Art

Within the spectrum of art, the departments consist of 2D artists: concept art, storyboard artist, texture. And 3D artists: 3D modeller, environmental artist, lighting artist, and animator. Including art director.

Concept artist - Concept artists carry out the initial visualisation of an idea. They are responsible for creating concepts of assets before they are produced - assist other artists to fully produce the assets with the art the concept artists provided for them. Assets can include characters, vehicles, props, weapons, buildings, user interface screens, environment and any other necessary game assets. Some concept artists would specialise in particular assets, like character and weapon design - which are the asset I’m particularly interested in. Concept artists work directly with the art director and usually communicate with the writers, asset artists and animators, even parts of the marketing team, as this department consists of a spectrum of marketing. In this case, artistically, certain concept artists would create art for a game sleeve. But overall, concept artists are mainly skilled in 2D art, traditional drawing, painting methods, and some 3D art, with ZBrush or other 3D modelling softwares.

Asset artist - Asset artists also have 2D and 3D skills, but are responsible for creating the assets that appear in the world of the game. As listed in the concept artist category, assets would include characters, weapons, vehicles, buildings, props, user interface screens, and any other necessary game assets. The game assets will then be finalised and and modelled in Maya using the plans provided by the concept artists.

Animator - Of course, animators must be skilled in digital animation, but also traditional 2D and 3D art skills. They are responsible for the in-game and cinematic animations, for example, cut scenes, character, NPC, and asset animations. Animators bring the game’s characters and world to a vivid view to the consumers as they work closely with writers and artists to assemble the artistic vision. In relation to the animator, there are also storyboard artists. They are responsible for providing a concise overview of the animation or story of the game for the animators. Traditional drawing and marker renderings are common techniques, but nowadays, artists often use Adobe Photoshop (Adobe Inc., 1990), Adobe Flash (Adobe Inc., 2005), Storyboard Pro (Toon Boom Animation Inc., 1994) or any other artistic program suited for the storyboard artists.

Art Director - As an art director, their primary function is communicating the artistic vision to the team. They are skilled in all aspects of creating traditional 2D and 3D digital art and are responsible for ensuring that all assets are in relation to the initial game plan.

I also searched on indeed an example of a Senior game artist job:

1. 2D skills

2. Concept and illustration skills

3. Characters, assets, environment art

4. Variety art styles

5. Animation skills

In addition you will be a self starter with passion and creative ideas.

- Indeed | Change-Job (1999)

Roles & Responsibilities:

Reference:

Indeed | Supermassive Games (2008) Senior Game Artist [Online]. Available from: https://www.indeed.co.uk/jobs?q=Concept%20Artist&l=london&advn=4412403408191290&vjk=d0a976308fb7cab3 [Accessed 20 November 2019].

CYBER GOOCH(2001) Getting a Job As a Games Artist [Online]. Available from: http://www.cybergooch.com/tutorials/pages/gamejob/getting_a_games_art_job.htm [Accessed 11 November 2019].

IMGyear2 (2019) The Art Department [Online]. Available from: https://www.imgyear2.com/art [Accessed 11 November 2019].

For an example of the evolution of 3D modelling, I chose the timeline of Lara Croft (Eidos Interactive, 1996 - Square Enix, 2019), because the evolution of this character is very distinct and different with features as the time passed through the years.

The first 3D Lara Croft game was in 1996. However, the modelling design is very sharp and solid with corners and simply the shape of Croft herself, in the game at the time. It appears that the 3D modellers used basic shapes and then modified them to shape into a human. But at the time, 3D modelling programs had limited tools and features to create high-quality 3D assets like today. However, as I researched and researched, trying to find the specific software the developers used to create the 1996 Tomb Raider, every link I went on were reluctant to reveal to me the software they used at the time. Not until I found a video on YouTube (Chad Hurley, Steve Chen & Jawed Karim, 2005) about behind the making of Tomb Raider by Core Design (Jeremy H. Smith, 1988). Even though they didn’t reveal the software, because the video quality was blurry, they conveyed the computers and graphics they used - which told me enough that the programs they used would have been very basic and low quality, in comparison to today’s technology. However, to discuss about the evolution of the Lara Croft 3D development, the developers said in the video that they improved from “350 polygons” to “540” in the second game “to add more detail and more curves” (AllUKn0wGames, 2011).

