Sci-Fi Military Vehicle Assignment

As with every assignment, research is key, and so I began this with doing research on existing Sci-Fi vehicles. However this brief requires the design to look like it would be believable created in the next 100 years, so anything that would involve extreme fictional themes would have to be ruled out:

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/3d-sci-fi-space-transport-ship/831002 (15/03/16)
http://conceptships.blogspot.co.uk/2013_02_01_archive.html (15/03/16)
http://digital-art-gallery.com/picture/4384 (15/03/16)
http://digital-art-gallery.com/picture/gallery/spaceship (15/03/16)
http://vladgheneli.deviantart.com/art/Sci-fi-Ship-448725598 (15/03/16)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2268402/Flying-car-developer-says-hes-80-million-closer-making-sci-fi-dream-reality.html (15/03/16)
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?348409-Sci-fi-Concept-Vehicle (16/03/16)
http://jcobes.deviantart.com/art/Sci-Fi-Vehicle-3D-Render-ATSV-Savage-419482364 (16/03/16)
http://whatzitoya.deviantart.com/art/Sci-fi-Transportation-Vehicles-353371122 (16/03/16)

After I made this moodboard, I watched the film Elysium for inspiration on Sci-Fi vehicles. The reason this film was chosen in particular is it is set in roughly the next 100 years, as well as having been conceptualised as a believable science-fiction film. Below are some concepts from the film that stood out to me:

http://www.artofben.com/ELYSIUM (16/03/16)
http://skul4aface.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/elysium-artwork.html (16/03/16)
http://cargocollective.com/christianpearce/Elysium (16/03/16)

Since Elysium based it's concept on real world assets I feel it would be sensible to do the same and also do a moodboard for military vehicles to establish a theme and look into similarityies to carry over into my design:

http://www.aishtechnologies.com/products/military-vehicle-components (16/03/16)
http://www.copybook.com/military/companies/goodwolfe-energy/articles/goodwolfe-supply-mission-batteries-for-military-vehicles (16/03/16)
http://www.army-technology.com/projects/tmv6x6/ (16/03/16)
https://wall.alphacoders.com/by_sub_category.php?id=57255 (16/03/16)
http://www.extremewest.co.uk/military-vehicle-driving-experience/ (16/03/16)
http://militarygearr.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/military-vehicles.html (16/03/16)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2275172/Britain-leave-3-000-military-vehicles-worth-2BILLION-frontline-pulls-Afghanistan.html (16/03/16)
https://www.armourgeddon.co.uk/military-vehicle-driving.html (16/03/16)
http://www.military-vehicle-photos.com/picture/number3821.asp (16/03/16)

From these I produced a couple of sketches of hovering/flying vehicles:

Out of these I decided to create a 3D model of the first drawing (top of page 1) in Maya 2016, and then lit it:

 

 No lighting

 Top angle with basic lighting

Lower angle with night lighting

Although the lower angle shows a less clear form the lighting makes it look more interesting. Despite this it would be easier to do a paintover with the top angle using the below textures. I also tried different colours and designs:

http://veryshareimg.com/free-seamless-metal-textures.html (30/03/16)
http://seamless-pixels.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/free-seamless-metal-textures_28.html (30/03/16)

I feel that my favourite variation is the dark blue one, as not only did I experiment with overlaying text but I feel that it's a more interesting concept, although strictly speaking it would be a "Police" vehicle and not a "Military" one. So in conclusion the variation I would choose is the green one. I felt that paintingover was rather difficult despite trying it before, although it was quicker there are some areas which are rough around the edges. In the future I could look into tips on the paintover technique.

With background added 

https://www.pexels.com/search/landscape/ (30/03/16)

Perspective Drawing 2

To practice the use of 3 point perspective we redrew our 2 point perspective room in this fashion, doing this made the room look more expressive and pleasing to look at but takes a little bit more effort to establish a 3rd vanishing point. For this redraw I only added the main features and tamed the colours down into a blue theme:

Next we applied 2 point perspective to a 2D designed vehicle and translated the blueprint into a 3D drawing:

It took a while to create the box shape, and the sketch was done rather quickly and therefore doesn't fit well, next time I should try a simpler shape.

Colour Theory

In this session, we watched a video that explained terms and meanings behind colour such as value and saturation (which I knew of before hand) and the ways in which colour can be used to achieve different effects, as well as the different combinations of colours based on their locations on the colour wheel:

Using this knowledge I produced 2 colour sets of this Yoda illustration, one with analogous colours (A set of 3 colours next to each other on the wheel) and complimentary colours:

I like these equally, as they both give off a different style: the left one gives one off surrealism and cartoonishness, wheras the right one looks more natural with the colours making a nice match.

