Schedule - 12/14-12/18

Monday 12/14 - Unity Space Shooter Project
Tuesday 12/15 - Unity Space Shooter Project
Wednesday 12/16 - Figure PAINTING
Thursday 12/17 - Figure painting
Friday 12/18 - Figuring out USC with Guidance Office

USC

Schedule - 12/7-12/11

Monday 12/7 - NEW Unity project
Tuesday 12/8 - C++ Computer Programming
Wednesday 12/9 - Figure Drawing
Thursday 12/10 - C++ Computer Programming
Friday 12/11 - Unity Project

Stories to Life - Hand Animation

Observational Drawing Tips

Schedule - 12/1-12/4

Resolution and Aspect Ratio

C#

Schedule - 11/23-11/25

Game Design: Questions

Schedule - 11/16-11/20

Presentation Reflection

Schedule - 11/9-11/13

Fantasy

Schedule - 10/26-10/30

Tips for Better Lighting

Portfolio Checkpoint #1

Concept:

Themes -

     -Invention and fantasy: create amazing, imaginary worlds and enjoyable characters.
     -War: weapon design, armor, war environments.
Integration -
     -Main work adhere to themes such as characters and environment with fantasy, but also my sketchbook pages are basically investigations on how to pull my goal off (Better Lighting, World-Building, Weapons, Armor, Character Creation, Proportion).
Concentration:
-3D Modeling, 3D Animation, and 2D Design
Production:
-Modeled a sword and arrow/spear I intend to use in an animation later on. (Still learning the basics of animation to pull this off.)
-Drew concepts of characters I intend to model in Blender (and attempt to animate).
Breadth:
-Sketches with different medias, poses, and objects.
-Blender for modeling and animation.
-Attempted Photoshop for concept art.
Evaluation, Integration, and Choices:
Sketches -
     Strengths: fixing mistakes, drawing figures/objects, easy and quick to do
     Weaknesses: turning it digital for further use
     Choice: try concept art digitally for easier access

Photoshop -
     Strengths: on the computer, used a sketch as a base, very good at selection tools (XD)
     Weaknesses: I have no clue what I am doing on this foreign equipment
     Choice: Give up and free-hand on Blender or just scan sketches... I shall try and figure this out before the school year ends though

Blender -
     Strengths: I know what I am doing!!, it is my preferred media and is my finished product for all the preparation of the two above, I can model and animate (Hypnosis) and use my concepts, I am also pretty proud of my node editor abilities so make amazing materials/textures
     Weaknesses: still learning stuff XD
     Choice: Suck it up and learn

Intention, Definition, and Exploration of Ideas:
-My focus on Blender stems from the want of creating worlds and characters that can then come to life with animation. The goal of learning these skills is to make video games or animated stories. Blender is the best choice to explore these desires because it is similar to the system video game companies and professionals use to produce their work. Also, sketching and digital programs such as Photoshop and the drawing tablet will help with the conceptual designs of my finished Blender projects.
Planning:
-My plan is to first make conceptual designs of characters and an environment. The next step would be to model these ideas in Blender and render images of the finished product.  Then I would like to rig it and animate a scene.  After all of this, I want to figure out Blender game engine and see how I could make a simple video game in Blender (or just program one with different software). While I attempt all of these goals, I would like to run into mistakes or problems so I may learn from them and make my art better.
Producing:
-So far I have made some concept designs and have modeled some weapons, grass, a sky, rocks, and have been practicing lighting and camera positions.
Evaluating:
-So far I hope I am on the right track. I have played with many different options and have already learned some valuable lessons.
Integrating:
-I have already learned from some mistakes when it comes to rendering images in Blender. Also I have more knowledge in Photoshop and I used prior use of my tablet to help (though I still failed pretty hardcore).

 To the left is a render at 1000 and the right is a render of 2000.

Then I realized the horrors of my lighting, so I went back and created proper 3-point lighting and re-rendered at 2000 (bottom left).

The outcome was so much better that I moved on and attempted another angle (with sky!).

World-Building

Schedule - 10/19-10/23

Hypnosis

Use of camera movements and angles to convey a certain emotion or story the viewer should (hopefully) feel and understand.

