Insectoid Design

We received a task involving having to design an insect/humanoid creature. For this task, not only did we have to come up with an original design, but we also had to draw a front and side view of the creature as though we would be presenting it to be modelled.

The idea I had for my creature was some kind of moth humanoid creature, and soon I decided I wanted to design a moth princess that would potentially rule over a civilisation of creatures. I started by looking at different images of various species of moths, to get ideas for the design.

I was very interested in how this moth's wings looked like snakes, to scare off predators. This was one of the many things I decided to incorporate in my final design.

After getting an idea of how I wanted the creature's anatomy to look, I began to design it's outfit. I wanted to dress it in a way inspired by asian royalty, so I began to look up different clothes and artwork from countries such as China, Korea and Japan.

                                          

I found that a lot of the materials in these images were very flowy and silky. I thought this would suit my creature well, so I made sure that the clothing in my final design would reflect this.

                                           

                                                

Here are both my front and side views of my creature, and the 3/4 view final design. My creature, as stated, is a moth princess that rules over her kingdom only during the night. Her main roles are to defend her kingdom against night time predators, and generally ensure that the civilisation remains stable during the hours of her reign. Her clothes are all handmade by herself, as she is a silk moth so she is able to produce the material. This is a tradition amongst the moth royalty, as it symbolises the fact that the princess should always work hard for her kingdom, and to always remain humble despite her position.

Turret Texture Baking

Today we baked a texture onto the turret model, and then painted the texture to give it a finished look. In order to do this, I opened the baked texture in Photoshop and then added a metal texture which I edited first to get the look that I desired. I then painted over this texture with a layer effect on in order to paint some graffiti decals onto the sides of the turret. Additionally, I added a small bit of blood using photos. Here are some screenshots of my finished texture on the model in Maya:

Speedpainting

In class today we had to copy an image we were given on paper, and we only had 2 hours to copy it.
Here is my attempt:

I went about doing this by putting each layer of the scenery on a separate layer in Photoshop, working from the mountains at the very back to the girl in the foreground. I'm glad that I managed to put down all the main features of the piece in time, and managed to make it look at least vaguely like the original reference image. However, I struggled with the perspective of the fence, as this is one of my weak points that I'd like to improve. Additionally, I feel that I could maybe have pushed the colours further, particularly with the highlights reflecting off of the objects, I feel that I could have made them lighter so that they 'glowed' more.

Halloween Monster Design

In the spirit of Halloween Week, our brief was to create a scary monster. Being a very broad prompt, I initially found it difficult to think of a direction to go in. So collecting images for my moodboard, they were not very focussed and rather were just images or designs I found appealing that vaguely fit the theme.

I found the idea of creating a giant monster quite appealing, inspired by the monsters from films such as Pacific Rim and The Host. However, whilst thinking about this I found that I was stepping too far into 'gentle giant' monster territory, which didn't exactly fit the prompt of 'scary'. So I eventually decided to scrap this idea completely, and focus on creating something more disturbing. Still, I was inspired by the limb shapes of the creatures I had studied, and eventually came to the idea of putting these strange proportions on a human figure.

This was a mockup I did for the final design image of my creature. Initially its face was a mask of some kind, but then I eventually decided that it could actually be the shell of a bug instead, which attaches to its victims face, and causes the mutations which makes the monster look so disturbing. I chose to include a small bit of blood dripping down from the face, to indicate where the bug digs its claws into the victim. Still, I didn't want to rely too much on gore to make it scary, I wanted it to be more sinister and uncomfortable than gruesome.

This is the final result I had for my monster. I tried to push the lighting to give a more ominous feel, however I did struggle with the colours on this piece, finding it difficult to make it interesting. I also included another bug in the piece to show how it functions when not attached to a human.

Futuristic Gun Design

We recieved a brief which involved having to design a futuristic/sci-fi, projectile firing gun. As usual, I started out by collecting images on the internet, both to learn how guns work and also to get some ideas as to how to give my weapon a futuristic feel.

I liked the idea of having more round shapes in the silhouette of my gun, as I feel that this gave an interesting, almost otherworldly effect. Additionally, I noticed that bright, especially glowing, colours in the design gave a good sci-fi effect. With these two things in mind primarily, I began to sketch out ideas, focusing on creating good shapes and also getting used to drawing out the general structure of different guns.

From this, you can see that I chose my third design. However, I also took a few features from other designs, for example the handle and details on the barrel.
I decided to draw my final design from scratch in Photoshop. Here is my result:

As always, there are things I am pleased about with this piece, and things I feel could have been done better. I learnt a lot from drawing this; it was my first time drawing a gun, let alone designing my own one. I also used this drawing to get used to the more advanced features of Photoshop again, such as masking and layer effects. Next time, however, I would like to use thinner lines to give it a more realistic look, and focus on ensuring that the design is practical and would work in real life, as well as being aesthetically pleasing.