Week 45 What a mysterious, fantastic sky
Leonie’s small blog island says hullo! (:
In this post: More buildings, heads, Rex returns for a cameo and showreel making. Not much of the Art camp unfortunately because of assessment deadlines this week; I will catch up!
Let’s go! Journal Time.
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| Sky of mystery |
20th Wed: Ye Olde Building take two
- PV progress: met up with Victor and Tony; crunch time again for the film by this Friday! For me, I need my paintings done ideally by then or even by tomorrow.
- PV matte painting shots 1 and 3: More painting continued and took upon feedback from Tony and Victor. I knew version 1 needed nitpicking! Wished my RSI ache will go away…
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| Trying to figure out a design for the gate now. Version 1’s gate was not ominous enough. |
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| Shot 1 Matte Painting final version (I hope!) Ran on only half an hour’s sleep to do this. It’s been a while since I did an all nighter. |
21st Thur: Shot 3 matte painting and aching RSI arm
- Nexus Tablet life drawing: drew stuff with my tiny stubby finger…struggled with accuracy. Sketchbook Pro App I’m slowly getting used to? I find myself stabbing at the tablet when I can’t seem to draw where I want it to. Scribby, scribby.
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| I drew this during the week from the previous blog post…but I forgot about posting it (I didn’t know I can export it at all!). My blergh left hand holding the tablet. |
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| Drew this today…some might recognise the person in question. *shifty eyes* |
- PV progress: most of the team under the crunch for the final time for this film. This is towards a more polished film with animation, 3D model placements, lighting and rendering being done (while I do my painting) as we still struggle to find someone to do our soundtrack.
- PV shot 3 Matte Painting: Continued working on details until completion with frequent breaks and almost caught myself napping a few times. Played with indoor lighting placement and got feedback from Victor. Soreee arm…so I left the refinement stages for tomorrow. 🙁 My arm desperately needs rest and I need to catch some sleep.
22nd Fri: I hope my arm is okay
- Train Drawing Adventuuures: did some head drawing though one gentleman gave me difficulty as he kept turning and changing sleeping positions.
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| These heads are all Fractions apparently. |
- PV shot 3 Matte Painting: Refined it added clouds, made another version with different lighting and tried to remember to rest my achy arm in between and afterwards. Vital shots are getting rendered again but Tony’s animation is done now. Exporting the painting correctly for compositing was tricky.
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| Matte Painting for shot “2”. Why aren’t you going inside? |
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| Get going, you’re soaked. |
We’ve only got one more week left and we might be making the sound track ourselves. It’ll be fun learning how, I’d hope!
- Blog and portfolio headers: made new ones finally using the clouds I painted for the matte painting.
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| Portfolio one for Nov 2013 |
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| My blog one for Nov 2013 |
- Showreel: started planning for it, even though I know showing 2D art as a showreel is redundant/pointless. I am required to do this for assessment so I might as well play and have fun with basic motion graphics in the process.
23rd Sat: Poking in the dark
- Showreel Sorting: Why am I doing this. It’s redundant. Figuring things out. Learning a bit about After Effects…
- Portfolio: fiddling with my new headers. Aye, I need to do many things over and I know this feeling will never change.
- Cooking with Rex (CwR) Illustration: wanted to utilise my matte painting and my unfinished Rex drawing to create an actual illustration as a representation of my work for the film. Did not want my work to go to waste. Will this film actually see the light of day? It doesn’t look like it will right now but I’d hope so in the future! I composed the painting further and scrapped other parts like the oven, table and ingredients.
24th Sun to 26th Tues: Rex…is back
- Sound track collecting: for my showreel…listening to tracks and picking and choosing. Much more harder than I thought! Narrowed down my selection.
- CwR illustration: arm soreness…can you go away so I can keep working thanks. Finally finished my CwR illustration and added/changed things as I went along, for instance I had to redraw Rex from scratch, added my unused meteor sprite and toned down the matte painting. Would like a break from drawing Rex though! I aim to try different workflows next time. Is this a show you would watch? (:
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| Cooking show hurling towards disastrous results! Catch up on Channel Triple3. |
- Showreel: Working on it continues. Did my showreel title card, and then started having a go at newb motion graphics in After Effects. It’s taking a lot of time but I think I’m starting to have a bit of fun! Of course, there are some tedious aspects and there’s probably more that’s possible with it but I’ve been having “ahh my art is actually moving!!” moments now. (: Will show you my reel in the next update; still working on it.
Reflection for the Week
Other Adventures first:
- Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies – Case 3…this is so painfully fanfiction-esque during the setup of the case. Two guys with a girl accused of murder? Ms Scuttlebutt (I am not kidding, but it’s a rattlesnake name) is annoyingly alright as a witness.
So much ridiculous screaming/yelling corniness…it became amusing somehow. Robin and O’Connor are both annoying in their own right despite their secrets and Professor Means is the freakiest in terms of him essentially appearing to be a Grecian statue with a frightening grin. The case is so unnecessarily convoluted with fluff, dragged on with Captain Obvious lines and so much “the dark age of the law” shoved in your face.
