Assignment 1 final image

Image one: Some reworks: Darker

Parrots Black

The amendments for this version are that all of the surrounding elements such as the feathers and parrots have been removed. This is to stop the eye from being distracted from the main images and to not take any vibrancy away from the main colours.

The underneath layer to colour the canvass texture (burn auburn colour) has been removed and a darker, not quite black, coloured background has replaced it. On top of that there is a new layer, on this I have used a soft edged brush set to black to  brush some darkness across the canvass. I have kept it to the right hand side, the bottom and two-thirds to the left hand side. Using the eraser on parts of the background I could, not only, tidy up some of this darkness but in doing so create what I hope to be a light pouring in effect. This I hope has been achieved, although I feel that I may need to add some highlights to the birds to compliment this.

Image one: some reworks

Parrots purple

On this version I went further on the sketchy, handmade effect. I found some watercolour brushes which I felt with the right colouring could really bring the subject alive. To try and give the colours of the parrots the boost that they need, I felt that my best chance was to find the contrasting colour which would allow the parrots colour to bounce. On consulting the colour wheel I found that purples would be best in off setting the oranges so that is where I took my starting place from.

I built up the colours around the birds and with lighter purples being used towards the centre and darker on the outside and less vibrant.

To add to the sketchy effect I used a selection of hard edged brushes to mark around the parrots, with the intention that this may add a little more punch. I used the same colour palette that the bird has and tried to be as opposite as possible to the colours in which it was overlapping. Once that was complete I set the layer mode to vivid light and played with the opacity very slightly.

The feathers and flying parrots are still underneath the water colours, so that they can still be seen but do not detract form the main image.

Image two: Conclusion

This manipulation certainly did not have a final outcome that I could have predicted. However, from my starting point I think that the journey has been a successful one and the piece has only but benefited from all of the reworks and amendments.

I think my biggest set back out of the whole creation of Image Two was fact that I could not settle on one idea from the outset. I started and discarded an uncountable number of images because I was not happy with them, or could not think of a direction in which I could take the.

However, overall I would have to say that Image Two is certainly my favourite piece from this assignment. I now fully appreciate the art behind building objects completely from scratch to look realistic and work in what is trying to be a realistic fantasy piece.

 

Image two: Changes and Final Image

When looking back I felt that the Chinese writing did not really fit, in a meaningful way, with the Egyptian pyramid. So as part of the final change I have changed the text on the pyramid and below the title in English to Hieroglyphics. The title is now “The Meaning Of Life” and written in Hieroglyphics is the answer.

A small change as well is that two line have been drawn to separate the English title and the Hieroglyphics answer. The top line has been transformed so that it has a curve in it and that at the top of the curve the line is slightly thicker.

Final Piece

Assignment 2: Hat Badge

On my research and reference images the badges that are featured on the hats are of flying wings. The issue that I had with this is that I really want to convey my concept and with just flying wings I was not sure that the idea that this is a pilot would be strong enough. I have therefore decided to create a “RAF” badge that will sit above the peek of the hat.

I built this in Houdini. Laying down ‘font’ and editing these as appropriate. The font used here was a traditional ‘Times’. A font that is used on some RAF logo work. These characters were then extruded slightly, not a lot of depth is needed otherwise it would not look accurate on the hat.

These characters were then textured with a metal feel, which had been coloured golden.

Assignment 2: RAF Hat

To create the sense of this man being a pilot I wanted to add some extras details to his character that complimented this idea. My first addition was to create a RAF’s pilots hat. I first had to research the design of these hats:

hat 1

hat 2

 

The key elements was the flat top, leading to a circular band round the middle and then the peek.

The build up for this happened quite smoothly. The top of the hat was a capped tube tilted and re-sized. This had a cylinder underneath it and a cone placed below that which created the peek. The edges around these connecting parts were smoothed so that there was less of a harshness.

What needed to happen now was coloring and texturing to give more of a cloth feel to the current crispness.I searched for textures that may work and set about testing the rendered outcomes.

blue texture

This texture has the correct colouring and also a grain and material covering which the render was able to pick out.

The main problem to be rectified from here is to lower the lighting and make the blue areas of the hat less shiny and give the material more grit and matt effect.

Assignment 2: Texturing

The sculpt of the head when I moved it as an obj. file from ‘sculptris’ to ‘houdini’ was a lot heavier than I had predicted. The final count was 999,999 polygons built up the old mans head. So in should this made texture quite a tricky process. After a few experiments I wanted to test out the painting tools.

paint test

Image two: The Pyramid

When looking at this image I still felt that there was something missing, the space between the two planets was too empty for my liking. However, finding something that filled the space was easier said than done. I finally had a flash of inspiration that would turn my space piece into something a bit more quirky and abstract.

I started with the idea of adding, a floating object and after looking at many differing things I finally settled on a Pyramid. (http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/stockart/?qh=&section=&q=pyramid#/d1ywtoe) The reason being that the shape of a pyramid is very structured and the sharp cornering means that it could look quite effective with the lighting.

I removed the background from the pyramid image and centred it between the large planet and smaller one. I added a ‘hue and saturation’ adjustment layer and gave the pyramid a blue tint. On a new layer I used a soft edge brush set to black to darken some areas of the pyramid. This layer was then set to screen and the opacity tweaked.  Finally I needed to add a little more 3D to the object, in the form of the underneath being slightly seen. This was a rectangle set to the width of the base and then the back part slightly transformed to give perspective. The colour was a dark blue with the opacity knocked slightly down so that it blended more to the colour of the true pyramid.

I created a new light ray and put that at the top of the pyramid and behind, almost giving the pyramid a silhouette. I then experimented with the lens flares, first adding one at each point, however, this was not a good effect and did not look right with the rest of the image. I removed these and created a new lens flare, masked out the outer rings so that the glow was left. I transformed this so that the low was all along the bottom edge of the pyramid as if the light was catching here.

Pyramid bottom

I felt that there needed to be something to make the pyramid a little bit unique. I translated the title “the blue pyramid” into Chinese and placed it onto the pyramid, I then changed the layer mode to ‘screen’. I wanted to add some depth the text so that it looked like it was etched into the pyramid so after converting the text into an image I took the soft edge brush tool with a black colouring and brushed around the top edges of each of the symbols and any of the horizontal edges that were not the bottom ones.

Chinese Engraved

I finally added the Chinese text into the border underneath the English text.

The Blue Pyramid

 

3D Assignment 2: Testing the face