To discuss the overall key differences of the evolution of Lara Croft, it is clear that there were many games of Lara Croft - meaning that we can observe that the improvement of 3D modelling is gradual, yet also we can identify that the 3D modelling programs have also improved and added additional features to their software to enable users to create higher-quality assets for multiple types of projects. Whereas with Tomb Raider 1996, the developers only managed to create up to “350” polygons to their shapes to create Lara Croft. Unlike today, where we can add up to as many polygons, or use NURB shapes to modify curved faces and edges with tools that can texture surfaces with sharpness, fur, shininess, smoothness, etc, heighten or lower a bump, and so many other tools that can easily shape a shape smoothly, to create 3D games we have today, that have characters that look just as much as a movie, or just as real as a legitimate person stuck in the game - which results how creativity has immensely advanced over the years since video games were first developed, where people advanced to crazy innovations, reckless challenges they learn from, the tools they explore in programs, and the journeys they discover as they create and play - which all became an influence from past video games. A routine that occurs all the time that started from the very beginning - sharing. Because we are story-telling creatures, in this case, this is why Tomb Raider has developed into an immersive, amazing, detailed and story-driven game: because the original developers shared their creations to the next generation, who of which took inspiration from.

In terms of user experience, it would have been supposedly fun to play with awe and curiosity when playing the first Tomb Raider and onwards until it came to an end to old and basic Tomb Raider. As I watched a YouTube video about Toridori’s game review of the first Tomb Raider, she mentioned that she grew up playing the Tomb Raider games, from when it first came out until the latest. So at the time, older people that played this game, would have found the game amazing, fun and entertaining. In addition to that, it was very popular:

“Eidos had only planned for sales of a hundred thousand units, which of course sold out in the blink of an eye. Prompting the company to hastily make hundreds of thousands more copies. By the end of the hype, Tomb Raider had sold over seven and a half million copies worldwide” - (Toridori, 2019)

This clearly implies that the players’ experiences reflects that they were amazed and loved the game. However, if I was to play the game, me who was born in 2001, grew up around more advanced games than the Tomb Raider games before that year. Therefore, if I was to play it, I would be thinking that it is a game looking like a fossil. But it would be clear to me that it was made during the times when there were limited tools in softwares and old technology. As well as I may perhaps become easily bored because I experienced better games with better dialogue and story, movement, textures, environment, asset design and character design.

3D Modelling:

Whereas the latest Tomb Raider game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Square Enix, 2019), as I watched the intro and little pockets of the first part of gameplay (this is my personal review), I was immediately immersed by the graphics and the 3D modelling work the developers put into the game. The graphics even consisted of the tiniest detail that can relate to reality’s detail, such as when Lara is stuck with a large rock on her leg, blood dripping down her face and leg, dry dirt cracking on her skin, the movement of her hair as she groans in pain, and the features of her equipment all over her chest, legs and waist, as well as her clear facial expressions that easily tell us how she feels. However, I also watched a review by IGN (Jonathan Simpson-Bint, 1996) on YouTube, reviewed by Lucy O’Brien, she also opinionated by how amazing and immersive the game was, in technical terms, such as the game’s mechanics, communication with NPCs, the environment, puzzles, quests and story. I then looked at another review on YouTube for more back-up about the game. Edmond Tran, reviews the game with GameSpot (Pete Deemer, Vince Broady, Jon Epstein, 1996), and his reviews were negative than Lucy’s and mine. It appeared that as he played, he more analysed and criticised as he played. He explained and demonstrated how the movement mechanics of Lara are too divine and invincible to match with reality and it “raises some eyebrows”, in addition to stealth around enemies when it’s more stealth in front of the enemies - which does not make sense in the game, compared to reality. On the downside, the movement during combat is difficult, impacting to getting killed easily by enemies. He also criticised about how quests, even side-quests were so “slow-paced” - in this case - tedious. The constant head moving and communication became a grind - and I understood his frustration. But in the end, he did enjoy the game overall, as he also agreed on the visuals of the environment and the characters.

