Sunday 26 October 2014

The golden chest

The final sequence is here.
 
 
Creative decision making :

Gothic Fantasy Art has many contributing artists to the genre, an example is Joseph Vargo (Link to Joseph Vargo - accessed 11/10/2014), who produced artwork pieces towards The Beauty and the Beast novel, so avoiding copying the portrayed characters in the images was a major priority when creating my project, whilst still keeping to the novel narrative. Tim Horton is also well known for his dark art pictures and films that contribute to the gothic genre whose artwork that inspired the picture that I have created. Choosing the colour schemes for each of the characters provided a challenge as I had to create a colour palette that linked the characters together yet kept the overall scene dark and Gothic. To link the father and Belle characters to each other I made some of their clothing similar or close to the same shade of purple with a floral patterning, whilst the rest of the clothing follows a black or monotone colour scheme with bright white highlights to give the fabric life and movement. For the Beast I used a monochrome colour scheme, making it a very powerful persona with soft hint of yellow/orange in the lion head mane to hint at the subtle beast-like rage and ferocity that may lie within.

Ancient Chinese art has been around since the 6th Millennium BCE with the Neolithic pottery, and passes through Early Imperial China (221BCE – 220 CE), and Late Imperial China (1368 – 1911). My first priority was to pick an era during the Chinese art history on which to base this project element, I researched the paintings created during the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 CE) where the primary subject matter was landscape paintings knows as Shan shui (mountain water). The style of these paintings essentially involved the same techniques as Chinese calligraphy, where a brush was dipped in black or coloured ink. Therefore I decided to replicate a brush and ink feel when using the digital medium of my project, using a digital brush that gave the same look and feel of Chinese calligraphy, where the thickness of the line created would vary in thickness as it moved around the page dependent upon the pressure applied by the artist. Tang Dynasty paintings, much like their calligraphy, were produced on paper or silk then incorporated into scrolls so they could be rolled up or hung, giving the image a sepia look, which can be easily created in digital mediums. The major decision making for this style was the types of brush marks that I was going to use, long flowing brush strokes or small sharp strokes, and would I create a texture in the image. The colour palette was another important decision to make there was a choice of either making the image completely out of bright saturated colours or soft subtle hints of colour.


The Sci-fi genre has multiple forms and environments, they may be clean and futuristic looking with designs that are crisp, clean and straight edged. Or architectural designs that are futuristic and do not conform to a contemporary visual appearance, they may also be dilapidated and similar to modern day but with futuristic influences, such as a type of door or door function, or a particular piece of engineering equipment, tool and gadgets that are beyond current technology. Deciding which of these paths to choose was the initial challenge. I focused my research on a clean futuristic looking environment to help tell the story of Belle meeting the beast and a grotty dark hallway where the Beast resides would be more accurate to how the original novel portrays the narrative. Exploring these two path ways led me to further research into the sci-fi genre portrayed in games and films; Destiny, Mass Effect, Halo, Blade Runner, Star Wars, iRobot, District 9, Elysium. From here I was inspired by various elements of these films and games and adapted them into my own designs for the corridor that Belle walks along. I chose the grungy deteriorating look as I felt that it was a closer relationship to the woods that Belle and her father had to travel through in the original novel narrative, I made the scene eerie and run down by the use of graffiti, water staining and rust and also using sci-fi architectural designs for doorways, details on the characters and the use of a floating hologram to consolidate this futuristic scene.


New learning over the project:
Over the course of the project I have learnt about how to effectively create different art styles. 

Gothic Fantasy art, with relationships to Tim Burton artwork (http://www.timburton.com – accessed 11/10/2014) and films; Corpse Bride (2005), Dark Shadows (2012), was an art style I had not yet before attempted to recreate and had rarely looked at. The main difficulty in achieving the Gothic art style was learning and understanding the key aspects of Gothic art, what they were and how these aspects were portrayed in art works, then adapting them by slightly altering these aspects to enhance a mood or emotion for the general audience.


