weeks I’ve worked out that I’ve spent about 60 hours on the internet alone which averages at about 20 per week which I’m quite astonished by. If that’s about 80 hours per month that’s about nearly a 1000 per year though these days I’m not using the internet as much as I use to, but in total that about 1 and half months a year spent on the internet alone which is quite phenomenal. If I try spending about 8 hours sleeping per night plus maybe extra on weekends, I have to take off about 60+ hours from my 168 hour week leaving me about 100 hours. I spend about an hour each day eating then take off another 7, now we’re down to about 93 hours. If I spend some time on our FaceBook network and have little breaks between working in the labs each day I need to maybe about another 3 or so hours off, so we’re about down to 90. If I take travelling or walking to University everyday it takes about 15 minutes each day there an back, I might go out into town to so maybe about another 4 hours off down to about 86 hours. If I take organising things and doing things such as washing, I might spend a couple of more hours do that so about 84 hours left, I maybe even also take out about another 10 hours for time spent on things I want to do in my free time, not forgetting our weekly film either which is about 2 hours extra so about 70 or so hours we’re down to. What’s amazing about all this is that I’m struggling to find out what I’ve been doing, but by the looks of it I am making about 60 hours a week, which is more than the average/standard 40-45 required of us each week, it just feels like I’m not doing much work when in actual fact I’m probably putting in all these hours to be more accurate and careful about my work.

On Sunday I originally wanted to spend this day doing some personal projects of my own but I’m sort of finding that instead I’m doing the mandatory work in this time. Sunday is suppose to be a day of rest but I’m not resting, it’s odd really but as I’m doing the work I don’t think about the time that I’ve spent doing work, it constantly feels like everyone else is working when I’m relaxing making it feel like everyone else is getting further ahead and producing more than me and I’m constantly falling behind. I’ll probably do another blog upon what time I’ve actually spent in a week maybe to be a little more accurate and further develop on what I’ve written.

Year 2 - Week 2 - October 10th - 14th

This week, to start off began with us going to Loughborough train station. Again like the previous week we are looking at colour again. What’s interesting about the train station is how old it is, a very good place to pick up a lot of textures for our 3D work. The was lots of old rusty metals, old decaying wood, in fact pretty much everything was decaying, none the less it may be helpful towards our group project work coming up shortly. We were looking at scenery of a 1940’s train station; it much looked like something I’d seen on TV, being an old black and white film.

It’s been quite a difficult week in visual design, I’ve not been feeling by best and just not feeling like I’m producing the work I know I am more capable of achieving, I sort of hit a low with it, thinking I know I can do better but I need to find more time to do so. We’ve been talking about planning a lot in this week in our critical studies and saying how such have good time management, the thing is I am good at managing things, time is something I can manage I just end up spending more time trying to perfect something more when what I’ve already what I’ve done is fine the way it is. What I’m trying to say is I spend way too much time on things, well over what I should but I’m sort of one of those that tinkers around with things over and over but ends up ruining what I‘ve done and then having to do it over again. I’m going to write another blog upon my time management so I’ll save my words for that. I’ve sort of come to realise that maybe I’d like to take more of a management route however...

This week I’ve given all of thought about which direction I would like to go in, I remember someone saying about ‘what you’d like to specialise in?’ ‘Cause this is the year to do it’. I sat there and thought out it a bit, but wasn’t entirely sure of my options. When choosing a University I wasn’t sure of Game Art or Game Design, ‘cause I wanted to do both though at the time none of the Universities I found had a really good accreditation for Game Design. I applied to Teesside University for Game Art to though the place was horrible and had really bad reviews which I found out after my bad interview there, which I was pleased to hear afterwards I might add. DMU looked 100 times the place Teesside is, not to put it down much but honestly being there I did not like. The thing was I’ve always been good at Art and I knew that Art is required for game Art and a bit for game design to, so it’s a good fundamental skill to have, though it’s probably one of the only sort of good skills I have so it’s good to be on the course to develop it in which in the last year I have and I’m happy with it. I’m hoping that by the end of the course I’ll have gained enough experience and creativity to be either a Game Artist or something related.

