Week 1: The game art chutney manifesto

I'm back, and the plan this year has changed. or, at least, developed from what it once was. For starters I certainly need to take my work more seriously now. Last year I think I had a poor work ethic, and did not reach my full potential. I wasn't particularly inspired with the work I produced for the most part. I think I took quite a lazy and relaxed approach to time and work management, which meant I spent more hours in labs achieving the same result I could have in much less time with better planning and a better attitude towards my work. Over the summer I've thought long and hard about what it really means to be a character artist. How I am realistically meant to achieve my goals with only one year of this course left. Part of it is down to my mental attitude and wellbeing. I believe I can produce a much better result if I am happy and enjoying the work I am doing. So I am trying to take that into account during my daily routine. I'm trying to plan my time better so I can work hard during work hours and have down time where I do other things I enjoy besides mindlessly scrolling through Facebook/Twitter/Reddit and all those other evil websites. Even things as simple as watching movies on my Netflix queue, will at least leave me more satisfied, happy, relaxed and often inspired.

Anyway, I'm rambling too much and no one is going to read this so I better keep it short and sweet so I can get back to The Office and have an early night. This week has seen the introduction of the Style Matrix for third years. After the stress I saw many third years go through last year with the sudden shift in projects I was a little anxious to get started. But honestly I'm so impressed with the changes that have been made to the projects this year. The Style Matrix is a fantastic way that we can tailor the briefs we are given to the role we want to pursue in the industry. And considering I plan to specialize as a character artist, this is great news. I wont have to waste any time this year completing projects that aren't relevant to me. So I just wanna say, big shout out to all who worked on this years briefs.

For my first project I chose the partially stylised aviator character brief. Having only 3 weeks for an entire character has proven quite challenging. But I feel like now, with the skills I have developed over the past 2 years and my new approach to work and organisation, I can get it done to a level of quality I am satisfied with in 3 weeks. I didn't do any work on monday as we were being briefed and given group meetings with lecturers, and I still needed to choose a projects and plan ahead. So monday was a write off for me, as it was for most people. The briefs weren't ready for us straight away so it wasn't as simple as getting straight into the work from the get-go. So with 4 days left I set myself the task of completing the Zbrush sculpt. And as you can see in the image above I managed that without too many problems. If I had more time I would have liked to iterate on the design more. In some areas I feel there is a lack of consistency, and some things look good whilst others fall short of my expectations. Next week I hope to begin retopology and polypainting, leaving unwrapping baking and rigging for week 3.

As I am starting to consider character art as a career now I really need to make sure I am the best I can be in all areas. And one area that I have been lacking is Hard Surface modelling. I previously took the attidude that as a character artist Hard Surface wasn't really relevant to me but that is not the case at all. So i have been trying to make up for that with the Sci-Fi helmet you can see above. I have been doing this in my spare time recently and I'm still trying my hardest to keep it going now that I'm back at uni. In all fairness it hasn't taken me as long as I thought it would. High poly modelling is just another one of those things that you need to take the time to learn, and once you do you will realise it's definitely worthwhile.

And lastly here's just a couple of projects I noodled around with during the summer. The Dinosaur bust was something created for a mini projects some of the second year students set up on Facebook, and the bottom photo is a character that started as an anatomy sculpt, which then became a base for me to practice Marvelous Designer, and then bacame an attempt at a realistic character. I would like to go back and finish this character at some point, and there are a few glaring issues that still need fixing in the sculpt such as the hair.

That's it from me this week. Apologies for the long winded post if anyone is reading this, but it's been a while and I wanted to make sure the work showcased on my blog is up to date.