Ancient Chinese art, with influences from Gu Kaizhi (born c. 344-406 CE), Wuxi, Jiangsu province, China, during the Period of Division (220 – 581 CE), this was a difficult art style to achieve successfully. I had to research various Ancient Chinese art pieces and analyse how they created the brush strokes and mark making with the various brushes of the period, then recreating similar mark making techniques using digital mediums and brushes. A common theme that most of the paintings that were studied all used single sweeping strokes, creating a smooth flowing image.


The process during the creation of the Sci-fi scene was challenging, as the result could easily look very 2D, with a direct comparison to Doom 1 visual environments. I gave depth to a hand painted wall with the simple use of a bump map, which is just a black and white version of the colour image, to which I then applied the texture node in Autodesk Maya to imitate a 3D effect. The image had to be increased in resolution to produce a higher quality bump map, thus avoiding sharp obvious pixilation in the texturing, which would lower the quality of the overall scene by making the scene obvious that it was hand painted. I gave the characters emotions that were visually obvious and non-rigid walking poses, representing movement of the character in animation was a challenge in itself, and after a lot of trial and error sketching, it was solved by the use of four high quality poses with one being a strong shocked expression.

Wednesday 22 October 2014

Let there be Sound!

Sound editing is rather fun.. when it works out. For a while I have been making sure that the sound editing has been going along smoothly and editing the sequences.

This is the workspace from Adobe Premiere Pro where I have been adding the sound and editing the sequences.



Tuesday 21 October 2014

The end of renders, re-renders and re-re-renders

It's have been a long week of rendering, and re-rendering but there has been some great final outcomes. As mentioned way back in the fantasy goth posts I was planning to use The Foundry's Nuke to edit the shots.
 
This is the workspace for the first scene. Using a little more nodes than 2-4 to create the final outcome. All of the scenes were made without a hitch and rendered out to a high standard, that you will see in the final sequence.
 
The sci fi has similarly been composited in Nuke.
Had to use a blur node to remove some of the grain that the degrain node wasn't removing. My skills are not that great at Nuke so I don't know if there is a better way of doing this.

Friday 10 October 2014

Thursday 9 October 2014

Delving into a Forrest

Progressing forward on the gothic fantasy scene rather quickly. But this is the end scenario of the fantasy projections scene. Doesn't look like much, however the painting itself is the detail. There are 2 cameras in Maya (Autodesk Maya), one of which is projecting the image. the other camera is the render cam, or the one the audience will look through during the final sequence.
 
 
This scene gives the final result of:


The character and the enviro was rendered separately and will be combined in nuke. The reason for this was because it was easier to colour correct and alter the characters and enviro separately compared to everything together which can lead to some horrid results. The enviro looks pretty flat in the single still image but the sequence does bring it to life and give it depth, as you will see in later posts. This technique has been repeated for the other 3 scenes.

Wednesday 8 October 2014

Getting Gritty in the Sci-fi

 
Progress on the sci-fi has been swift and almost without any hitches, quickly solved when they did arise as they were minor. Below are, in order as they appear, the overall scene layout, with planes and items out of the scene where I test render textures making sure there are no issues. It renders quicker when there is little lighting and not much in the shot. Below that is a shot from the workspace view, that is, a rough view  from the perspective viewpoint. the white on the Belle character card will disappear with the alpha cut out leaving just the coloured figure, and the merchant will appear on the black square.
 
 


Improvements for the sci-fi scene have been: adding more detail and "decals" to the walls floor and ceiling of the scene. Covering it in rusted electronic panels and graffiti and piping. the floors I added lights and grates over them. the ceiling I added pipes running along and changed the design of the light shapes. The merchant I have built the base in 3D compared to trying to draw it, and improved his texture also to make him look more digitally distorted as holographic projections do.

Tuesday 7 October 2014

Ancient chinese round 2

Following on from the feedback I received for the Ancient Chinese styled scene, I went ahead and improved the merchant/ Belle's Father, giving him a front view so his face can be seen clearly.
 
 
 
 
The first scene was needed to be drawn up in the same style as the overall environment. This was due to the fact that where I wants the first scene could not be seen in the overall environment image. The cart (see below) was created separately.
As mentioned above I have created a front or 3/4 view of the merchant too allow the view of his face, next to him is the original back image that I created before.
 
