Life Drawing - Lesson 11

A 5 minute sketch, I managed to capture the outline with minor errors.

Two more 5 minute sketch. These two are much better, even managing to add in muscle tone in one of the picture.

Again I have tried to put muscle on the piece,  on the model, the muscle tone was much more visible, so I wanted to show this through the life drawings.

1 minute sketches all on top of  each, this was so we could get our imitation of the body up, so we instantly knew what parts of the body to look out for.

Another 5 minute sketches. I managed to get much more detail on the image, by sacrificing a more accurate body shape. 

In the last part of the session, I drew two different images, both consisting of two different  colors, so you can easily see where the shadows appear and where they spread to.

Life Drawing - Lesson 10

These were some extremely quick 3 minute sketches that we did at the start of the session. 

Here are more of them, it was just to get a reough indication of  the body.

Moving on to 5 minute sketches, I had to use a biro this time, which was a lot harder but in a way, much more enjoyable, as you learn not to regret any of your mistakes.

Again continuing on from the 5 minute drawings.

For the 1st 15 minute one, I decided that I was going to use charcoal. The body shape, I got perfect, its just the shading that is not as great as it could be, that's why next time, I will use lighter shades.

Using a graphite pencil, I managed to get the shape of this model absolutely perfect. The way that she is positioned made the piece work. The only problem being that it did take a long time to get the shape right, not leaving me long to shade with.

As we had a 5 minutes left, we were told that we could do a quick sketch. Again using my graphite pencil, I managed to get the outline of the model done, the only problem being that that was it. 

Using the Warp tool in Photoshop

Today we were told that we were going to be learning how to use the "warp" and "Scew" tool in Photoshop, something that would become extremely useful when it came to creating something that looked realistic. The first thing that we were told to do was to open the files that were given to us and used the skills that Steve had just showed us to make this piece have a texture on it.

Using the "scew" tool to wrap it around the pipe.

At first I decided that I would be using the scew tool, this meant that I could wrap this piece of texture around the pipe and make the angles look right. You can see on the pipe I have made several adjustments to it. The tool is actually really simple to use, using the the corners to adjust where the picture was going to be.

Using the warp tool to polish it.

When we selected the warp tool, We could drag the different angles and make the picture. It was especially useful as we could curve it, The best example of this was when I needed to put it on the cylinder. I could easily drag it across and make it look realistic.

The final result.

This is what I got as well as adding a layer of white on top to emphasis the shadows on the piece. The way that I have used a combination of these two tools has worked out very nicely. I'm really glad that I managed to learn this skill as I believe that it will be vital in the next few years when creating pieces of concept art.

The character is ready for the skin.

We were also given a character to skin as we were told we need to show our teacher what we had learnt had officially stuck in our head. We were given this vampire creature and as it was already made for us, all we had to do was use what we had learnt and apply it to this creature.

Example of lizard skin on the internet.

I went straight onto the internet and managed to find a image of my interpretation of what I felt the skin would look like. I wanted to give this creature a green skin and try to wrap it around his head using the tools that we had at our disposal.

The model with the finished skin on.

As you can see the way I have applied it has worked out extremely well. Using a combination of both tools and then deleting the remaining skin, it looks quite realistic. The main concern was rounding it on the characters head as its a dome shape, so you need to really see the way that scales move along at a different angle.

I am really pleased with what I have learned to day and feel that the results that I got where fantastic, I only hope to continue this trend into the next lesson and again, I am very happy that I got to learn a skill, fairly simple, but none this lesson quite important.

Lava Lizard in Photoshop

Following on from the session in which we created realistic looking lava and managed to paint a monster using that effect, we were told by Steve that we were going to use the techniques that we had learnt during that session and put it into a piece of work of our own. The objective was to create our very own lava creature.

I really wanted to work on my 3-D skills and thought that it might be a good idea if I created something using a 3-D program such as Maya or Mudbox and took it into Photoshop and painted over the top. First things first I had to get some inspiration, what did I really want to create? What would be something that I would be proud of? I was in the middle of a discussion with a group of friends about the best race on a game series called "The Elder Scrolls" and that's when it hit me, I would love to do a lava twist on a lizard, a small one at least, something that hasn't been done before.