As I was searching for the software the developers used for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I managed to find Substance Designer and Substance Painter (Adobe Inc., 2010), as a primary texturing package. With these software, they allowed artists to link .sbs files directly to surface materials to be texturised.

Overall, the better the resolution, asset modelling, story and other features in high-quality, the better the experience.

Reference:

3Dfx_Aslinger (2018) ‘Tomb Raider (1996), 3D api comparison - Software vs. ATI3DCIF vs. 3dfx Glide’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFyGSxs31Zo [Accessed 10 November 2019].

AllUKn0wGames (2011) ‘Behind the scene of Core Design - The making of Tomb Raider’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_j01Nm0gzU [Accessed 10 November 2019].

Toridori (2019) ‘Tomb Raider (1996) - A History - Part 1’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAE2P4qhwe0 [Accessed 10 November 2019].

IGN (2018) ‘Shadow Of The Tomb Raider Review’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdEfROL2Wx8&t=109s [Accessed 10 November 2019].

GameSpot (2018) ‘Shadow Of The Tomb Raider Review’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taXpT2Cb59U [Accessed 10 November 2019].

Vincent Gault (2018) SHADOW OF THE TOMB RAIDER: TEXTURING THE SOUTH AMERICAN JUNGLE [Online]. Available from: https://store.substance3d.com/blog/shadow-tomb-raider-texturing-south-american-jungle [Accessed 10 November 2019].

Easy Render (Date Unknown) A Brief History of 3D Visualizations: The Ins and Outs [Online]. Available from: https://www.easyrender.com/3d-visualization/a-brief-history-of-3d-visualizations-the-ins-and-outs [Accessed 10 November 2019].

In Maya (Autodesk, Inc., 1998) and other 3D software, there are many tools to texture objects and assets. The common tools in Maya and other programs consist of tools such as bulging, shrinking, roughening a surface, narrow bulking to create the muscles and defining the bones. I couldn’t find the specific names and additional texturing tools in Maya, but I also learned that you can create a specific colour and texture by importing a photo. For example, to create a block of bricks, you can download an image and import it to the textures panel to make the block appear like a block of bricks. In addition to this, Maya and other programs already include a setting where you can manipulate the object’s material type. For example, modify it to gold chrome or shiny chrome, or grainy or smooth, etc. But sometimes 3D modellers use them for easy visualisation to help them model specific areas.

Research post: Maya texturing

Reference:

MBC (2011) ‘MAYA 3D ModellingTutorial - Materials and texturing in Maya’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-fFpmBYP_Q [Accessed 29 November 2019].

HOKIROYA I Digital Art (2015) ‘Creature Creation - Modeling, Sculpting, Texturing, Rigging (BLENDER TIMELAPSE)’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXg0IRKhEho [Accessed 29 November 2019].

AUTODESK KNOWLEDGE NETWORK (2018) 3D Paint Tool [Online]. Available from: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2018/ENU/Maya-LightingShading/files/GUID-F7BDD112-2BEF-4B8C-94D7-356012774172-htm.html [Accessed 29 November 2019].

The history of art started roughly around 1.8 million or five hundred thousand years ago when Homo erectus (species of archaic humans that lived throughout most of the Pleistocene geological epoch) were still living in caves and hunting animals with their own made spears, archery and other primary weapons, and wore skins as clothes. They painted images of bulls, bison, stags, horses, and other animals on the walls of the caves around Europe, and other prehistoric cave art in Indonesia. Then time passed and art remained a hobby and career across the globe, where they learnt art from each other and from other inspirations.

