More character development

This is some concept art I've been working on for a while now applying some new techniques I've been learning for one of my stories. One character you might recognize is the one with the blue shirt. It's Owen the older brother, though I've tweaked his character a bit from the last version a while ago with him in a red sweatshirt and the tree in the background. The other character is Gene, his friend, who is a little bit of a trouble maker. This part of the story is after the family gets home and Owen's allowance has been taken away for a while since he didn't keep an eye on his younger brother Riley when they were at the flea market. Owen and his friend Gene are talking about how to get back at Riley and have an interesting idea of how to go about it. All that's left now charcter wise for this story is the family dog.

BYU Film color scout 2 progress

This is another painting I'm doing for the BYU film Crossing. I probably will do some more work on it after I get some more feedback from my directors. This is the second version of it after they requested some changes.

Lighting assignment

These are images from my lighting assignment of a model we chose given to us by our teacher. So, I didn't make the model, I only did the lighting and added the sky. We had the assignment of doing four lighting setups: 4-point, monster, world, and sunset. 4 point is your basic photo studio set up with two main front key lights and a back light to accent light behind the shadows and define the shape of the model better. Monster lighting was anything we wanted to make the model appear eerie or in a gloomier light setting with cooler colors to set the mood and is usually lit from bellow looking upwards to light it in a more frightening way. World lighting is lighting from an outside environment and comes from all directions. Sunset lighting is set low on the horizon and off in the distance with warmer colors.
I had fun, and now we have a three week assignment of modeling, shading, texturing, and lighting a teapot composition of our choice. So, it basically combines everything we are learning so far in the semester. We have an assignment of this week to draw several sketches of our ideas for the composition and we will discuss them in class and critique them together. This should jump start me more in drawing in my sketch book for the animation program and help me think more about design and composition in my own art work.

Brenden and recent project

These are some pictures of Brenden keeping busy in his new toy, wearing himself out so much that he falls a sleep while being burped, and sitting up all by himself on the couch. I also have some pictures of my Maya project from last week about shaders for a pencil, lamp that I made, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunchbox as well.

Let it be written, let it be done

Yes, it's officially official that the recent version of my painting is approved and finished for the film!!! My directors said I did a great job, and in the dailies meeting today, everyone said it looked amazing and that this Mike Finch guy is really good. I wasn't able to be there since I had class, but my art leader told me about it when I showed up after my class and got the feedback and next assignment.

I think it's finaly done!

Well, after a week of different versions and changes here and there, I seem to have finally gotten something that all three people I've been working with like. In the words of my light leader's response to this version: "DING! I think you nailed it!" I have to say I really like the most recent changes in this one. My lighting director wanted the car more in shadow, a window that was dirty so the window light would not be as bright, more shadow and contrast with the armadillos and the ground around them to be brighter so they pop and grab your attention, the sky needed to have more blending with the color transition, and so I did all of those changes in this version. I really like how it all turned out and appreciate another artists perspective in helping me improve and become better.

BYU Film color scout updated

I got a little bit of feed back to combine my two versions of the sky from my art leader, and I was also told to add some atmospheric disturbance to the mountains to make the armadillos pop more. I still like my last version of the sky better color wise, but if this is the way he wants it, I don't mind it at all. The director of the whole film said my other version was great and loved what I did with the shadows and my art leader said he liked what I had done with the lighting and shading and making things stand out more. I also included the 3D model I was given to use and paint.

3D Model

This is my assignment that was due today on modeling in Polygons. I used this image I got online, but found that it wasn't perfectly lined up in all of the views, so I had to do a lot of guessing. I did ok, I would like to have had more time to put more detail into the head and face. I learned a lot about what not to do, so when I have more time in the future, I'll go back and rebuild this even better.

BYU Film color scout

I got feedback from several people also working on the film to change a few things about my last version of this scene. I hadn't quite gotten to the lighting and shadow of the last version, so I did a lot on that, plus I did some more landscaping adding in the mountains, I toned down the car so it wasn't the center of focus, and I made the highlights jump out more, and the shadows more deep to create more contrast between the two, and I made the armadillos next to the fence more distinct and at the center of attention. I also had a request to change the sky back to more of my original design after I was told to use more color from the script and then used too much, so I balanced between my two previous versions of the sky to where you see it now.
This has to be the most technical painting of any that I have done. It had over 20 layers: half color, half texture, some lighting and shading layers, etc. I think it turned out nicely, and hopefully my art team leader, lighting leader and director will aggree. They tend to have differences of opinion and keep me guessing alot of the time on what they want, but I think this is definitely headed in the direction of their requests. I'm not even in the major, or industry yet, and I all ready have a feel for how it is to work with people with different ideas and piece them all together to please each one.

In class assignment

This week we started shaders and textures. In class we had to make an orange shader and a beach ball shader. We are supposed to do shaders for different kinds of objects for our assignment next week. It was really confusing to me how to apply different surfaces to an object with different reflective qualities and textures at first, but at the end of our three hour class, I think I understood it much better, and can't wait to learn more as I experiment with my assignment this week.