2 pages

artcontrol.me

Artwork of William Mckee

Taganimation

Lynn Mall to Blender Model

September 17, 2012 / / Comments Off

I’ve been super busy in Blender. It’s been a blast. PolyCount has been a big inspration. I feel things are starting to move forward. This post shows a scene I worked on yesterday with building stairs and a hand rail – using Concept artwork I drew in Auckland. I want to model more of my works in Blender – my skills will improve!

The digital painting I used for inspration in the 3d work. I didn’t copy it excatly but instead took the essence of it – the stairs, hand rail and pillar shapes. The scene developed as I worked on it – adding items that were not in the original scene. Creative freedom allows this! 

Overall view of the scene – this was badly modeled and when it came to texturing it was a disastore. I used this as a first draft and remodeled the scene so I was able to texture it.

Same scene. This is the ground view. I wanted to hand paint the entire scene. I enjoy digital painting and UV painting is something I need to learn. The remodeled scene. I basically split the scene up into areas, in the first scene it was all one big mesh – here it’s split into tiny meshes to work with – the floor – three walls – several cubes for the internal walls, and the stairs. I just re-added the power poles and made them a more interesting with tilting (notice right)
Ground view of the scene. On the right is the power pole - I added several more polys to it. I think a texture will be best though.

Animation of the scene. I wanted to give first person a go. It would be super cool to add limbs and such to the first person view. So you felt you were really there. I read a great post on Reddit the other day discussing Why do developers generally not like to implement feet and torso for 1st person view?. I’ll like to explore the first person view further.

Street Sign

September 15, 2012 / / Comments Off

Update on Blender works. I’ve started taking ideas from my sketches and modeling them in Blender. Since I so often draw street scenes it’s about time I work on creating them from my art. Real streets, drawn, then re-imagined in a 3d environment.

I wanted something simple that I could repeat – so I modeled a power pole and a light. Buildings were build later. I used alot of the same assest as previous works – such as the texture for the floor and continued to use the same red, yellow and blue in painting. I’ll like to keep these colors and develop a world. As you can see I have added a little water mark to the bottom right. This is something I will continue to do in all my artwork – just something small to link it back to me. Seeing it now – I shouldd drop the opacity the logo. 

On the left you can see the buildings. These are not in the animated film as they were added a later point. I’ll work these into a future cut.

The video I made. I’ve already started expanding on ideas started in this. It needs more particle effects – rain and snow would be cool. Needs detail – more polygons to make up the scene. Story is important as well – something I often struggle with.

Welly Blend

September 10, 2012 / / Comments Off

The place I was staying in Wellington didn’t have any internet. I spent my last night there working for several hours in GIMP – I modeled a new scene and worked with an older one. I want to take more of my sketchbook works into Blender.

I’ll start with the new scene I made. Inspration for this comes from the street drawings of powerpoles and trees. Digital paintings have been using to texture. I started with just basic color textures but found the paintings felt more complete.

Wireframe view. From left – camera, streetlight, spotlight, tree claw, and in the back the streetpole has been repeated several times. The ground and side are 2d planes with a painting projected onto the. I also used a standard area light to light the whole scene.

Solid view. The pole and tree are UV mapped with a santa digital work I did for SketchDaily. The background and floor are digital landscape painting

It was fun to create something completely new. I often recycle my models, without impoving on them. I’m very much interested in lighting and camera angles. 
Wireframe of a recycled scene. The four leggef creature was created sometime ago in blender. Since then I have experimented with him in several scenes.I have also started using the model as part of the enviroments. Stone, frozen in time. The chairs and desk have been used before. They make helpful props.

Side is a recent digital painting of ChCh. These common street views have  become more and more of a major project for me. I am over half way full in my landscape sketchbook. I’m certainly a huge fan of rectangle shaped paper – I would use it commonly at TLC for life drawing.
Floor is a warm up digital painting – just scribble of lines to develop my strokes.

Another view of the scene.

Video of rendered footage. Plenty of experiments with lighting and cameras. Attempts to make seamless footage.

Character Swipe Blend

September 1, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Another Blender update. It’s addicting, what can I say. I worked with a model I had previously made – I just reanimated and textured. I added two walking stick objects – they turned into a weapon object.

Heres a shot of the scene. I repeated the throwing and walk cycle three times. With the 2nd model I animated it to blink around the scene.

Another view of the scene. Nothing special with lighting – just a basic sun light to light the overall scene and a spot focusing on the character walking. You can see these two lights and the direction in these two screenshots.

Finally, here’s the video of the animation. One thing I forgot to mention – I’ve been working towards creating a seamless shot that starts in the same place it leaves. Basically creating a walk cycle with the whole scene – Making the background move forward was an attempt of this. I’ll keep working on creating this.

