We had the privilege to add a beauty pass, Ambient Occlusion Pass and a Z depth Pass to a scene made by Alan. Its amazing what a little tweaking in photoshop can do to a Maya scene.
I am just going to quickly talk about the different ideas that i have had about my portrait throughout the last few weeks. Main thoughts that came to my mind first were, I wanted to do a portrait were I could should show that different emotions that i was going through and also the fact that I travelled away from home.
Idea 1
This was me trying to draw myself in a more conventional way of how portraits are done, the idea came from the artist Albert Durer, I liked the way he was able to show a progress of his life through his portraits. I was trying to get a similar effect through my portrait. However I found that it still wasn't expressing the emotions that I wanted for the portrait to show.
Idea 2
Here I used illustrator to draw myself looking away from the viewers, this gives a sense of mystery once again. I made the background black to add emphasis to the character in the middle and also you can see a show of London scenery in the face, I did this to show that I was missing home or the place were I was from.
After this i was still searching for a method were i could express more emotion, I turned my attention to photography. I didn't have a great camera or a studio so i had to do with what I had. So I tried playing around with lighting a bit to try and give a sense of sadness or sorrow.
Idea 3
Here i was trying to capture the emotions that I was going through at that particular time. I light casts shadow on the other side of the face almost giving a sense of sadness and sorrow in the portrait.
This was pretty fun to do, making UV layout for a object and then editing the UV's in photoshop. After which you apply the texture to the different chips.
Model rendered using Blinns and Lamberts, the amount of different materials that came out of the two nodes is great!
Glass, Matte, Plastic and Silver
Gold, Chrome, Glow and Hidden Glow
Robot Animation
First animation scene in maya, have to say a big thanks to Alan's tutorials, they rule!!
I have to say that after using Maya only for a short period of time, things are finally getting a lot more easier. Maya seems to be a lot more familiar to me and i can navigate the software quite efficiently now.
Fire, Horror and Sc-Fi
Night. Day and Morning
For some reason they never look good as Alan's one, but hey they are good enough!
Finally I am going to upload these, I have to say that I rather enjoyed making these models. The fans was not so hard as I thought but just enormously time consuming. So I think its about time I get these all uploaded, so here goes.
The Toaster
The Magnifying Glass
The Fan (Hard one)
Very proud of the models I have made, even though they might not be perfect but I think its good as its the first time i am using Maya.
The Elephant Man tells us the story of John Maverick and his difficult life due to physical deformity.
It was a rather sad story about a man despised by everyone due to being physically disfigured from birth. When the movie started it almost had a felt like a horror movie, although as the movie progressed further we gain an understanding of the characters background and this felling changes. However at the start we only get glimpses of the elephant man and leaving the rest up to our imagination. I was very curious to see the character and how he looked, as it was the first time I was watching the movie. However as we progress through the story we are shown the full extend of the characters deformities and problems, and he is abused and bullied due to it.
At first I had a sense of reproach and disgust about the character, but then this is why we humans are so prejudice in some sense. We see something different or out of the ordinary and we feel scared or threatened by it. Nevertheless as the story carries on we learn about him as a person and my feeling towards the character completely changed to sympathy and sadness. You end up realising that inside he is just another human being with all the emotions and thoughts that we have.
I personally loved the movie as I thought it gave out a message to people about judging others by their physical attributes rather than getting to know them first. The movie was directed very beautifully and with a great storyline.
Once again all of this comes down the identity issue, were does the identity of a human being lie ? In his face, body or Soul?. Others felt repulsed by John Maverick due to his physical body not being the same as everyone else and maybe without that we find it hard to grasp the identity of the person. Well towards the end of it all i was just happy that he did find some nice people who cared and loved him.
So after reading through phils comments, I am keen on stepping things up. I was kind of stuck on my portrait ideas so I thought I would research a bit more on artists. I wanted to go outside the artists that were mentioned within the presentations so I stepped back into the past and remembered some of the artists that were mentioned when I was a kid. These were quite famous artists in India and I have seen some of their work and found it brilliant for the time period in which they were created. These artists I think give an insight into how colours can be used to influence portraits and the emotions that they portray.
Ravi Varma
Raja Ravi Varma one of the most famous Indian painters, he was born in a keralite royal family. He learned painting from Indian painters and later from a British painter. I find his drawings very beautiful and his depiction of Indian beauty in his drawing very interesting.
