MY UNI YEAR!

So if someone was to ask me how my first year was at university? I would probably answer them with it was good, but so stressful and not what I expected. I’m not going to lie, it could have gone better! The problem with me when it comes to work is that when I get presented with a task or a project I think “yeah! This will be great and when it’s finished its going to look so good!” but then I will start with the project and find out that it’s a lot harder than what I think it is. Before my year at DMU, I was really motivated and excited for my first year learning how to do some really great art! To be honest, I thought I would be able to go there and be told all the industry secrets on how to make stuff look amazing. Nope, it was nothing like that. I was just hoping I’d come to uni and be able to do some really good digital paintings. I was aware that this course would be intense and really difficult to succeed, but I didn’t know that when Chris says that we are going to be out in the rain and snow drawing that we would actually have to re do all our drawing because of the rain destroying our books.

SO, when I actually started my course I soon realised that it was going to be a long grind till I get to where I want to be. I realised that at uni, I’m not going to be sat down and told how to draw. It was better than that! I was told to go out and draw lots and lots and if I don’t I get kicked of the course. This opened my eyes that if I want to be good at drawing then I’m going to have to learn it myself. I went out for the first project and did exactly what they told me to do. I did lots of thumb nails and a few finals. I was pretty confident that all year long I could easily do this every week. But, then we started our other modules like Games production and critical studies. That’s where my arms just weren’t big enough to carry all the work. It was all just all down to my time managing, I couldn’t balance my studies with my social and personal time. When I was supposed to be drawing 24 drawings of a tree, I was out making friends and putting for time into my other projects.

After Christmas, the tutors saw that I was taking on the course the completely wrong way. I was pulled aside and told that I’m heading to failure if I don’t do something about it and they weren’t wrong. They really opened my eyes that I wasn’t preforming as well as my fellow students. But this is where the martin deep down comes out. Every time I’m told that I can’t do something is where I kind of put on my try hard hat and get to work because I want to show people and myself that I can do what I want to achieve. I think it’s mostly that I want to prove people wrong.

I attended a management class at the library where it really helped me change my attitude towards work. It showed me how to time manage properly, so I made a to-do list on my wall. Once I laid out what I needed to do and when to do it for I realised that there’s a lot of stuff to do! Putting that list up made my mind a lot clearer. I managed my time effectively and it also helped because everyone that came in my room was like “oh my god you have so much work to do” so that helped too.

When it got to the end of my year I really put my foot down on the partying and stayed in a lot more to get all my work done. I didn’t just rush it either I took my time to make sure it was all good. There was that one day I took off to go out in the sun and play a bit of football in the sun. But the universe soon told me that that’s not what I should be doing as I got sunstroke!

Over all the course structure was pretty good apart from the very last few days when my critical studies deadline was close. I wasn’t told at all, I didn’t have a clue when I was supposed to have all my blogs done. None of it was on blackboard and because of this I am now having to re do all my blogs over the summer. But things happen for a reason, I just hope that they organise this a bit better.

If I was to re do this whole year, I would have made that to-do list right away! It would have not only saved my time but money too, because I wouldn’t have gone out as much. I would have paid a lot more attention on how much work I really had. I would have done my work as soon as I could instead of doing it last minute. So over all I think it’s all just down to time management! 

VISUAL DESIGN

An exam? Say whaaa!

Wait what? This is not what I signed up for! I did not know that we were to do an 2hour exam at the end of the year. Well when I say exam I mean just re do an old project within 2 hours. We were told that we had to go back to the museum where I did my dinosaur bones (stupid turkey) and draw again for two hours under supervision. When I got there, again the whole museum was flooded with game art students all crowded around a dinosaur. I decided not to do my turkey again this time round but instead I picked a big skull with some nasty looking teeth on it. I thought it looked interesting and did I mention it wasn’t just a stupid normal turkey! I actually liked drawing this skull as again like most bones, it had lots of gradients to it and different surfaces on it. There is a lot of shading involved with these drawing and I love shading! It’s probably one of the few things I’m actually good at. I think I just need to learn to use a wider range of pencils because all I really use is a 2 or 3B then a HB for the sharp edges.

VISUAL DESIGN

The hardest painting I have ever done!