Digital Painting: Blob and Whale Boy

In this session we were given a plain black blob and had to add depth to it using light and shading:

I feel this demonstrates how much I've picked up on shading techniques, and giving a sort of texture. After this we had to recreate an image by Bobby Chiu:

We started with a low resolution version of this image and had to shape out the basic colours of what we could see:

After this we were given the full size reference and added additional detail and shading:

In conclusion I feel that the face looks too muddy and the eye doesn't look defined, however this was developed from a technique I haven't used, and I think that the result overall was alright.

Design Task: A Tree With Character

http://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g32908-d124505-i58678961-Point_Reyes_Lighthouse-Point_Reyes_Station_Marin_County_California.html (06/03/2016)
https://roadtrippers.com/stories/8-cool-trees-that-defy-belief (06/03/2016)
http://www.alansblog.org.uk/?p=3561 (06/03/2016)
http://ankit0621.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/trees-with-character.html (06/03/2016)
https://www.pinterest.com/kaydelong/trees-with-character/ (06/03/2016)
http://www.theeclecticblog.net/tag/trees-with-character/ (06/03/2016)

 After this I produced 3 sketches of trees, using this moodboard for inspiration. Then scanned them in for later reference:

Out of these ideas, I took the shape of the tree at the bottom and attempted to experiment with digital painting:

I am proud with how this came out as I don't make art by painting alone, so this was a challenge. It is evident that I found it difficult to produce a clear form without the use of lineart, and as a result the depth seems rather confusing and flat. But I do feel that the crater in the middle of the tree makes a good focal point and is my favourite part of this image.

Battle Arena Statue: UV Mapping, Texturing And Quixel

After having finished the 3D model as well as a prop sword, I had to UV map it by slicing pieces of the model int "Shells", with these I had to split and combine the UVs of the model into a sheet that can be used for texturing by exporting it into a UV Snapshot. For this statue I did flat colours for the texture at first then realised I can take it into Quixel Suite to add believable stone textures, here are the flat coloured textures:

At first I was intending to entirely texture the model by painting it, then overlaying it with a stone texture, however after using Quixel I could achieve this effect in an easier and faster way:

Using this I achieved a weathered stone statue appearance, after this I will rig my model and import it into unity and pose it.

Life Drawing Task 17

For our last session, our model was clothed, and just like every session we did some quick sketches:

After this we drew the model holding a broom to achieve perspective, and even tried mixed media:

Overall drawing the model clothed was an interesting experience, the detail on the clothes was a bit hard at first but I feel that it was quite useful to know how to draw folds and such. I believe that these sessions were fairly useful for practicing, however I did feel that they got a bit too repetitive after a while and that the clothed model added a new angle, but I do feel grateful for getting this experience.

Form Language

In this session we watched a video about form language, and produced designs based on what we learned, first of all I designed construction vehicles using straight lines and triangles:

Next I did the same with circles and flowing lines:

I feel that combining these two extremes with this knowledge will be useful in creating interesting designs.

Group Project: Beta Build

For this milestone I was able to quickly finish up the flow of the game. Although some things are missing such as sounds, sprites and an ending; The way this game has been programmed is to build an engine then add something to do. Below are some screenshots of this beta build:

The title screen has been fixed. The difficulty was just for experimentation.

The game begins with Marie falling, at the moment there's no sprite or sound for that yet.

The game features a dialogue system with avatars as well.

The player can move rooms by clicking on entrances. Marie also has a walking animation for left and right, up and down animations aren't confirmed yet.

Reggie will talk to the player when they enter this room for the first time, to talk to them again they must use the "Interact" action on them. The door going left is locked.

Going up will take the player to a room with the sludge monster.

Clicking them will bring up their stats, and the player can choose which weapon to use. The player cannot fight without a weapon selected.

Going up again will take the player to a room with 2 chests, one with a sewing kit and one with a cheap umbrella, the player's animation for opening the chest is the same for picking up items off the floor.

The player can select the weapon and fight.

THe fight now takes place in the same scene, and can even involve turns and hitting multiple times.

After defeating the monster they will drop an umbrella, using the sewing kit I can recover my health by clicking it and Interacting like an object.

After the sludge monster the player can go left and confront Mama Spider. With this new weapon the player can can attack twice in their turn.

Defeating Mama Spider will trigger new dialogue with Reggie, and can use the key to get through the door.

After beating Mama Spider, Teddy will appear, beating him will result in him dropping premium stuffing, which increases the player's max health.

By interacting with a non-consumable inventory item, the player can interact with an object using it, this is done to unlock the door.

The final room is incomplete, and will include the player's victory screen with their score and time.

After some feedback, we were told that we could do a front and back animation for the player walking, however this would include more time to allow for the animation frames to be made so it's a low priority. I also need to adjust the difficuly of battles, and fix bugs as well as changing some backgrounds. I am pleased with how this game has shaped up over the last month, and despite being far from a finalised peice I feel it does a good job at demonstrating our prototype idea.