Fundamentals of Art, Weeks Two and Three.

Another "Twofer" here; work and being sick took it's toll on my blogging. Thankfully it didn't take it's toll on my homework!

Week two of the Art Class covered the definition of Space. Covering both physical depth, and positive/negative space (positive being an object itself, while negative being the "empty" space around it). 

To study this, we had a whole lot of exercises. First of which is a "single line" drawing in ink. To be honest, I'm not a fan of ink as a drawing medium. I like the flexibility of graphite for shading and being able to fix my mistakes, but drawing in Ink certainly helps to hone the production of shapes and make things overall "automatic" with practice.

Next up was the use of "Organizational Lines". Essentially, using lines that help to define the shape and space of objects. As in this piece, the lines are used to position the knobs and sliders of the mixing board, as well as produce the depth required for the slab itself.

Being able to recognize and draw negative space also can be a tool for drawing objects. If you can draw the negative space, the space remaining must be the object!

Another tool for defining dimension and space is the use of Cross Contours. These are literally a cross sectional contour of an object, defining its shape: 

Very specific to cross contours, the use of ellipses is paramount to the realistic depiction of cylindrical objects.

Putting it all together, I created a Still life scene and used the tools learned to create the correct proportions and shapes. You can see heavy use of ellipses and organizational lines here.

Last but not least for Week two, using various "value building" techniques to add depth to an ink drawing. We could make any piece we liked, but I decided to indulge my "sci-fi industrial" side. Obviously ink can only give us black on white, so the use of hatching, cross hatching, gestural lines and deliberate cross contours as part of the design (like the sections of pipe) all fulfilled these goals. The final piece has a few issues (mainly there is way too much white still on the page so it really doesn't pop as much as it should), but a solid start at least!

Week Three covered Light and Value. Compared to week two's heavy "drawing" schedule, week three felt almost like a break! There was a lot of photographic work in week three. Mainly, the study of how light, shadow and the values in between can be used to great effect to achieve desired results.

First up, we have "Moody Eggs"! To be specific, I had to use lighting to give some eggs a specific mood. I had to fight the urge to draw the specific facial expressions on them, but in the sake of professionalism, I didn't ;)

After lighting and photographing eggs, it was time to draw one. Specifically, to draw the lighting and the shadow. Each element was then labelled to show our understanding of the way light and shadow interact, and the terminology (We also created two shading scales using both 2H and 6B pencils, to examine the differences; essentially, 2H never gives a dark black, but is ultimately more controllable and even in the shading range, while 6B gives rich dark tones, but tends to be a little granular in the lighter shades).

Object Planes were next up for study, in my case some stacked boxes. Getting the planes defined using light and shade, rather than outlining was the goal of this exercise. Luckily, such shading has always been a favorite technique of mine in the past.

Next was examining "Tonal Range". While a light tonal range certainly gives dimensionality and you can clearly see the form, using a darker, more "rich" range of shading gives additional depth and definition and helps to define some smaller details.

I then took various rubbings of textures from around the house. I used these as inspiration to produce some purely speculative objects (made up by me, not observational sketches) to show how light and value can be used to emulate specific textures on objects. I decided on a "furry ball" and "waffle box".

Next up, I created six different "paper textures" using various techniques. these were then used for later assignments.

First of those later assignments was using our paper textures to produce interesting compositions, then photographing them.

I then used one of those photographs and created a sketch of it, showing full tonal range.

Lastly for Week three was taking the Week two still life, and finally rendering it fully with graphite. While I am overall happy with my final result, I will admit to needing more practice. Areas I need to work on are blending away the pencil strokes, and using a darker tone when possible. Edges also could use some work, but overall, not a bad weeks work!

Week four covers "Linear Perspective". I will post those when I can!