This sounded pretty easy and enjoyable at first but trust me it’s a lot harder than what you might think. All we had to do was to copy a master painter from the 1800’s. First of all, it was soo hard to find a painting that I didn’t think was too difficult for me to copy, then I had to see if some else had done it which meant I had to change it twice. I managed to find a painting from Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. She did this nice painting of a person painting which I thought would be pretty easy to imitate. Once I got it into Photoshop and all my guidelines were set up, I think it took me about 2 hours to actually get a bit of the painting done that I was happy with. For some reason, I found it really hard to copy all the colours and textures on a small area. Now I can really see how skilled you had to be back in those days because I can’t even do what they did with a computers help. But something like 10 hours later, I finished it and I’m actually pretty pleased with it. It’s not the exact same but it does look pretty good for my first copy.

VISUAL DESIGN

Leicester history!

Off to the guild hall! Thank god this wasn't another trip all the way across Leicester in search of some amazing thing to draw. The guild hall is just across the street from the halls I live in, so it won’t be a problem with taxis or long distance walks. It was a nice history lesson as well as visually appealing. There is loads of stuff to draw there like old chests, chairs and the architecture. For some reason there was a lot of volume like inside with the high windows which really made the place one of my favourites to visit. I can’t remember if I have explained this in my blogs before but not only do I have a thing for straight line but for some reason lighting interests me soo much in every project! Every project I am trying to add some sort of atmospheric lighting and volume light, just to add some mood into my drawing. But because I’m still a little noob I still have lots to learn.

This project however was really easy to add some great light into the room. I’m really happy with the finished painting and would love to go back and maybe draw a different room. If I were to re do that painting I would add a few more textures into the walls and into the wood as they look a bit bland at the moment.

VISUAL DESIGN

Time travel!

The 1920’s Chicago project was a really interesting project! We were asked to research Chicago city in the 1920’s and create a final. At first I didn’t really know what I should do as lots of interesting things were happening in those times. So I waited it out a bit, I waited for everyone else to post on Facebook what they did in the hope for some inspiration. I saw that a few people were doing some highways going through the city which looked pretty cool so I thought I would give something like that ago but it just ended in disappointment and me raging because I couldn’t get the perspective right once again!

So I decided to just do a character for the project. The character was a sergeant for the police force. I didn’t want to make just a boring, vanilla character so I added some mystery to him. I added a cigar for character and the brief case for the mystery. Once I had drawn him out I thought that there was something missing, he looked a bit incomplete. So I tried different combinations with different items. 

I’m pretty happy with how the character has come out but I still think that there is something missing. So I made my first background! To add more drama to my scene I added a man in the fore ground with his head turned away from the camera looking straight at my character as him they were about to have a show down. My scene was in a bar and my character just walked out of the back door. I don’t want to add colour because I want to give it that brown old photograph look!

 I’m really happy with this painting as it was my first one that I really spent time with on the back ground and trying to put in as much character as I could.

VISUAL DESIGN

My first digital lesson!

FINALLY!!!!! What I have been waiting for! I have been looking forward to a lesson in digital art for a long time now.  However, when we finally had it he just taught us everything I already know -.-. Besides learning how to use the tablets I didn’t really learn much more. When I did get home however I came up with plenty of ideas for my vehicle that we need to draw, make and paint. Mike showed us a great way to come up with ideas and that’s silhouettes! We were told to pick one interesting item and draw the silhouette of it. Then we had to use our imagination to add more to that silhouette to create a vehicle. This way of coming up with ideas is the best that anyone has ever showed me as it really helps me get my head around shapes. I have been doing this for my projects since, so thanks mike! I’m pretty happy with how my final ended up as I think I had a good colour range and texture on my vehicle. The only down side I had with this project is that I really, really suck at clay modelling. When I finished my model I just took a step back and sighed L it looks so bad! I really need to practice a bit more with the modelling as I just find it really hard to model one side of it without destroying the other.

VISUAL DESIGN

But where’s Nemo?

This project actually daunted me at first, all because we have to make clay models! I wasn’t expecting that at all. I didn’t know that we did those kind of things on this course but oh well, bring it on! Apart from the messy clay, the rest of the project really excited me as we needed to create a character completely from scratch, gaining ideas from the word “reef”. Chris told me that we can do absolutely anything but I really can’t think of anything else other than the sea’s reef and I’m pretty sure that’s what everyone else is doing so that’s what it is I guess. To be honest with you I have no idea how I came up with my creature. I just sort of combined a scorpion and a crab because why not right? I had fun creating this character but as I was drawing him up in my sketch book I realised that I tend to rush my physical work to get straight to drawing it up on Photoshop. That just shows I’m clearly into the digital arty side of projects, maybe this could help me find what career I want in the future. I did my best on this project to get the right colour pallet for my under water character. I colour picked from a crab and found what colours look best under water for my light sources. It turned out pretty good, I think I just need to work on the
perspective.

