Life After Pi|PPP2

A very good, short documentry on visual effects industry and the downfall of Rhymes&Hues, studio that made a green screened Life of Pi into extremly sucessful and beautiful movies.
VFX industry is quickly growing but, like many other, can't guarantee a safe job forever. It's quite normal for  studios to open and close quite quickly, merge or be bought by bigger company. Yet, it's unheard of studio to annouce bankruptcy in same time as the movie their created to get Oscar for Best Visual Effects.And I think thats what let to the protests via Facebook (green icons) and media cover.

Right Places|Responsive

 
 Right Places is a short 2D animation done by Mateusz Urbanowicz as a part of his final year at Kobe Univesity in Japan.
What I find really interesting in this short animation are beautifully painted backgrounds, based on actual places that can be found in Kobe.


Plot concentrates on a young college student, who, suddenly, starts to see weird creatures around. Since backgrounds are very detailed, characters and creatures were simply cell shaded and fit perfectly. Character animations were done in traditional way, with pencil and tons of paper, later cleaned - up and colored in Photoshop (coloring step by step video for one of the shots).
It's a really good animation, inspired by Makoto Shinkai work, and definately worth watching. As for my little project - I'm not going as crazy with backgrounds as Mateusz, mostly because I'm not skilled enough for that. However, Right Places are going to be a source of inspiration for future projects.

Mayan Portal Concept Art|Responsive

Few weeks ago I've got asked by Kinga if I could draw some concepts for her Responsive brief. She's doing a game level inspired by Mayan civilization (you can check it here).

---

First batch of rough sketches. Kinga's feedback was to make them more scary and way more creepy.

---

Two more concepts, luckily a bit more scary (big mouth-gate and monumental size does the trick).

---

Final concept. Added little fellow to show the size of portal statue and floor plan. I've tried to make these one as good as I can, with 'fancy' shading and neat lines, so it can be added to my portfolio.

I've enjoyed working on this project, was challenging and different to what I normally do (cute stuff as Kinga like to say ;)). Unfortunately, I didn't had enough time to draw as much as I wanted to, had to go back to my own brief (procrastinated by doing work for someone else.. which isn't that bad really ;).

Alien_workshop01|Machinima

This week task was to create an alien model based on given referance. Finished mesh will be used in rigging tutorial. After final model is made it should be UV mapped and textured. It was a very challenging task for me, as I'm still quite new to Maya, but I've learnt a lot.

I've started with a cube primitive and kept on modeling half of the alien, as adviced by Mat.

At this stage my model was really simplified as I was concentrating on getting main parts correct (eg. leg, torso, arm).

 Next step was to finish up a rough model. I had everything in place and the only thing left was to model head. That part of modelling was really hard for me. Heads are way more complex than they look. For mouth I've extruded some mesh and moved it inside the model. Eyes were done separetly as two spheres (eye ball and eye lids).

I've tried to smooth my model a bit by moving vertexes and edges, as well as adding extra faces (or deleting unnecessary ones).

I've created a final model by merging together both half. It was quite an easy process, as it required only using a specific for this task tool (and flipping model along -X axis). However I've ended up with few holes in my model, which I sew by using another tool.

I'm particulary proud with how the legs and body (torso and bottom) have came out. Head looks a bit weird and I might try to fix later, but overall I'm happy with final model.

Epic development art|Responsive

Development art for 2013 animated feature film Epic, done by Micheal Knapp, one of the production designers (along with Greg Couch and Bill Joyce) at Blue Sky Studios (Ice Age, Rio).
After getting Annie nomination for Best Production Design in Animated Films (along with other nominations), Micheal Knapp decided to share some goodies (I mean Epic art) on his website (part 2 of Epic art). Color scripts and concepts look amazing, extremly detailed and beautiful. The amount of hard work that was put in making this movie is insane. I've also enjoyed reading Knapp's description of a project and challenges they had during the production process.
I've watched this movie in cinema and I have to admit, that overall art direction is stunning. Environments are interesting, colorful, characters fun and memorable. The only weak point could be a plot, but since it's based on a book and its main audience are kids, I can't really complain ;).

Carter Goodrich|PPP2

 

Carter Goodrich (artist website) is an artist mostly known for his character design work in various animated feature films and illustration books. He worked on character designs for Ratatoiulle, Brave, Croods, and many more. Usually drawn with pencils, his characters are always full of life and personality. Personally, I found work he did for Ratatoiulle the most amazing, mostly because of unusual animal chosen to be a protagonist. Rats are very smart creatures and they deserves more love from animation companies ;)

Another big part of Goodrich portfolio are illustrated (and written by him) books. He is currently working on his sixth book, We Forgot Brock!. Artwork is done with traditional media, paints, pencils. Really colorful style makes these books perfect for kids.

Editorial work for Forbes, New Yorker (and few other papers), is something, that (almost) every illustrator have to do at some point in their career. Goodrich illustrations are again amazing and well suited for adult papers and topics. Fact, that he can switch his style to suit audience, with keeping it coherent and recognizable, makes him even more amazing artist. 

Odin Sphere|Machinima

Odin Sphere is a 2D fantasy action RPG, developed by Vanillaware (GrimGrimoire) and published by Atlus for Playstation 2 in 2007. SquareEnix released game in Europe in 2008. Odin Sphere is probably one of the most beautiful games ever made (along with Journey and Shadow of the Collosus and other Vanillaware games), with beautiful backgrounds and stunning characters/monsters. This is simply an eye candy, level of detail - amazing. Character models are nicely polished and doesn't stand out from this magical world. Walk/idle/attack animations are also nicely done.
   Plot mixes Norse mythology with magical, full of fairies, dwarfs and elves, fantasy worlds. There are 5 different stories for player to explore, each of them is enough for 10 hours+ of gameplay. Of course, it requires more time to level up each character to maximum, try every dish from cafes, achive perfect score for each stage ;). Gameplay itself is very interesting - player can only level up by eating food (EXP points) and learn new attacks (and level up weapon) by collecting little floating lights called Phozons.
   I highly recomend this game to people, who like jRPGs and beautiful games (with amazing storyline) in general.

