WIP: Concept art for Human Warrior

In recent weeks I've taken an interest back in drawing with Photoshop. It's been useful for generating ideas for character modelling practice which I have been keen to develop. To get a better idea of how to put my ideas across I've been studying sketch-style concept pieces, trying to work out just how to get a more convincing design and image, especially when it comes to the face.

The left-hand face below is when I started earlier today. Rather dissatisfied with how flat it looked. I looked online to get some inspiration, coming across a rather nice sketchy look. Using this painting as a basis I took a very different approach to create what would become the face on the right-hand side. It started with just the face, blocking out large patches of shadow and filling in the gaps with detail such as eyes, mouth and wrinkles. I thought it came out so well I tried the technique on the hair and headband, resulting in a very different hairstyle (and face) when you compare the two side by side.

It's been surprising to figure our the difference comes from one afternoon of analysis.

There is still plenty to work on with the image. His lower body has only been blocked out. His sword-hand and the attached hilt are somewhat completed and his cloak only has some basic blocking to it. After that comes colour.

(WIP) A Fantasy World Map

One of the projects I've received lately is a world map for the setting of my brother's upcoming D&D campaign. Can't say I've done much of this sort of thing save for the occasional more science fiction like map, but it was good drawing practice all the same.

The current deal is for a map that can be printed on A3, so I'm working in a CYMK format at 300 DPI. It's pretty big. It could have been A2 but by the sound of where he's playing his game an A2-sized map might be too big for the table.

I wouldn't call this finished though. The world could do with roads connecting the various settlements and after some discussion with him I'm considering reworking the locations on the map to better fit the current graphics. Special thumbnails have been discussed representing the world's various capital cities or important locations and maybe the sea could do with something like waves.

Or sea serpents... The world doesn't stop at the edges of the map.

Back to Basics with Digital Drawing

  I've been going back to basics lately with my drawing skills. I've had a nagging feeling for honestly quite a while that my colour depth palette has been rather muddy. I've noticed I get lost in getting the shade just right at the expense of how clear the composition is. So, back to basics; getting familiar with the essentials of blocking colour first before moving on to tackling light and shadow.

  After all, many projects are 20% crunch, 80% cruft. You want to get that 20% foundation right or the whole thing just doesn't work.

  This new approach I feel has also given me a chance to back away from relying on dark lines to delineate shape. The pictures I have been drawing lately have been moderately popular on Reddit which is good for exposure. I'm getting plenty of feedback and starting plenty of conversations about what I've been working on. It could be some time before I'm back to full-shade digital painting like I've been doing before: I'm taking this one step at a time, so when I am ready to start adding shade again I am definitely ready.

  Moving away from the same old character subject, I've experimented with map design using Adobe Illustrator. I've found it and PDFs amazing for condensing enormous images into something I can easily send to clients. When I tried buildign something like this on Photoshop, it would slow my computer down as the images, plus layers, might be over a gigabyte in size. Which my computer did not like.

  But it was mostly fun to try map-making, which I have found to be an amazing way to build a setting as they say you can tell a lot about a place by reading into how the local inhabitants drew their maps.

Personal: Monsters Misfits and Serpents

  I promised myself I'd try something a little more alien and out there and for the most part I think I'm on the right track.some of these still have that dinosaur DNA but others (my particular favourites of this being 3, 5 and 9) are more bizarre, more something unknown.

  I believe there is enough character in each of these to tell a story for each one. What they are like to speak with, what their tastes are, maybe even what they consider to be artful or in good taste. I've grown to like turning rough shapes into creatures, a few of these I had a clear picture in mind but others started off quite vague and abstract. 9 I believe was quite random to begin with and some unexpected things came out of 5's outline.

At a pinch, it is possible that all or most of these could exist within the same universe, perhaps under the same banner.

Crest Design Experiments

  Taking a minor break from writing I was sorely tempted to go back into logo design. What I had in mind was a bit more elaborate than a typical brand logo and more of a crest or insignia for a nation. You have to start with the basics, which in this case was the core element. For this insignia the core would be the arms of a galaxy, representing the nation's dominance or an assertion of supremacy.

  I went though a few revisions, settling on something less angular and blocky. The other core were the four great vassals of the nation, which would be represented by how they are bound to the galaxy in the centre - the core and the home realm. The gem at the top felt less cliche than two heads looking in opposite directions, and helped to congeal some of the other elements.

