More Spits!

Exactly what it says. More spitpaints :p

Fallen Empire/

Three Wheels

Weather Demon

Required Skills

For this project I will be assembling a library of material I can use for learning the relevant skills.
As I have never really composited footage before, this will be vital. Particularly when matchmoving and making it look real.

A vital part of this will be the Gnomon workshop's masterclass on creature development. Which includes an entire disc on how to fit a CG creature in with a photographic plate.

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/products/masterclass/3dcreaturedev/

Other areas I will be looking at for reference and learning skills is Digital Tutors, and of course other Gnomon courses.
http://www.digitaltutors.com/subject/video-and-vfx-compositing-tutorials
http://www.digitaltutors.com/subject/video-and-vfx-matchmoving-tutorials

And of course I will also be attempting to improve all aspects of the skills involved in this project.
By this stage I already have a fairly good idea of what I want the general designs to be, and what the finished images will look like.

The next stage is to thumbnail and do some initial storyboards and sketches of what I want the project to look like, as-well as nailing down the final designs for the creatures and the world.

Ideally id like to have a mix of elements to composite, organic, hard surface, some creatures, machines and environments aswell.

So, a checklist for what I have to do next.

-Thumbnails
-Storyboards
-Shoot photos & HDRI (for SIBL)
-Final Designs
-Shoot HD Videos
-Modelling
-Texturing
-Rigging

Spit and Colour

A few paintings here, just practices, trying to be more bold with colours and make nicer images.

I also started doing the "spitpainting" challenge to practice, so there is a few of those uploaded here aswell. 30 minute paintings done to a specific subject.

Underwater Police

Strange Visitors

Practice

VFX Boards 1

Here are some of my early VFX research boards. The purpose of these is just to try and represent in a visual way, what sort of things I'll be looking at in order to make this project come together. Including other examples of work, breakdowns and even the software used.

The basic premise has not changed since being given out our briefs. Except that the focus has shifted slightly towards a more compositing angle. However this DOES NOT mean that I will be skimping on the creation of assets. A big influence behind this will likely be "Pacific Rim" as it has that giant monsters vibe that I'm looking for. However the monsters I'm designing are far larger than them, and the focus will be shifted to fighter craft and military hardware other than bipedal robots.

All in all I feel this is a good thing as it restricts me and gives me a more focused and (hopefully) a more polished project.

Next step. Snapping some photographs of the city and painting some concept ideas across them to try and fit the "epic space monster demon thing" idea in a smaller environment. But we shall see what I can come up with.

I've also included I think the first concept image I painted for this project (besides sketches). This is more the scale I'm thinking (as this was actually painted over a photograph of Dundee's waterfront). However while im thinking of compositing in some cool buildings I don't want to change the scene too much.

VFX Research 1

For the research portion of the coursework thus far I have been collecting and looking into the sort of compositing that the large production companies do. Companies such as MPC, Digital Domain and Framestore. The majority of companies make breakdowns readily available for public viewing and I have been studying these closely and creating a library of references that I can look back to. Aswell as providing me with some ideas for my own project.

As well as assembling this library I have also started to assemble boards in photoshop of images pulled from various composites as well as some of the original concept images for those shots.

In addition to compositing for traditional film ive also included examples of compositing for music videos and gaming cinematics. As well as a few examples of still image compositing.

I shall upload the boards in a later post once I've found more images for them

http://digitaldomain.com/projects/261?list=9
http://digitaldomain.com/projects/84
http://digitaldomain.com/projects/286
http://digitaldomain.com/projects/277
http://vimeo.com/77822882
http://rhythm.com/design/
http://rhythm.com/commercials/games/ ( +1 awesome point for the Globus song)
http://rhythm.com/commercials/vfx-animation/
http://www.ghosttownmedia.com/
http://www.ghosttownmedia.com/81045/1987589/work/linkin-park
http://www.ghosttownmedia.com/81045/735727/work/linkin-park
http://www.ghosttownmedia.com/81045/741064/work/linkin-park
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9Ym9Mx4GcY
http://www.moving-picture.com/showreels/vfx-breakdowns/prometheus-vfx-breakdown
http://www.moving-picture.com/showreels/vfx-breakdowns/making-of-assassins-creed-iv-black-flag-defy
http://www.moving-picture.com/showreels/vfx-breakdowns/life-of-pi-vfx-breakdown
http://www.moving-picture.com/showreels/making-of/creating-alien-environments
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/deus-ex-human-revolution/
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/game-of-thrones/
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/the-last-of-us/

Space Monster

Yet again another practice piece.  I swear to god I need to stop reading Lovecraft before bed.
However to me it also looks a bit like the Sathanas from Freespace...

Audrey II

Something I've done over the past few days, just as a bit of practice and it seemed appropriate given how many times I've watched this film recently. Anyway I was very pleased with how quickly this painting came together. :)

The Lamprey Monster

Took the concept of the Lamprey creature further and painted up a concept of what it could look like. This one took longer than I would've liked, but I'm reasonably happy with the results.

The Mean Green Mother from Outer Space.

Two colour schemes for this one!
I wanted to paint something a bit more focused on the creature itself. Starting with one of my thumbnail sketches in photoshop I painted up this guy. 

Sketches!

Some quick thumbnail sketches I did over lunch to plan out the next painting. They've also helped me to clarify some of the design features behind the creature.

The Space Tendrils

Well this one I'm going to call done for now. Id like to take what Ive learned and move on to trying a different painting. It came out pretty well I thought. Ive included two colour schemes for it...because, well. I like em both.

The Ocean Tendril

Waheyy! Some more concept practice for le project. I made a few new brushes for this one and they are kind of awesome. Anyway Im pleased with the progression I think Im making :D

The Rearing Tendril

I did this image a lot quicker and as such it is not as polished or finalised as the others. It was more of an experiment with a different colour palette.

The Building Tendrils

Another concept image created as a way of improving my skills and to show off another idea for a scene. 

The Sky Tendril

Concept image created as a way for me to get more of a handle on the kind of scenes I want to create for this module.

Tonal Study

For class. 2 hours.
Overall I'm very pleased with how this turned out. Especially since I was trying to be a lot neater than I usually do when using pens. I think If I was to improve it I would be even neater and maybe use a pencil or biro in conjunction with the ink pen. Just to be able to get a better range of shades. That and a few of the objects could also be refined further especially the pencil case, which was the most challenging thing to draw.

Perspective Study

Perspective study for class, about 1hr 30mins.
Overall I feel like i managed to do a reasonable job of capturing the scene. However a lot of the inaccuracies in the scale and relation of the objects to each other annoy me. If I was to do this again, Id spend more time planning out the scene in pencil first and making sure everything was in proportion to each other. I would also take the drawing and clean it up further using a lightbox. As the sketchiness and line weights could also be improved.