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Learning how to do Hand Painted Texture for TPS – Part #1
Texture Painting and Sculpting
For this new class we are learning to do Hand Painted Textures, which is a fancy way of saying Digital Painting, which is a fancy way of Photoshopping. We were tasked with painting a texture using 4 different materials. I choose Wood, Stone, Cloth and Metal. My stone turned out pretty decent in my opinion and was a lot of fun bringing it to life with all the cracks. The cloth was by far my best piece and I had a lot of fun doing that one. I learned a technique where you paint all in grayscale just focusing on where the highlights and shadows should be and then adding color at the end. That way you do not have to worry about color and getting all the colors to look correct. I used the smudge tool for 98% of it and with a lot of time it comes out looking like a real cloth. My wood was my least favorite, only because I left that for last and didn’t get to spend as much time on it as I would have liked. I added Metal nails for effect, but I am sure with a few more hours it would have been much better. I received a B+ on this for my grade Mainly due to the wood.
Our second project was to Hand Paint a barrel to tell a story. I choose to do an old radioactive barrel with lots of damage, rust and mold. I really enjoyed making this one because It was fun to see a nice fresh looking barrel become old and beat up. I used a bunch of different techniques in this one to get the final result and lots and lots of different layers in Photoshop. The trial and error were fun on this one and learned very quickly it is fun to make a layer and experiment and if I don’t like it, just delete and start something new. That’s how the mold turned out. I had several different versions of the mold and after receiving a few critiques decided to end with this version. I received an A on this for my Grade.
I am currently working on Legacy/Current Generation Textures making another wall, and soon will start on a box. So I will post those at the end of the month once they are completed. Enjoying this class for sure. It’s nice to get back to feeling like I am making art.
Keep Calm and Sail On
Just a little something I made for my Full Sail University Networking Group on Facebook.
Back when I first started at Full Sail, we were told “NETWORK!!!” I mean, almost every day we were told how important it was to network and get to know people and come out of your shell. Well I took this very seriously and when it came time to try to network on Facebook, I found it very difficult to find one good place where I could reach out to as many Full Sail students as possible. There were plenty of groups here and there, Full Sail Soccer group, Full Sail Writing group, Full Sail This group and Full Sail That group, but no Full Sail Networking group, (that had more then 100 members). So I took it upon myself to start one and make sure it became the go to place for all former and current students to come and network with each other. Little did I know this was going to become the BIGGEST Full Sail group on Facebook with over 7,500 Members as of this minute.
I am just honored that it has become such a great community and place for us all to get together and discuss all kinds of things. A place where I hope I am making a difference and connecting people together that might not have had a platform to meet. Where people might find that next contact that lands them that job. Where someone might be encouraged to come out of their shell and maybe make a new life long friend.
So if you have happened along this post and are a Full Sail Student, Full Sail Alumni, Industry Professional, or looking into attending Full Sail University, I invite you to come on in and say hi.
Visual Effects 1 – My 3 Projects – Full Sail University
Visual Effects 1
This month I had Visual Effects 1 and we were tasked to make some pretty awesome effects in Maya 2015. My first project was a Rube Goldberg Machine. We had to practice making rigid hard bodies and passive hard bodies. Along with different fields I was able to make the Rube Goldberg machine work. I then gave the scene some colors and also practiced lighting the bulbs by making the texture glow instead of using a light.
Quick History lesson
For those of you who don’t know, Rube Goldberg was the guy who invented the machines that you already know about. They are the machines where one thing triggers the next and then that thing triggers the next and so on. You probably just didn’t know that was the name of them. Reason everyone knows about them is because he was a cartoonist that drew these wild machines that we have all seen in cartoons and now in modern days people build them, but fun fact, that most people do not know is, he never made one himself.
Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) was a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor and author. Reuben Lucius Goldberg (Rube Goldberg) was born in San Francisco on July 4, 1883. After graduating from the University of California Berkeley with a degree in engineering, Rube went on to work as an engineer for the City of San Francisco Water and Sewers Department.
More info on Rube Goldberg here.Â
Here is my Pre-Pro Storyboard with my plan of what I was going to use and how I was going to do it. The fun thing about this class was they made us do our story board and plan before we even knew what we were capable of doing. My guess is so we didn’t feel limited to what we knew how to do and it would challenge us to try to learn how to do what we wanted.
Storyboard Sketches
Here is my final project, Please watch in HD if possible for best results.
Rube Goldberg Machine – Lesson 1 – Rigid Body Dynamics
Our second project was a Foundry scene that was given to us and we had to create particles for Smoke, Fire, and Liquid. We had full control of what the scene would look like. We used all kinds of particles to create certain looks. Lots and Lots and Lots of setting tweaks to try to pull off certain particles. My original plan was slightly different then the final project, but sometimes that happens. My original plan was to do Steam, Smoke, Fire, and Sparks. But I changed it up by getting rid of the steam since it was so close to smoke and changing the sparks to liquid to keep the scene short for rendering purposes.
