Cristina's Blog

Concept Sketches For this exercise I had to draw many thumbnails sketches of my environment object/asset. I have selected two thumbnails to talk about on the topic of derelict city and two on the topic of toxic jungle. Thumbnail 1 - Derelict City  This first image for derelict city is one of my favourites because it shows deep rends in the structure of the building on the left side and the collapsed road in the centre foreground creating a deep foreboding abyss which is always good for any horror movie or challenging game. Thumbnail 2 - Derelict City  The second image in the derelict city class is a good example due to the plant having climbed to the very top of the building and gives the impression that many creepers are winding their way inside wrecking concrete and masonry in their attempt to expand. Thumbnail 1 - Toxic Jungle The first image I chose in the toxic jungle class was this of a two headed snake and giant spider, I think this is a g...

Rule of Space  The Rule of Space is a technique that creates a sense of motion or activity in a composition.  In the photo we can see the student in blue with a vast amount of space in front. This gives the implication that there will be movement into this space and in this instance there is a good amount of space available.   Rule of Odds The Rule of Odds states that an odd number of objects is more interesting than an even number. Here we can see that three benches creates the rule of odds giving the viewer interest in the scene. Rule of Thirds The Rule of Thirds states that an image is most pleasing when its subjects or regions are composed along imaginary lines which divide the image into thirds. In the image we can see two examples of this rule ( the hedge and the horizon). In fact the photographer showed too much sky and really we should crop the picture at the top a little to achieve a slightly better thirds ratio. Rule of Simpli...

I decided to create a jet pack in a fantasy style rather than a practical style, borrowing upon the idea of feathers and wings, I started with a main body and created wings and feathers which glow with a neon light, giving the impression of something akin to anti-gravity thrusters The main body of the jet pack would obviously house the energy source and the circle in the middle is almost reminiscent of iron man's energy torus. The body was made using a cube and extruded in several places before adding the energy torus. The wings were created most using cubes and smoothing before duplicating as necessary. When trying to create a glow on the feathers, I used a surface shader material rather than a lambert or blinn. Finally adding the spotlights was a problem because when duplicating a spotlight caused the duplicated one to cease emitting light, therefore all spotlights had to be added manually and adjusted in the property inspector. Due to great attention to detail in cons...

Tower Our assignment was to model a tower. After a considerable amount of thought I decided that I would not do a simple water tower or a modern tower, I would go for a mystic and magic style of tower. My idea was to combine all world magic with maybe mystical slightly futuristic elements. I therefore planned to make the body of the tower in the older style and have a projection from the base of the tower going up inside towards the magical elements above the tower. I started modelling the roof as this would give me the size of most of the other elements. It was also the most time consuming to get the tiling correct. The tiles were difficult to organise because they had to be angled and shaped correctly to be able to place the next layer above and also to be able to place them around in a circle as the centre portion of the tower had to be smaller than the outer part of the tile. This involved several attempts at "Duplicate Special" with different angles and shapes...

Research techniques in the media industries Rosie – She should improve her grammar           - She understands  the nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries and gave illustrative examples with generally correct use of subject terminology Zainab – Grammar needs improving               -  This person explained the nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries with the correct use of subject terminology in great detail, gave an elucidated example  and consistently used subject terminology correctly. Bobby – Grammar needs improving a little             - He has some understanding of the nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries, but he did not give any examples and he seems to jump from an idea to another too fast. ESS...

Bob Eggleton Bob Eggleton is an American science fiction, fantasy and horror artist. His paintings cover a wide range of space ships, alien worlds and inhabitants, dragons, vampires and other fantasy creatures. Fun Fact: He has an asteroid named after him in his honour, so there is an asteroid called Bobeggleton whizzing around the skies. The Rainbow Dragon - Oil painting The rainbow dragon caught my eye firstly because I think dragons are interesting, secondly because of the small figure of a girl on the dragon's tail who seems to be his friend and thirdly because of the rainbow striking the dragon. This painting was the artist's idea of a dragon who could channel colour from the sky and reflect the colour in his scales at will. I think that a painting like this will give ideas for the games along the lines of adventure games, where the dragon will play a central part with his abilities and provide lots of interesting interactions on a questing game....

