Current project: Jaw Breaker

Jaw Breaker is a platform race game being produced as part of my course by myself and a team mixed from three other courses. Three classmates and I are producing the art work for the game, which will be candy themed.
So far I have concepts for some platforms that will be candy themed and have different effects, for example, the biscuits will break, some will move, jelly platforms will be bouncy, and so on.



This project should be fun! It'll make a nice change from a darker theme and more strict style of my other project running alongside; the steam punk/Borderlands 2 Alice in Wonderland scene. I'll keep updating with my progress :)

Traditional Art Dump

I found old photos of my art! The album is up HERE.
Also a piece based on a project about secrets, inspired by www.postsecret.com
I collected anonymous secrets online via www.formspring.me and spread the word to have secrets sent in. I used these secrets to create paintings and this is the final piece. I love the painting but I wish I had taken a photo of it without the text to better represent myself.

The other project for that year (A level Art - 2012-2013), inspired by Chuck Close, photo of myself winning an award of excellence for these projects.

LIVE website

My website is now live! It is an online portfolio with an up-to-date resume. Please give it a visit!
www.louisejenna94.wix.com/louisemayart
I will update the domain now soon to be LouiseMayArt.co.uk

Off The Map: Alice in Wonderland

GameCity: Off the Map set up annual art projects, this years theme is Alice in Wonderland : Underground, Gardens, or Oxford.
I have a team of four people in total and our game level is going to be a frozen in time tea party scene with a steampunk subtheme in the art style of Borderlands 2. It sounds complicated but hopefully we will pull it off well! I'm confident as the other artists are amazing. When the project is finished I will post our work and links to the other blogs too.
For more information on the competition go here: http://gamecity.org/alices-adventures-off-the-map/

Currently I am designing tea pots and tea cups in a steampunk style. I can't wait to build these!

Low Poly Stylized Submarine

 My low poly submarine! I took inspiration from Jak and Daxter, World of Warcraft and Ratchet and Clank mostly.

The brief I chose to undertake was for a game ready "underwater exploration vehicle". I took the time to research how submarines work and what mechanics are involved and what I would need to include for my vehicle to realistically work. Although the art style is low poly and stylized, meaning the game is most likely not going to be realistic, I wanted to ensure the vehicle would work.
I looked at the HOV Alvin, http://www.whoi.edu/main/hov-alvin/. I learned about different types of submersible vehicles and all sorts of requirements for it to work to make this project.
Eventually my concept and research came to this point, a final concept with topology planning:

Before building the vehicle I did intend to do the metal work in the style of World of Warcraft, in particular in the style of Fanny Vergne, possibly my favourite inspiring game artist. I practiced the metal in this way to ensure I could pull it off, however decided against it later on. I intend to, at some point when my projects in uni are less intense, take the model in to Z-brush and build it in a World of Warcraft style. 

The diffuse map is: 

I tried to paint a similar style to that of WoW but in 2d. There is also an emmission map, for the glowing headlights and side lights, and an alpha map for the front window.
I am happy with how the submarine turned out, however I am aware I need to improve on texturing, I should have added a normal map.
I also think the model would have benefited from using more polys. I built in mostly in the style of older games on the PS2 so used as few polys as I saw fit, however, now that technology has advanced and even if building in the style of low-poly I should take advantage of that. For example, beveling the edges would give a much smoother edge and improve the overall look and feel of the model.
I would have loved to teach myself animation to make the vehicle run! The thruster could spin and the arms wave around as it was steering through the water. I learned the basics of setting up a rig and key frames, however I didn't animate in time for the deadline. In the summer I intend to look at this further.
I also absolutely need to improve on lighting and composition for renders. I used Vray in 3DS max, and set up a gradient spherical background to give the (bad) illusion of deep sea. I tried to take renders in UE4 and Marmoset, however because I had built the vehicle as one object with translucency on the glass I was unable to get the same look in other programs. In UE4, either the whole submarine had to be translucent or transparent or opaque. I was unable to seperate the glass from the rest of the vehicle to get it to appear the way I intended. I settled for Vray which I had not used before and struggled to compose the renders well.
I will improve though!

As always I really appreciate any feedback! I'd love to see what others think of my models and how I can improve.

My first Zbrush Character

My only other model I was proud of that year was also a character, a mythological creature inspired by reptiles. Instead of photo manipulation to produce textures I hand painted it, which I found I much preferred. I used Zbrush for the first time and fell in love with the software, thanks to its similarities to 3d modelling in real life, which I had done many times previous to the Game Art course.