Certain careers of art started from religion, from parts of Europe, mostly from Italy - Christianity - and south east Asia, from the religion of Buddhism.

In Europe, not only it was art for religion to visually give a message to the viewers of the meaning behind the art, but also art for cathedrals and then proceeding to art for politics. Apart from Asia, as they remained creating for art of their environments for nature, general citizens and general lives.

From the late 1800s, artists began to draw the dawn of the ‘isms’: surrealism, impressionism, expressionism, cubism, dadaism and other isms. And modern art developed to contemporary art.

Nowadays, art are mostly made of portraits, landscapes, game characters and other features of the world in many different tools and equipment. But the art we make are not as famous as the art that were created many years ago.

History:

However, for the history of concept art, and the time of the beginning where an individual creates art to visually present a design for an item, character, or area that does not exist, began from Walt Disney Animation as early as the 1930s. In fact, Disney was the creator of the term “concept art”. But this is the Wikipedia definition - apparently, Tate, and other websites claim that concept art started in the 1960s, except they researched the history of conceptual art. Because as I glanced through another website that had the title Moving Image: Concept Art, I noticed that this website also informs that concept art started around the 1930s, where Walt Disney invented the term and actually consistently used concept artists for his work. One of Disney’s most famous concept artists was Mary Blair, who created colourful, highly imaginative paintings for films such as Cinderella (1950)m Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953).

Maurice Noble was a frequent concept artist for many of Warner Bros. greatest animated shorts, including Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th century (1953), What’s Opera, Doc? (1957), and others until 1970.

Since Walt Disney had is own concept art, as well as his concept artists, other animated and live-action films had concept artists before the full production to gather and visualise ideas for their films. For ideas such as character ideas, props, vehicles for, perhaps, spaceships in sci-fi films, or other assets to suit a fantasy film, or any other genre that’s surreal to reality. And so concept art developed across the industry of films and games, as well as hobbies for other people to create their own original characters.

Reference:

DON GLASS (2015) How Art Began Online]. Available from: https://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/art-began.php [Accessed 13 November 2019].

Ewen Callaway (2014) Homo erectus made world's oldest doodle 500,000 years ago [Online]. Available from: https://www.nature.com/news/homo-erectus-made-world-s-oldest-doodle-500-000-years-ago-1.16477 [Accessed 13 November 2019].

Illustration History (Date Unknown) Moving Image: Concept Art [Online]. Available from: https://www.illustrationhistory.org/genres/moving-image-concept-art [Accessed 13 November 2019].

The School of Life (2015) ‘HISTORY OF IDEAS - Art’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ECzduUWx0 [Accessed 13 November 2019].

likefilmsdotorg (2011) ‘The History of Art in 3 Minutes’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZOsR0TzbJ8 [Accessed 13 November 2019].

Tim Schafer is a games designer, game programmer and game writer. He founded Double Fine Productions in July 2000 after spending over a decade at LucasArts (George Lucas, 1982).

Tim Schafer progressed into games as he studied computer science at UC Berkeley. Schafer became interested in writing and took inspiration from Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote short stories in the evenings. Schafer interned to help develop databases for small companies while he tried to position himself for an opening in a larger corporation such as Atari and Hewlett-Packard. But he was rejected by them.

Schafer saw LucasFilm Games was advertising jobs for programmers who could write game dialog. During the application of the job, Schafer received a phone interview with David Fox and Fox asked him to submit his resume for further consideration. To make up for the phone interview, Schafer sent in a comic of himself applying for and getting the job at LucasFilm Games, drawn as a text adventure.

