Concept Drawings 2, Buildings.

Today I was looking for books on prisons, dungeons and torture rooms in the 1800 to give more of an idea of what the jail cell look like in Allan Poe's short story 'The Pit and The Pendulum', but I couldn't find any. I did however find books on buildings and I thought I could use this to help me design the house in 'The Fall House of Usher' and also design the inside as well. One book about London's architect while the other talks about Gothic England.



I did some sketches from the Gothic England book to because the building inside are very old, but have amazing textures and shapes. I ink the sketches to make them more visible when I scan them to my computer.











And here are the picture I used from the book, I only chose certain parts of the buildings that looked easy to draw, but soon I will try to draw complicated buildings.





























First Picture: Canterbury Cathedral. Second picture: York Minster.



Finally here are the compairisons between my sketches and the buildings, I only drew the shapes and parts that sort of stand out.

















If anyone knows any books about prisons or dungeons or even old buildings from of near the 1800s please leave a comment.

Concept art project: the judge.

This is what I think the judge look like in the story The Pit and the Pedulum.

This is just my own opinion of what he looks like. I will do a lot of research on the year this took place or when the book was made.

My Final Self-Portrait

Here is my is my final self-portrait. It was meant to represent the two sides of me, good and evil, and what paths did I follow. However, when I shown in my presentation of my picture, everyone gave in their own idea of what this picture says to them. I think my favorite one was when one of my classmates said that this picture gave off an intimidation appearance, and I have to agree, it does. I think the reason why it failed to deliver my message is because I rushed it.





Here is my photo and my edited photo.
I came across the negative effect when I was fiddling with my camera, and that's what gave me an idea of doing a black and white portrait.

This picture was actually my original idea, but I chose the other one because I used too much effects, and I wanted mine to be judge by the message not by the amount of effects that went in to it. Although, now I wonder what type of feedback would I get if I used my original idea and not the other one. We will never know. The two spirit are meant to be the good conscience and the bad conscience giving their inflyuence to their host. The host has a sad face because he doesn't know which side too choose. The portrait also show's the person being haunted by two ghost and are trying to influence him.

Here are my photos and the process of how they all became on final portrait.

spirit 1, the host, and spirit 2

I first wanted them to be the same size to show that spirit 1 and 2 are the same height as the subject, but I did a close up on my face so I decied top make them small, just small enough to sit on his shoulders. Finally I gave them the black and white treatment. Then I edited them to the picture you see above.

I think I got most of the black and white idea from Andy Warhol's Self-Portrait with Camouflarge, because the effect it has give it a mysterious and spooky feel.

Yesterday's Life Drawing Pictures

Yesterday we were drawing some poses, I used this as an opportunity to work on drawing certain parts of the human body as well some poses that I fined difficult to draw in my mind.

Once that was done, we had to do some shading. I find this very difficult because I am not that good at shading, but I still gave a shot.

The first image wasn't that bad but could do a lot better, maybe taken away the mouth line to give it a more mysterious feel.

The one next to it was just the shading with out the help of guidelines. This was very challenging, but the effect was okay, just need a lot more practice on shading certain areas and giving the picture a more variety of tones and shades.

Metropolis

Today I have watched the film Metropolis and it was amazing.
The music was good, the idea of the workers being treated badly by their employers acting like two races that lives on one planet, but what really caught my interest was the effects.
when I hear black and white films, I think of old films with horrible effects.

And I am glad I was wrong. The effects in this film are way better then the effects I see nowadays, because they actually look and feel real. When we watch a film nowadays we can tell that was special effects, but when I watched Metropolis I actually had some hard times tell them apart. I especially loved how the buildings were done they actually look great.

The story of the film is about the main character Freder's farther making sure that the workers do not start a riot. And take everything he made away from him. So he asked a scientist he knows to ruin their chances of standing up for themselves, But it all backfires.

Out of all the characters in the film, it's the robot I feel sorry for. For one thing it was programmed to cause the destruction of the city. So all the blame should go to the person who invented it.

I actually like this film a lot for the uses of effects and the story.

The Fall House of Usher

Today I have finished reading Edgar Allan Poe's story 'The Fall House of Usher'.

The story is about the main character visiting an old friend who is the owner of the house.

This story uses a lot of language I am not familiar with so it was kind of hard to keep up. At points I was lost but soon I get the idea of whats going on.
What I liked about this story is how the house reflects the mood of the owner, since he is very sick, and he felt he lost hope of getting better. The house and everything around it are also described as having a depressing appearance and atmosphere. However, the description of the house sounds like a horrible place to go :

'with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.'

'I looked upon the scene before me - upon the mere house and simple landscape features a domain... with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation.'

Another thing that makes this book unique is that the main character isn't the main character, he is just the narrator. The real star is the owner of the house, struggling with his illness. That is what I believe make this book very unique.

