Hey!
I just wanted to show you the chess piece concepts that I finished up yesterday. They're really simple, only going to be used to get correct proportions on major details when modeling the pieces in Maya.
I've started to model them, I'm currently working on the London Eye, for me, the hardest one.
I'm glad to hear all is well with you guys! What are you unto this weekend, anything fun? And how's the weather been lately? Warming up yet? It's supposed to be in the 80s all weekend here.
Finally I have my computer back after weeks of it being out of commission. I can't tell you how happy I am to have it back. I was really struggling to get homework done last week. My Thursdays and Fridays are my productive days and I had no computer with which to work, only using Jace's computer when he got home from work. Now I'm looking forward to a much better, less stressful week.
We have LOTS of catching up to do though, I haven't told you yet about all my new classes! And there's lots to tell.
My first week went decently well (besides stressing about not being able to do homework at my leisure). First, on Mondays I have Motion Graphics which turns out is not a Flash based class dealing with making cute drawings move around the screen and possibly coding for making games, but rather, an After Effects class that deals with making short videos, mostly commercials or trailers. So far, it seems like a very easy class, the teacher goes much too slowly in my opinion, but I am, as usual, in the minority on that point. We only have two projects for the entire duration of the class, the first being a "midterm" which is basically to hand in all the classwork done up to that point. The second being a "final" which is to be a commercial or trailer on any subject of our choosing that we will also be working on during class for the second half of the quarter. I take this as I will have no homework since I can always manage to finish my work in class. Yay!
Next, on Tuesdays, I have Short-Format Storytelling which was cross-referenced as Conceptual Storytelling. Meaning the class has two titles and neither of them really describes what the class really is so far. I thought it was going to be a story-writing class (easy-peasy) but instead it is a concept design class. Which is good, I suppose, because I've never had the opportunity to learn much about concept art and it's a huuuuuge part of my industry. My teacher, Kalen Chock (an awesome artist who is very much a part of the industry and whom I had actually heard of before taking this class) mostly lectures about what it's like in the industry which is awesome. For homework we had to conceptualize characters for a next installment of How to Train Your Dragon by Dreamworks. A really great assignment in my opinion, and very difficult. Mine didn't come out very great (too realistic and not stylized enough). And luckily, our homework for week two is to re-do them. Because as Kalen says, nothing in the industry is done once then sent to production, every concept is done many times over with suggested revisions from higher-ups. So true and I'm so glad to have a teacher that actually teaches about such things.
On Wednesdays I have 3D Animation which, unlike everything else is actually what it sounds like. This class I also find to be a bit slow (again, no one agrees with me). All we've done so far are varying ball bounces to demonstrate we understand how 2D animation relates to 3D and how to use the program to achieve what you want. Like I said, I find it ridiculously easy so far and I am very eager to move on to something more complicated. I stayed behind for an hour after class today and finished all my homework for next week already. I've inserted the video below of each of the little animations I've done so far.
Lastly, Thursdays I have my one evening class, Technical Visualization. This one I had no idea what it would be and neither did Steve Hammond, my teacher, when I asked him last quarter. It turns out it's an upper junior or senior level class and is sort of about a start-to-finish production of 3D objects. So it entails all the good stuff like concepts, modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering. Steve basically wants us to get out of the class two great portfolio pieces, which I think is great. Too many teachers have you do useless projects to demonstrate that you know the course material, but the project is unusable in a portfolio (usually because of copyright issues). Our first project for this class is to design a custom, themed, chess set. I think many people in my class are doing sets based off of books or movies, which I also considered doing (Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and Doctor Who were all high on my radar). But I ended up deciding that I wanted to do buildings. I didn't want to redesign existing characters, or even model humanistic characters at all because I don't like modeling organic objects. My concept is old architecture vs. new architecture since it seems like many cities are currently having this war, looking like giant chess boards themselves. So half my board is old famous buildings in London and the other half is new famous buildings in London. I'm really excited about this project since it's going to be an AMAZING portfolio piece for getting into ArchViz. Due for tomorrow are concept drawings for each piece on our board so when I'm finished, I'll post it so you can see what buildings I'm planning on doing.
Other than classes, not much else is new. I did read a couple new books over the last week since I had so much down-time (Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard and Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, both very good). Not a lot of knitting got done as a result. On the bright side, I think I'm nearly done recovering from that awful cold that Dad gave me ;) Just some lingering congestion, yuck.
I hope all is well with you guys! Feel free to leave a nice long comment on this post as a reply, I'd love to hear what's new with you :)
Hey guys! Welcome to my new, very humble little blog! I wanted to start this little blog so that I could easily keep you updated on what I'm up to. I've realized that it's quite hard to do from so far away and I thought this might make it a bit easier. I'm always working on new stuff for class and more than half of it I never end up showing you. And most of it isn't portfolio worthy, so you won't find it on the new site that Jason is building for me :) Plus Jace and I love having little adventures exploring the Bay Area and it's more fun telling you about them if I can show you pictures! So with that being said, it's time for dinner (Jace made a very interesting pasta dish that I'm secretly a little scared to try) and I'll try and see if I can make this blog a little prettier a little later on. In the meantime, hope you're all doing well and I miss you very much! Love, Di