Finally, Schafer was hired by LucasArts in 1989, and his first position was as a ‘scummlet’, a programmer who helped to implement features and ideas proposed by the lead game developers within LucasArts SCUMM engine. He, alongside with Dave Groassman, helped to play test Indianna Jones and The Last Crusade: The Action Game and implement the NES version of Maniac Mansion. Schafer and Grossman, along with two others, were taught by Ron Gilbert as part of a “SCUMM University” on how to use the engine to set up rooms and puzzles. later `Gilbert approached Schafer and Grossman, offering them the chance to work in his new project, which would ultimately become the pirate-themed adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island (Lucasfilm Games, 1990).

Tim Schafer:

Schafer’s first solo project, the biker adventure Full Throttle (LucasArts), was released in 1995. He went on to design the highly acclaimed Grim Fandango (LucasArts, 1998), a noir adventure game set in the Aztec afterlife featuring characters similar to the papier-mâché-mâché skeleton decorations from the Mexican holiday Dia De Los Muertos. Grim Fandango won many awards, including GameSpot’s Game of the Year award of 1998.

Tim Schafer worked on an unannounced PlayStation 2 action-adventure game at LucasArts, but it never entered production, because LucasArts shifted away from adventure games - which resulted to a number of developers leaving the studio. Schafer was approached by his colleagues with the idea of leaving the company to develop PlaySation 2 games on their own. Schafer was initially wary and concerned of this idea, since he believed he felt secure in his position at LucasArts. But in the end, he left the company in January 2000, to found Double Fine Productions, where he created the platform game Psychonauts. The game was first released on Xbox in North America on April 19th, 2005. It won many critical acclaim, including a Game of the Year award from Eurogamer.

As I watched a YouTube video of Tim Schafer at an interview with Adrian Killens by The Centre for Computing History, even though I couldn’t find out how many years of experience Tim Schafer had of game production. Schafer informed how he was playing games since a child, and played the game Ballblaster at 16, except it was a pirated version of Ballblazer. But around that age, he was interested in producing games and studied computer science at Berkeley University, therefore, Schafer had around thirty years experience of game production, and experience still counting to this day.

Judged by the researchers who interviews Tim Schafer and the research they put into the websites, it appears that Psychonauts, the first game Double Fine created, is the most famous and awarded game they produced - and clearly because Schafer indicated that the game nearly sold 1.7 million copies and won over six awards.

The art style of one of his projects with Double Fine Productions, for example, Broken Age. The art style of this game is very artistic with paint and other digital drawing tools. However, because of the art style, it implies to us that Double Fine wanted create this game for a PEGI 7 or more audience - an audience who can understand the story of the game, as it’s complicated because of how it consists of two main characters who are in alternate universes or worlds, yet different environments, whom both are going similar situations as each other. Which gives an overview of how Schafer scripts his game with his own personal style of scripting.

In addition to the art style, not only is it artistic, but it also has a cartoon-theme of a storybook.

But from Tim Schafer’s first game, The Secret of Monkey (Lucasfilm Games, 1990), the style of the game can give a clear visualisation of Schafer’s style of scripting, since the game is a dialogue point and click game. Like Broken Age (Double Fine Productions, 2014), except more old-fashioned, however, Schafer did not participate fully with this game, since it was produced by LucasArts, which is a larger company. But from Schafer’s first game with Double Fine Productions, Psychonauts (Majesco Entertainment, 2005), the art style is also cartoon-themed, yet with basic graphics, but highly within the sci-fi theme. Plus, the character design is very similar to the Broken Age, except older. The style of Schafer’s games evolved through his years of game production. His style evolved into the style of new and immersive stories, and large variety of themes. I once watched a launch trailer of Brütal (Electronic Arts & Double Fine Productions, 2009), and the game was completely different from all the other games Schafer had made with Double Fine. Which reveals that Schafer has an open mind to producing games, especially with the game KIDS (Double Fine Productions, 2018?). A very unique, yet unexplainable game. Since Schafer is common for his advanced skills of scripting and story writing, the game KIDS does not even include dialogue or any explanation of a brief storyline or purpose behind the game. But with Tim Schafer’s evolved mind of openness, he’s made so many games in so many styles: pixel platformer, violent games from Iron Brigade (Double Fine Productions, 2011) and Brütal Legend, strange worlds yet immersive stories of Broken Age, Psychonauts and Knights and Bikes (Double Fine Productions, 2019). As an experience from college projects, it’s always good to make a range of different games to extend the audience to be recognised more and satisfy the large audience. But I’m terms of recognition, the players can recognise Schafer for his scripting work and his journey through game production.

