Back to Work

Man, 3 months since my last entry! Winter Break, Skyrim, Shogun 2, Bastion... lots of time-killing going on. I did manage to teach myself some more about web design though, and became more acquainted with creating sites solely through code with HTML and CSS, even learned the Joomla content management system and made a test template for it!

Soon I'll have to put up an entry on web design stuff, but for now... it's back to work with 3ds Max and Photoshop, and also now... Unity 3D! I've mustered together a couple friends to work on a super-duper top-secret eyes-only videogame. As its stands its just me for asset modeling and texturing so I'll have my hands full with stuff to practice on now. So far I've made some "Stone Ruines" set pieces, was pretty fun. Got a couple different size walls with damaged versions, archways, bridges, columns, pedestals, decals... the works.

Stone Ruins Assets in Unity 3D

We're still working on the proof of concept stage so we're figuring out an art style but I've become quite fond of the "Cutout" filter in Photoshop. It's almost like a cartoony posterization.

Cutout Filter Before > After

Aside from modeling, the texture work has gotten me reacquainted with the clone stamp tool and the healing brush, for making seamless/tiled textures. I must have done this to 10 images last night but here's one that stands out the most.

Seam Removal Example

Just today I decided to try my hand at concept art for the first time ever. Put some light logic skills that hadn't seen daylight in a while to work. Here's the result, some ideas for health pickups (yea, some of the colors don't go together, was just throwing in variation).

Health Pickup Concepts

So hopefully now that I'll be in max and Photoshop quite often from now on, I'll get around to finishing some other higher-quality models and eventually putting them up here. But at least I'll have stuff to start posting on here again.

Line Art to Illustration

Yet another Photoshop thing, took some orthographic line art and tried turning it into a realistic scene. The color on the lamp's body should probably vary a bit more from the background wallpaper, it tends to blend a little too much.

Just waiting on the Creation Kit to get released for Skyrim then hopefully I'll get back into the modeling thing.

Colorizing Black & White

Just spent around 90 minutes making this. Turning a grayscale photo into color. Came out pretty well but I think the roots on the right side of the photo are too large, and for some reason nothing I did would make the sky color satisfy me properly. Think its pretty good for my first attempt. Quick "fine art" at the bottom also.

More Photoshop - Abstract Art

My first assignment was due tonight for my Photoshop class, just abstract art that was supposed to give a feeling of depth and possibly motion. Here's my submission:

Decided to just put some little thing together too since I liked the multi-colored electric-light thingymajig too.

Starting off on Photoshop - Painting & Retouches

So the last few weeks I haven't done much modeling, too busy playing games so I can uninstall them before Battlefield 3 and Skyrim come out. I have been playing with Photoshop some though. In the process of making some abstract image for class which I'll post once it's done, but as for my own side project I retouched some old family photos and also tried painting over an image to replicate it.

Here is the original image of my little bro at the archery range, then the painted version of him, and finally the painted version on top of the original background. The hair could probably be redone, hard to get myself satisfied with it.

And some retouches of a black & white and a color photo. Gonna end up trying to make a black and white into a color image soon, whether for class or for myself.

 

Hoping to get some modeling done again soon.

B-25 Engines & Propellers

This morning the engines got finished as well as the proplellers, though I'll probably end up adding more details inside the engine cowl.

Not sure which part to do next. I guess either the belly/top gun turrets or start working on the nose/tail turrets.

B-25 Wings & Engines

Today I was working on getting the base shape of the engines done and getting it to smooth out with the wings. Also cut out the ailerons & flaps. Most of the work was all the cutting/bridging/chamfering to try and get the engine to smooth out to the shape of the wings and not appear as an entirely separate component. I realized I'm still operating in low-poly mode for some reason... sort of hesitant to use cylinders with more than 18 or so sides. I'll just TurboSmooth it at the end and add more details I guess.