David Schleinkofer David Schleinkofer made many illustrations for science fiction novels  such as Battlestar Galactica and as painting work for science fiction dried up a little in the 90's he now mostly paints fine art and landscapes. This picture was again hanging on my friend's wall and I loved the ice, snow and the cool colours making up this image. It gives the impression of a very cold forbidding world and the purple aliens depicted here must be very tough to survive in this habitat. Obviously this is easy to imagine a treasure finding game, where the treasure is hidden on this desolate planet, and in fact, this painting was commisioned for a computer game called Absolute Zero. The painting was done using water colour.

Chris Moore Chris Moore is a British Artist born in Yorkshire in 1947 who has discovered the course of many years provided artwork and illustrations for most of the famous science fiction writers of the last century. His clientele include Philip K Dick,  Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, even Lucas Films used him for some of "The Empire Strikes back" artwork. In addition, he has done record covers for Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and has done non-fcition covers for Frederick Forsyth, Jackie Colling and Jeffery Archer. Although he is an accomplished artist for any type or work, it is his science fiction illustrations which really define him and most of his paintings consist of futuristic scenes, imagined far away worlds and the like where amazing use of bold colours captures the imagination and makes you think "could there things really happen" and they look beyond belief or something we could just not imagine in our world. He star...

Exercise: Human head For this exercise we had to produce 3 x A4 drawing of the head at various angles (looking down on the head, looking from the side and looking from below). Drawing number 1: One of the most difficult things for drawing number one was to get the subject to put their head down long enough to get a decent sketch. I found this easier to draw than both the side and below angles. Drawing 1 - Above angle Drawing number 2: I found this one a little more challenging, particularly the lips and eye. I also thought that the front tooth was difficult and tended to look more like a vampire fang than a proper tooth (this may have been aggravated by the fact that when the sun shone on my subject he tended to set on fire). Drawing 2- Side angle Drawing number 3: I found this drawing to be the most complicated and although my drawing seemed to be fairly accurate it appears more like a zombie than a vampire.  Drawing 3 - Below angle To summarise, when...

Analogous Colours Analogous Painting Analogous colours are any colours that are adjacent or next to one another on the colour wheel. They are inherently harmonious because they reflect similar light waves. For example, red and orange are analogous colors. Analogous colours work well together, creating natural harmony. They are often found in nature, such as in the blue, blue-green, green and yellow-green of foliage, and are therefore naturally pleasing. In an analogous colour scheme usually one of the colours is dominant, or used more than others. This colour is usually a primary or secondary colour. Complementary Colours Complementary Painting Complementary colours are two colours that are on opposite sides of the colour wheel. At the hear of colour theory, complementary colours are opposite hues on the colour wheel. In their most basic form, they are one primary colour and the secondary colour that is created by mixing the other two primaries. For instance, the c...

For this exercise we had to observe people and produce 4 A4 pages studies of people in motion. I went to a friend's house for the day where there were several people socialising and partying. It was quite interesting because they were doing all sorts of things (some games and miming, etc). Obviously in the warmth and with fairly captive subjects I was able to relax a little and take my time over this. I had never been really good at drawing figures before, but this did give me some idea of how to approach drawing the human form in a simplistic manner. I feel like I've done better now than ever before. I was particulary proud of the semi reclining female and the spider-man type of action figure doing lots of miming.

The task for this week was to create a sphere of a certain element by adding a texture to it. My element was "water" and I have tried to apply a texture of a wave which I have modified a bit in Photoshop. After, to give the texture a bit more of a 3D look, I have created a bump map by using the same picture of the wave and just turned the grey scale on and adjusting the contrast. The only thing that I found a bit difficult was to find a good texture. A lot of them had watermarks and I also wanted to find something that stands out a bit. At the end, I think it's amazing how you can make a simple sphere look amazing by just adding a texture.