I love this drawing due to the use of bright colours and its strong references to cultural background. You can see that this is very traditional form of women back in 1980's in India, however the techniques he used were very western, he also used modern hues and oils in his work and because of the western influence in his paintings. His work really got me thinking about how we can portray our emotions and feelings using colours and different body poses.
William H Johnson
Once again an artist that used colours more than perfect picture drawings to express himself in this drawings. His work puts emphasises on colours and gave me some ideas about messing with the colours on my portrait, so once I get back to London I will upload some of my portrait pieces I have been working on.
I been thinking a lot about portraits and the different artists throughout the years who have tired to capture something of a person in there drawings.
My question would be " Can you capture who a person truly is within their portraits?"
After several brainstorms and a lot more research I have decided to change my essay question to the following.
Are there any fundamental differences between photographic and painted portraiture?
When phil was showing us through the presentations, some of the artists really caught my eye. I admired their different work of art and also liked the way they made their pieces. Most of these artists appeal to me mainly due to there work being very experimental and interesting.
The artists are :
Albert Durer
Chuck Close
Gerhard Riehtrer
Albert Durer
I found this artist very interesting because even thought it might be something of a classic or typical piece of portrait work, it isn't. The artist through his painting tries to tell us about his life and the changes its gone through. Like in this particular piece you can see that he has put a window behind him and this represents that he has travelled and matured. I think in some aspects this related to me as I have now travelled away from home to stay in Kent and study.Chuck Close
Gerhand Richter
I have to say I found this piece very interesting, I first saw this piece of art when phil showed us the power point presentation. I immediately took a liking to it as I found it very bizarre and almost as if its challenging the viewer. As most people would agree I do find this picture a bit haunting, its almost as if one day you would find the picture just turning around and look at you. This picture is one of my favourites now as its unique and different from most of the work out there.
The live drawing lesson was very exciting and frightening at the same time for me. I have never done a live drawing session before and was rather nervous of how I would do in class. To be honest hand drawing is not one of my strengths and whenever it comes to drawing things I try to push it aside. Nevertheless I took a chance and went to the lesson in the end.
I have to say that I really enjoyed the lesson as I could see with every drawing my skills were improving. Couple of the drawings I drew had bad proportions but towards the end I found myself paying a lot more attention to the details and observing a lot more. Chris was very helpful as he gave me some really good advice and tips on drawing. Something he said which I found very interesting was that "its 30 % drawing and 70% looking".
I am now looking forward to more of the live drawing lessons, as i want to improve my skills in drawing further.
First
Second
Fourth
Now looking forward to the next set of challenges that await me :)
hroughout the summer I did do some drawings and sketches of different objects, I was a bit shocked when the black sketch book came through my post. However after a couple of days I got the email with details as to why we received the sketch book, i was able to start on some of the sketches. I was on holidays and just got back a week before the university started so i wasn't able to do a whole lot either.
But below I am going to show some of the sketches and drawings that I did, i am also going to talk a bit about the different sketches.
Character Designs
This was a sketch of one of the characters that I designed, I wanted him to look very trendy and powerful. The clothing I gave the character gave him the look of a superhero. It took me quite a while to draw this character as I kept changing my mind about the different details.
For now I am trying to draw myself and other people faces, as I find it hard to draw detailed objects such as faces etc. However will be practising a lot more and hopefully throughout the period I am here I will be looking to improve a lot.
Hi,
At last virgin media decided to set up my internet and now I am officially on line. I know I got a bit of back tracking to do, so I am going to start to put all the work I have done onto the blogs.
I thought I would mention a bit about myself, I have already met most of the people on the course but there are still loads of people that I haven't met. I am looking forward to meeting the rest and getting to know everyone in class.
My name is Aju Jacob but you can call me Aj, as people find it easier to pronounce. I love absolutely anything to do with Digital arts and animations. I just finished my national diploma in Media studies and 3D Animations, so looking forward to learning new things in uni. In my spare time I try and perfect my skills in 3D modelling and animations, I do love music and I enjoy playing the piano. Some of the other activities that I like are biking, swimming, reading, gym and martial arts (i watch too many kung fu movies) .
Aj
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