Test Textures: Preparing my Skills

Since we are nearing the end of pre-production we need to start thinking about making the film. Since my role is the texture artists, I created some test textures. I wanted to try to make some textures so I can get a feel for what my directors are asking. They both wanted painted styles but the colours of the film are completely different. Here are a few test runs I did.

 

 All these textures need improving but these are just tests. Doing these test really help improve my photo shop skills.

Thank you for reading :)

The Prop Designs for Once Upon A Time In Leningrad

Just like for The Dimension infinite film I took the prop list and started to work on some prop designs.

He will go through the drawings and then he will start to model them in maya.

Thanks fro reading :)

The Prop Designs for The Dimension Infinite.

When I received the prop list for his film I began work on drawing them and designing them using the Simple shape method. The reason why I used this method is so we can look at different designs and we can choose which design we like best and then model it. Here is a prop "mood board" of a few things that are in his scene.

 

 This is the line art of the main room in the film. I took the original drawing from Edward B and made it more clean so we could see what the room would look like with all the props. This is a great reference to use when it comes to modeling.

 
Ed will go through and pick out the ones he likes.

Thanks for reading :).

Character Designs: The Next hurdle.

I got asked by Neil (tutor) to help Ed Hudson (once upon a time in Leningard) with his Main characters turn around. I could go in and change the design to suit my style but I need to keep the DNA of the original design so it would go with the rest of Ed's film.

Here are Edwards Designs that I referred too:

These are the coloured drawing of the old man and orphan by Edward Hudson. 

 Looking at these as reference I then drew my version of the characters, I also had to do the turn around. After studying these drawings I had a rough idea on what I think should been changed.

My Drawings of the Orphan and the old man:

 I showed these designs to our tutor Neil Housego. He said the designs have improved but in the turn around the have misshapen and look rather stiff. So Neil offered to help out by redrawing the characters. He took these and took the imaged in to photoshop and roughed out the designs in red.

 These are the designs he gave to me. He improved the look of them and helped us a lot to move forward in to the production.

I took these drawings in to photoshop and cleaned them and and finished the turn around so Ed could us them in Maya. Here are the final designs for the Main characters:

These are the final Character Designs.

Please note that these are not my designs but I did go in to photoshop cleaned the designs and finished of the turn around. 

Character T-pose.

Now that the designs are done they can be placed in to Maya and ready to be modeled in to 3D. 

Thanks for reading :)

The Prop Lists.

All films have prop lists and these prop lists are really important. We are creating a room/scene from scratch and we need to know what it's going to look like and what we need. Here are the prop lists for both films.

Prop List for Dimension Infinite.

Main room:
Desk
Desk books
List
Ink Pot
Quill
Desk lamp
Photographs
Newspaper Cuttings
Chair
Boxes
Persian Rugs
Chest of Drawers
The Doors
Table Lamps
Floor lamp
Taxidermy Crows
Vases
Wilted flowers
Oil lamp
Furniture with cloth over
Suit of armour with cloth over
Coat Stand
Pipe
Big old suitcase
Wardrobe
Tea Pot
Tea Cup Stacks
Notes
Paper with equations
Pens
Walls/floor

Bird Dimension:
Giant Talons (3 variants)
Cupboards
Desert Plain
Birds Rag
Rocks around Bird

 
Last Dimension:
Horrible Man
Desk
Chair
Arena.

Prop List for Once upon a time in Liningard:

Prop list:
* The Coin - The main prop of the film.
* The Barrel full of discarded rubbish.- The Orphan is seen trying to look through it at the start of the film.
* Loaf of Bread - Given to The Orphan by The Old Man at the end of the film.
* Piles of Snow, and Icicles  - seen around the square throughout the film.

Vehicles
* Cars - 1920s style; Multiple cars seen driving around the square.
* Trams - Also 1920s style; follows along the tracks around the square.

Architecture
* The Buildings - These form an enclosure around the square, where the action of the film take place. The buildings are based on architecture found in St. Petersburg from the 1920s. On these buildings are piles of snow, and hanging icicles.
* The Fountain - Found in the middle of the square. Frozen over and covered in icicles.
* Lampposts - Dotted around the square, covered in icicles.
* Roads and Pavements - Forming the base of the town square, the road has tracks in it for the tram to follow.

I will be designing some of these props a I will feature some model sheets of my drawings once the character designs are finished.

Thanks for reading :).

Character Designs

These are the character designs I did for Once upon a time in Leningard.

Character Line ups:

As you can see I used brown colours and I have tried to find my own style. I also took in to consideration on the place and the time period of the film so I could incorporate that in to my designs. I also had to go back and look at my mood board for colour ideas.
In my last blog I talked about using simple shapes to come up with the character. As you can see for the Russian man I used squares. I made him really tall and thin. I made his nose and beard square so it ties in. this technique is good so get an appealing character. For the girl I used circles for her face and I tried to incorporate that more in to her body.

 In this picture you can see how the shapes make up the body.

 This is how the drawing looks when simplified. Here you can see how I try and stick to one shape.

 I am going to improve my character designs as Ed Hudson has seen my character design and said that they now need to be drawn with his style.

I am now going to do some prop designs for Ed. I will be looking in to 1920s street lamps and buildings. I also need to look in to 1920s Russian coins because in his film the coin is the main object the characters will be playing with. I need to look at what design would be on the coin at the time.    

Thanks for reading :).

Learning about Character Designs and Prop Designs.

Since we have finished doing our mood board we can start to design our characters and our props to be used in the films.

Character design:
For the character design I am going to use a simple technique where I use shapes to develop my characters. This can give characters appeal. We use simple shapes like Square circle and a triangle to form our characters. once we have chosen our shape I am going to try and use the shape though out the character, for example, square body with a square nose. Once I have the basic shapes I can add detail and then colour.
I did a few examples of existing characters to show that the simple shape method is used.

 Here is woody from Disney Pixar Toys story. As you can see they used mostly squares for his body and head.

 This is the character line up for Disney Pixar Ratatouille. They have used all different shapes but they complement each other. They are all different sizes and as a group they work.

 This is just some characters I found on the internet. This shows that even mixing up the shapes can work for example triangle goes well with circles.

 Prop design:
I am going to try the same technique with my props as my characters. This is so we have solid shapes and we can start to develop a style along the way.

Character design in Ed Hudson's film:
For Ed H film he needs background characters to fill out his film with. These characters don't have to be too detailed but they still need to fit in with the style and the location. I am going to do three character designs, one square, one triangle and one circle. After I have designed them I am going to colour them and line them up to see how they match. I need them to complement each other so that if they go in to the film they match.

Prop design for Ed Bulmer's film:
Ed B doesn't really need any character designs for him film, he needs more prop designs as he has a room full of objects. For his props I really want to try out the colours I used in the mood board. I want to try pastel colours with dark reds and browns.

Thank you for reading :)