Unit 69 - Storyboard Design

Over the course of the project for Unit 69, we was required to plan, design and develop storyboards within the industry. After some selective research into trailers, storyboards and characters, we where challenged to choose a character from the previous project we has done during our induction. I first selected Stewie, but in the difficulty of trying to find information and background on the character, I decided to switch to a more challenging piece, which was to create a storyboard based on the character Batman.

With my character in mind, we was told to practice drawing them, and try to take them out of context, go crazy with our designs to find something unique, something that was our own. I came up with the following designs.

These are my quick design sketches or trying my hand at alternating the appearance of Batman, the top full one, is sort of a replica of the 1999 Batman cartoon.  (See Right) I also attempted to create a more robitic batman, and see if I could attempt to create man in a more droid based individual, while it worked, it didn't really fall into the storyline I wanted, mostly because it fell more down the RoboCop line and wasn't out of context enough for my liking.

This image was anither pratice at trying to find a good way to draw batman, after having some trouble with the jaw and mount of the character I decided I would develop a character that cover most of the face and allowed me to focus on the actually character itself, rather than the long details. 

These are my final chaarcter designs, I have chosen to go for a rather rustic looking bartman, instead of all the high-tec gagetery, I have select a more Post-Apocplyptic element, with a scarf covering his face, and goggles to help him since the dusty envrionment. With this I also managed to creaft a new storyline. Batman works a s a world war 2, mercenary fighting for the side that pays the most.

And below is the final design, I am rather happy with the outcome of this, at first I have to say on paper it didn't strike me as anything decent, but once I got it in Photoshop, and started to apply the different concepts, it quickly turned into something I am rather proud of, and would happily recreate again. 

I used a wide array of concepts, for this, such as applying filters like CutOut and turning up the attributes to create a more stand-out effect for what I really wanted to accomplish. As well was using images from numerous sources to help added the effects, such as the fire and explosion which I found was too time consuming to attempt to do in Photoshop myself, unfortunatly. 

I now begin my evaulation on this project and look back at the development process and discuss what I liked, and what I did not like, what I would do differently, and of course explain the tools and concepts I used to end up with this final design. 

What did you like about this project?

I particularly liked the design and creativity of it, it allowed me to explore a depth of imaginative concept drawing that I haven't delved in much before, it also allowed me to futher my skills and attempt to do something that bit more challenging in order to get a better outcome and something I am rather proud of creating. 

What I like about the actual storyboard, however is mostly the colour contrasts and how interesting the mode of colours make it, dragging your eye to the scenes, that interest you, such as for example my favourite scene, the last one. Which I found very cool, and all I simply did was apply a cutout to that scene, increasing the Fideility to increase the thinkness of the lines, and also the Simplicty to create a more abtract designed look. Finally, I applied a plaster effect with a red tone, to get the  view that I wanted, it was mostly by trial error, and worked out very well.

What don't you like about the project?

Other than the fact it's incredibly time consuming, mainly the basis of which my design was on. Originally I attempted to recreate Stewie Griffin, but in realising that in doing soo I was limiting myself and possibility of increasing my skills (As well as the fact there is so little history on Stewie Griffin), I opted to create a more defined approach, and went for Batman. Of course this proved difficult to replicate, and although the re-design was to my liking in a story wise aspect, I believe I could have developed him a lot more, and worked more on designing him, and the aesthtics of it.

This of course, is something I would like to work on more, if I had the chance to do it again.


What difficulties did you face?


There are numerous difficulties, one was actually drawing a design that worked, which is suprisingly not easy, even with an idea, trying to get the aethetics of it correct, proves difficult and time consuming, also trying to become more familar with the painting side of Photoshop, its all well a good learning how to manipulate images, and apply various filters and effects, but it becomes really difficult when you try to use Photoshop in a way that the professional concept artists do, it is quite a challenge to learn how to move the brush better with a mouse. (Should have use a graphics tablet really...)

What tools did you use when creating your project?

Well, apart from the pencil and pad of paper, we had to use the computers and the program called Adobe Photoshop (For your reference, Photoshop CS3). You can purchase a copy of this program from the adobe website, at www.adobe.com if you require it. 

Comparison

I have compared my work to that of a professional example. I have chosen to compare this to an example of Batman I found online, apart from the basis that the comic here is based on the actual Batman while mine was based on my design of Batman, thier is still alot of concepts which they use in the artistic and layout side of the story.

The layout isn't overally that much different from my own layout, and seems to provide a structure quite simple and basic. The use of figures and colours are pretty static in my opinion but work well for this basis. Compared, to my use of colours I have gone for a bright range of contracts and gradients to be used throughout. One thing I do like about this though is the use of movement, and stylising. Such as the sweeping of batmans feet in the second frame which are complimented by the use of sweep stripes in order to repict movement, I myself use this in one of my frames and something that seems to be a standard practice when creating comic/storyboards.

 

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Space Animation Video

This is the final product for the space animation video, which was supposed to follow the storyline above, unfortnatly it doesn't represent most of the concepts I wish it had, due to the time scale, and resources I had to create the particular project, still I believe it came out rather well, in the end, but I do need to brush up more on my animation skills.

Unit 66 - 3D Ship Model

  

Unit 66 - 3D Model Ship

My project for Unit 66 over the last couple of months was to plan and create a 3D model. I have chosen to create a spaceship and model this around the base ideal that I had for when I was designing the space models for Orbis Online. The based my design on the general concept of the T1-Interceptor Class Scout Ship which is shown below in my concept piece.