  This was all based on a drawing I had worked on ages ago that was supposed to be a coat of arms. I never really went back to it. This insignia could perhaps be depicted everywhere - against starships, on offical forms and declarations, letters, tanks, aircraft, pretty much something that could be stenciled or easily applied.

Badge and Emblam Ideas

  As the new year approaces, I have lately been pondering writing. It was one of my strengths at university and before and I've been really getting into writing regularly over the summer. Although I didn't quite live up to my "nulla dies sine linea" goal ("not a day without a line"), I appear to have taken a new motto: "not a day without a word."

 To accompany a possible publication (which is in a state of revision for final publication) I picked up a stylus and powered up Photoshop to do some drawing as I like to combine words and images. In this case the goal was a logo for an airborne military division that is the centrepoint of the story.

  I decided on something more elaborate to separate from more tried designs and try something distinct, the central idea being the wearers of this symbol, these badges, are heroic fighters who fall from the sky and turn the tide. "decisive" "falling" "speed" and "celebrated" were key words that rang though my head over and over while I was designing the emblam. The initial ideas for the design (above) just didn't feel right for the society portrayed in the story, so I moved away from sci-fi and looked at paratrooper badges for inspiration.

What I have may change over time as who knows what could come from this.

  I might go back for some character drawing as the t-shirt sales plan came back. Although thinking about it, this emblam could look nice on the front of one. Maybe accompanied with a phrase from the book "strike hard, strike fast, seize victory." (might revise this)

This could be why I've been quiet for a month.

Personal: A few Posing Designs

  While I may be going back to an old subject, I've been thinking lately on using my ideas. To build a lifestyle. The one thing I was told on thinking of such a direction was whether or not there was a market. I intend to use these images to look for that market. While dragons are perhaps a rather saturated direction, preliminary research always intrigued me that dragons and armour had almost two constants beyond the "anthro" communities, which unlike my ideas used human torsos and human spines:

• Armour featured scale patterns, scallops and thorns, reminiscent of Gothic plate amour
• Reptiles of any kind are frequently draped in all kinds of Mesoamerican motifs and designs

Some of it could be explained in how scales can sometimes (especially on much larger reptiles) be depicted as an armour of its own.But the Mesoamerican connection for any reptiles always confused me as to why this was the principle.

  I believe i could go further with these, I will be doing research in the coming days on whether there is a market for this kind of thing.

  It can't be all boyhood fantasies, one thing I'm aiming for with my research is variety, something to build off of. So it's not just warriors and swords and all that, what other avenues could be explored?

Four: Major Project Final Submossion

Making of Four (Version 2) by Mark Stamp on Scribd

Four Interim Presentation by Mark Stamp on Scribd

Four: Final Animation from Mark Stamp on Vimeo.

Four: Art Of Draft Page

I have started animating (more will some), basics but mindful of time I looked into creating a first draft master spread for the Art Of document.

The idea I have had discussed is that the Art Of resembles a dossier, a document on Four herself and the research on her, so I went with the idea of going for something that looked somewhat official. The stress David feels as the story progresses would manifest in this document as more hastily-constructed pages with more post-it notes, tilted images to reflect the pressure he is under.

Four: Smithston Wessex Logos

Deciding on the font and logo image there was a slight thought. The central sphere is quite large and quite dominating so to offset the emptiness something was suggested as a 'spot' to draw the eye.

1

2

3

  While I was provided with a five-point start, I wondered about a four-point star. Which I choose (either 1 or 3), a more straightly-arranged star feels more appropriate. I have also considered shorthand formats featuring the company's initials. 

4                                                                                                                       5

Four: Branding, Fonts and Scripts

  Taking a small break from modelling I took some time to try and refine the other elements of the project, particularly the art-of. For this, I needed a better logo for Smithston-Wessex.

  I'm still trying ot decide but I am leaning to the likes of 20, 22 and 11, but one thing I am definitely certain so far is the logo is better off without any text in the graphic. Logos need ot be simple ,but meaningful, something that can be drawn quickly or recognised at a glance so I kept the graphics bold and simple, but not too simple to be too generic. the list just needs some narrowing down.

  To accompany the logo I needed a suitably sci-fi title font. I looked on line for a few retro fonts (on the left) along with some that came with Windows (on the right). THe ones I like so far are 2, 4, 5, 9 and 12. Possibly 8, others like 6 are too horrid (the 'esse' section in 6 just blurs into one repeated letter due to the extreme stylisation).

