Jack_VFX

Unfortunately, this will be a smaller post than my regular posts as my presentation is in a few days and i need to make some final tweaks to my presentation to earn the best grade that i can. This week i had my mockup presentation and it all seemed to have went well and with the additional dragon asset that i am to add in, hopefully this will boost my mark further. Ad you can see below, the dragon is practically finished, i may make a few tweaks in post production software, but the dragon is rendered and has had a few tweaks already within Photoshop. Once i add this into my presentation i believe i will then have a strong premise to present. Wish me look everyone, I am almost there. Sorry for the smaller post.

As of today on the 12th of September, i have returned back to my place of study, Newcastle College. It was a long summer, but i am ready to get back to work. During this week in college, we were delivered our first brief of the second year, research and Development. This brief essentially consists of researching into various movies, games or animations and trying to understand the processes and techniques that  they used. I then need to apply these skills to my own work to show that i understand how they work.  This will hopefully be a really fun project, as it allows me to look into various medias that i love and draw inspiration from them. Over the next few weeks i plan to keep you all updated with the research topics that i am looking into, and if all goes well, there will also be experimental pieces that i have created. Sorry that this is a short first post, but i cant wait to dive into this new year and start creating some new animations and ...

Monochromatic Throughout my research, I have been trying to push away from 3D work and start challenging myself more with 2D. with being on youtube and watching animated music vidioes I stumbled on another that I wanted to talk about and try out.  and that is SIAMS - The Wolf. I think the main reason I want to try out animating in this style is that I am a bit wary of 2D animation especially frame by frame and I feel like this would help take off the pressure. It's not about creating the best animation is about being clever with the colours that you can. creating a strong contrast throughout and not having to work about every little bit of colour and detail.

Hi everyone! you can see below that i was successfully able to create my last pixel art character/sprite, this is is the last of the three characters that i wanted to create for this project. Throughout this project i needed to show that i was able to research a subject area and use the skills applied to that subject to use within my own work. I am very happy to say that i succeeded this when it comes to the pixel animation aspect to my work. Throughout this project I looked into various methods of creating pixel art and deciphered all the skills and workflows into creating pixel art and i was able to apply them to my own creations. I am extraordinary pleased with the results of my research and development for this subject area. As i am now approaching my deadline It is vital that i finish my dragon and show that i was able to replicate the skills of my research here also. Next week, i need to present my findings and artwork that i have gathered throughout this project. If i am able to...

Over the past week i have made significant progress throughout both of my chosen subjects, Zbrush and Pixel art. Ad for my pixel art characters, i have decided to create three characters that are all completely different from each other. These three characters will resemble my fire team form the game destiny, Me and my two friends. The character below is my character and you can see that although it is pixel art, it shares no characteristics from the last design, they are all going to be completely different and i cannot wait to see how all three compare to each other once they are finished. As for my dragon, i was able to add a lot more detail to both the horns and face. I even added an additional two horns to bring the character more to life and give him a more interesting silhouette. As you can see the character also has antlers and wisps coming from his chin, this was heavily inspired from Haku the white dragon from the Studio Ghibli movie 'Spirited Away.' Although I te...

This is my second attempt at creating a pixel character, and you can see that it looks a lot better than y first attempt. Although these are my friends characters from Destiny, I am still very proud of myself that i was successfully able to create a 2D sprite within m second attempt. I was even able to make a small animation using this character. Even through small movement such as this, the whole character comes to life and i can even begin to imagine her in a a game as a sprite. This animation could even act as its idle animation (an animation that plays when the character is not moving). Creating this character was a lot of fun and i intend to do more throughout the project which will hopefully further my skills throughout this project. This project is all about acquiring new skills and processes that can aid me with my project work, and so far i believe i have achieved that. Although the next post may be pixel art related, I can guarantee that it another pixel art character will sh...