"Rage" demon on Dragon Age.

When I searched the internet for inspiration, there wasn't much to be honest, everything that I was looking at was all the same thing, so instead I didn't really look at the creature, I looked at the skin of it and saw how it flowed from its body. My main source of inspiration was the "rage demon" that features on the video game Dragon Age: Inquisition. The way that the body flows from the bottom of its body, whereas it has a fleshy top, to hold it all together.

Starting the sculpture.

I started up Mudbox, the 3-D modelling program where you can sculpt and was ready to start my piece. I was extremely lucky to find out that Mudbox has a variety of templates and one of them is a geko type lizard. Instantly, I selected the template that I wanted to use and went away carving the pieces that would not feature in my lizard.

I firstly started off by using the grab tool and pulling apart the neck. I wanted him to have a natural brace around his neck, just like that of a lion or a velociraptor. It is something that is like a warning to people, telling them to stay away.

The next thing that I did in this was create pivots and put them on my creature. By doing this I could move my creature about, such as the legs and place them in a certain position. This made it look like the creature was moving and was extremely simple to do. Just by selecting the pivot and then the move tool I could place it anywhere that I want.

Moving the pivot on the lizard.

The next thing that I did was use the tools that I had learnt when making the T-Rex in Mudbox. I wanted to grab something off of the internet and project it onto my creature. As this creature was going to be a lava/magma creature, the main idea was grab a picture of rocks for his body and paint it all over.

Going on the internet.

I started to sculpt the picture using the projection tool and setting the rock image that I found as a stamp. Using the sculpt tool and literally painting over the top to get the texture of the rock onto the character, it gives the skin of the character a really rocky feel and gives the right effect to I wanted to have.

The projection tool.

The next thing that I decided to do was use the projection tool, but with this time I would use the stencil to import a picture. With this one I decided that I would get an image of magma and would then paint it onto my character. It is pretty straight forward as all I have to do is place the image over my lizard and just drag the brush across to get a representation  onto the model.

Selecting lava as a stencil.

The next stage of the creature was to render it and take it into Photoshop and paint it over the top. As I have been working on the position of the character right from the start, I didn't need to make it so that he was in a decent position. The rendering is also quite easy. All I had to do was go into Mudbox and use the preset settings, then from there all I had to do would be to adjust the settings to my liking and then save it as a JPEG.

Rendering the creature.

The final render of the lizard.

After I had got the final render and saved it, I imported the lizard into Photoshop in a file that I had already set up. I started of the piece by giving it a black background. By doing this, it meant that I could clearly see the piece, and and glowing effects that I was going to give it.

The next stage was creating the lava paint. I did this I when I created a lava monster a few days back. The lava was very simple to create. All I had to do was create a new layer and select the white paint brush and dab some on the layer. From here, I changed the color of the outer layer to red and the color of the inner layer yellow. This meant that when I painted, The lava paint came out and looked very interesting.

Creating the lava of the creature.

The next thing that I could do was start to paint the lava into the creature on the page. The only problem with this is that I had to pick out the points that would show the lava a lot stronger in different positions. The way that the brush works, the more I paint in a position, the brighter the position will be. After I had textured the skin with a magma materiel on Mudbox, I could use the brush and follow the lines in the skin to create a realistic looking creature.

One I had marked out the parts that were gonna have the splits in the skin, the next thing that I did was make the creature glow. I wanted to give of the effect that the creature was emitting light, due to the heat. The way that I did this was that I replicate it and then selected the outline of the creature, then deleting the image and keeping the outline, I created a glow and then rubbed out the parts were lava was not shown.

Giving the creature a glow.