Blender Testing Action

August 28, 2012 / / Comments Off

I decided to get back into some 3d – taking a break from the digital painting for now. It’s been a couple of days since I’ve painted. I’ve wanted for awhile to get back into 3d. Working in Blender and Source Filmmaker.

I’ll start with Blender. I opened some of my .blend files and retextured the works. The textures used are digital paintings – mostly environments. It’s refeshing to see this series of works come alive in a animated world.

All the models had been used before – I simply retextured and rearanged the scene. I used the character as part of the set – creating two large stationly characters. This helps give the scene more depth – often these blending in with the background. 

On the right is a character that moves forward during the sequence. This model has a different texture to everything else – helps with contrast.
.

And finally the video of the animation. I’ll make another post later highlighting some of my learning in Source Filmmaker.

In the meantime, keep doing what you’re doing.

Robot Animation Tests

April 24, 2012 / / Comments Off

Ok. So I went Vincents life drawing. It had been awhile. Successful night, This post isn’t about life drawing though, blender update.

I’ve been a bit less motivated these past days to produce much. Tired and feeling generally down doesn’t help. The life drawing at Vincents was a boost. I plan to transfer this energy to Mondays class next week.

I made a car thing in Maya. It isnt much but better then what I did with my time at UCOL. There are also several angles of a walk cycle.

I’d like to do more cell animation. A weekly walk cycle could be a good challenge. Planning and ideas is needed for future Blender projects.

Fail First

April 23, 2012 / / Comments Off

Still no drawing or painting to upload despite making a return today to TLC. In the morning we watched slideshows and talked about life drawing. It was much the same as normal for  the class. Good to catch up with old faces and met new ones though! Gonna crash Marcy Marcs on Thursday.

In the afternoon Dan modeled for the class (clothed). I felt horrible so went to the common room and played Half Life 2 and did a bit in Blender for the rest of the afternoon. Just wasn’t the time. I’m hoping next week I can get into the flow – it was quite a depressing afternoon thinking – geeze, why don’t I have the motivation to draw. Setups also the other. I didn’t plan out to draw today.

Here’s a drawing I did in bed the other day.

 

This was all done in colored pencil. No reference, just sketching down ideas. I think this is really important. Too often I get trapped into using a reference and it’s just nice and free to work out of my head. Especially using it as and exercise to get to sleep!

The Robot inspired head I animated. I’d like to create a talking model in Blender – especially a robot like this one. I might take this idea into Blender tomorrow and explore.

That’s all for tonight. Goodnight.

New Scene Tests

April 20, 2012 / / Comments Off

Spent most of today working with Blender. I mucked around with the scene but decided to start something fresh. I needed new inspration. I started a new project and here’s what I’ve done:

Some screen shots:

Walk cycle is in there- even if it’s rough. I know how to create actions and dublicate them – now I need to learn how to create multiply actions and ‘link’ them together. When I have something like that happening I’ll feel great.

I need to explore modeling further. I’m going to keep it simple with low poly modeling. Textures – create legit UV maps for my models, using my own artwork.

Learn more about Rigging.

More.

April Block Blender Tests

April 19, 2012 / / Comments Off

Didn’t end up going into TLC this week. Spent the day working with Blender and looking into game engines. Over the last few weeks I’ve downloaded several game engines – steam (which I used years ago with Count Strike 1.5), Unreal, Unity3d, and the Cry Engine. I’d like to get some good models/textures and animation done in Blender then look into importing these models into a Engine. But that’s jumping ahead too far. For now I want to focus on learning Blender further. Everyday I’m learning something new from it.

I’ve drawn a little – mostly just sketches with no reference. Done when in bed. I’ll upload them in a future post.

Long passageway. Used to make a long walk cycle and move various objects on the side. Need to improve textures and modeling on the overall scene.

This was a better camera angle then the one I ended up Rendering. I’m work in Blender with two windows systems.

Color sceme ideas. I’m going to keep with my color pencil insprations here – blue for negative areas. Figures and objects will be in reds and yellows. Having a color set will help the scenes flow together.

Finally, here’s the video:

Yeah Yeah Yeah Colored Pencils

April 15, 2012 / / Comments Off

Back in Wellington. Nice to be back I guess. I’ve been enjoying colored pencil, yesterday I didn’t work with Blender – instead sketched in my visual diary. I’ve got a strong mindset to take these ideas into Blender. Something is brewing.

Back in 2010 I got really into the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and I frequently drew the band.

This was one of the reference photos I completed a drawing of. In order to compare my drawing and check development I redrew this photo. Here’s what I came up with:

Strong straight lines, color used for tone. I love this color scene – red, yellow, brown for the characters and blues for negative space. Several sketches of wire frames to help understand walk cycles further.

Less character based and more animation feel. I’m not sure what I’m doing with this but I’m going to take these into blender today and experiment.

2 pages
Older posts