 

The top one is the ship I tried to base my design on, of course the design doesn't look much like it, as I came in to numerous problems with design when trying to complete this model. One of my concerns before starting was that I wouldn't be able to get the right shape and the right look, and this remained true, it seemed the more I focused on trying to create a decent posture within the model, the more difficult it became to keep that solid form and the model turns into something much more different than I have originally intended. 

I place this on the concept of trying to align the vertexes, and the polygons I unaligned each of the selected parts and set them far too thick. Nevertheless the design that began to fold out was better than I thought and I decided to work with this concept and expand rather than restart and give up. 

 

Above are two shots from the render of the space ship, the one to the left is underneath and shows the front vent grid, and the underbelly, I applied a smooth modifier to outline the look of the ship which I think worked rather very well, as you can see from the right hand side, I have applied a racing stripe similar to modern cars that are in racing. As you can see from the top view you can see the flame streak flying from the behind engine of the ship, which we will take a better look at now.

 

You can't see the engine too well, because of the flame streak, but you get a better idea of the concept here, the smoke that is coming off was done with a lighting effect and works will with the radius system that is in place.

Here you can get a better view of the engine, the engine was made with a cylinder shape and I extruded and beveled the different polygons to get a kind of wheel/tubing effect. This interested me, and I was rather proud with the outcome of the cylinder based engine. Lastly I added a more glass based effect to the ship so it was see through a looked some what more realistic.

This is the wireframe model of the ship, showing the base outline. Although intially the ship didn't end up the way I hoped it would, I still think the final outcome was well worth it, and worked very well towards what my intial idea was proposing.

Unit 78 - LO4 - Iphone Application Evaluation

This is the end product for my Iphone applications. The end product matches what I tended to do, and I believe the application icons are consistent and fit in with the tended audience I was trying to aim for.The end product suits well and the icons fit and are similar and consistent. They remind me of the Adobe Icons in that they have a different image but still remain linked to the person who created them.

This project has been a long one, we began with researching icons and looking into apple. I researched many different icons and took influence from many companies such as Adobe, Apple, Autodesk and a few of the applications that are created for the iPhone device. By researching this I was able to get a feel and understanding for the products I wished to create and began to develop and sketch my ideas onto paper. I created 5 concept sheets, of which one was for a 3D model I made, and wanted to use it in my final application.

The concept sheets I created that where used to develop my icon ideas where, Horror, War, Sci-Fi, Fantasy. I choose one from each sheet, including my 3D model and used that to further develop my designs. I choose the space diamond, the army man, the skull and the knight.

My next task was to develop them in photoshop and bring my design to life, I scanned in my chosen designs after redrawing them onto one large concept sheet and then began to scan them into photoshop and develop them, recording the process as a went along, the final production of which looked like the following:

 

This was my fantasy Icon, I went for a knight which I believe strongly represents the fantasy theme and works in correlation to a lot of fantasy based media. It is also famous due to King Arthur and the Knights of the round table and this is often put into process with it.  Out of all the 5 icons this is by far my most favourite. I used a lot of colours and lighting techniques here, and tried experimenting with shading in with photoshop.

This is my horror application icon, for this I went with the skull because I think it represents a horror based theme and works well with the background theme I have selected for it. For this design I made use of the bevel and contour tools and made the surface smooth. I applied a shading technique to the icon design and played around with the lighting in order to optimise a decent outcome from the overall product.

 

This is my Sci-Fi icon. For this I wanted to create something that represented a robotic entity, but to keep away from the common sci-fi elements, such as a space ships and robots, in order to go for something a little more abtract in my approach. I like what I did with this design, because I was able to make use of numerous concepts within photoshop, mostly the pen tool in which I use to draw around the design, and used two different base colours in order to create a form of shading. For the large yellow area I used an inner shadow for to create the indented effect which I think worked really well with this overall design. 

 

This design, although is not my favourite is definetly the hardest to create. Like the previous designs I used the pen tool in order to create the shapes I wanted. Each element, the eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, helmet was created to impliciting put together the pieces afterwards like a jigsaw. It didn't come out quite how I wanted it to but in the end, I think it works I used Bevel with a smooth and high depth modifier in order to get the helmet looking somewhat 3D. One thing I did realise about this design and although it was not my intial intention was that it looks very much like a paper cutout, which I suppose can be thought of as a plus. After all most ideas come from mistakes. 

My final icon, this icon makes use of the 3D space ship I designed for my Unit 66 LO3. For this icon I just took my intial 3D model and palced it right into the image. I do like how the 3D comes right out on this one, and the colours and shadowing uses to proves to build upon the original desing intention. Overall I think it looks professional, well put together and I am just as proud of this one as my other icons, even if really it required less work to put together.

Motivational Speaker - Action Jackson

Last Wednesday, our tutor, Chris Dewey introduced us to a motivational speaker who came into to college to give us a presentation on being motivated and how to get yourself up and ready for life. It was interesting, personally I didn't find it useful, but I can understand how other would have liked it, and wanted to join in with his dancing and singing. (Not for me).

All my dislikes aside, I believe Action Jackson provided a great source of motivation for the mass of the room and his attitude towards the group was very exciteful and interesting, providing games and the tools we need in order to build up that motivational standing we'll most likely require in order to move forward in today's less than motivated society.