Friday 23 October 2009

Gold Guns Girls

Hiya. Back again on a Friday oh yeaah (I might brag about this every week... It'll be a sad day when I miss my first weekly blog.) Been getting on with business this week. Finished my Mascot, and i've even almost finished off my bad guy. It's really strange how I work. I probably took a week and a half on the Mascot (if not more... I don't want to think about it though) and then I go and blast out a fairly detailed painting of another character in almost 2 days. Why is this? Anyway, that's all that i've been up to work-wise as far as I can remember. I'm hoping *fingers crossssed* that the studio will all be lovely and shiny and working by the time I get in on Monday morning. Even though I can work perfectly fine without Windows 7 etc, I just feel a little left out with computers that aren't what they're meant to be. I'm contemplating buying Windows 7 myself actually, since it's only 30 quid for us students and the amount of praise i've been hearing (and it's shiny). Anyway let's get onto the pikchars::::



Mascot, of course. To be honest i'm really happy with the way that this one came out. I think it may actually be my favourite at the minute. Re-doing the entire thing definitely paid dividends. The reason I like it is probably because of the rendering that I achieved on the armour, notice the shine on the breast plates etc lol. It may be a strange reason but it's just that I managed to achieve pretty much exactly the material that I wanted to portray, and that's pretty cool for me. It's something that i've been trying to push for in most of my paintings and this time it worked out. I feel like a lot of the materials I paint look exactly the same, and I achieved something this time round. I also like the background. It should be obvious that i've been experimenting with the backgrounds on all of these paintings, and also that i've really been into the dissolve layer function. The desaturated green towards the lower half of the painting doesn't really make the character stand out as it possibly should, but I find it creates an interesting effect. Also, not to keep blabbing on but I purposely left the lower half of the character loose. Even if it was mostly because I had been painting the Mascot for farrrr too long, it was also interesting for me to see whether your eye was drawn to the detail in the upper half of the body or not. I still can't decide, but i'm happy with it anyway (maybe all apart from the rendering on the legs, light source is a little confusing there...) Woo!



This is the Baddie! He needs a name still though. Actually this is the sketch, just in case you cared at all.



And here's where i'm at now. Character is pretty much done, and the background is half done. I did something differently with this painting. Should be fairly easy to spot, but I tried out a more menacing, dramatic lighting, compared to the fairly soft, top down lighting in the other pieces. I think I managed this alright, although my lack of knowledge/experience with the sort of thing made me a little uncertain of a few things. I think his face may be a fair bit more dramatically lit than the rest of the body. First time anyway so I guess it's alright. With this guy I tried to make him both goofy and a little bit grotesque. That's the reason for the lighting, the pale arms, dodgy face etc. Worked alright I think, definitely handy as a painting exercise too. He's not completely finished, but I should be able to deal with him in an hour or something on monday, lovely jubbly. Might even start modeling for Andy!

That's it for work, not including sparse dissertation readings (that're actually very very interesting surprisingly, thanks to great writers), so now for some inspiration i've come across this week.

Making of N0X-2292 (part 1) from Slipgatecentral on Vimeo.



Making of N0X-2292 (part 2) from Slipgatecentral on Vimeo.



The above videos are just bloody god damned hell amazing. Really blew my mind when I first watched them. It's strange really, and a little sad, for reasons I will explain. This model was submitted to Dominance War IV and when I was browsing through the winners, I almost completely disregarded it along with a friend, because it seemed to be similar to things we'd seen before, namely in Metal Gear Solid and stuff. So i never paid it much attention, found a few other things which I thought were better, and forgot about it. Then later in the week I came across these videos, and as I said they blew me away. The INSANE level of detail that the model has, and the fact that it is almost entirely built in Maya is crazy. Watch the videos and you'll see what i'm on about. The 'rigs' are just great too, even though they aren't technically rigs. They move beautifully, just like real machines would, and this is a skill which I am completely devoid of. Maybe I should study some mechanics. The other great thing is the amount of time and effort this guy has gone through making the video. Not just to showcase his work but to educate others along the way, and I think that's just great. A big thanks to this guy, I am really inspired. His website is here: slipgatecentral.livejournal.com and vimeo page here: http://vimeo.com/slipgatecentral Where you can find a few more great videos.

That's it for this week. See you soon xx

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