Ygritte

As a part time student for Spring, my only ANI class was ANI 130B: Advanced Digital Modeling. It really rekindled a fire for me to make use of modeling in my production pipeline. For our final project, we got to choose what we wanted to model, be it a character, environment, or prop. I went with challenging myself on making a 3-D version of Helen Chen's Ygritte print that I got from her when I went to APE last October. I love Game of Thrones, Ygritte is one of my favorite characters, and she got drawn by one of my favorite artists. While I was getting advise from an upperclassman modeler on taking a 2-D image to 3-D, he mentioned to me how sick it would be to get it 3-D printed!!! This made me even more stoked to start on this project and just see the final product on the palm of my hand.

The challenge was that I had only had one image to work off so there was a lot of work to be done. Luckily I had a partner to help me out with the project, Diem Doan. We spent quite a bit of time figuring out the structure and anatomy going on within the print because it had to make sense in a three dimensional plane rather than just a flat piece on the wall. 

At first, we got off the a rougher start than I expected. I just could not get the hold of Helen Chen's style, so I handed it off to Diem, who had a much better handle on it. This turnaround was definitely a back and forth process since we both could not get the turnaround to a satisfying point for our teacher. On his advise, we just started doing a basic shape model for her proportions. 

I did the body while Diem took over the head and hair. Making the body was quicker than I expected but the biggest challenge for me were her hands. I had to fiddle with it to make it look like they were the hands of a young woman rather than a man. Another difficult task that I encountered while working on her hand was figuring out how to connect her backhand armor (with fur) to her hand because we had to make it water-tight for printing. I'm glad to say that the amount of late night hours I spent on this hand was definitely worth it.

After the hands, I connected it with the body and waited for Diem to finish her head. Sadly, I don't have progress pics for those but I can say that she did an awesome job with it, despite how busy she was with her 117B class.

Once I got the head connected, I rigged the body using Maya's human rig so I can match the pose in the print. I had plenty of fun with myself just seeing this thing that I built move! 

After posing the model, with her holding the sword, I quickly made a super basic human model shape to go inside to hollow it out for printing. That way the printers would use less ink and it would be cheaper for the both of us. It consisted a lot of refining in Maya/Zbrush and uploading to the printer website to get a print that wouldn't be too thin in some places and big enough to justify the cost. We ended up scaling it to a 4.6 inch as a 5 inch and above got way too expensive. Unfortunately, even though we ordered early enough to receive our print, the package got lost somewhere in France. We still haven't found a resolution on the investigation on what happened to it, nor have we received a very good communication with the printing company, especially after we asked for a refund. It is sad to say that this last part of the project left a bittersweet taste in my mouth.

Despite a very bad ending to this story, it was definitely a fun project and it pushed me to try more modeling projects such as this. It made me realize that us 2-D artists take advantage of the 2-D plane and cheat without really thinking about it in a 3-D sense.

Fall 2013 Semester Review

The semester's finally over! I couldn't be any more proud of myself in finishing my classes and be satisfied of the work I've done throughout.

Along with an amazingly talented crew and a great director, Dave Yee, we finished Dave's short film, Jimmy Loves Juice! Apparently it is the first time that a crew has managed to finish a film within a semester despite doubts that it could not be finished. As one of the background leads, it was definitely an honor and a great learning experience working on this film!!

Here's the trailer: Jimmy Loves Juice Trailer

I've updated this blog a couple of times on my progress within my visual development class. Our last project was Robin Hood set in the California Gold Rush.

For this round, I was set on trying to paint realistically rather than stylized. It's something I never really touched upon digitally, and if I wanted to work for the video games industry (heck, even the film industry), I needed to get my realistic painting skills up. I also set myself the goal on finishing my environments because the last three times, the environments I've done did not get to the level where I could have taken them. Fortunately, we had 2 extra passes for this project and working on my environments taught me various things that I did not pick up on previously.

Over the break, I plan on working on my own personal take of Romeo and Juliet and use my acquired knowledge from this semester to bring out something great!

Submarine Project

Third project for class is to create two anthropomorphic animal characters, one captain and one co-pilot for a submarine. I went with ravens, after thinking about different animals that would look out of place underwater, because 1) I never drew anthro birds before, 2) birds would be a great contrast to the underwater setting, and 3) ravens are practically my dad's favorite thing ever so I wanted it to be kind of a homage to him.
Greatest challenge for me was the interior. I had the drawing down but I wish I set in more time than I thought needed to work out the color and lighting. This is something that I hope to fix in the next project and shoot for an actual finish on both the characters and the environment!

Kolkata

Yesterday, I finished my class's second project, Kolkata Food Vendor. I had tons of fun and was definitely challenging. I tried my hand in painting without relying on my line drawing, trying to use edges, saturation, value, and color to get some form. Second lesson I learned is how to push shapes in consideration for character design. I really had a tough time in this part at the first phase but I've come at the end where I just fell in love with drawing my food vendor. There are some issues I still need to fix but they aren't as much compared to my environments! Lastly, biggest lesson of all: I just need to get through developing as fast and as far as I can so I won't have any trouble when it's time to get to the finish.

Here's to the next project, which is super exciting already!! 

117B Raiju + 118

118

New Semester

 This semester, I'm taking an intermediate visual development class taught by JP Balmet. Class is super tough and fun, and every minute contains great information. I find it pretty hard to fall asleep in the class even during crits (but we'll see how that goes as the semester rolls on).

We are currently assigned to produce a character design and a final environment painting of one of three Japanese demons: jorogumo (spider woman), raiju (thunder beast), and funayurei (sea ghosts). I chose the raiju. So far, the process for designing this beast made out of lightning has been difficult and caught myself in road blocks many times. That's how it goes, right? After yesterday's class, I can finally see a direction that I can head to, but who knows? There might be detours along the way!

   

Revised Pole Render

I definitely learned the big difference in edges. I still need more practice under my belt, but that is never-ending. :)

I'm super excited for the stuff lined up during the summer, such as the weekly illustration challenge, a monthly project thing where all areas of the major are being challenged, and the revision of the Three Barking Dachshunds animation.

Vis Dev Dump

Finally getting around to posting most of my 117A Beginning Visual Development projects this semester. Yayyyyy!

This is where I am for now. We're starting a character design project! But first we were assigned to render out a light/street pole that has character on it (like with texture, aging, painted over). I am definitely starting to get how to vary and see my edges in my digital paintings and how it really makes a difference between a hard and soft edge.