The last thing that I needed to do was to set the scene. This was was because the picture looked extremely bland with just a black background and I wanted to make the piece seem much more realistic. The first thing that I did was go onto the internet and find a rock to place the creature on. I placed it onto the scene and arranged it so that it worked perfectly. I created a new layer and painted under his body so that it looked like he actually had a shadow. After blurring the rock, I moved on and painted under his legs to make it look like he was burning the rocks that he was stepping on.

Setting the scene.

The next thing that I did was finding a suitable background that would work with my creature. At  first I tried using a background with a cliff side to show this creature in a natural environment. I grabbed a picture and then decided that it would look much better and realistic if I blurred the background and create foreshortening. Below is the result that I got.

I was quite proud with this design but still felt that the background was not suiting to the creature, so I went on and grabbed another one.

Final design 1.

I felt that this one was much better and the background really mixed in with the creatures origins and looked quite professional, I especially liked the red mist in the background and how the piece ties itself together.

I gave this creature a bit of a back story to help create realism. The creature known as Vulcan's mask (Vulcan being the Roman god of volcano's). He was first discovered when explorers in Rome found all these little creatures wading about near pompay. Its even said that their origins are directly linked to the famous eruption. All though they are cute and a look friendly, these animals pack a hell of  punch and the lava acts a strong defense mechanism.

I would defiantly have to say that I think that the second one is a much better piece. The whole feel of it makes it feel a lot darker, like an actual creature that does exist. If I were to do this piece again, I would perhaps add some more detail at the Mudbox section, make this creature stand out a bit more. I do like the footprints on the stone, making it look like he has scorched the rock.

Final design 2.

T-Rex in Maya

We went into the lesson today to find out that we were going to be making a low poly model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. This fits in perfectly as we had just sculpted into the same character in mudbox (though this was in a template). The idea is that you create a low poly model, like the one that we are doing, and then take it into mudbox to spruce it up. It was just unfortunate that we had the mudbox session before this as we could have used our own models instead of a template.

We started off by creating a plane and putting a sketch of a T-Rex on it, so that we had reference that we could constantly refer to and make sure that the character that we were creating was absolutely perfect.

Starting up the T-Rex.

When we ready, our tutor told us that we would be going to obtain a file that was already made for us. In this file we had the T-Rex already set up for us. What our teacher had done for us was he mirrored the cube to start with. Whatever we did to one side of the cube, the other would follow it exactly, for example, if I wanted to pull a face forward, the other side would then proceed to do the same.

At the start of forming the face.

As I am doing a low poly of the T-Rex, I wanted to keep the head quite basic, so I started off using the cube that we had already been given to us, I extruded it so that I got a outline of what the head would look like. Now at the moment, the head looks nothing like the reference image. that's because at the moment, I haven't inserted a certain amount of edge loops onto the shape. One I have done this, I can make the head more physically appealing.

The low  poly of the head.

As you can see in the image above, I managed to create a low poly version of the head that looks pretty accurate. You can see that I managed to get the basic things done right such as the eyes, the skull shape and the open mouth. The one thing that I'm not too happy with at this point is the way that the eyes are, structurally. I would do my best to touch this up later, but for now, I would like to continue with the rest of the body.

Extruding the neck.

The head was done, this meant that I could move on with model. Starting with the  structure that I had at the neck, I could start extruding it and create the body. It will be a slow but efficient method. Whenever I need to make the neck/body bigger, I can just scale the extrude and then press "G" to repeat. This is a process that I would be using a lot, so that the body can look as realistic as possible.

Carrying on the extruding all the way to the table.

I continued on with the process that I had used above and repeated the same methods. This low poly model went all the way down the tail, but this mostly a test, just to see if it had worked at all. It had but the edges in the piece were very messy and somehow affected the piece. I decided that I will be starting back at the beginning of the body, just so I can create a more realistic looking creature.

Starting the neck again to a better standard.

Looking at the image above you can already see a drastic improvement to the character that I had just attempted to make. This is a good process to go through as I feel that I am learning quite a lot by just re doing all the actions again, just in better ways. The structure of the body is looking more realistic a firmer, I just needed to carry this on to the tail of this beast and then I could start to do other features on the  T-Rex.