Here is a look at my Pre-Pro plans. You will see how I had slightly different plans then the final project.
Storyboard Sketches
Test Renders of my Fire and Smoke
The Foundry – Lesson 2 – Particle Effects
Here is my final video of Lesson 2. I am very happy with the way it turned out considering some of the challenges I ran into on this project. Of course IÂ see some of the errors and things that I wish I would have had time to change. Please watch in HD for best results.
Our third and final project was a super fun one for me. We had to practice creating soft bodies. The first thing that came to mind when the professor was presenting our final project was Jello! Who doesn’t love watching Jello Jiggle? So I did some research and found a video on-line of Jello being dropped at high-speed to give it a slow motion effect. I wanted to try to recreate that look of Jello falling and rippling in slow motion. But how was I going to do it? After many different methods I found one that really gave it a very nice ripple effect. The first few tests made it very stiff and cartoony. Once I found out how to make the Jello look real, then it came to color and trying to get a good look of the surface. I used a MIA X Material and set it to a solid glass, but then tweaked the settings for hours. Below is a few test renders once I got close to what I liked.
My original plan was to try to replicate the video as close as possible with about 12 pieces of Jello all interacting with one another. Once I got to two pieces of Jello I started running into issues where each piece I added after would change the dynamics of the first two pieces of Jello. I knew that rendering was going to take a VERY long time as I wanted to render in the highest quality of mental ray for this final project so I decided to just work with two pieces but make them look the best as possible. With 600 frames it took over 40 hours of render time to produce the quality I was looking for and the final video shows it!
Storyboard Sketches
Test renders of my Jello
Jello Simulation – Lesson 3 – Soft Body Simulation
Here is my final video for Lesson 3 and I am so happy with the way it turned out! Please be sure to watch this in HD so you can see the full quality that I put into it. I mean after 40 hours of rendering at least take a minute to watch it in all its glory. I also found a commercial for Jello from the 1970’s and thought it was perfect for this video. Please feel free to comment below and tell me what you think of all these projects.
Hope you enjoyed my 3 projects from Visual Effects 1 as much as I enjoyed making them. Feel free to let me know by commenting below. I sure learned a lot about Maya and how to make things look amazing within it. Excited to continue to learn more. On to the next class!
Character Animation 1 (CAN1) is in the books! All of My Projects
Another class is in the books. I had a great time in CAN1 this past month. Learned a lot more about animating a character. I do enjoy doing it, something about making it precise and getting the character to look fluid when they move appeals to me. I feel like I did a real good job on all of my projects and of course there is always room for improvement. Feel free to take a look at my projects below and comment on what you like or what you see I could have changed. I love to get hard critiques on my work. It helps me become a better artist, so feel free to nit pick.
Return to the Walk
Our first project was to make a character walk again to get us back into the groove of Maya and doing animation again.
Turn Around
This was my project that continues the walk from earlier in the month. This time we had to make the character turn around. This can be a little tricky because now you are moving on many axises not just in one direction.
Silhouette Poses
We had to make strong silhouette poses with Bugsy to try to concentrate on making strong poses
Final Project
Our final project is we had to make Bugsy walk across the platform from a standing position or a relaxed position. He had to take 5-6 steps then once he reached the button, do a turn around and then anticipate and hit the button,then make a strong pose. I choose to add a little more and make the elevator go down, for a little added bonus. This was good practice. Grades will soon be posted.
François Boucher’s Odalisque 1749 Remake to Bugsy 2015
CAN1 Media Center Activity
For Character Animation 1, we had to go to the Library and choose a book with some famous artwork and then re-create it in a drawing. Then we had to insert Bugsy, Our Character Rig for CAN1, into the drawing the second time. I choose François Boucher’s Odalisque simply because I thought it would be funny to see Bugsy all sprawled out looking like a 1749 French nude model. Sure enough I think it is pretty funny looking, Don’t you?
This is obviously the ordinal painting.
This is my remake of the original.
I used Sketchbook Pro and my Wacom Intuos 5 Tablet.
This is my Remake with Bugsy looking all sexy!
This was only worth 1% of my grade, and I feel I went way above and beyond what was even being asked for this assignment, but I was having too much fun because most of my work lately has been in Maya, and I have not had a lot of time to get back to drawing. So I decided to do my best. Feel free to tell me what you think in the comment section below.
2015
WOW! I can not believe we have made it to the future!