Tim Schafer’s latest work was Full Throttle Remastered. But his other latest work is in production, Psychonauts 2 (Double Fine Productions, 2020), which will be coming out in 2020. Which will excite the majority of the audience, since the game was very popular and sold over millions of copies.

Reference:

The Centre for Computing History (2017) ‘Tim Schafer Interview 2017 - (Lucasarts / Double Fine)’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KACDkoWNoQU [Accessed 13 November 2019].

IMDb (Date Unknown) Psychonauts (2005 Video Game)
Awards [Online]. Available from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395252/awards [Accessed 13 November 2019].

Double Fine (Date Unknown) Games [Online]. Available from: http://www.doublefine.com/games [Accessed 13 November 2019].

Double Fine (2014) Broken Age [Online]. Available from: http://www.brokenagegame.com/ [Accessed 13 November 2019].

Double Fine (2009) Broken Age [Online]. Available from: http://www.doublefine.com/brutallegend/ [Accessed 13 November 2019].

Wikiwand (date unknown) Tim Schafer [Online]. Available from: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Tim_Schafer [Accessed 13 November 2019].

Art is something I am most interested, fascinated and focused on. A concept artist I am most inspired by is Ross Tran, also known as RossDraws in many of his media. Ross Tran is an independent concept artist who creates art of his original characters as well as the existing. However, he creates art for other people to buy, and does not create art as a guideline for other people, as he creates more of completed art pieces than sketches, but his tutorials are for people to buy too, if they would like to learn from him.

Ross Tran was passionate about drawing ever since he was younger, and made characters of his own at his grandmother’s house and her backyard. However, his father preferably wanted Ross to learn about math and science, and gave him homework and book volume to learn from instead. But Ross kept drawing on his homework, desk and anything to escape the numbers. Except, whenever he was found drawing, his father would give him a timeout, or ground him, so Ross had to sneak around to find a suitable place, and couldn’t draw at home but at school.

Until Ross Tran reached middle school, and his parents got a divorce, and Ross was able to freely draw again. A routine of him coming home from school and drawing as much as he can at his own pace.

Case study: Ross Tran

As he was gifted with a Cintiq drawing tablet, he researched about art, about how there’s so much to study from the foundation, and how you can do art for a living. His mother allowed him to learn in a summer course and his desire was to simply learn. Learn and learn about art and improving.

Art inspired and motivated Ross Tran even more, and excitedly told his mother that he wanted to art for a living, however, his mother was weary and preferred him to do a science degree as it’s “a better idea”. Then Ross told his father, and the response was the same: “I heard the word art, I’m not there, I don’t know Ross.”.

Ross Tran was accepted at an art college in L.A., and a few months later learning there, was hired at a design studio. His first assignment was to move drones for a Star Wars kinect game, but it didn’t meet Ross’s expectations and didn’t think he could anymore of it for a living, and he wanted to make people laugh. So he decided to get into acting, leaving all of his art, and contributed to some acting gigs of which he enjoyed, however his passion for art crept in and thought “I miss art!” Again. So he spent a week doing nothing but drawing and playing with cameras. He thought how could he do art and amuse people at the same time. So he posted a video on YouTube, and so his channel grew and grew and became increasingly recognised for his professional, immersive and fascinating art with his original and existing characters from the media.

