Portfolio 03 Week 01

Story Beat 01

For this portfolio sprint, I will be illustrating story beats - one each week. My research will be seeing how these sorts of illustrations are done for films. I will also be showing my process throughout. For future presentations, I will have a timelapse video of me working. This week I dived right into the assignment so I forgot to record myself, therefore I will be showing images for this week.

For the first story beat, I wanted to introduce Rapunzel and her problem of being unable to leave her tower due to her anxiety, leaving her distraught. I've seen people experiment with different compositions before settling on one, so here are the 3 shots I experimented with. I decided to go with the 3rd one since we get a good view of Rapunzel's face, which is the most important part.

For these shots I tried using camera techniques for how I wanted the audience to feel. I tilted the camera for an attempt of giving a sense of uneasiness.

After rendering out my frame, I went into photoshop and sketched in Rapunzel. I put the mannequin in to help with foreshortening and placement. I thought that having her hand on the rail would make the illustration more visually interesting.

It seems that for film, story beats offer a way to show how the camera, lighting, and mood of the scene would be. Since we're seeing Rapunzel in a sad state over something she thinks she can't change, I wanted to have the shadow cover most of her face seen by the audience. Since the light is coming more from the back, I liked the idea of Rapunzel being giving a nice rim light that would help her pop even more.

In terms of process, my work for this illustration was anything but organized so that is something I'm going to be working on in the next story beat.

Sprint #4 Delivery

For this sprint, I made a repeatable brick texture for the tower that resembled the other rocks in the scene more. Also adjusted the coloring so that it wouldn't look so dark. I also went ahead and gave the wooden doors more of a realistic wood grain texture to match texture detail compared to Pedro's door knockers.

Repeatable Texture

New Tower Texture

New Door Texture

Portfolio 02 Week 03

Environment Part 03

This week, I completely finished the interior concept for Rapunzel's room. I'm really happy I took this week to work on it because I was able to come out with a result I was proud of. This process was definitely a learning experience and a test for my patience.

Here are the final results.

Day Lighting

Night Lighting

Prop Callouts

Additional Close-Ups

Overall, I am very pleased with the result. I would like to keep improving on making the spaces feel more "lived in" to make them even more interesting and full of character.

Moving forward in the next portfolio sprint, I will be doing story beats in this setting.

Portfolio 02 Week 02

Environment Part 02

This week, I designed the interior of Rapunzel's room in the top of her tower. This was quite the challenge, I definitely underestimated how much work this would take.

I began by doing a sketch of what the floor plan would be like, then added in necessities like a bed, and finally added stuff for character. I also made sure to have references on hand for what Italian Rococo furniture looked like.

References

Sketch

Once I had the sketch, I decided to set everything up in Maya for a cleaner look, and to save me time for when I do the story beats in this environment for the last portfolio sprint. My plan is to finish the interior with a finalized lined and colored look, like the two examples here.

Render

I think that I can keep adding in things for character to show more of Rapunzel's personality in the room, such as more books strewn about, a hair brush on her vanity, and maybe a bunch of hats or clothes spilling out of her wardrobe.

For this next week, I think I will spend it polishing the interior, coloring it, and showing detailed prop callouts of what is seen in her room.

Sprint #3 Delivery

This week, I focused on fleshing out the rest of the props that are seen in the throne room, such as the orb pedestal, the ribbon plank, and the benches.

Schedule

Maya Shapes

ZBrush Sculpt

Textures

UE4

I also went ahead and adjusted the lights on the throne so that it would pop more as a hero asset. Metal still looks really shiny so that is something to tweak.

Sprint #2 Delivery

 For this sprint,  I focused on the hero asset --> The Goblin King's throne.

Sculpt

Bake

Texture

Iray

In Engine

Portfolio 01 Week 01

Character Designs Week 01

This week our portfolio project was announced. Since I am focusing on concept art, I am planning on using this opportunity to go through the whole development process for the Brothers Grimm story, Rapunzel. I plan on referring to the book, "The Skillful Huntsman," to guide me, as well as examples seen in portfolios from other visual development artists working in the industry.

Below is my schedule for the whole project.

I know it looks like a lot, and it is but knowing how I work, it seems doable. I estimate to work around 6 hrs a day on this. We'll see how that pans out after the first week.

To help organize myself more, I made a PureRef board showing what I would ideally want for each portfolio sprint. It is displayed below.

The first 4 weeks will be focused on character designs. I plan on designing 5 characters. The most important ones are Rapunzel, Frau Gothel, and the Prince. Therefore, if I get cut short on time, the last week spent on the parents would be cut and I would focus on have 3 really well-designed characters. 

This week, I have started designing Rapunzel. I started off with a PureRef of everything that I could think of when it came to a Rapunzel character. 

After creating the PureRef, I began making a bunch of thumbnail sketches for Rapunzel's silhouette. I tried not to constrain myself so that I could really explore in this stage.

I ended up going with a design where her hair is all bunched up at the top because it reminded me of the cabbage plant Rapunzel is named after, called "rampion". Because it looked too mature I changed the design to make it look younger.

After creating that design, I decided I wanted to theme everything in a Rococo style. This was the PureRef I used. I wanted to make sure I included the frills, flowers and big dresses. Below are the various design passes I did for that.

Finally after deciding Rapunzel's design, I thought about her character. I decided that her character would not want to leave the tower and that she enjoyed staying there. That will cause later story changes as well that I'll explain as I get to them. Because Rapunzel enjoys staying in her tower, I decided to make her happy and almost spoiled by Frau Gothel. Below is her final design that I will be finishing and coloring in the next week.

3D Art 11 - Week 15

Environment/Vehicle Project Part 04

For the remainder of this week, I focused on finalizing my textures and then bringing them into the group's UE4 project to see it in the scene. I adjusted some lighting in my version of the scene so that I could show off my assets more.

Here was the result.

I also went ahead and brought my assets into a separate level so that I could get different shots of them individually. Below is my crate. I only have one shot since I already have all the crate at different angles to see it all at once.

And here is my cannon.

I was actually really proud of how my cannon turned out. Since I basically rebuilt it from a much earlier assignment, I can see how much I have improved as a 3D artist.

3D Art ll - Week 14

Environment/Vehicle Project Part 03

This week, we focused on creating out game res model and our first bake, although it was encouraged to try and get as far with it as we can since the end of the spring semester is just around the corner.

With my models, I revisited them in ZBrush to create more chips in the wood. After that, I went into Maya and created the game res mesh off of the proxy meshes that I had. Below, you can see the topology of my models as well as the UV's.

Cannon

Crate

Below are the bakes.

I tried getting a head start on textures. Below is a test for getting a texture similar to Orb's style.