Week 17; Clothing Folds and Resurrection!

  To kick off the new week I have a new power supply and my computer finally works again! I know it'll be difficult following up from that exciting sentence but I'll try my best.

   This week we had a lecture on Monday from the Animation and Games Art 3^rd Year life drawing tutor; Geoff. This lecture was actually really useful for my life drawing as he explained how to really understand the volumes of the subjects we were drawing, with exercises like drawing the form as if it was see through to understand how (for example) a leg would deform when in a seated position – how the thigh flattens out. We also covered head proportions and the weighting of the subject in the sketch. For example: always bearing in mind the centre of gravity of the model when sketching, which gives a weight to the sketch and makes more realistic.

Andrew Loomis - Proportions at various ages

  In games production we were covering clothing folds, where we had to model a sleeve on an arm which was rigged to help us understand deformation of topology and how to create clothing folds on topology. The process includes using the “cut” tool to create diamond-like shapes and moving the verts to make overlapping folds – better demonstrated below

  For Critical Studies this week we were given our character project brief which I was absent for but have picked up the PDF. We have 4000 tris to model our character, a 1024x1024 texture and a 512x512 32bit targa for accessories.

  I've already decided what kind of character I'm going to design roughly; I'd want to design myself as an older character, perhaps late 50's as a medieval fisherman. I would have just created the character as a model of my in medieval fisherman attire although I didn't find that to be particularly imaginative and I thought it'd be interesting to try push the boundaries of what my imagination can cook up.

  I'll be back next week with my concepts and mood boards of the my character!

Week 16; A Character Continuation

  So after a weeks reading I'm ready to continue on with the next project warm-up for the looming character project. This week we were tasked with modelling a low-poly head, as a learning experiment for out character project. I didn't have too much hassle with this and was rather simple to follow along with.

  For games production we used a technique called box modelling where essentially, like a classical sculptor you carve the head out of a block, using the cut tool and swift loop tool craft out the head.

On Monday was the preparation for this exercise as we were tasked for Monday to take photos of our face ready to draw face loops and facial topology over them so we could model out the head using those images as reference.

  For the latter part of the week we were given a critical studies talk about cleaning our footprint on the internet and roles we would have in a company or group. We started with a sort of personality test which then determined which of these Nine roles we'd fall into:

Plant
Resource Investigator
Co-ordinator
Shaper
Monitor Evaluator
Teamworker
Implementer
Complete Finisher
Specialist
 

  After taking the test I fell into the category of “Teamworker” which is surprisingly accurate for one of my attributes. This role entails “Co-operative, perceptive and diplomatic. Listens and averts friction”. However the “Allowable Weaknesses” include “Indecisive in crunch situations. Avoids Confrontation” Which I wouldn't say is totally accurate. Some good food for thought though, It'd be nice to be more rounded an individual rather than sitting in one category. The other part of the lecture was finding ourselves in search engines and how we can eradicate any unwanted data of ourselves found easily on the internet, which I didn't find too bad as there isn't many things that I could find about myself, except my Batting average in 2012, which is probably the only embarrassing I could find!

  Other than that I ventured into town to buy my own copy of “The Hobbit” as my other copy is back at home, since I had finished “The Rachel Papers” and my Power Supply had not yet arrived. The reason for doing this was the third film in The Hobbit series was released recently which was getting poor reviews and it'd been a while since I'd read the book. But that's about it for this week, I'll join you next week!

Week 15; A Fresh Start with a Funeral

Hello again! So we meet again after the Christmas break and this first week back has been quite eventful.

To start off the week we were given a project to help us with the forthcoming character project. We were given a low-poly female body to model in a week. Now, halfway through this week is where the fun begins. On the Thursday, my power supply for my desktop blew, leaving me stranded for a computer, only being able to access one in labs – The death of my computer. This was a rather awkward situation as I was working from home on modelling the body of the female character so I only got so far.

In better news, this lead my back to my love of reading; since I was going to be without a computer for a while. So, I decided to revisit an old favourite of mine which I never finished; The Rachel Papers, by Martin Amis. An Intriguing and somewhat challenging book (vocabulary-wise) which I distinctly remember reviewing for a Year Nine project in secondary school, only to be told it covered “Rather inappropriate subjects”. I digress, the book itself is a fascinating read into the mind of a highly intelligent, yet uncomfortably awkward teen, Charles Highway, on his journey of the last three months of being a teenager. A highly acclaimed book that I'd recommend to most (once I've finished it, anyway), as so far it's been a gripping story and has more than sufficiently challenged my vocabulary.

Back to more familiar ground with the modelling side: This week was an exercise in body topology of the female form. I spent most of my time trying to replicate the topology given to us on the reference plane for the modelling process, and even though I didn't get to finish the model before my computer blew, I still have a good understanding of how to go about modelling my character for the Village Project.

For Critical Studies this week we were given a new perspective on how we should be constantly evaluating and re-evaluating ourselves as we continue on the course. There were some very helpful things I need to do which I really hadn't thought of before like filing my marked work away so I can reflect on the feedback on a later date. I also need to actively do something about my feedback, something like making a plan and sticking to it, maybe pinning it up in my room to remind myself. Also compiling all the data of my feedback and trying to work out some trends to improve on. The lucky thing is that our feedback is either verbal (Therefore I need to have a notebook handy to take a note down) but mostly digital so I can always have a copy online to file away. 

  We were also given a sheet to write an action plan for our next two years at university and analyse our personal strengths and weaknesses. From these things I determined some future goals; including every Tuesday working through an hour of tutorials to improve my overall knowledge of the programs and medium I'm working with and writing a blog schedule to strictly follow.

I have also determined over the Christmas break that I need to make time to work on my ability to draw, which will come with practice of life drawing and extra life studies outside of taught class time.

So it's not all bad news, I've rekindled my passion for reading, and in a couple of weeks I'll be able to have my computer back and upload the model lost in progress.

I'll join you next week when I hopefully will be the proud owner of a new power supply!