Cutting a whole for the legs to fit in.

Now that the basic body of the T-Rex had been forged, it was time for me to start the legs. Using the reference that I had on the background, I could decided whereabouts the legs were going to start off at. Once I had found the point that the new legs were going to located, I selected the first few faces on the flat side and decided to delete them. This was so that I could completely reconstruct the legs into the image that I want, while at the same time not having to deal with as many problems with the faces being inside of each other.

Extruding the edge and slowly forming the top of the leg.

At this stage I am selecting the edges from the cut that I had made and I am extruding them out., I keep repeating the process, and then I bridge the hole, so that now, I have the tops of the leg, looking fairly decent and ready for me to use it to structure out the rest of my leg.

Pulling the leg down to reflect the template.

I have the template lined up right next to my low poly T-Rex, so the next step was for me to follow it and pull the leg out to replicate this exactly. This again, was simple enough, I selected the edge that was available after doing the last move and then went on to extrude it and pulled it down. I was starting to gain a decent looking leg and it was starting to come together, all I had to do was follow where the template took me.

Using the same method on the arms.

I did the exact same process that I had done above for the arms. Again, all I had to do was select where I was going to put the skull and make the muscles that would feature in the piece look fairly prominent. As well I used the template to help indicate where this would go and get realistic sized hands for the creature.

Creating little hands for the T-Rex.

This next part was quite easy, all I had to do was to split the square that was the hand using the "Insert Edge Loop Tool". The next thing that I did was position the two new edges apart from each other. This created two pincers that were apart from each other. After that all I had to do was extrude it forward and then at the end scale it in so that it has a sharp edge to it, looking more like a hand.

Continuing with the rest of the leg.

After I had completed the had, I felt that using the skills that I had learnt, I could finish up with the feet. As you can see on the image above, This time I didn't necessarily stick to the template because of the way that I had positioned my dinosaur. It was only slightly out, so I managed to keep the same structure to it, but if I were to do this again, I would be constantly watching the template, making sure that everything was in the right place.

Extruding the toes.

For the toes, I wanted to get some claws on it, like actual T-Rex's had, so to do this I first needed to create the toes. This was achievable by selecting three faces and then extruding them. The next thing I did after pulling them out was to select the two edge toes and rotating them inwards. This gave me the structure ready to create the nails on the dinosaurs foot.

Polishing off the toes and adding nails to it.

What was left for me to do was keep on re-sizing and extruding the nails until I got the result that I was happy with. Another thing that I did was to select the edges and play around with the direction and with it I got some pretty interesting results as shown above.

A finished low poly model of the T-Rex.

The Low poly version of the T-Rex was finally finished, if I were to take this any further, the next step would be to export this model as an fbx file. From there I can take this model into mudbox and sculpt over the top of it, meaning that you can make any decent low poly model and touch it up in another program.

A smoothed out version of the low poly model.

I really did enjoy today's session and did feel that I had learnt a lot. I like the idea that I now know how to make a decent low poly model and export it into a program of my choosing for editing. I' am really happy with the result that I ended up with as the creature does look quite menacing and scary.

If I were to do this piece again, I would give the T-Rex a unique shape. This is so that it is original and different form everyone else, something that would stand out in a sea full of T-rex's would be remarkable.

Drawing and Painting a Lava Monster in Photoshop

In today's lesson we were told that we were going to be learning how to draw lava. This was something that I was extremely looking forward to as lava is such a unique thing, its full of many different colors, like reds, yellows and oranges and every single streak of it tells a story and is unique to itself. 

We were told to start the lesson of by going onto the internet and grabbing a source of reference, instantly, we I went to Google and grab a piece of lava that really interested me. I was caught to it by the many different shades of red and how it goes up the colour spectrum as you go up.

Starting to replicate the lava.

At first, I created a black background. By doing this, It means that I could emphasis the glow of the lava which also means I could show different temperatures of heat easily. The contrast between the such bright colours and the dark background is perfect because the viewer can see clear;y what work has been done by me to get to a certain detail.