This week we have learned how to texture in Maya. We started with a cube and applied a forest picture as the texture. Then we've noticed that the texture doesn't look right. It was stretched in places and it had a distortion. To fix that we went into the UV editor and exported a UV Snapshot to Photoshop to edit it accordingly to the cube's shape. Our homework for this week was to model a crate and apply a texture to it. I wanted to make my crate look a bit different so I have added some detail on the top face of the crate. This was done using the multi-cut tool to create curves and then with the help of vertices, I manipulated them to make it look as in the picture above. After, I've got a wood texture from the internet and modified it in Photoshop to fit the crate. This was a good exercise as it helped understand how to use UV maps for texturing.

Exercise: Interior Perspectives In this exercise we had to draw on two separate A4 pages a room from one point perspective and another from a two point perspective. I chose one of my earlier bedrooms as a one point perspective drawing and the point I chose for the perspective was a bit higher than the middle of the page. This was to give a better view of the bed and the clothes. The room I chose for my two point perspective was one of my home study room. The two points I chose were at the sides at the page to make the room look more open. From drawing with perspectives I have learned that if the perspective is higher, you will see the top of the objects more clearly and if the perspective is lower you will see the front of the objects more pronounced. Thus the choice of perspective is determined by how you wish to view the majority of the objects within the room. Room 1 Room 2

STRENGTHS What are you good at naturally? I am naturally good at research on the internet, problem solving and analysing situations. What skills have you worked to develop? I am working to develop my drawing skills, 3D modelling skills and programming skills. What are your talents or natural-born gifts? I am a quick learner, a good listener, a hard working person. What do other people see as your strengths? Being calm, finishing projects on time, the ability to analyse things. What values and ethics set you apart from your peers? Analytical ability. WEAKNESSES What are your negative work habits and traits? Sometimes I work too hard, I get upset when things go wrong or don't work the way they're supposed to. Does any part of your education or training need improving? There is always space for improving. What would other people see as your weaknesses? Being a quiet and introverted person. Where can you improve? Trying not to be negative. What are ...

Exercise: Object perspectives The exercise was to select three objects and draw them from at least five different perspectives, from a low view point up to a higher view point. I started with a bottle and managed relatively good perspective sketches of the bottle using perspective lines and feeding upon my success I spied a wonderful scary Halloween pumpkin lantern which looked to be a lot of fun. However, this was not as easy as the bottle proved to be and I did only a reasonable job on this. Resolving to exceed expectations on my third effort, I picked a shape which should show perspectives dramatically being of cuboid shape i.e. a box type pencil sharpener. True to my resolution, I produced what I consider to be the "piece de resistance" of my three attempts. In an effort to understand why I did so well on the pencil sharpener I came to the conclusion that straight lines rule in perspective drawing and curves are not as easy when drawing from different perspective...

 Exercise: Still life arrangement Select a range of objects from around your house, ideally a minimum of 5. Set them in an interesting arrangement, and produce a full page detailed A4 drawing. Step 1: Select 5 objects from around the house Step 2: Arrange them in an interesting way. Be sure to set them up in a location where you can work without disruption. Step 3: Plan your drawing lightly using the sighting method to establish distance and scale, Step 4: Work from your rough plan, work into detailed full A4 drawing of your still life arrangement. Work in pencil/graphite, with shading (shading values). Materials: ~ 5 objects of your choice ~ A4 paper ~ 2B pencil/graphite. ~ My most difficult part of this project was actually choosing the still life objects to use. I wanted to make something good, but equally did not want to go overboard to make things difficult at this early stage. After arranging the items I decided upon a center point of the drawing and then m...

Mjolnir SUMMARY This model was fascinating to do because it involved using many different tools which took a lot of time researching on the internet. This was a very time consuming project not only because there was a lot to learn and a lot to do, but also because I decided to use a drawing program to create the curves for the ornament details. I found this technique on the internet whereby I could draw curves in a drawing program such as Photoshop or CorelDraw and then export them as EPS (encapsulated postscript) file. This was easier than trying to model the curves directly in Maya. However, I obviously had to install the drawing program and to do that I also had to upgrade my internet explorer and to do that...............(Further, I wish I had found out earlier that I could have used Photoshop to create EPS Files as then I would not have had to install CorelDraw and learn a bit of that because I already know Photoshop a little - Grrr!). In total with the reinstallin...