I am very excited that it is 2015 because this means that I only have just over a year to finish my degree. I had such a wonderful year in 2014 and I have learned soo much. The year flew by which means I must have been having some fun. When I think back at the beginning of 2014 and now I feel so much smarter when it comes to my field. Classes are really ramping up when it comes to difficulty but I feel I am still keeping up and getting A’s.
Character Rigging 1
I made a few tiny mistakes in this class which gave me a %99.20. I am extremely proud of myself for this grade. I really enjoyed doing rigging a lot. I had heard from a few fellow students who had already taken it and they warned me and some down right hated it. That made me a little nervous that it might not have been such a fun class, but they were all wrong. For me, this was my type of class. My teacher, Mr. Clavan, was a wonderful instructor and was able to teach us the basics or rigging very well.
Character Animation 1
I have started my next class and it is going to be a fun one. Character Animation 1 is a continuation of Fundamentals of Animation. I am looking forward to using what I have learned from that class and adding more knowledge to create some fun and exciting animations. I will keep you posted.
Discussion: Blog Post – Character Rigging 1
Discussion: Blog Post
Well this is a first… I get to use my blog as one of my assignments for class. All month-long I have been learning Rigging in Mr. Clavan’s Class. This has by far, been one of my most favorite classes so far. For some reason rigging just appeals to me. I think it is the precision of it all. Everything has its exact place and it just feels good when everything is perfectly lined up and precisely in its spot. We also got to do some coding in the last week of class. It is fun to see how you can make a code that literally does things that took me an hour to do and now I can do it in a push of a button. I am not sure if I will become a rigger, but it is definitely at the top of my list of things I might want to do when I get done with Full Sail.
Part of my assignments this month is to make a post on my blog once I am finished with my Rig showing off my work. So here it is Mr. Clavan, hope you like it.
Prior to this class we had done very minimal rigging so this was kind of our “real” introduction to how full rigs work. We learned from start to finish how to rig a character, but of course each one will be different, but the basic principles should remain the same. Here is a few shots of the progression of my work.
Video of my Rig in action, Enjoy.
I am very happy with the way he turned out and apparently so was my teachers. I received a 100% plus got an extra 10% for doing extra credit with the fingers having their own separate controls. Below is some screen shots of the finished product showing off some of the controls that I made and how it was rigged.
I am looking forward to CRY2 and I here it is even more fun then CRY1. But until then it is time for CHRISTMAS!!
TGGAMIO = Thank God Geometry and Measurements is Over
Well I gave it my all and did my best, but the record of straight A’s has fallen.
It was the tests that killed me. I have come to learn that my brain just does not work so well with math. Not that I can not learn it and perfect it. I think it just takes me a bit longer to get all the rules down. Full Sail being a accelerated school, we are learning in 4 weeks what most colleges do in 16 weeks. I am sure had I had a bit more time, I could have aced these tests. I am actually happy with my final grade of B+ when usually I would be upset it wasn’t an A. But I know I did my best and I am proud of myself for that. I do have a secret weapon though. Full Sail allows you to bump up 1 grade at the end. So if I continue to keep getting A’s, I can change this B+ to an A.
Next month is Character Design and Creation, and I am looking forward to that. I am sure I will have more to post next month. So keep your eye’s pealed for that.
After 1 year at Full Sail University
Had you asked me a year ago to do the things I have done in the past year or had you asked me where I would be in a year, I never would have imagined what I have done and how far I have come at Full Sail. I can not believe that I have completed a full year at Full Sail and when I think back to my very first day it is amazing how far I have come in such a short amount of time. I am 1/3rd of the way done with my Bachelor of Science in Game Art and at the pace it is going, I am sure the next two years will breeze by. I am so proud of myself for the grades I have gotten and the networking I have done. I am still rocking the straight A’s, which when I think of some of the classes I have had so far and the amount I had to do in 1 month per class, I am blown away at my own work ethic and determination to maximize my opportunity here. I am trying to have patience with myself as well. I have learned to not stress as much over grades. I have learned to just do my very best and work hard and the grades will reflect that. Also it is hard hearing about all the job postings at the places I want to work knowing I still have 2 years to go.
My favorite part of Full Sail so far, has been when they bring in people (Rock Stars) of the industry in to speak to us about what is going on in their position. Especially when they are Full Sail Alumni and even Hall of Famers. It feels good hearing and seeing someone who sat in the very chairs I am sitting in and taking the very courses I am in, telling me to keep at it and at the end, if you work your hardest, network, and get your name out there, “it is possible”. Of course they do not sugar coat it and they tell us it isn’t easy, but it is up to you to get it done. So that’s what I have been doing. Even with this very blog I have had industry professionals take notice. I am thankful for that.