VISUAL DESGIN

An all-time low

-.- Self-portraits was next on Chris’s list of projects. At first I was really looking forward to it as I haven’t done self-portraits in ages! I was hoping that because I have done a lot more drawing since then I might actually be able to draw myself without it looking unhuman buuuuut…. that just wasn’t the case L. I did a few quick sketches to get myself warmed up till I thought I might actually be able to get a big one done. After doing about 8 small sketches the monster was about to be created! It looked so bad. I was really trying to follow Mitch’s face guidelines but every time I did, it just didn’t work. It made me look fat L. Every time I did a big sketch something was wrong with it. The main problems was that my eyes were too big and my head was too wide. I knew I had no hope at this time to actually draw a good sketch. So, I decided to draw several faces each expressing different emotions like happy, sad and just normal. It was pretty funny to see them done but next time I’ll really take some time to look at my face!

VISUAL DESIGN

What’s interesting?

So this week we were asked to do a very similar thing to our Christmas project which is to find someone in Leicester and turn them into an interesting character. This should be easy enough but I was thinking, what is interesting? Like what do people consider to be interesting? Is it something that’s different or something that is exciting? Many people have different opinions as to what they find interesting. So on my adventures, I stumbled across a late 40’s woman with tied up frizzy hair. She had rough skin and baggy eyes which showed me that she smokes and also the cigarette in her hand gave it away. I’ve picked this person because she reminds me of the old school 90’s ravers that would go around in bright interesting clothes and just be completely different to other normal people. So that’s what I decided to do, I drew her in my sketch book and scanned it in. With help from Photoshop I added some bright florescent colours and some funky clothes that I researched using man’s favourite “GOOGLE”. I was pretty happy with it and it was the first digital painting that I really took my time with and tried to learn some techniques with Photoshop. If I could go back and do it which I may do in the future, I would add plenty of detail in the clothes and maybe add a back ground.

VISUAL DESGIN

“AWE YOU GUYS JUST MADE ME INK”!

Time to get messy! We are finally using more exciting ways to put our ideas on paper. We were shown some really inspiring art from the film Black Hawk down. These images were made with Indian ink and a pen. When these images were being shown I was in awe! They looked amazing and the best part about them was that they were only done in 2-5 mins. I just couldn’t believe how much detail the artist could get into the drawing in such little time. So I went out with a friend and decided how hard can it be? Very. It was pretty difficult to get everything in that was necessary for the drawing in 5 mins. First we timed ourselves so we could go faster and faster and it worked but we still didn’t really get much in. I think it’s more about little crucial things that make a big difference rather than big iconic things that only shows the view where you are. I had a lot of fun with this project and I hope we can do more messy projects like this in the future! It has also helped me develop my view on how to be efficient and what to draw first.

VISUAL DESIGN

Christmas Time

YAY it’s that time of the year again where everyone pretends to be happy whilst the spend loads of money on people they don’t actually care about. Call me the Grinch but I’m really not much of a fan of Christmas because it hypes everyone up and makes everyone want that one day to be perfect. So, naturally when something small does go wrong like not having enough brussel sprouts or the kids not behaving. Someone always kicks up a fuss and hides in their room or man crib and makes everyone else miserable and left feeling awkward.

Any way ART! So this Christmas I have been set the task of finding an interesting character in Leicester and turning him or her into an evil Christmas character! This was our first character project and I was really looking forward to it! Unfortunately another reason why I hate Christmas is because I have to spend it with my family meaning I have to travel down to Stansted. This meant that I didn’t really have much time to go out and find an interesting person in Leicester. But have no fear as Chelmsford is probably even stranger! So I headed out and found a kind old homeless man that would let me take a picture of him! Don’t worry of course I gave him some money and food for his troubles. I picked this man because he just had so many characteristics like his aged skin and roughed up hair. Let’s not forget to mention he had a beard! So of course I picked him. I would have loved to sit and have a long chat with this man to find out a bit of his past to help with ideas on what to make him into but it was getting late and my bus was about to leave L.

So I decided to make him a large and slightly mysterious man with a long fur coat and a cigar. I wanted the viewer to wonder why I choose these items and I would have liked some of them to write a paragraph showing what they may think of this man. I intentionally made his shoulders really wide and his head small to give of a super natural feel to it but I fear that most people may just see it as me being a noob.

VISUAL DESIGN

BROOM BROOM!

