Character Modelling Brief: Day One

This brief is off to a good start! Spent most of today gathering materials for my four moodboards...that's pretty much today - summed up in two sentences!

To be more precise, I've been looking at different characters and different styles, focusing on many, many, many aspects such as the posture, colour scheme, visual appeal - and trying to think outside the box at the same time. My most-developed character idea at the moment is the concept of a 19th-Century stage illusionist. Perfect, seeing as we have to choose music produced between the 20s-50s for our animation! It should fit well. I'm going to go radically different for my other ideas - cartoony, an animal perhaps; a completely different vibe altogether basically! I'm also thinking about different, innovative ways to approach my character, something that'll make it more my own, and less derivative of past media depictions. Good times.

So yeah, lots of things to think about while I'm on a delayed bus due to the snow! :p

Lighting Assessment Images

Two research sheets on lighting types and some renders of the completed scene:

Lighting Scene: Update

Started work on my scene to be used in the lighting project. Taking inspiration from one of my case studies, I'm doing an art gallery-style thing. Although it's not one grounded in reality, it's just a lighting concept, and as a result there are no doors or windows! Why? To eliminate natural light. I'm basing the whole thing on artificial light, notably spotlights used to highlight the exhibits. I've got a few directional lights in there too, just to give the room an ambient visibility. Here are a few shots of what I've got so far, I think I'll be adding in a few more objects though...

Thursday: Tutorial Classes

We've been doing a lot of Maya tutorials today concerning texturing and lighting. These are a few screenshots of my progress today...

Second Update on Lighting

Produced three moodboards yesterday in addition to the two I've already started in our 3DS Max class. I've also completed my first case study (focusing on an art gallery) and I should get the other two done in preparation for upload on Wednesday. Also sketched a dead tree this morning with a forest fire in the background - put a lot of time into shading it, and used a putty eraser for the first time in the process. All in all, it turned out good enough to be shown to the rest of the class as an example. My drawing/sketching skills are getting better, seemingly, but I've still got a lot to learn in that respect. We were also shown Molyneaux's tech demo for Milo. From a modelling/animation point of view, yeah, it's impressive stuff, as for the concept, well, it hasn't impressed me since the E3 demo. I sense it's premise is much the same as Heavy Rain, where the player's decisions are said to customize the game, but in reality, the player's decisions just lead them down one of a few pre-defined scripted paths. Although I'm always happy to see developers trying new things, experimenting. That's how the industry evolves. Perhaps such ideas are better explored in indie games. Anyway, rant over!

EDIT: Three images to be used in my second case study, which will focus on greenhouses...

Lighting: First Progress Update

I'm currently compiling a series of A3 design pieces - an A3 page on natural light, one on unnatural light, and three case study pages. In addition to this, I'm putting together a moodboard of lightning-based images, putting my moodboard total up to three. I'm planning on possibly getting some A4 research sheets done too, which will explore particular sources of light and the effects they have on a scene.