Ross’s first original character was named Nima, who was created during class for a project, and whose personality and story represents Ross’s past life when he was younger. He explains how “all your characters, all your creations should be an extension of yourself”, “what you’re putting out in the world should be crafted with your stories and your storytelling and your experiences and Nima represents me in the past” and “create something that an extension of who I am.”. This inspired me, even though I may disagree with the idea of creating a character from your experiences and past, when you can create a character of your own that does not have to be in relation to you, but can be “an extension of yourself,'' as a way to be recognised and reveal a meaning behind your characters.

When watching his projects on YouTube about creating his new original character, Faye, and presenting tutorials on how to design your character, put them into a portrait, into a landscape and then into a cinematic scene, and creating a professional portfolio of them, inspired me further to return myself to Red, my original character.

He explains how to lay out a portfolio in a certain way to attract and impress employers and art directors to be recognised and hired.

However, his videos are mostly for students and independent artists, than employed artists in a studio. As his job is to teach, motivate and inspire beginning or skilled artists to create professional art. As well as teaching them essential features of art, for example, semiotics with shapes and colours and teaching them how to use and where to use them suitably for the characters and environment.

Ross Tran is a representation of no matter what people say, do not let them mould you into what they want you to do and do what you want to do. Like the quote from Joseph Campbell, “follow your bliss.” As well as this, Ross Tran is clear representation for his beautiful and professional art but also of being open-minded, and flourishing creativity and creating emotions for your characters that develops into a meaning to your characters. In addition, if one has a desire for something, they must work for it to reach it, and when it comes to drawing, to learn effectively, you need headspace - and the majority of artists give the same advice.

Reference:

Academy of Art University (2016) ‘Concept Art Panel: Ross Tran’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoTDSpxtKc0 [Accessed 17 November 2019].

Patreon (2018) ‘Creator Tour with Ross Tran | Illustrator and Youtube Creator’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjJwcHCL6Uc [Accessed 17 November 2019].

Ross Draws (2019) ‘Illustration Master Course - Ep. 5: STORYTELLING & PRESENTATION’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK91woAn8TI&t=997s [Accessed 17 November 2019].

After researching about the evolution of 3D modelling, we began to learn 3D modelling with Carlie - straight into Maya, which is, apparently, the hardest 3D software to use than Blender. But I find this very helpful, as being thrown into something hard is the biggest leap to quickly becoming an expert at something, even if it could be overwhelming - unless it’s taught with good, well-explained and practical steps. Nevertheless, before we actually started off with Maya, Carlie first introduced us to the fundamentals to shape types when 3D modelling, which were polygonal shapes - which we are essentially using and has points, straight lines and corners that can be modified, and NURB, which uses curves. However, both are in design with coordinates - meaning that they designed through vectors - meaning that the design will not lose their resolution however they’re manipulated.

Then we were introduced to the basic user interface on the side of the screen, along with primitive shapes on the top tab: the cube, cylinder, tube, sphere, torus (donut shape), and cone. Primitives are the building blocks of 3D - basic geometric forms that can be easily used or modified.

After the introduction of shapes, we were set off to complete the three mini quests of creating shapes and combining them. After the whiteboxing lesson with Martyn, I was confident with moving 3D objects with rotations and across the screen to certain areas and completing the mini quests smoothly, for example, put a cone in a torus or balance a plane on a cylinder. Until we all finished and we were assigned to create a snowman or any object that can be easily created with primitive shapes. This didn’t taunt me since I easily learnt the essentials we were set to do. For this task, I made a chick - well I initially planned to make a snowman, until Jack, who sat in front of me, was making a chick - so I switched to making a chick - because baby birds, especially ducks, are very cute to me. Either way, as we didn’t have enough time to finish the majority of our 3D models, I threw some cylinders for the legs, and tried to input another cylinder for the tail, and try to modify the shape from its vertices and faces - but, personally, it looked quite weird for the chick so I decided to call it a completion of the task for me. However, this implies a sign of me being taunted. I realised that I was afraid to challenge myself to at least try to make a tail for the chick. But because it looked weird and wrong, I was scared to proceed further with it.