The search for a new David continues. One thing the current voice helped with was that some of the lines David posessed were perhaps repeating themselves in some instances (such as David observing that the tubers ocntai nan egg, the moss providing nutrients that feed the egg as an embryo develops), while this might not have shortened the piece by any overall measure, I think it has halped improve the flow of the dialogue nonetheless, as there were a few moutgfuls that David was delivering.

Four Project Script V-04 by Mark Stamp on Scribd

Four: Skin and Colour

  With the model's rig just about ready I moved on to working out the textures. When making the normal map I found that the some regions were divided by seams. These seams were blended over in Mudbox, a technique I also plan to use to clean up the divides between the texture meshes, giving much cleaner result that's faster than trying to fix the seams in Photoshop.

However the normal map appears to be a little faint, but it is there and on more extreme areas such as the throat, it is visible. I am considering going back into Mudbox to bring the shapes out it might just be I need some more time working out what could be defined by its shape and what would be defined by patterns. The possibility exists of also using a displacement map so any minor changes to the geometry do not require restructuring the corrective poses.

  With the above picture I tried combining a greyscale of the normal map with the texture map to bring out the features. I consider it a bit of a mixed success though, as it has also ended up making poor Four look like she has severe sunburn. Beyond that, some greenish tint to coincide with her environment and some wrinkles and she's almost good to go skinwise.

Don't mind her lack of eyes. For efficiency's sake I decided to create the texture map on a copy of Four's geometry that matches the geometry on the rigged model. All the eyes really need are a texture map with the pupil stretched across the top edge of the image file.

The teeth and claws could easily be a shader at this stage. I just need to revise how to give the transparency of the edges. The idea that I believe will work is to give a mock rim highlight. The texture files are so far somewhat large - 8192 pixels square which I will likely keep for extreme closeup shots. Smaller files can be easily created for more distant or full-body shots.

  In fact I will probably need to do this, such size extends to the normal and specular maps which will eat processing power during rendering. Understanding my shots will be important in working out the correct resolution required. the current size might be too large for what I'm doing save for extreme closeups.

Major Project: Grub and Juvenile Orthographic Layouts

  Some of today was spent on the Orthographic drawings for Four's juvenile state. This one is a little more detailed than the previous one as in its juvenile state Four is quite dumpy and rounded compared to what she grows into later in the story. This is the stage that she begins to start looking cute and endearing. It is the moment this one opens her eyes for the first time that David is struck with awe over her beauty.

  The grub itself in retrospect isn't that complicated. But I believe working out it rough shape is still worthwhile as the grub's form is indicative of the shape Four will take on when she develops within the cocoon. cocoon is simple enough that an orthographic drawing is not needed. The grub curls up inside so its shape is determined by this u-shape. Similar would be the case for the tuber as well.

Major Project: Adult Form Orthographic Template

  With the concepts given the sign-off I moved on to creating orthographic templates to use as measurements for building Four in Maya. There are a few places where the orthographic layout makes Four look thinner than the concept (below) but it was at the orthographic stage where I think I've nailed the feet. I also considered adding ribbon-like tendrils, which would flow and sway with the head. In the wild these could be used to detect air particles, much like the whiskers of numerous mammals, as she lacks nostrils on the front of her snout. If these don't turn out to be worthwhile, then they could easily be left out in theory.

  I looked at otters to see how their feet were built for both land and water. And while Four's feet might be a bit shorter than a typical otter's, looking at the two images I find that what I came up with as a bottom-up view has closely matched the feet that came out in the concept design.

Major Project: Four Solid Concept

  Looking to catch up after a couple of slow days I set myself the task of drawing up a final concept piece for Four herself. In hindsight I could have drawn her at different angles but the addition of a few expression poses (1-7) I figure help a lot as I considered she could communicate her mood using her fins, much in the same way dogs, cats, rabbits and horses will direct their ears to indicate attention or mood. A little flexibility could be useful in these instances as they'd allow for a much more living performance when on the screen. All that remains are understanding the colour of her fins (as the colour pattern, while attractive is mostly a placeholder) but more importantly I need orthographic drawings. The colour and pattern of her fins can come in-between modeling. Especially since by January my aim is to have a fully developed set. for filmmaking

  Regarding which, I now have my three primary voices. They still need a little processing so they will come in a later post.