Pixel art  I have always been interested in pixel art with old retro games and I have always admired the animation style that they had. I recently stumbled across a music video called White Flag by Delta Heavy. It reignited that passion and now I am looking forward to testing out some experiments in this unit. the video itself is stunning with a fantastic colour pallet throughout and great attention to detail. the animations are smooth and in the style of a retro game. I really am a fantastic animation and the was they have used the transformation of the pixels to create different effects is mesmerising. I want to try this in my won project and I have already started with a few experiments. I want to focus on the design but the clastic bob of the character withing the animation first before I start expanding my skills.

I have also been fascinated with pixel art, although i love to draw, i have never invested time within this media. Therefore, i thought this project would be the best opportunity for me to try this. In my spare time, I am a big gamer, i love games, such as halo, destiny, and gears of war, I love sci-fi. Therefore to maintain my enthusiasm throughout this pixel art attempt i thought i would attempt to draw my friends characters from destiny. Below is my first attempt at one of them. Lets be honest, this attempt was awful, however unlike a lot of my work that takes a lot of time to perfect, i knew exactly why this attempt did not go well. I attempted to create pixel art from a 3D image and that is definitely not the way to approach pixel art. Pixel art is made for a 2D format and trying to form an pixel image from a 3D image is not going to look good. Identifying this mistake this early is great as i do not need to waste anymo...

The model below, is the final sculpt i intend to work on for this project, I have other experiments with other medias that I need to try before this project ends. However I intend to update this model throughout the rest of he project to try and build it up to a final piece. I returned to a head sculpt as creating a final piece that consists of a full body sculpt would take too long. A head sculpt is the best way to show my newly learned skills. As i said I wanted develop my skills within the subdivision workflow, and a head sculpt is the best way to show detail. This is simply the first step within this modelling process. Within each post I will be providing images of the models progress as well as showing my new experiments. As for the current progress. I was able to build a simply form of a dragon and was even able to add some detail. This is a great first step to learning the subdivision workflow. However, there is still a lot to do. As a big fan of dragons i thought th...

After the first two tests I created with Zbrush, i wanted to try push myself further. The first two sculpts that i created where bases that i could constantly build upon until they were a finalized sculpt, however, they were just head sculpts. For my next experiment I wanted to try take the skills that i learned from creating a head sculpt and apply them into making a full body. Sculpting a full body from scratch is no easy task, it takes a lot of patience and a decent knowledge of anatomy. I could sculpt models forever but my knowledge on anatomy is lacking. I knew this was going ti be a tough task for me, therefore i spent a lot of time just trying to form the base shape. Within Zbrush, there is a tool called Zspheres, these Zspheres automatically generate mesh in between themselves once spheres have been generated. This made it a lot easier to generate a very simple base. From here I started building up the muscles to try form a shape that closely represented a body. However I k...

After researching into the Godzilla game and 'Kong: Skull Island,' i was incredibly excited to try create some models of my own. Over the past few days i have created some test models to try determine where my skill level is. By doing so i am able to identify the areas that i am lacking and need further research. You can see below that i have a few head sculpts, an orc and an alien. Although these represent what they are supposed to be, i struggled detailing the sculpts. Adding detail to a model in Zbrush is a complicated process, you constantly need to be aware of your subdivision levels, as once you up the level, you cant go back without losing the detail that you added. For example, if i was to create a basic head sculpt, subdivide and add some detail, if i wanted to go back and make some bigger changes to the shape of the head, i would loose the detail by decreasing the subdivision level. This is a process that i need to be very aware and careful about.  Hopefully, ...

Research! I am currently in a research and development unit where I will researching and experimenting with a range of techniques and skills. I will be posting my research and influence every Friday to help reflect on my finding throughout that week. Godzilla 2014 Games I was introduced to the 2014 Godzilla game by a friend and they discussed the process on how it was made that really impressed me.  If you look closely at the designs in the game you'll see that there are seems on all the joints. this is actually because these models were not models in 3D software but instead, 3D scanned. the models are from a series called SH monster arts which deals with creating a series of figures of the monsters in the Godzilla movies. These figures were scanned in and tweaked so they were suitable for the game. the amount of detail put into these figures dramatically helped the graphics of the games as they were realistic and saved the developer's time.  ...