Coming back to management, I remember being told earlier in the year about how one of the best students on the course in the past was into managing things; I think I’d be personally good at that to be honest. I’d love to manage things like level design for example or going onto making games themselves. I love gaming so much I just can’t decide a route. I’ve said that I’d like to maybe go on and further develop my knowledge of gaming after University weather that be doing another degree or progressing to a master’s degree if no job opportunities comes up, what I’m trying to say is that it all depends on how I feel after I have gained my degree and I hope that by the end of this year I’ll have found and hopefully chosen a  route I want to go down and I’m happy with or even find a few different routes, try a little bit of each see what I do like and keep my options open. I know the group projects are coming up shortly and I would actually like to plan out our game level given the opportunity of the group I’m put into, I’d to have the roll of planning out the level itself, and planning little extras that would make it more enjoyable to play as I know that making a game fun is essentially what makes the user want to play more and rewards the player, but of course alongside modelling and managing a blog alongside it to.

In my Game Production this week, it’s just been about editing the model I first initially created, tweaking it a little bit and finally unwrapping it, which I may add took forever. The chest legs are something I’m dreading to texture, really it’s something I think I should get out of the way first since it will be the most complex. This 3D project however unlike my previous ones I’ve worked out what I’m going to do first, what I want to do and how I am going to achieve it. I’m on time with it to were as last year my projects were all over the place and I was rushing around to get things done quite a lot, however with this I’ve planned it all out and stuck to my deadlines I have given myself. The thing is I am good at planning things out and that’s why I think I’d be good at managing, designing and planning games. Level design is something I’d quite like to experience to, but we’ll have to wait and see until the group projects come because then we’ll all get a real taste of what it’s like to make a real working game level which will be exciting and will make us Game Artists.

Overall it’s been a tricky week, and it feels as if maybe I’m planning a little too much and losing time on producing my work, I need to balance things out more at the moment.

The Machinist

The Machinist I thought was quite a unique film, looking at Art direction within the movie the first thing I noticed were the colours of every scene and shot. The film has a dull effect to it, but not in a bad way in a more unique way, something in which I haven’t seen before. It used very few colours like just green, grey, blue and the odd yellow tints along with black and white for negative and positive areas. It’s kind of odd though, and what I mean by that is that last week we looked at how we can create images with a small colour palette and this movie seems to have been created with a limited colour palette to. For some of the scenes, even when outside in the open looked dull even though you could tell it was a bright sunny day.

One particular scene I recall is the route 666 one, very gloomy dark atmosphere in which the route was portraying Trevor’s (main character) actual incident with a hit a run murder of a small child (Nicholas) in example the route 666 is filled with red lighting indicating Trevor not stopping at a red light on route 66 while driving, in which is the start of his insomnia and starvation. At the start of the film it sort of makes you wonder why this guy is the way he is, being so skinny, not sleeping and it makes you want to watch on. Strange things start happening to Trevor like meeting a guy called Ivan who nobody knows off, yet he works for the same company as Trevor in which eventually Trevor starts to believe he is the one that killed Nicholas as he keeps popping everywhere, like in a red sports car in which Trevor follows him and take the registration number in an attempt to track Ivan down he finds that the car belonged to himself but was destroyed a year ago. It adds horror to the film as it goes on and all these strange things keep happening, especially the notes that keep popping up in the form of a hangman game. Trevor sort of hallucinates a lot I feel, but it’s these hallucinations that are trying to tell him that he murdered the child and it’s sort of a way of attacking him as he can’t face the truth and reality of it because of what it’s done to him.

Coming back to the route 666 scene however I like how they made everything in that scene relate to everything Trevor has done and Nicholas also with Trevor indicates has a seizure while holding an ice cream which portrays how he was killed while holding an ice cream when he was hit by the car. Eventually at the end of the movie we see what Trevor should of done by helping instead of running away, there was one part I distinctly remember in this scene were there’s two options of turning on the carnival ride, Trevor tells Nicholas to go right but instead goes left to ‘hell’, in which shows Trevor knows he has done wrong. At the very end Trevor completes the hangman notes that pop up throughout spelling: Killer, despite his other attempts of mother, being mother’s day early on in the film and then: ‘Miller’ which is a guy who lost his arm due to an accident that Trevor caused at work.

The dull looking Art style is made to use in this film as it suits the story line. The lighting and colours suit what Trevor is going through since his accident a year earlier, as everyone tries to avoid him because of his appearance and paranoia, his sleeplessness because of all this, they way he thinks this Ivan is a murderer and trying to attack him, but in actual fact it’s a reflection of himself and it’s not until the end we see that the car Trevor saw was himself and faces the reality and turns himself into the police, though he finally sleeps for the first time in a year after all that.

The film sort of reminds me of Memento which we saw a year ago, which the sticky notes and trying to remember things and it all doesn’t make sense until the end until you work out what has been going on and the order of things that are happening and why they happened. The Art direction in that film too reminds me of this.