This final concept and colour palette were from personal reference photos of reptilians, mostly chameleons and snakes.
The character is a chameleon, snake and human hybrid, taking inspiration from basilisks and greek mythology.

When building the model I used parts of my own human body model, to save time. 

When it was complete, I took the build in to Zbrush. I used brushes specifically for reptilian skin to give it an accurate texture, and made small changes to the shape of the character, such as making the eyes rounder and protrude further from the socket, and adding a more clearly defined mouth. 

It isn't perfect, but for a first attempt I was proud. 

I painted the colours in photoshop. Using the normal map to ensure the colours lined up to spots, as it does in the reference. 

If I were to redo this project I would use a higher poly count, though the brief specified not to, and I would spend more time in Zbrush to give a more detailed reptilian skin, as well as painting in more details and more tones and colours. 

First year at USW

This entry is a summary of my first year of digital modelling and how badly it went in hindsight, now that I have learned so much more.
My first year at USW studying Game Art, I began digital modelling for the first time. My 3D modeling projects were as follows:

• Star Wars landspeeder vehicle
• Street furniture - a postbox
• A lorry based on given schematics
• A local building
• A human body
• A realistic human character
• A mythological inspired creature 

The landspeeder exercise was mostly to throw us into the deepend of digital modelling to discover what skills everyone had. Naturally, it went terrible for me as I had no experience. I took the time to read the given tutorials to learn the basics of this new software - 3DS Max.

The Postbox, I feel, was a success. I modeled it from personal photo reference. The form was accurate and the texturing believable, to an extent. I used photo-manipulation to make the textures, with a mix of flat colours and sporadically drawn flecks to mimic the dirt in the photo reference.

There were visible seams in the texturing and I didn't know anything at all about rendering and light setups, so excuse that too.
Not bad for a first attempt right?

For the lorry; I tried to follow the schematics but as I have such little knowledge of mechanics, or vehicles in general, it was difficult. I aimed for perfection and still struggle to accept that not everything has to be exactly accurate. I attempted to model the underneath of the van and make the wheels functional, however, it was all as one object as at the time I didn't realise that I could use different elements to combine in to one object.
I tried to use photo-manipulation from a variety of different vehicles all mashed together to get the front of the van looking realistic. It was a mess. The glass window was difficult in particular. At this point I had no understanding of normal maps, materials or shaders.
Although I am proud of the logo (clearly a Lidl rip-off).

For the building project I chose the Golden Cross Pub of Cardiff.

It went terribly. I took my own photographs as reference and used these to build the model. I think my biggest error was trying to build a lot of detail into the one object rather than adding, for example, the windows, and detailed brickwork towards the top of the building as separate elements. I tried to build one "panel" of the building, as 8 are almost identical, and then duplicate it, however, it took multiple attempts. Several times I found un-welded vertices and n-gons that needed cleaning up, which at that point had to be cleaned up 8 times.
By correctly modelling a panel the first time, using separate elements, it would have saved a lot of time, and looked a lot better, which would have ultimately allowed me to have the time to texture the model, which I didn't do in time for the deadline.
Another issue, I realise in hindsight, is not using magnetic snapping. I'd freehand extrude and move lines or vertices and estimate where they should be. This led to a lot of errors too.

Another improvement I could have made is unwrapping elements before duplicating. Everything seems so obvious now that I am looking back at it. D'oh.

The human character I enjoyed! I've always been interested in portraits and have practiced a lot of life drawing through both the foundation course and the Visual Studies module of my current degree.
There was a low poly limit for the brief. Obviously there is a lot of room for improvement, but this was my first attempt at organic modeling. The topology is good, with more polys I'd follow the muscle groups more closely and have a cleaner flow of polys.
The first head wasn't good enough. I developed it more before using this basic body sculpt to create the realistic character.

My first character was based on research at Cardiff Castle of mostly European armours and weapons from various time eras and wars. I ended up with a rogue-like character, wearing leather, and duel-wielding German inspired daggers. There was a lengthy designing process, I tried to explore as many possible directions with the character as possible.

I really enjoyed the character design, as my first character it was difficult. This is how it ended up! Including the diffuse map for both the character and the weapons.
I used a mixture of photo-manipulation and digital painting to get the effect of leather. I wasn't very happy with this at the time, let alone now that I have more experience.

I set up a rig for the first time. I had little knowledge of rigging, I had a very basic understanding of it, and set my mind on being able to pull it off, at least once.

A lot of this project was difficult, but led onto the next character project which was my most successful and most enjoyed, which I will write about soon!