I am looking forward to the classes I have coming up. The best part about my choice to go “extended” (one class a month), I get to make friends with people and they move forward into classes that I will soon be taking, so I get to hear all about what I have in store for me. It has helped prepare me for what to look forward to and especially the art classes, prepare for my projects. Also I am very happy that I can focus on one class at a time. I have fellow peers who I watch completely freak out because they are doing “accelerated” (two classes a month) and they have double the work load. I am thankful for that. I feel that extra time I have reflects in my work as well.
So, here is what I have been up to in the past few months.
I can not tell you how happy I was to get a 97.96 in College Mathematics! I was very nervous about Math as it has never been a strong class for me and I had not done algebra in soo long. But hard work, studying, and a lot of getting it wrong taught me to keep trying and you will get it.
Shading and Lighting I actually got a 95.05% because I was not credited for my extra credit I did in the class. This was a good class but not my forte so far. We learned how to light a scene to make it look realistic.
Then I had Methods of Design which was an AWESOME class. I got to make all kinds of stuff for this class. I found that I really enjoy working with my hands and creating tangible things. Things that can be touched and picked up. Using my art eye was so much fun to create and see things come to life. The best part of this class is that I kicked some serious butt and got my very first Course Directors Award which basically means I was the top in my class.
This may not look like a lot but let me tell you when I walked into class on the last day to pick up all my graded work, this meant the world to me. I was in shock. It is actually the second great thing that has happened to me in Full Sail. First being when My artwork was featured on the walls.
This was another great part of this class, a 99.64!! WOW! I am so proud of myself as this was a difficult class especially when I had a week-long vacation to Vegas, Grand Canyon, Sedona AZ, and Ft. Lauderdale FL. But I did get some work done while in Ft. Lauderdale. It was actually a great break to have from art.
Here are a few of my projects I made
 
This is my re-make of Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition (blue rectangle over the red beam) which was painted in 1916 and sold for 60 million dollars. The assignment was to choose a piece of art that we hated and reimagined it the way we would have done it.
The Original
5 Sided Tetrahedra
noun, plural tet·ra·he·drons, tet·ra·he·dra [te-truh–hee-druh].
Geometry . a solid contained by four plane faces; a triangular pyramid.
My next project was we had to create something out of cardboard that showed a good use of Positive Space and also Negative space. I choose to make a 5 sides Tetrahedra. This is actually 5 pyramids that are all interlocked with each other. This was gonna be a serious endeavor that I did not realize would be so challenging yet so fun.
Pre-Production
Going Full Size
Painting and Construction
Final
This was such a fun project to do. I decided after I started construction to go with a 3 sided Tetrahedra that way it showed more negative space. With a 5 sided Tetrahedra it would have not given me any negative space at all to show and that probably would have effected my grade. I did also start to make one out of paper to get how the construction worked before going full size. But WOW! I think it turned out amazing and it was all made with just cardboard.
This was two projects in one, I had to do an abstract along with a sculpture out of green foam. First we had to pick a household item, I choose an XBOX 360 Live Camera. We then had to sketch out close ups to try to make it an abstract look. Then once we came up with those we picked one that we liked and did it in full size and color. I choose to do mine in colored pencils which I am finding I really enjoy working with. Once we completed that we then had to carve out the item in Green Foam. This is the green foam that fake flowers are shoved into to keep them upright. What a fun project and I was a little apprehensive to work in this medium because I did not know how it would react. I found out it was very east to work with if you just used your hands and fingers. No tools, tools simple break it apart, when using your hands you can slowly mold it to what ever shape you like. Here is some of the pictures of my work.
Sketchbook Pro all done on my computer and Wacom Tablet
Final
Green Foam
Final Project
My final project we had to read Grimm’s Fairy Tales The Golden Goose and then create a scenery from the story. I didn’t get much pictures of production as this was made the final day and I was up pretty late working on getting everything finalized for turn in. But here is the final results. I feel it turned out real good. My finger is still sore from using a dull exact knife to cut out all the pieces.
So as you can see I have been very busy over the past few months. Currently I am in Geometry and Measurements… grrrr! Not feeling this math class either but I will put my rhino horn to the grind stone and get it done and hopefully get out of there with another A for the collection. Thanks so much for baring with me over the past few months and not posting here, but as you may or may not know, you can always follow me on my Facebook page as that is also where I post lots of my school fun.
www.facebook.com/MyFullSailJourney
AAAAAAAAAA! Killing it at Full Sail University Game Art Program
Working hard ALWAYS pays off!
I am very excited to report that I have straight A’s right now. I did slip below my 4.0 GPA I was trying so hard to maintain, but not by very much at all. My goal is to maintain these straight A grades for the remainder of my time at Full Sail. This has been such an amazing ride so far and it is actually flying by. I have been through 9 classes, some easy, most difficult. I have strived to put forth my very best effort and I know that at the end of all this it will pay off.
Game Industry… You better be ready for 2016… I am coming strong!
My Full Sail Journey.com 