Ben Mathis week

It's always a pleasure to have a professional from the industry come into class and go through their general work flow on a project. I wonder if it would be possible to get other people to come in and do such things as when it comes to an art based course, being told by the pros how they do it, isn't always descriptive enough.

That boy does like his keyboard shortcuts though.

Seeing how he did things was quite eye opening such as how he had the basic model for a skeleton done in around one morning then the entire model done by the end of the second day, tweaking and all. 

He really knows some niche stuff that I may not have learnt otherwise such as using layer adjustments instead of applying the same filters to the layer itself. Now I just have to find a way to get it to only apply to an area. Thinking about it, using a normal selection may be what i need. It makes complete sense as there have been times that I've wanted to use an original image but adjusted it for a lil too much to make it unusable again.

Turning off the bounding box in 3Dsmax is also a helpful thing. I say helpful but that thing hardly had a purpose anyway. If it does maybe itll become apparent but I don't think ill find myself saying "I wish that bounding box was here. IT would make this so much easier"

His texturing was pretty first class too. I'm glad he likes having pixellated textures too as thats almost a special thing of having a low poly model. Its an extra style that adds more than it takes away. And how he painted it was quite impressive too, I may have missed some of it but I did keep looking up at his final result as he was going. His little talk on the antialiasing and mip maps (painting the texture sheet the primary colour in the texture instead of black) is bound to be useful in the future.  I was also surprised that you could paint in 3D in Cinema 4D. I used that very program in College but considering that our tutor had no idea about what he was doing, let alone 3D, we didnt get very deep into that one. But perhaps it didn't have that functionality back then...I'd like to get my hands on it now though.

Wish I coulda seen him using mudbox, that woulda been the icing on the cake. Then again, we already got more than our monies worth as he gave us insights into the industry, how to meet people and approaching them for jobs. As always its not a what you can do as much as a who you know kinda business. Better make sure I don't make any enemies on the course  .

All in all I would have worked on that WoW project too but considering I'm not a stickler for WoW I didn't want to join in. It wouldve been the 100th Night elf female dark knight anyway. These Game artisans competitions are pretty good sometimes. I still have to finish my mini racer, along with a pixelly texture. That and my Sackboy of Persia but with all this work I set myself up for doing over christmas, hope I can find the time before the new year deadline.

Roll on tomorrow where more art is bound to happen

Night of the hunter

Night of the hunter was an interesting film especially since I kinda dislike black and white films. Taking out the colour takes out some of the charm of films and removes a whole dimension. However it does make strong the contrast that its given. Many of the scenes at night  are lit well showing only the characters lit compared to the rest of the scene. The first scene that shows this is the Reverends shadow appearing on the wall of John and Pearl's bedroom. A towering shadow that enveloped most of the light in the room showed him in an ominous light. Looking out of the window showed the Reverend standing by a street lamp looking at the house, singing one of his hymns, as if to decieve that he was still a holy man.

The film opens with a brief message of about trust. Not everyone is trustworthy and this of course leads to the reverend. Just because he seems believable doesn't mean he is. 

Ben harper, a minor character, runs back to his house and tells his son John about the money he has just stolen. He's hidden it inside of his sister's, Pearl's, doll.  John isn't able to tell anyone under any circumstances until he comes back. This of course startsa thrilling film of cat and mouse for the greedy reverend to get his hands on the money.

The reverend has the words Love and hate tattooed on his knuckles. He uses these as a way of winning people over and misleading people into thinking hes a good man. His tale says that man is strong and the hate grows but eventually love wins overall. For impressing some of the townspeople he is invited to the town picnic. A few days later at the town picnic he get John aside and interrogates him. He repeats this later on after he marries their mother as an excuse to getting closer to the money. 

Of course it would be very hard to forget the strangest scene in the film when the river water is as clear as a glass of the liquid. John and his friend Birdie can perfecty see his dead mother sitting at the bottom of the river in a car. Just why is the water so clear? Water is never as crisp and clear as that. Hilariously stupid mistake really.

Not wanting to live the rest of his life being in fear of the reverend, he takes Pearl into his repaired river boat and goes downriver, even sleeping on the boat as night falls.  They spent the rest of that night in a barn hiding from the Reverend who rides in front of a magnified moon on a horse. His black shadow creating the perfect threat merely 100 yards away.  The next day, they come into contact with Rachel Cooper who looks after a few other abandoned children.  She takes John and Pearl under her wing only if they work on the farm for their keep. John reveals the tales and Rachel promises to protect them if the Reverend comes near.

That night he does and Rachel upholds her promise, guarding the front porch with her shotgun. The two of them sing the hymn that the Reverend has sung throughout the film. Its as though this song is their fighting, both of them singing to show how determined they both are to win. The lone candle that lights up Rachel goes out and the Reverend makes his move into the house to get a hold of John and the doll once and for all. 

At the end of the film, the Reverend is arrested and the scene plays out exactly the same as when Johns father was arrested. The police wrestle the adult to the ground, John shouts "Don't..don't" and collapses onto the ground in tears. This shows us that even though the reverend is a terrible person, John things of him like his father or at least somebody that he cares about so much he doesnt want to see them in prison. Later shown by John not pointing out the Reverend in court, letting him run free.

The film ends with it being Christmas at Rachel Coopers. It is like the light at the end of the dark tunnel that was his journey. And with the money no longer in his possession, the "Reverend" can no longer bother him.

Colours

The 9th floor resides in grey tones with hints of blue everywhere

The 8th floor is mostly yellow with brown wood everywhere

You can never unsee it

Christmas Checklist

Things to do:

Environment: Edit colour palettes

Change bench model to fix textures and alphas.

Add more bushes, plants and shrubs.

Fix back bushes into a subtle bush

Light and Render

War of the Worlds: Give diagrams as to what it is

Fix bump maps and add speculars

Add blue energy orb

Light and Render

Self portrait: Improve head modelling (lower poly etc.) Side and 3/4. Draw over a face photo to get edgeloops

Bigger hands and improve foot structure

More relaxed pose

Get decent textures

Rig

Light and Render

Blogs: Carnival of souls, city of lost children, children of men, donnie darko, Brazil, Dark City, Blitz, Rare and Ben Mathis talks. General progress and interesting things

2D: 2 pages of sketchbook work a day to flesh out projects. Work on Bradgate and Interesting location paintings. 

Finish sculpture

Interesting person, R+D (faces, bodies, gestures, anatomy, proportion), war of the worlds

Learn Mudbox, read tutorials, learn more

Sackboy of Persia

A quick render, an older render of my model with a quick texture on it. I suppose when i find the time between everthing else ill get around to finishing it off.

My new version has a wooden sword, a rounder scarf and slightly cel-sahaded texture with an outline. 

3D in a real world environment?

Found this on gameartisans. Seems that alot like the Eye Toy, (or the eye of judgement thing) we can put 3D models in a real world space without having to green screen things.

Wanted to put it here just so that I remembered Video Here

Guitar Hero World Tour: Bike Hero

Guitar Hero World Tour: Bike Hero Video

This just has to be shown to the nation. Even if nobody reads this, I'm going to keep it here so that I can remember this for all time