BA3b Creative Practice

Week 4 - The Castle - Environment - Maya Block Outs - Sketching Over 3D Models - Ambient Occlusion Shadows - Presentation

Creative Practice

The Castle - Environment

For my second environment piece I will be designing some of the interior for Ivan and Marya's castle. I really want to start challenging myself more which was why I chose to complete environment pieces in addition to characters for this project. With this in mind, I want to try out different workflows for creating them - with the second allowing me to create a 3D base in Maya and then sketching on top. This is very different to my previous Baba Yaga workflow, where I designed the house/objects in the scene itself first and then the environment.

Examples

I really like the look of a fairly detailed sketch for a room, which is very prevalent in what Feng Zhu teaches at his design school. I have picked out some examples below which show the look I want to achieve with this piece. It's not often I see them in colour so for this reason I will going forward in black and white.

My Work

The Meeting Room

This room is where Marya tells Ivan she needs to leave to fight in a war, in addition to being on of the first areas the player can explore. It is meant to be non-fantastical and much more like a traditional medieval castle, as this area is meant to contrast with the prison cells hidden beneath the castle where Ivan discovers Koschei in his 12 chains (like the original story).

3D Block Out (in Maya Renderer 2.0)

Like I mentioned, I was to firstly recreate what I was thinking in my head and blocking out the basic shapes and structures within Maya. I was very conscious about the scale throughout making it, which is why I found a stock female base mesh online to use as a guide. I didn't think much of it at the time but I understand that the steps on the stairs are much too high, so instead of redo-ing them I will just do fix it when I do the sketch over.

3D Block Out (Rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 2)

When I had completed the basic shapes I thought it was time to create a render which I could use to paint over, so I did this in Marmoset Toolbag. In addition this I also liked the perspective of how the room would look which seemed more aesthetically interesting than the view in Maya, as well as giving me some extra guidance when it came to the lighting and tones.

Flooring

One of my issues working like this was getting the perspective right on some of the edges, as it was quite difficult for me due to the slightly skewed view. In addition to this which didn't help was that I also made my floor planks way too wide, which put me off from adding additional ones because I found it difficult to place the lines where they didn't look to unbelievable. Thankfully though, I thought of another idea! I found a stock photo which showed planks and decided to draw the lines on top to create a base which I could use. Then to move them where I wanted I held the 'Ctrl' key to scale them to where the edges were, which resulted in a much cleaner and accurate set of floor planks. I also decided to remove the smaller slabs because it was beginning to look too cluttered otherwise.

Pattern

For the patterns I did the same method I used for the planks, where I sketched over a google image which showed a very Slavic pattern and incorporated it easily by scaling it to the edges of where it needed to fit.

Finished Sketch-Over with and Without the Base

With Ambient Occlusion and Saturation Change

Presentation

Despite how much of a challenge this was for me, I'm really pleased with how it turned out! This is my first time doing anything like this and the result is better than I thought it would be. There are definitely more improvements I could make with the lighting overall but that knowledge will get better the more I do things like this.

2. Koschei's Prison Instead of Koschei being imprisoned in a wardrobe and found in chains within there like the original story, I want the wardrobe to be a secret entrance that leads into a tunnel which at the end of it resides a room which is where Koschei is kept. The idea is that this castle belonged to Marya before Ivan also moved there, yet he didn't know that evil creatures and beasts were also situated there. The way I imagine it is that Marya believed the only way they could be kept safe would be there instead of being found in the wrong hands or in a place where someone could break them out to release them. Each set of prison rooms contains 3 cells, which have a dangerous human entity and 2 beasts - so the human cannot communicate with them. There are beacons within each room that suppresses the use of magic, in addition to a barrier.

Professional Practice

Important: I will be compiling all I have learnt from job listings and people from the industry into a final PDF which will be added to my submission.

Concept Art Advice from those in the industry

"Take the time to make your thumbnails and sketches readable" - Jason Chan from the video 'Jason Chan Character Design 3 - The Villain'

Job Listings

At the end of each week I will be looking at job opportunities in my chosen specialism, relating to the role of a Concept Artist and/or Illustrator to further my knowledge of what it takes to be hired within the industry and what employers are looking for. These will include unrealistic expectations that I don't meet as of yet, but I feel that it's good to be aware of them.

Important: Some links may be available at the time of submission if the job has been filled, which is why I have written the date accessed and have presented screenshots. ---

This week is slightly different because I applied for an additional 2 jobs within the games industry, so I thought that it would be best to highlight these instead of various ones I have found.

Company: Sumo Digital Job Title: Undergraduate Placement Game Artist 2017/18 Link to Job Page (Accessed 22nd February 2017)