The next thing that I went on to do was selecting a bright yellow, with this, I would brush streaks of the paint all over the page, to get an interpretation of what I would think a creak of lava would like.

A way of showing heat in images to put in white, bright colours. You cannot go any brighter than white, so it is seen as the hottest point. As lava is extremely hot and taking note from the reference that I had, I proceeded to paint in different places onto the streaks, getting an interesting effects, but defiantly the ones that I wanted.

Just as white is seen as way of showing high temperatures, the further down the spectrum that the go, the cooler the temperature of the colour actually is, Such as red, although it will still be extremely hot, it is much cooler than that of the white centre. Too create a much more realistic looking lava, I added in streaks of red to merge the colour.

Adding a slight background to the lava.

The next thing that I wanted to do, to create realism, was add a crust to the lava. This is when the lava has gotten too cool and started to form a solid. I got a much darker and deeper red than that of the lava and started to paint away. I also wanted to add different loops and bumps in the crust. By selecting a darker red, I could lightly brush the parts which I felt could be raised.

Adding a glow to the lava.

The lava streaks that I had made were finished and I must say, I was pretty impressed with what I had created but instantly we were told by our tutor that there was a much easier way of doing it. Excited that we could learn a different way of creating lava, I set to work and followed the instructions that he had gave us.

We had to go and paint white streaks, by doing this, it meant the white was already in and the centre was already done and the hottest point was selected. The next that we had to do go onto the shadow settings and select "Outer Glow". in this selection you can select what colour you want it to be. As red is mainly located on the outside of the lava, I selected it and tuned the settings so that it wasn't too large, but just there so you slightly see it. The same is replicated on the "inner glow" but with yellow.

What is so fantastic about doing this is that if we keep the white brush selected and paint onto the layer, it keeps the same properties and paints like lava essentially creating its own brush.

A screenshot of the painting.

Using the techniques that we have learned, we were told that we were going to be creating a lava monster out of a sculpture that was ready for us. We had to warp the sculpture to look as if  covered in lava and was extremely hot.

I went onto the file that was set out for us and took it into Photoshop. I cut the background out by using the lasso tool and just selecting the creature. Now I had just the creature I was ready to set up the paint brush that I had used earlier and paint this golum.

The sculpture that was ready to paint.

The first thing that I went on to do was create a brush, exactly like the one that we had done earlier and start to mark out the places where the lava was going to spill out of. I then proceeded to exaggerate them a lot further and create the spillages. I wanted it to make it look like the rock structure was still there, holding the creature together and make sure that it wasn't getting consumed by the lava.

Once the lava had been placed the next move was to adjust the hue and saturation of the golom creature. I wanted to make it look like the rocks have been burning and have taken a fair bit of damage over the years. I also adjusted the brightness settings to give this character plenty of scorch marks. After the creature had been completed, I decided that I wanted to give him a background. This way the creature has a sense of realism to him. I got an image off of the internet of like a volcanic planet and placed it. I wanted to add a fore shadow to the piece, so using the blur tool, I completely covered the background.

As I only had the top half of the sculpture, I wanted to add something that would cover it up, so again, using the internet, I gained a photo of a rock and modified it to my liking.

The last thing that I had left to do was to create a sense of distance. I wanted this creature to fairly big, so using the smudge too, I washed it with his back hand. This also created moment in the piece, like he was swinging his arm.

Adding the final touches.

Overall I am extremely happy with how I got on in today's lesson. It seems that the further along this course I go, the easier it is for me to work independently. I find that the new skills that are being gained are perfect in the way that they are being taught and I can only hope that as more and more lesson go by, I continue to learn at this rate.

If I were to do this creature again, I would first start off by creating a slightly more realistic mouth. The aim that I was going for wasn't too great compared to the final product. I would also make the rock in front perhaps slightly less visible on the page as it starts to draw away attention from the creature itself.

Overall though I am happy with what I have done and hope it continues.

My final Monster.