One of the two cart variations for the Merchant and Belle
 
An enlarged and higher resolution of part of the environment, with one of the 2 cart variations in the scene. This will be the majority of the Chinese scene itself so the larger resolution is needed to produce a high quality sequence with no pixilation
This is the second of the two cart variations

Monday 6 October 2014

Sci-fi round 2

 
This week I have done little towards the sci-fi scene, as this, in my view, will require the least amount of work out of the 3 scenes. However I have completed a front back and a 3/4 view of Belle for the 4 different shots that she will feature in.
 
 

Saturday 4 October 2014

Gothic Fantasy round 2

So after receiving great critique from my lecturer, and the work being approves on quality and style, I am pushing on with the Goth art. Below I have created the last 3 environments and have implemented the characters within them.
 
 
 
 






Wednesday 1 October 2014

Week 1 recap

Well.. after not much sleep and a lot of hard work I have achieved a week and a half worth of work in just under 6 days. The quality, I feel, is very high and has improved since the last environment., and now awaiting on the feedback of my mentoring lecturer.


A comparison from the old at the top to the new underneath

Tuesday 30 September 2014

Revamp of the past - Sci-fi

There is not much here to revamp apart from Belle, the camera movements and the overall flat looking environment. But here is what I have been up to, I have improved on the design of Belle, clearly showing facial expression at the Beast's appearance, improving the lighting and appearance of the whole scene.

A Comparison between the old design (Right) and the new (Left)


Seeing how the new Belle works in the scene, that at this point has yet to be altered and changed.
 Testing a bump map against a hand sculpted normal map, focusing on the right hand panel, the one the camera is focusing more towards.

Monday 29 September 2014

Revamp of the past - Ancient Chinese

The Ancient Chinese scene previously did not appear to have been done in a Ancient Chinese style. So I had a rethink and analysed some more artwork, so now I think I have the style worked out.
 
 
 

 The 2 Palaces that will be where Belle meets the Beast
A shocked Belle, where she encounters the beast.

The full planned environment of the scene.

A run down sci-fi

District 9 (2009, dir. Neill Blomkamp) plays a large influence of how I want my scifi scene to look, a run down grimy unpleasant area. The shanty towns that the alien race are forced to live in is inspiring in this aspect. Elysium (2013, dir. Neill Blomkamp) also helps as the main character also lives in a shanty town.

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/elysium-a-practical-miniature-and-digital-fx-odyssey/ (accessed 29/09/2014). This article provided imaged and videos that help influence ideas.

Images from District 9: (all accessed 29/09/2014)

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--mHHr7BIL--/191dckn0v36n1jpg.jpg

http://johnkennethmuir.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/district9a.jpg

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews48/district_9_blu-ray/large/subs_large_district_9_blu-raysubs.jpg

Sunday 28 September 2014

Chinese art, shanshui

Chinese art has a long history of dynasties and time periods, all influencing the artwork. As "Chinese art" and "Ancient Chinese art" are a rather broad spectrum to research, I am looking into a certain period of time. The Sui and Tang dynasties (581-960)  was when the primary focus of paintings became landscapes, shanshui (mountain water). Different artists have their own influence on these painting, in turn the paintings have different ways that the ink was transferred to the paper they used, or mark making. Finding a style that I would be able to work then replicating the style will be a challenge but after much research and analysis I think I may be able to achieve the style.

Saturday 27 September 2014

Revamp of the past - Fantasy

So as some may be aware, last time I attempted to create a fantasy scene with hand drawn images. The end result was not as great as these following images.
The environment shot for the first scene, created in photoshop

Gothic Belle

Gothic Beast

The Merchant, Belle's father

Tim Burton

For the Fantasy scene I was thinking of completely changing the style, so rather than being broad and saying a general "fantasy" look I will aim at a Gothic Fantasy. Tim Burton immediately comes to mind, so his site http://www.timburton.com/ (accessed 26/09/2014) was the first I looked at. Some of the colour schemes in his work, some of the style and a character of the images will, I think, help with my work.

Friday 26 September 2014

The Revenge of the Revamp

Hello to new and old viewers. As you may, or may not, be aware I had previously attempted to recreate Beauty and the Beast, based on the novel written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve.  The result was un-satisfactory, to sum in a word, so I am now revamping most of it, and dropping out the modern day completely.