New class... Fundamentals of Art, Week 1

Hi all,

3D Foundations is over, and a new class begins; Fundamentals of Art. Week one is all about Composition. To be honest, this class is one tough class, specifically the amount of homework to do! there are 6 assignments to complete in week one alone, and that's not including the final quiz and discussion topics. I'm actually wondering if I will even be able to keep up in the coming weeks (I was lucky enough to have five days off this week which allowed me to concentrate on the work). I guess time will tell.

Anyway, on to this weeks subjects. Composition. My initial task was to write a discussion article about "why modern art is bad", or if we disagreed, "why it isn't". It was an interesting discussion mainly because I learned a great deal about modern artists I had not even heard of. I think it's all too common to think of all modern art as the shock-fests and frankly, outright lunacy that gets all the attention in the "modern art scene". While I agree there is a lot of rubbish out there, there are a lot of examples of art and artists of this current generation that really buck that trend. My own discussion centered around Rackstraw Downes and his panoramic views.

We then studied and wrote a visual report with supporting photographs about the various basic principles of art. Line, Shape, Form, Value, Color, Pattern, Rhythm, Unity, Texture, Emphasis and Balance. Once we found examples in the world around us, we were tasked to photograph it and use that in our report. Not too difficult, but I had to do it while working, so needless to say there's a lot of aviation related stuff in there!

Next up was some Photoshop work. Being fairly familiar with the basics of Photoshop, this did not pose too much of an issue. We simply took five large images from the internet and extracted four small abstracts from those images, then identified the appropriate artistic principle of the abstract.

Next in line was an exercise to complete five sketches, each one illustrating a key artistic principle. I hadn't put pencil to paper in years and was quite surprised how it all came back!

Next, we took a photograph in Photoshop again, but this time we created numerous "thumbnails" of small sections, made some basic adjustments, scaling, rotations etc then built three large scale images using these tiles, again, each image to demonstrate an artistic principle.

Next up was five more sketches, in the still-life tradition. Small items from around us, arranged to show five specific composition techniques; Negating the edge of a frame (the image can easily continue beyond the frame), Centralizing the subject, Filling the frame completely to all 4 edges, Crowding the frame (to produce a highly dynamic piece), and Emphasizing the edges (making edges/frame part of the composition. The latter of these I am still trying to wrap my head around.

And finally, we had one last assignment; Re-framing existing images using either "The Rule of Thirds" or "The Golden Mean". Again, using Photoshop, I simply applied a template to existing photographs and determined the best composition assuring I followed one of the aforementioned techniques. I think the results are quite obvious!

All in all, it was one heck of a first week, and I still have a few things left to do... Hopefully I keep the momentum going!

Week 4: Last week of 3D Foundations...

Hi all...

The 3D foundations class is officially in it's final hours now. I'll actually be a little sad to see it go! It was certainly a fun class, though it is not for the faint of heart... There was a lot of material covered in the four short weeks, and for me, it felt less like a "foundation" and more like a trial by fire.

Each week certainly built upon the previous, but the build up was like climbing a sheer cliff at times. Thank goodness for Google, Lynda.com and the many talented peeps on the Full Sail 3D arts Google Hangouts... I certainly would not have gotten as far as I have without those resources.

Anyway, enough waxing lyrical. Week four.

The focus this week was taking the modeling skills we mastered over the first three and adding an introduction to UV mapping. UV Mapping is basically a "second space" in which texturing takes place. If the model is built in three dimensions (X, Y, and Z), the coordinates used to define where an image gets pasted to the model is defined in a separate two dimensional space using U and V as the axes. Another way of thinking about UV space is to imagine creating an unfolded "paper craft" version of your model... turning it from a 3D object into a flat 2D version. This 2D version is then perfect for painting and editing in a traditional 2D paint package such as Photoshop.

There is far more in the areas of UV mapping than just basic textures however. Transparency, shine, reflectivity, surface detail can all be achieved in UV mapping. Those aspects however were not covered in this class.