I hate drawing cars.-.- why in the world are cars so frustrating to draw! I just don’t get it, I think there’s something about curved shapes with perspective that just doesn't agree with me. I think I need to sit down and really have a look at how to draw curved shapes like ovals in perspective. It sounds stupid if you don’t do art but drawing a car includes lots of shapes like rectangles and ovals so drawing it is actually harder than you think. Because of my frustration, I decided to pick a box car to study and draw (LAND ROVER). This made it all so much easier! I think I’ll start off with boxed cars then slowly move onto more rounded cars like the Ford KA which in my opinion looks like an egg with wheels.

VISUAL DESIGN

Pumping what!?!

Being frustrated by the lack of drawing from the space centre, I headed over to the pumping station the next day.  It surprised me that I actually really enjoyed it. I think this must be my favourite project yet, I think it’s because of the straight lines! I did say somewhere in my previous blogs that I have a thing for them I’m just not sure why. I found it really easy to shade and draw these huge industrial pumps. And even better I enjoyed it, maybe steampunk art is the way forward for me? I was watching everyone else rage as they were finding it difficult to draw out the strange pumps. But, instead of helping them I decided to feast on their rage!!! It actually made me so much more confident to go back to the space centre and conquer the unknown where no man has been before! Oh and did I mention that the pumps where used to pump sewage? Yeeeeah…

VISUAL DESIGN

Back to the expeditions!

So this week was interesting because we basically got set two large projects at once which for me right now really wasn’t the best of timing. We were sent over to the familiar and famous SPACE CENTRE! We were shown some pretty good examples that made me feel pretty ambitious for the project. We were shown some amazing space designs that had been drawn using great lighting and tones! But unfortunately I’m not a 3^rd year and I have no clue how to use colour properly yet. Soooo getting started with this project was very frustrating and tedious as I couldn’t get the circles right in a perspective. At the end of the day I just ended up raging and storming out the centre to the words of “we have another project to do this week at the pumping station across the road” -.- at that point I just wanted to go home.

VISUAL DESIGN

Relaxing time!

This week surprised me a bit because I was expecting a grand project to do. I was thinking that we would have to travel across Leicester to draw some amazing ancient ruins of prehistoric leicestrians! But now it turns out it was just a nice simple project for us to draw some still life. Don’t get me wrong I love still life! It’s simple and easy to get to, well actually you don’t need to move at all. A lot of people will sit in their room and think to them self’s that they really want to draw but there is nothing interesting around to draw, yet if you take the time and actually look around there is plenty to draw and study. Such as me beloved speakers next to me. It’s got lots of simple shapes that you would think would be very easy to draw but trust me it’s really difficult to get the perspective and depth correct.

VISUAL DESIGN

Turns out it’s only a turkey -.-

A trip to the museum was our next Visual design quest! We were instructed to find a dinosaur that we liked and draw it for a few hours. To be honest I wasn’t really feeling up to drawing much that day so I decided to grab a coffee and have a walk around the museum and found out they have all sorts in there. They have an Egyptian area and a wildlife section. I think I ended up spending too long on looking at the museum because by the time I was ready to draw I had wasted 3hrs :/ I found it really funny how the whole museum was empty except for a section with the dinosaurs where a herd of the game art students had taken their chairs and camped out for the day. I found some really interesting dinosaurs but none of them really got me excited to sit down for 5hrs and draw some bones, so I thought I would draw some thumbnails and get the hell out of there. The next day I felt a bit better (probably because I got up at 1PM instead of 8AM!) so I headed down to the museum and found my all amazing DINO! It looked like a small bird of some sorts but I didn’t question it as I knew that dinosaurs are cray cray. I actually really liked drawing it as it had all sorts of smooth and rugged areas on the bones. Once I had finally finished my drawing I was pretty happy but as soon I put my pencil down I read a sign saying that it was just a turkey! Seriously -.- out of all the amazing preserved dinosaurs I picked a lousy turkey. Yay.

Visual Design

ATTACK OF THE ANTELOPE

Our first field trip! This project was great apart from the typical English weather. We were sent to Bradgate Park where we had to spend a lot of time drawing the nature (little did I know that we would be chased down by some antelope!) It was pretty amusing to be fair, but apart from that we got a fair bit  of drawing done. I really didn’t know where to start though, it was like looking into a hay stack and deciding where to start looking for the needle. I did really enjoy capturing nature into my sketch book as it’s all just squiggly lines. I really think I need to get home and look up a few tutorials on how to draw trees because like I said it’s pretty difficult to start off with the drawing. I’m just looking forward to capturing some lighting on a digital version of all these beautiful landscapes.