The trio plus Ms Scuttlebutt became more likable towards the end while Prof. Means’ transformation was…interesting. Athena’s breakdown was a bit too dramatic while her doing an actual statue demonstration was amusing. And aw, so it’s here where Juniper starts to crush on someone. What a ride.
Starting Case 4 and liking how you don’t know in advance who the murderer is for Case 3 and 4 unlike the first two. “Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaangh… ” – the common theme in this one. A more serious tone here with links to Case 1.
- Range of Android games: Plants Vs Zombies 2, Juice Cubes, Flow Free, Minion Rush, Angry Birds…been trying these and deleting them. I kept Flow Free though as it’s just brute forcing through “join the dots” with constraints. I got real bored of most of the popular games after a short while (ie after the novelty wears off and things become simply repetitive with no new things brought to the table).
- Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Google Game: Pixel art style is so cool but I was playing it in increments to the point that I cycled through all the Doctors several times (as I forget the controls).
- Gravity‘s spinoff Anigaaq adds a nice touch as an addition to the movie
- Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor 50th Anniversary Special: I keep up with this show for the ride and twists really (rather than nitpick every plot hole and follow up on everything about the show) so as always, my expectations were neutral. Mixed feelings resulted after watching the first time live (ie do I like this or not?) so I’m going to watch this again (with subtitles this time) to ascertain if I liked this special or not. I can say…that I mostly enjoyed it as it was wonderfully entertaining with three bantering doctors in the mix and kept me engaged all the way. Moffatt and the whole team’s doing. (:
It was a really well executed special, it was packed with much tributes to past doctors (can’t miss the intro sequence, the scarf and all of the doctors plus the 12th doctor’s eyes at least), found Clara being a teacher an interesting development (as she’s still living her own life at a school that appeared in the first episode of the whole TV series, no less), welcomed Billie Piper, John Hurt and Tom Baker’s presence and I noted the much better CG overall compared to the usual TV series. Looking forward to Peter Calpadi’s Doctor.
- RYSE- Son of Rome: Watched part the gameplay at the beginning and didn’t go further. Getting the impression of a violent hack and slash (loads of arm chopping) towards a war fueled by the revenge for one’s murdered family against the conveniently called Barbarians.
I suppose it’s to get the experience of engaging in a Roman war from the beginning? It appears really engaging in that area if you’re seeking that kind of realism though so far it’s been pretty repetitive and unchallenging with upgrades that start you off really over powered with health regeneration and all that. Graphics and the historical Roman atmosphere looks impressive but that’s all I can say about it.
- Contrast (PS4) — finished off watching the whole game, full of Noir and good dialogue. It’s full of puzzles though it glitches out and sometimes doesn’t allow room for rectifying mistakes thus it becomes the usual get from A to B to get the narrative going.
Family, abandonment and taking matters into your own hands is the main theme here and although there are depressing circumstances involved, it’s not a game you’re too emotionally invested in as it’s relatively short, the shadow platformer puzzles start looking like a chore and without purpose as you’re helping the same characters who don’t seem to be able to help or work on themselves at all and the main character you play as is still somewhat left underdeveloped.
- Knack — in co-op mode, player one keeps dying after just two hits, rendering the experience frustrating to the point that player two has to do most of the fighting due to their advantages of health regen and being able to take 8 hits before dying. Lost interest at the point where you break into V’s door and realise Knack can’t open it. Stylisation and graphics look great though and it reminds me strongly of a Saturday cartoon “fighting the bad guys” show, where the bad guys are obvious to all except for the good guys.
- Dead Rising 3: the usual zombie game. It’s not what I would play but it’s something I don’t mind watching/listening as I work. Characters are somewhat ridiculous and hilariously silly in their decisions, leading to dire consequences.
- Lava Sharks pit of Death: glimpses of Angry Video Game Adventures and…very interesting to say the least and a terribly brutal platformer and brimming with gaming references.
- Started watching Disaster: Day of Crisis (Wii); can’t say much about it yet aside from comically huge burgers. And the question of what makes up masculinity and “if saving everyone is possible” comes up.
Art learning:
- Seeing great people doing great things still makes me a bit envious but I’m now more inspired. I’m not too focused on negative comparisons but it does highlight what you still need improvement on and keeps one humble.
Feng Zhu Design School and many other relevant intensive courses across the world looks wonderful but the main two reasons that hold me back is not having the money and wanting to make do without it in order to establish my own two feet (just like countless others have done so). I’ve also got my Art camp and other things on my plate first [I’m really behind]! I’d like to finish what I start eventually before starting even more things! So much to learn! (:
- From incrementally doing my showreel and header images…though I have much to learn, I guess I do have some sort of cartoony and whimsical style (as I enjoy doing it the most whereas applying realism is what I’m aiming to develop). Been wondering what music suits the art that I do and I’m still on the fence. Halp.
- Arm strain update: it’s still sore when used too long so breaks was a must. I had to work so all I could do was manage my arm so it doesn’t get worse…at least. Felt sore all over my shoulders too…been exercising more and in short bursts because of it. I’ve been busy this week in finishing off loose ends of PV, CwR and my showreel so Art Camp’s been neglected. But when my showreel’s done…here I come Art camp!
Thanks for reading & feel free to comment below! (:
Until next time, Leonie
(UUUinfinity/TripleUinfinity)
