The Lonely Road

Using a few different techniques from photo-bashing to using custom brushes i've been practicing building up images in a similar way to how i am going to approach the Final Matte painting which will be undertaken in my production time. These concepts are merely for understanding a rough idea of the angle and feeling of the Matte painting I will Create,  I've found my developments lead to a mix between a very Silent hill feeling world/the glows and blues of a Sci-fi/futuristic styled world. 

The mood board shows a great few examples and colours which will influence my Matte painting/Set extension.

Initial Scenery Concepts

I started off with 6 different routes that i could explore, I tried to make them varied but still with the post-apocalyptic, Single character stance. I really liked the the though of having the character approach a Bridge, and thought of films like 28 Days later, when the city is completely dead, and Planet of the Apes, when the mist is settling just before the fighting begins, aswell as the Classic poster shot of I Am Legend with the broken bridge taking main stage compositionally above Will Smith's character. I had these in minds as I started to develop the bridge idea in the second set of concepts, I used various technqiues, photo-bashing, drawing over the top and custom brushes to get various effects. These are still initial concepts, and I plan to develop and redefine a single finished Version that can give our piece more understanding visually.

Understanding the project

As i'm still developing the piece things are still up in the air narrative wise, But to make sure the Animator/Rigger was on the same wavelength as me I collected more reference footage from various VFX shorts that contained certain qualities that I want this project to be pushed towards, I also broke down the basics of project so far and will be updating as it develops along with sending through the development of the Scenery concepts. this is to make sure the team has enough information to begin with rough Animatics, and throw in potential idea's to enrich the project and its direction. 

Mechs&Scenery Research

Before delving in I collected a range of compositions and strong scenes I liked with powerful silhouettes/Characters placed in them. I specifically found reference using Mech type characters to focus my reference images more for when I begin the concepts for the scenery, to see what works well. I'm exctied to start the concepts as this is around the time i'm also progressing the story behind the project, and visualizing the character and potential Scenery's together will definitely help build upon the story of this project.

something to keep in mind

“Life is nothing but imperfection and the computer likes perfection, so we spent probably 90% of our time putting in all of the imperfections, whether it’s in the design of something or just the unconscious stuff. How the camera lens works in [a real] housing is never perfect, and we tried to put those imperfections [into the virtual camera] so that everything looks like you’re in familiar [live-action] territory.”

-Andrew Stanton

Collaborative Proxy Modelling

Been focusing alot on my collaborative work for my FMP recently, just finished basic proxy modelling of the character and helmet for my rigger/animators reference. Production work doesn't start till early January, but its good to get in early pieces of work like this so we are well prepared to start when we get back!

Realistic Eyes

An interesting post from Disney Research Hub, I've been gathering alot of realistic and next gen CG research recently for my FMP 'Advanced Mech Character' as well as looking at alot of resources of creating realistic CG features, a friend showed me this, really interesting to see this advancement in eye modelling.

Collaborative Mech Character Pre-production

Face Development

I already knew the qualities I wanted on the face, if you check out the first development page I have a list of features that would give me the type of action face I want, I wanted it to be a hardened, bald type figure, the classic main hero worn face that you see in a lot of cinematic trailers, I wanted a stubble on his face and scalp, with a chizzled jaw and sharp features on his face with a button nose. I decided to do a one of sketch of what I was picturing then worked different hairstyles on top of the original to see how different hairstyles would effect the look of the character. 

I'm really happy with the different versions but I may just go with the bald as if still has that feel of a post apocolyptic have to stay clean shaven/cut to survive and for ease etc.

Collaborative Mech Character Pre-production

Body Development

Collaborative Mech Character Pre-production

Helmet Development

I decided to tackle the helmet separately form the character as It was a going to be a separate prop, So I began with rough silhouettes around a roughly shaped head, I then continued with various shapes I liked and started to add some more shape and colour into them, It was a very on the fly technique of continually working into which shaped I liked most. Once the shape started to develop I had to start working out exactly how it as going to work, and which parts of it I wanted to move so that the rigger/animator could easily set it up once I handed over the model, so i drew up some 'How to' pages that explained the way the helmet would work and shift when opening and closing, aswell as a colour breakdown of the different materials!

Collaborative Mech Character Research

I love collection alot of research before jumping straight into a project. In my head I already knew i wanted to look at some type of male character with an army influence, I looked at many different influences from a very general grab straight away then whittled it down to different film and game concept work, I looked at The new call of duty artwork to the edge of tomorrows artwork, but my favorite collection of images was form the artist 'Vitaly Bulgarov' who creates alot of 3D concepts for mechanical company's but also does concept work for some films. some absolutely brilliant mechanical concepts for Robocop underneath !

Check out more at his website at: http://www.bulgarov.com/

Green & Blue's Turnaround

My character turnarounds and a breakdown of some of the other work I did on the project, the week after I refined a few of the problems like the IBL quality being set to low causing the shadow flicker etc so our VFX guy had the correct images to work with for our final piece, say hello to Green & Blue!!

A collection of making of images and the pre-production all In one video! sorry its a little long needed to incorporate everything for a deadline, but happy with how the project went as a whole!!
As I am still very much in the process of learning I see everywhere project as a chance to grow and understand the pipeline better and become a better artist, I feel every project that I do I am successful in this and am looking forward to the next project I am on!

Lighting Development

Here I tried to get the renders so that they were clean aswell as looked similar to the backdrops, we made a mistake in not capturing the HDR'S of the scenery so when it came to lighting it was a little more difficult, I would say this was the weakest part of our project, the characters didn't quite fit into the scene which was a shame, I'm glad we got the scenery and back plates setup properly in Maya though with rough modeled in scenery to capture all the required shadows against the walls, I liked shadow length and feel I got on the later images as I think this was the closest I got to mimicking the light influence on the characters, A little dissapointed but glad to know what to do and fix properly next time around which is always important!!