Colors and Their Meanings

Schedule - 10/12-10/16

The History of Bungie

Schedule - 10/5-10/9

Camera Movements Creating Emotion

Summary:
Emotions can be evoked from camera movements.
Smooth and shaky movements can emphasize certain emotions and support a story.
Crane shot down gives a feeling of being dropped into the character's world and moves you into the story.
A shot from an actor or object into a wide vista shot gives a feeling of how small the character is or how large an obstacle is.
A high to low shot makes the character look strong and gives a feeling of authority. Handheld movement creates a feeling of uneasiness or danger.
A quick pan changes the emotional direction of a scene quickly--it reveals something dangerous or something to overcome.
A quick push in creates a feeling of surprise or shock.
A slow dolly in creates tension and intimacy (whether uncomfortable or helps share emotion) while a slow dolly out gives a character a lost and abandoned feel (creating empathy and a relationship).
A dolly across reveals action or change of emotion.
A smooth glide cam between subjects creates a ballet or dance to feel epic and dreamlike.
Handheld camera creates a edgy, stressful feel to push emotion right in a viewer's face.
A glide cam going in and 360 around an object gives a "calm before the storm feeling."
Dolly + Zoom = Zolly and the background gets larger or smaller while the person remains the same, creating an overwhelming emotion as if there is an out-of-body experience and it's blowing their mind.

Schedule - 9/28-10/2

Artist Page - Jonathan Cooper

Example of Jonathan's work:

Pendulum Animation

Continuation of realistic movement in animation.

How to Draw Weapons

I then attempted my own weapon designs:

Schedule - 9/21-9/25

Bouncing Illusion

Learning how to create realistic movement using the graph editor.

Penny Easing

Practicing spacing and timing in an animation to look realistic.
Animation is the art of timing.

An Armor How-To

(Please excuse the colors... XD)

She's the most important anyway:

              

Schedule - 9/14-9/18

Character Creation Investigation

     After researching, I followed the first couple of steps with the help of a D&D character creation sheet and then drew what I imagine my character to look like.

     The next few steps I have not gotten to quite yet, but I have a feeling it will be a sketchbook page in the future.

Schedule - 9/7-9/11

Lighthouse Animation

Link For Animation on YT (JIC) Click Here

Schedule - 8/31-9/4

Proportion Investigation

The use of proportion will help my concept designs and the finished products to make them anatomically-correct.

Artist Page - Issac Hannaford

This artist's official page where you can check out his work: www.isaachannaford.com

Themes to Influence My Art

     Ever since I was introduced to video games, I fell in love. It did not matter what type of video game (first person shooter, role-playing, anything!) because I was interested in it all. I was immersed in magnificent, imaginary worlds that came to life on a screen that had cultures, different species of plants and animals, amazing characters, and basically let my creative mind run free. My passion for creating worlds before video games stemmed from my obsessions with Greek mythology, architecture, and love for writing and reading. All of these loves in my life have shaped my future goal: go into animation and video games design. This career allows me to incorporate all of my passions of fantasy and creation to let other people obsess over - what could  be more perfect?
     Invention and fantasy, therefore, is my main theme to follow. I want to be able to create those amazing, imaginary worlds and enjoyable characters. I wish to study the creation of environment in video games to make both the outside and inside world. This allows me to keep my interest in architecture alive. Additionally, I would like to study character creation and video game story writing. Characters are very important in a game to give off the correct feeling. To achieve this "feeling" background stories, attitude, and appearance are all necessary to influence what the character may do or say.
     Since my interest includes first person shooters, there will be some concepts of war in my art. For example, I may practice modeling different types of weapons: guns, knifes, swords, or maybe a futuristic weapon that does not exist. Also I will create war-destroyed environments and armor. I will incorporate game design by writing about an enemy and the history as to why the war started, and character creation by including physical deformities such as scars and prosthetic limbs. Furthermore, since my range of interest is vast in types of games I will also study those types. There is animation, drawing, pixel art, and many others.
     The main theme of choice for my art studies is invention and fantasy. Creating imaginary worlds, characters, and learning about the types of game design will create a perfect portfolio and experience for my future career (hopefully) as an animator and game designer. My childhood fantasies will be able to come true and I will be letting other peoples' fantasies come to life through my art.

Rocket Lava Lamp :D

NURBS (Spline) Modeling

NURBS (Spline) modeling is used in Blender to create curves or realistic surfaces.  For example, you would use this to make a realistic human or a car.  It helps to imitate organic surfaces.