Don't Starve|Machinima

    Don't Starve is a 2D game developed by indie company Klei Entertaiment (Shank, Mark of the Ninja), released first on computers and earlier this year on Playstation 4 (for a month was available as a part of Playstation Plus offer). It is mostly known for it's unique, Burton-esque, stylistics and a difficult gameplay. Your main goal in Don't Starve is, obviously, surviving as many days as possible without dying. This game doesn't know terms like checkpoints or tutorials, player have to figure out everything. And every death is a permanent death. You have to start from Day 1, no matter if you made mistake at Day 3 or Day 567. Nevertheless, this game is very addictive and challenging.
    I personally found this game to really interesting, surving day after day - rewarding, graphics - charming and style coherent. In Don't Starve world you can die in multiple ways but you can also survive by making various decisions. It's not easy, over time player will encounter many different types of enemies (from bees and spiders to walking trees) and change of seasons (summer, where food is widely available, and freezing cold winter). The only thing you have to remember is not letting your character to starve and die ;).

Moodboards|Machinima

After the idea brainstorming, I've decided to create 3 moodboards. Key elements I was looking for was: unusual sea creature (for character moodboards), colours, texture, shape.

Character moodboards: since we are after an unusual alien design, animals like shrimp mantis, sea dragons, jelly fishes or sea slugs (e.g. glaucus atlanticus) seemed perfect. They have a very unusual shapes and bright colours.

One of the brief requirements is, that characters have to be humanoid and preferably without tail (or anything else that requires extra rig). This makes it an interesting design challenge.
As we are asked to come up with two characters I want to make each one of them as unique as possible. Strong silhouettes and opposite color schemes/textures will make them more recognizable.

Spaceship moodboard: when creating this board I was mostly looking for weirdly shaped shells (to make a sea-themed alien world more coherent) and rocks with interesting textures. I've also looked at snail shells for their colours and textures. Architecture  (and sculpture) was another big part in this part of research.

Shell house in Mexico City (architect- Javier Senosiain, owner- Saching Tendulkar) with it's unusual design will be probably one of my main inspirations for designing a spaceship.


As we haven't agreed yet on style (wherever our characters should look more cartoon-y or be really scary and creepy), I've looked at different artists and included two (opposite) examples I'm happy to work with.

Little Shadow Soldier Turn by John Singh.
- funky little characters, interesting shapes;
- cute and cartoon-y but also mischievous;
- directed for younger audience, kids and teens.

Diseased thumbs by fightPUNCH.
- interesting head shapes, some of them quite abstract;
- scary and disturbing, but also goofy;
- for more mature audience,  as kids could find them too scary.

Brainstorming Ideas| Machinima

This year game module is all about Machinima and creating a cut scene inside a game engine. I've teamed up with Katherine and Elliot. We also wrote a list of jobs each one of use can do (and I think our role list is split evenly) and set a Trello and Facebook groups. Our brief requires to create 2 humanoid characters, scenery and come up with a short story that can be made into a one minute cutscene (saved as a Quick Time format).

We started to brainstorm ideas and write them down on a piece of paper. Our mind map contained a variety of different themes and styles we would like to explore. After a long discussion we decided to go with sci - fi theme. However, we didn't wanted to do generic looking aliens and looked at sea creatures like mantis shrimp and stingrays. We still need to work on story and choose a theme for cinematic sequence (challenge, gift or surveillance), but really looking foward to this module and what we will create.
 

Icarus Project|PPP2

Last summer I was asked by Kenny to create a few pieces of concept-art (mostly T-poses) for an upcoming online shooter game. It was quite a challenging task as I'm not an active FPS player, plus I rarely draw any futuristic designs. However, it was also a reason why I took this project. I had fun working and it was a very good experience, as I was involved in a big project with many other people on board.

I also learnt quite a lot, especially about efficency with designs and ways of doing it just a little bit quicker.
As mentioned earlier, I was mostly doint T-poses of various character fractions (human and creature).

Sela Bar Charity Exhibition|PPP2

In late October I've came across another exhibition opportunity. This time I've joined Frances in a charity event. I got my four pieces displayed in a cosy environment of Sela Bar along with few other great Leeds College of Art students.
Our main goal was to rise as much money, as we could, to support Yorkshire Air Ambulance. For the first time I've been in opening night event, which was filmed by Elliot.

I also got a chance to participate in JuJu Shop Showcase Spectacular craft and art show. I've been to craft shows before and really like atmosphere (although it's quite chilly in winter).
Overall, it was a very good experience and I'd love to take part in this type of events more often.

Plants - sketches|Responsive

Quick sketches of plants I'll use for this animated video.

Decided to go with more cartoony style and interesting shapes. I'm particularly happy with tree designs. As they're going to be more of a fore - (composition blocking) and background objects I had to make sure they look interesting enough. I'll use puppet tool to add little animations to the leaves.

ImagineFX Raising Star|PPP2

    This year I've again entered Rising Star competition run by ImagineFX.  It's a very good opportunity to get you work judged by top industry people (e.g. Bobby Chiu). I find submitting my work to Rising Star quite stressful, as the competition is very high and you definitely want to impress judges. However, it's also a good reason to work even harder and improve even more.