GAME PRODUCTION

WHAT? You mean I can get a prize???

It’s nearing the end of our year and to finish it all off we have been set a competition for the best textured model. We have been given two models for us to texture and rig. This sounds like heaven to me. A model that is all done and ready for me to just paint away? Well that sounds perfect. As I’ve said in my previous blogs, I much prefer painting and designing the look of something then I do building it. I was all ready to go from day one. We had two weeks to get these models done and handed in. Yet, after the first week I had already completed it! After having a creative thinking session with my girlfriend, we decided that I should make the male model a gangster G and the female a 1940’s dinner waitress! I was pretty happy and confident that those models were really going to show people that I can paint and that I can make the effort into making good looking models!

GAME PRODUCTION

UDK

We meet again UDK! I used to use this program back in college, I made levels using BSP brushes and kismet to animate platforms but we weren’t taught how to do any of the stuff we covered in the past few weeks. I was shown how to put all my objects that I had created in 3Dsmax into UDK. This was pretty simple and not really a project but it was all I had to do for a week or two, I thought it would be good to do all this as soon as I can so I can move onto my other projects.

GAME PRODUCTION

READY…FIGHT!!!

The gladiator project! The very first character project has been set and completed! This project was pretty fun to do, but sooo very frustrating! Rigging has actually made me suffer and not want to finish the project. Rigging took ridiculously long to get right and even when I had finished it, I ended up having to do the whole project again because the modelling wasn’t correct so the joints wouldn’t bend properly! It was so frustrating but yet enjoyable. I think I did a really good job compared to some other gladiator I had seen made by other fellow students, but when I handed it into my tutor he said that a lot can be improved in the art work -.- that really made me feel like a noob. When I was doing all the modelling all I could think about was painting it, so I guess I prefer painting and adding colour to the character more than creating it.

GAME PRODUCTION

The start of a bad habit

Van-This project seemed like it would be a simple task at first. However, little did I know that we would be using a new type of modelling method called strip modelling. This method made me want to pull my hair out! But I knew if I did that I’ll just look like my dad. Making the van was pretty simple after I got the hang of attaching the vertex’s and edges. Doing this project really taught me what can and can’t be done with polygons. I’m still at the point where I’ll imagine how it will look at the end but when I finally finish it there’s always something wrong with it like bump maps or spec levels not being perfect, I guess I’ll just need to keep practicing till that day comes along. The project was once again rushed last minute due to me not having my time management properly sorted out. This has lead me to be behind on other projects such as visual design and these blogs. Time really isn’t my friend!

GAME PRODUCTION

Proof I am a good boy

Foliage – “Nature you scary!” Oh my god, now I see why all the trees in games look so bad! This project was quick to do but so damn frustrating and difficult to get looking good! Because foliage is all natural, if you make a mistake or a seam is showing it doesn’t matter to much as nature is all random any way and nothing within nature has straight lines! That’s probably why I find it easy to draw nature because you can just scribble and it will look like a rock. All there was to it with this project was just making sure it looked like the tree I based it on which was very frustratingL. On the other hand, you can look at a building and see from 2 photos (SIDE AND FRONT) exactly how it looks and how to make it. But with the trees it feels like I’m trying to solve one of those illusions. Because I was so badly organised with my last project I decided to prove to my tutor that I am capable with time management. So I actually went out and took pictures of things in parks that I didn’t need to like bins, grass and rocks. I put these items into 3Dsmax and made a pretty scene with all of them. But when I wanted to show my tutor he wasn’t there for the hand in L but at least I showed myself that I can do the work set for me plus more!!

GAME PRODUCTION

TIME!!!!!!!!!!

Building- When I was presented this project to create an interesting building somewhere in Leicester, I felt like I was presented with a real challenge where as in the previous projects I felt like they were just to help us settle into 3Dsmax. This project taught me how to use multi subs which are a life saver and essential to almost every build. I’m not going to lie I thought I was going to be able to do this pretty easily but instead I ended up having to re sit this project because I didn't leave enough time for texturing. But over all I did really enjoy this project apart from the fact that we nearly got mugged in Leicester whilst looking for a building to create. I’ve always been interested in buildings and architecture, I guess you could say I have a thing for straight lines. I wanted to be an architect but my puny brain couldn’t handle the maths that was needed for it. I think I really need to organise my time better for future projects :/