Self reflection, or self loathing - you decide.

A new year has dawned upon us! Let us rejoice with resolutions that no one will ever keep up… hopefully maintaining this blog better won’t count as that. Woops. So what better way to start the year than looking back over previous work, you know – the thing I’ve been avoiding like the plague because oh god pure hatred. However reflecting on these is one way to help me improve my lovely, never ending life of average grades.

I attempted to touch upon this previously, getting to week 3 of Visual Design and mentioned my issues with scale on environments. Quitting ahead before I got to 2 point perspective, which made sense because well, it’s self-explanatory looking at it.
With the horizon line running off the page to suit the vanishing points placement in order to avoid a fisheye perspective, this proved to be more difficult than it probably should have been. In addition to this, other buildings proved to be harder than others – a more basic shape like the Fletcher building being easier than one such as the Student Union or the High Aston building – mainly due to their over-hanging roofs. Still, the thumbnails proved to be easier to produce than a larger scale final piece, whether that’s due to be getting unbelievably worked up because I appear to be unable to draw a straight line as well as my issues with scale getting the better of me. To be honest I’m surprised my blood pressure isn’t sky high.

Week 4 saw the entrance of a task I felt more comfortable with – rendering techniques on dinosaur bones. The obvious reason being because I’m so deep and brooding and the bones represent my soul, of course. Or maybe because rendering of more organic forms is something I like to think I have some decent ability in. Despite this, I feel I could have experimented more in different rendering techniques, or attempted to apply a more textured appearance to my drawings. In addition to this, I would have loved to have produced a larger amount of thumbnails for this project – however due to my sister whisking me away to London for a belated birthday trip on the Thursday I found myself without a full week and having to make the most of my time there – using it to produce a detailed final piece that I’m rather proud of.

Sorry mum I didn't mean to destroy your car..

  As much as I’d love to skip the next project, unfortunately I feel I must go over the, what can only be described as appalling attempt at drawing a car with the “ability” I learnt in week 3. Well, it took an entire week to even get a basic understanding of this task I may as well have been drooling on the page and submitting it, and even then the final piece completely destroyed any form of progress I believe I made over the week. Over all cars tend to be easier to draw from behind or when I am overlooking them (preferably from behind as well). But still, the length of a vehicle seems to be something I struggle to get right – as shown by the poor, boxy rendition of my mums Skoda Fabia. This is an area I need some serious work on, and the same area that’s incredibly off putting due to my lack of progress through it.

Straight borders? What are those?

The joys of being rained on in the cold. 5 Layers of thick jumpers and jackets couldn’t prevent the inevitable hiding from the wind and rain in the pub when we ventured to Bradgate Park. Perspective on these tasks came easier than expected – obviously something has sunken in from the previous tasks, although foliage proves to be as difficult as ever to draw. In addition to this, I decided to challenge my ability by attempting to draw water, as well as a waterfall. All I’ll say is it could have gone better.

Week 7 we went to Abbey Park pumping station, somewhere I apparently visited frequently in my childhood with my parents and siblings. Needless to say I don’t remember it much, however it did prove useful in attempting to render different materials such as metals, as well as apply perspective to indoor scenes. Not only did some objects prove I haven’t gotten over my somewhat questionable scale issues, but that one area I need to work on is my ability to portray depth in an area, varying the amount of detail on objects as the distance changes. It was suggested that changing the pencil hardness on more distant objects could aid me in this – something to attempt in the New Year and projects to come.

Week 8 saw the introduction of speed drawing. As well as blind drawing. Never again. But it saw the introduction of a lovely specimen, of whom I’m surprised, turned out quite well considering 50 minutes was spent on this drawing. Although there is the issue with his spine possibly being too long, and perhaps the angle on his body being somewhat distorted and the rendering being somewhat rushed, what can you expect from a quick drawing? Probably something better than I produced but I’m getting there I guess. He has no lower legs.. my apologies.

As I haven’t covered my progress in 3D at all yet, I’ll touch upon it, and my progression through the more tiring aspect of the course. 3Ds Max is a somewhat temperamental programme, of which angers me. The first project was to create one of the more well-known Doctor Who villains known as the Darleks. Learning the basics of the programme and how to meet a small triangle count was no doubt necessary, although I question the choice of an object with multiple spherical shapes surrounding it.

The second project was wheelie fantastic, obviously not a load of rubbish. It gave me a chance to make some shoddy awkward puns every now and again which was obviously nothing but fun. But no, whilst modelling the wheelie bin was rather simple, it gave us a chance to experience the overwhelming joy of gathering our own reference photos, adjusting them in photoshop as well as the different mapping types such as alpha, specular and normal mapping. Unwrapping the bin was a pain to begin with, lining up the texture correctly and avoiding distortion. If I could do this project differently than I would have adjusted the texture images in photoshop a bit more, allowing them to blur less.

Finally the building project proved to be nothing more than frustrating, utilising all the skills previously learned to produce a photo realistic version of an old, interesting building located around Leicester. The building I chose could have been modelled better, taking advantage of its age and warping the faces more to add an aged effect. However at the time I was just happy to finish the project – finding out you’ve accidentally deleted an entire, crucial face when it’s time to start texturing isn’t amusing. An additional aspect I could have done differently is the TGA files – making each one smaller, allowing myself to apply more normal mapping. Also, perhaps choosing not to adjust colours of tillable textures on my laptop – which enjoys distorting colours so that it’s not necessarily an accurate representation – could allow a less “psychedelic” feel to the house.