One thing we did cover was "Ambient Occlusion". This is a technique used to add depth to a model's appearance by creating shadows and darkened areas on a model in creases, much as you would see in reality. Literally, ambient light is being occluded and a darkened space is the result. In Maya, using various aspects of the "Hypershade" window (which frankly, right now seems like some form of witchcraft!), the software can actually calculate the AO and create a texture file that contains that information.

Lastly, we have a final "Presentation Scene" to showcase our work so far and generally show off :) . My scene is as follows...

With all that in mind, 3D Foundations is over. A lot was learned, and a lot still remains... Now onto Art Fundamentals 1!

Week Three... The Detailing gets a boost!

Hi all...

After a successful first two weeks, starting with basic blackouts, then moving on to more advanced techniques (such as extrude and poly-cutting), week three draws to a close after introducing some more considerations.

First up, Cleanup! The more detailed the models become, the more chances of some unusual, or even illegal geometry appearing. Everything from "Hanging Vertices" (Vertices that are simply abandoned and have no purpose, yet still exist), to "N-gons" (polygons with sides greater that 4), to "non-planar surfaces" (a four sides polygon that has its edges and/or vertices not aligned in the same geometric plane). Luckily Maya has tools to help find these and show them on the model itself.

The exercise for the week was to "fix up" a badly modeled object, and try to get as many problems dealt with as possible. I managed to track down all the issues, and fix them, though I will admit that some took some creative thinking!

The main theme this time, it's all about applying details and "edge flow" to our objects. Edge flow, something I always was a aware of but never gave it a name is the basic concept that all edges have a certain degree of "hardness" to them. No edge is ever perfectly square (unless you're looking at a knife blade of course!), so the use of beveling and edge loops can add a degree of subtlety and enhance the appearance of a model.

Additionally, Maya has an option to render surfaces as "hard" (where it takes the edges literally), or "soft" (where it interpolates the lighting between edges for a smoothed effect). Here's a good example on the Hammer... The ground down section between the handle and the head I made "hard" to emphasize the grinding angles, but the head itself in general is "soft" (the face of the head appears as a smooth curved surface, but in reality is a few sections).

Next week, we cover UV mapping... Finally adding some color and texture :) We also create a final scene for turn-in... Watch this space!

So this is a "Two for one" post...

Hi all...

What with one thing or another, I didn't get round to posting last week, so this week's post covers both!

Starting with last week, we got past the "core four" subjects and finally got started with the meat of Game Art. The class I'm in now is "3D Foundations" and is a basic (!) introduction to 3D modeling and Autodesk's Maya package.

The tasks for the week were some basic familiarization exercises (learning how to use and navigate in Maya), parenting of objects, and some basic blocking out. Having used a package previously called Gmax, I found Maya quite intuitive, but like all 3D packages, the logical ways to do things are hidden deep in menus and shortcuts. Luckily, I'm learning these all the time.

Thankfully, I got myself a 100% for both my exercise and main week one assignment, though I did have to redo my week one turn in as I went somewhat beyond the basic block out concept... On the plus side, it gave me more chance to practice ;)

As for weeks two, The exercise was about using the more advanced concepts of Maya; using the three main components of a 3D object (vertices, edges and faces) and extrude tool. This knowledge, along with other research made allowed us to craft much more complex models.

The week two main assignment is to craft five models total, using the techniques learned in the exercises. the models are to use minimal separate objects, and any complex shapes and elements should be appropriately modeled into the 3D objects. It's been a lengthy task for some, and I still have one more to go this week, but so far, I think they look fairly decent... though my grades will be the real indicator there of course ;)

Next week is all about cleaning up and fixing issues with models... of which I am certain there will be plenty of in mine... Stay tuned.

This is just a quick introduction post to explain what this blog is all about. Back in January of 2016, I started a degree in Game Art at Full Sail University. As I progress through my learning, I will be making posts here to supplement my portfolio, and show my development (and perhaps a few cool things along the way!). Keep watching...