The Pit of the Pendulum

Today I have read one of Edgar Allan Poe's stories 'The Pit of the Pendulum'.
The entire story is told by the main character who is spending his time in jail, while expericening some stranges everts.
This story is very discriptive and uses alot of language that I am not formilliar with. At points the story is quite confusing, but it was interesting to see the main character losing his mind.
If I had to choose my part in the story it would has to be when the main character has to spend his time in jail in the dark. Here's a good deiscription of how dark the jail is with out light:

'The blackest of darkness supervened; all sensation appereaed swallowed up in a mad rushing decent as of the souls into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and the night were the universe'.

When I read that, it sounded like he was already sent to hell and all he can see is total darkness.
I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. Seeing nothing, hear anyone but yourself. all alone in the dark, spokey.

The next reading material I'll be reading tomorrow is Allan Poe's 'The Fall of the House Usher'.

Last Tuesday life drawing lesson

In life drawing last week we were asked to draw the outlines of the figure. making up new shapes with the model and the objects around her.
I actually thought this was weird, but really interesting.
To tell the truth my first picture was actually an accident. I drew a part of an object a bit too big, do I thought of just drawing bits and pieces.

picture one, two

three and four.




The next set of picture was to improve one a figure.

Last Thursday Maya work

Last Thursday I worked on my last Maya project which was a set of poker chips.
I would of finished it on Tuesday but I had problems on texturing my poker chips.
So I thought of doing it on Thursday because I needed Wednesday to do my essay work.
I had some help with the texturing of my poker chips and I was happy that I went well.

The reason I have more duplicates of green chips the the reds and blues is because I thought it would be better to have more of the lower number chips the the higher ones.

Last Week Maya Work Tuesday

Here are week 4 of my Maya work.
The first lots was different type of textures.

Glass texture render

The first one was a glass texture, this didn't take too long to finish. I like how the model is see through and how curvy the background is through the model.

Matte texture render

A matte is a none shiny object like wood, and that was the next texture I had to make.

It wasn't hard and it too didn't take too long to make.

Plastic texture render

The third texture I had to make was a red plastic texture. It looks like a plastic toy figure, but I still like the glass texture.

Silver texture render.

All I have to say the texture I made really make this model looks like a metal statue.

Bad Chrome texture render






Chrome texture render

I posted two chrome renders to show when I was following the guide. The first chrome render ,the bad one, has it's settings wrong for it's colour. The actual colour was a blue or purplely colour, I don't know, I'm colour blind. So I tried my best to match my chrome colour to the colour of my reference picture. It was hard.

Gold Texture render

Same as the Silver texture. This texture looks like a statue but made of gold.

Glow without Glow texture render

Glow Texture render

Hidden source Glow texture render.

The last three are renders of different type of glow. Mainly th second render and the third render. I like the third one because it looks spooky. The first render, without glow, was done by accident because I forgot to activate the glow.

Bottle render

The next project was to texture a drink bottle. It wasn't hard, but it did took long to make. However I am pleased of the out come of the final render.

Detective Desk render

This one wasn't about texturing but actually how to make our renders look better, by adding blurrs to the back ground and sharpening the foreground. I had to make three renders of this, one was just a render, the second was and ambient render, and the third was a zdepth render. I actually like this one out of all the renders, because the render looks so cool.

Last week Maya homework.

Last week Thursday I have finished all of my Maya work for week 3.
This time it was, the different type of lighting for a scene.

The first scene I was to set a light in the cinema.

I had to use both Maya and Photoshop for this one because for Maya I had to set up the light while in Photoshop I had to edit the picture to make it blurry.

Cinema scene layout

Cinema render

The next one was a Glow from a doorway. The only proble I came across was when I rendering the image the glow did not set right on the ground. It turns out I didn't tell the main light to bright through the plane behind the character.

Glow render

The third one was a beach sceen. I don't think I came across any problems when setting the light in this scene.

Beach render

The forth one was to set a light in a display room. Same as the last one I didn't came across any problems.

Display render

Once I have finished all the lights for diffenrt scenes. I then started then next one. Which was, different styles of light. The first one was an Early Morning style. I didn't came across any problems when I was setting the light, but this effect felt a bit dull.

Early Morning render

The next one was a Mid Morning style. Same as the last one I didn't came across and trouble when I was setting the light, but this one feels a little better then the last one.

Mid Morning render

The third one was a Night effect. This lighting style was also easy to make, thats because I used a guide to help me, but still it was easy to make.

Night render

Next was a Horror lighting style. However to me this one has more of a film noir effect to it then horror.

Horror render

The Sci-fi style is the same as the Horror one, but a bit lighter. I think this one was ment to repersent the old Sci-fi films that were black and white.

Sci-fi render

The last one is the Fire style. this one gave me a bit of problems because I had trouble choosing the colours. I chose a Red colour by mistake. What I really ment to choose was a mix betwwen red and orange, to give a more better firiy look.

Fire render

The next homework was to animate objects. the first one was to animate a robot skating across the scene. This one took a while to animate because I had to set most of his actions to rotate infinatly. However I am pleased of how the animation went.

Robot render

The last object I had to animate is a rocket thats following a path. The only problem I came across was saving the animation. Other than that it went well.

Rocket render