Week 05 - Use of Composition

 

For this assignment, I really wanted to challenge myself. The target artist I chose was Jim Henson, but I wanted to do it in the style of Over the Garden Wall. The only real identifying aspect of Jim Henson's art style is the facial expressions of the characters, Greg and Wirt. I wanted to put more emphasis on the environment in this assignment as I've never really done that. Overall, I really enjoyed this project and what I've learned from it!

Module 2 Week 05 - Simple Crate

 

First is the proxy crate used in the videos that were posted. Next is the crate I created in Unreal 5. Below that is an Arnold render of the crate again. Unfortunately the Arnold render has a ton of noise, I tried to fix that to no avail. It was great using the knowledge I've gained about 3D modeling though to create this simple, stylized crate!

Week 04 - Basics of Lighting

 

For this week's assignment we went over the basics of lighting. Making a three point lighting set up in Unreal came pretty naturally to me, but when it came time to draw it out in Photoshop that was SO HARD. Drawing has never been a strong point of mine, so this was an incredible challenge. I think I did some things very well such as the triangle shape and cone, but I think I was lacking in the glass pyramid and the pill shape. Those were very difficult for me to get right, but overall I learned a bunch about lighting and the best way to convey that through a drawing!

Module 1 Week 04

 

I created a scene in Maya and Unreal inspired by the movie Midsommar. I wanted everything to be triangular in shape and follow an upward movement. I've never rendered anything in Unreal before so this was definitely a new challenge for me! I also learned a lot about Blueprints in Unreal that I didn't know before. I knew the basics of rotating an object, but I didn't know all of the different ways you could make that happen.

Week 03 - Value and Contrast

 

For this weeks assignment, I decided to stick with the image used in the demo as I have zero experience with value and contrast. Shading and using light has never been a strong point of mine, so I definitely learned A LOT this week. I really liked using the color dodge stuff for FX as it felt more fun and created a lot of life to the image. Overall, I learned a ton about Photoshop and about how to use contrast through this assignment.

Module 1 Week 03

 

For this week, we went over hierarchies in Maya and Unreal 5! I'm pretty good at organizing and grouping everything within these programs, so this was a breeze! The only thing that posed a challenge was building my own scene in Maya that will later be rendered and lit in Unreal. I decided to go with something inspired by the movie Midsommar and create the iconic triangle building as well as some maypoles. I wanted to stick with the triangle theme and have triangles move along the torus. I will probably add more to the scene to make it more interesting visually, but this is what I started with!

Week 02 - Use of Silhouettes

 For my thumbnails and silhouettes, I wanted to go with a character that is easy to recognize, so I went with Toad from Super Mario. I thought it would be super cute to have him wearing different Halloween costumes with some being generic and others being more recognizable characters such as Wednesday Addams, Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and Sam.

Module 1 Week 02

 

    

For this weeks assignment, we went through the basics of topology! I definitely learned a lot as I had no idea how to use any of the tools or practices mentioned such as fencing, paneling, creasing. I also learned a ton of new hotkeys which is going to prove to be super useful as I continue to 3D model. Unfortunately, the blinn material I tried to make wasn't as reflective as the example, so the material came out quite flat it was hard to see what mistakes I made. Either way, I learned a lot about materials in Maya as well, so I'll continue to mess around with that and get better at it.

We also needed to kitbash the robot model seen here. I decided to stay pretty simple and just add a small party hat using the cone shape. I moved the arms to be raised and I made the eyebrows and wheel point more outwards so he looked more excited.