Scifi Ship Concept

In this assignment, I was set to design a sci-fi themed ship, carefully researched and placed into a 3D model before using the technique I learnt that is paint overs. I first started off with a moodboard, as I had done so previously with my other projects. Researching not only from video game concepts, but movies and other medias too. Displayed below are ships from game franchises like Star Fox, Rachet and Clank, to movies like Elysium and Pixel.

 

Drawing inspiration from concept art from Elysium, I highlighted the most common aspects that features on a space craft.

I also had done some more ship research with another project I had been doing in between that helped me further my inspiration and what I wanted my ship to finalise into. The project I had worked on the other hand of it all was focusing on the mothership, and a few ship concepts.

 Here is the moodboard, a few finalised motherships as well as a few space ship silhouettes.

I then started to sketch out a few more concept ideas, before designing a more refined one digitally, taking my most favoured features from certain designs to put together.

I drew and lined my final idea with a greyscale fill, so I could test out some colours before I started modelling in Maya. I took some helpful palettes from the Adobe colour wheel that best complimented each other. 

The one that stood out for my was the blue schemed ship after colouring four out. Reason being was that the others felt too dull, or were too vivid in contrast of eachother.

I started my work in Maya, building each part piece by piece separately before wielding them together. I then later rendered the model to add lighting for my paint over.

Using the same colour scheme and photoshop, I used the paint over technique to the best of my abilities and used some textures I had featured before (as well as my own I had made) to create a more realistic design. The gold design was one I made in photoshop to overlay onto my final design, as the one beside was texture I had used before on another piece of work.

Low Flow Technique on Photoshop

Durng one of our lessons, we tried a low flow brush technique that helps the graduation of colour and lighting when you draw digitally. We were given an example of a black silhouette to work on first, using grey scale colours to make it appear defined.

Here's my brief example below.

I was then set to do another speed painting task using the works of Bobby Chiu. Here's his example against mine.

I feel I could be faster with the time constraint I had (and that this being a speed paint) to help improve my skills. All the while, this was a technique I would love to try in future reference.

Tree Design

Designing a tree was one of our short assignments for my Visual Design lesson. For this, I created a moodboard contrasting of two different themes, horror and fantasy. As well as researching into real life trees. The idea for me here was pretty simple, I felt I could be as creative and colourful as I wanted if my tree was fantasy themed.

Before my final design, I sketched out some trees and structures of them, experimenting with colour and design mostly.

For my final design, I decided to use one of the sketched designs and develop on top of them. It was focused to appear like a creature of fantasy as well, the trunks and roots acting like the "feet" of the tree, whilst holding quite a unique shape for the leaves. This was quite a fun and unique assignment, though I feel I fell short on where I went with the colours. I could have used something more vibrant to exaggerate my fantasy theme

Insectoid Character

 For this brief, I had to design an character that is insect inspired. And so firstly, I created a moodboard that helped me visualize my idea, before sketching out a few designs in my book. However, the main part of this brief was also not to make it appear too antho-like. For example, an insect on a human body would not suffice my design brief. I took a look at a few games, artist sketches and other media works in films as well.

 

Before any sketches, I did a bit of research on insect parts to get a better feel of what I could do. For most of it, what I recognised is that most have quite similar eyes/eye shape. Though dynamic as they come. 

After that, I went on thinking what kind of character I could make. Something regal or common, or something aggressive and dangerous? I wanted to create something based on their shapes and nature. What I go out of it all was that the insects I studied had certain aspects of themselves that appeared either deadly or defensive. I wanted to make something that was borderline both, and began narrowing down my sketches, combining some aspects.

In the end, I wanted to create a character that was plainly obvious as an insect, with an air of mystery and having something quite sinister looking about them. Having multiple eyes makes them appear to have an adept vision, and multiple small feelers also give that effect of heighten senses.

I also added a small summary describing my character which reads;

This creature preys on those that are barely surviving, guiding them back to their nest by luring them wit empty promises. The Tattered cloth it wears is said to 'apparently' have the ability to transform into misshapen wings. The oversized scythe it carries along with it is rumoured to have come from something that was insanely monstrous, but thankfully extinct.

 Above is a grey-scaled blueprint view of my character from the front, back and side. This was done in Photoshop.

A final rendering image of my character also done in Photoshop with colour. After some review, I realise the front, back and side views should have been aligned more correctly to their anatomy, as well as anatomy of the insect is needed without the cloak as well, for future reference to someone that would have modelled it.

Rule of Third

In this lesson, I learnt about perspective when positioning a subject in either a photo or drawing and using a guide line known as the Rule of Thirds. In the intersection point of placing it on top of or the bottom of the horizon line, allows something to appear more visually pleasing. For example, we were given a task to apply this rule with a given drawing.

Western House by Claire Hummel In Photoshop. 

I used the Rule of Thirds guide when positioning the house and even altering the cactus plant later. Then used a filtering gradient over the background.

After using a colour palette similar to the image and layering each section, I used the guide to make sure it aligned.

The final image is below. I also applied some lighting contrast between the cactus and the house so it would stand out more against the light. I found this rule to be quite helpful during this speed paint, and will look forward to using this in future references.

Steampunk Concept

As a two week assignment, I was set to create a Steampunk inspired character/object/etc. I went through a few designs inspired from my moodboard to a finalized digital design. The feedback given to me was very helpful, as I could understand how difficult my final design would have shaped, and would need to appear more relative to the Steampunk design had I used more designs making them appear less human.

Below are the initial sketches I had designed before I had done my final piece, thinking about more steampunk themed clothing and how certain mechanics work on the body.

Below is my final outcome. I see a few drawbacks include how this would actually function if she were to move, it may create some complications.

Animated Sprites

Here are some gif/animation examples I worked with in my Visual Design lesson using Photoshop to add the red eyes and weapon in the girls hand. Using layer by layer animation, I manipulated and rearranged how the final gif image would appear.

Light and Shade

Here's an example of shading/lighting done in Photoshop. The lineart belongs to Jordu Schell. Using a mixture of tones between black and white, I was able to convey a 3D form of the character.