Production diary: Week 1

Carlie then introduced us to more tools to our new 3D modelling skills with Maya and four pairs of the same shapes merged together. Except the introduction was only to three more, which were union, difference and intersection along the Boolean tab. Self-explanatory for union, but it makes the shapes into one. Making a unique shape. Difference depends on which shape you first selected, otherwise the tool cuts out the shape you last selected, leaving the shape with a mould where the other shape originally was. And lastly, intersection, this tool leaves out the shape created within the two shapes merged. For example, merge a cube with another cube diagonally into a corner, internally, it creates a cube, therefore intersection only leaves out the small cube.

After that, we then learned how to subdivide and extrude shapes. Subdividing divides a face of a shape into multiple, smaller faces. Which is useful as this tool can allow 3D modellers mold the shape into any shape of their desire, by selecting any divided face and modify however they want. With this tool, this made me realise how the process of the first making of Lara Croft may have occurred, as the developer explained. As he informed the use of 350 polygons, then improved to 540, implied that the more polygons, the more resolution and accuracy of the object. Unless if only the developers had better technology and software, they would have had the 3D modelling program to model objects with NURBs.

Then we proceeded to extruding shapes. This tool gave me a flashback of a YouTube video I watched a few years ago where someone modelled a unique, dinosaur/alien specimen. Where he started off with a block, then extended the shape from its faces into his ideal rough outline of his creature.

We tried extruding our shapes our lives and we all ended up with a box with a trunk or an arm, with a window on the side, or an eye socket for the elephant, perhaps.

This lesson of 3D modelling interested me further as it made me remember that YouTube video I spontaneously watched around three years ago. But also what I, and what my classmates can make out of these useful tools.

Week 2:

For our next 3D modelling, we were introduced to loop lining, bevelling and smoothing. We first started with loop lining, which was the manual method of subdividing, where you drag your line wherever you wish. This is useful for any method without using automatic tools, and creating another face wherever you want, and then extruding however you want. We then continued to bevelling, which was a tool that can create curves, yet it creates lines and faces in order to create the curve - which is also useful, because modellers can modify the object further. However, the second time around I tried to bevel again on a different line of my cube, the shape wouldn’t not curve, but we were already proceeding to the next activity. The next activity turned out to be simple with just a press of a key. By pressing 3, the program calculates the amount of vertices and edges and smooths out the object as round as possible. It shocked me by how instant the tool, even by pressing 1 and your shape is back to its original design. However, we were also introduced to how to modify the roundness of the tool beforehand. Carlie explained, the more subdivisions, the less rounder the shape will become.

Now that we learnt the essential features of Maya, we downloaded two images of the front and side view of cartoon baby in a T-pose. We were then demonstrated how to import the images into Maya and use them as a reference. For this, we had to use the four-screen view to ensure that our images were aligned properly, as well as ensuring that the shape was also aligned with the image reference - extruding and shifting along with the image. However, because of my tiredness, it degraded my motivation to do the activity properly with the new tools we were learnt in the past two weeks. Though, I did use the extruding tool and the loop lining, but the majority of my other classmates were very much better than me and had more accurate modelling, and modification of their baby models. In the end, Carlie did claim that it is a lot of fiddling and it takes time and at our own paces.

Overall, even though I was actively unmotivated and easily bored - not because of the presentation, but because of my tiredness from the same routine everyday, where I wake up fairly early to continue with school work before school in some days when college starts late. But if I was awake and normal, I would have been able to create the same work as everybody else: more of an accurate baby model. However, 3D modelling is an essential skill within the games industry, as it boosts the likeliness to get hired.

Week 3:

Reference:

Autodesk, Inc. (1998) Maya [Computer program]. Available from: https://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/maya [Downloaded by the college].