Major Project: Final Designs In Sight

  Today's priority was getting a final idea for what Four looks like I looked back on fighting fish and, entranced by the draping silk-like tails they had looked into giving something like that to Four. As can be seen, there are shades of dilophosaurus in some of the drawings which I want to avoid (this is mostly due to possessing similar frilled crests.) the main difference I think is Four's is a lot more swept back. It would give her an edge in swimming. I don't want ot go too overboard with the frills - these will likely be animated as ncloth materials in the animation (so lots and lots of flow!). Too many frills and she might lose her shape in the action. But I believe the most successful adult form is 78. 83 and 85 I believe were fairly successful bust shots.

  Perhaps she can retract these sails. We see this shape in its full glory during her escape. It makes perfect sense that she escapes from captivity when she is in her most impressive. She is at her most beautiful and David sees this. As well as this, I looked at the juvenile, which will be a much dumpier and less attractive look. While the adult is inspired by Asian fish, otters and ferrets, the juvenile was strongly inspired by naked mole rats and axolotls.

What is probably needed now is a final concept piece. I have plenty of thumbnail material, now would be an extremely good time to set to work on the final design.

Major Project: Progress on the Adult

  Following considerations, I considered the shapes Four's body could take. The start however was maybe a little slow. I put a lot of attention to Four's head, thinking of axolotls but after some thought I may have been going too directly. I feel it also started looking a little too like Colo Colo. I'm also considering avoiding horns, though the frills add a charming touch to Four's appeal.

  So I took a step back, looking at the two most successful colour thumbnails and building on them after the Maya workshop. There's still a lot of room for refinement however. I was looking at ferrets, otters, and Siamese fighting fish for possible features. The fighting fish direction I think brought back a lot of the sense of otherworldness to Four's design. Although utilising the fins is going to be an interesting prospect to consider.

Major Project: Developing the Alien Forms

  Looking to get back into my stride, I have set to work on the finer points of Four's design. As well along with a contact sheet which explores the larva's anatomy, its skin folds and what could be done for the eyes and mouth, I also looked at some possible cocoon forms 

  Designing Four's adult form I have decided to splice the marine creature and the brown lizard creature from the previous thumbnails, I'm playing about with fronds however at the moment they look a little like dragon horns. This is a hurdle I have encountered due to the axolotl inspiration. It may pass when I look into drawing heads to get an idea of head structure and facial expressions.

  At some point during the week, once I have a better idea for Four's body, I will consider a contact sheet of colour tones. I've started getting ideas for the juvenile form from designs made today. But I feel the grub/larval form is at a state it can be signed off after a few other orthographic sheets are made for the other potential angles.

Major Project: Four is the Priority

  Nulla dies sine linea was what I was telling myself this time last year. After a discussion with Phil on the current direction, I feel confident at present that a lot of the prepatory work for the environment and the story is done. The script is ready, the world has been crystallised. What remains now is the beast in question. I had the chance to do a bit of drawing after the discussion but my evening was busy as I soon found myself off to London for the night.

  So to uphold my personal promise, H took the chance to use my sketchbook on the train with the drawings above. Phil and I discussed that a touch of axolotl could be investigated. Dumpy body, alien features and a thick tails, it seemed useful. While on the train I sort of realised that giving the tail some kind of sail may restrict its movement. So I played with a vertical and a horizontal arrangement. As well as sails, I considered the sails could form a prong, and that maybe instead of big bulges of fat, the larva could have its eyes covered in a thin membrane (which on reflection may look creepy but this larva's adapted burrowing though soil, it'll need to protect its eyes somehow). Experiments, ideas, it was a better use of my time than waiting an hour or browsing the internet while I sat on the train.

  With the larva's body, I'm inclined towards the fatty consistency of 29 and 31. It seems more in line with the overall idea for the body than the direct segmentation of 28 and 30. The page above however is currently a work in progress. The intention is to create an orthographic sheet for the two grub/larva phases and the cocoon phase.

Major Project: Back Into The Thumbnails

  Recovering well, I endeavored ot get back to work, having missed half a week's worth of progress. I believe I am getting closer to a final shape for Four. I attempted more refined shapes but continued with a few experimental designs (as much as I like the head of 39, the neck seems just wrong). What I am leaning towards is the otter-like body shape as I'm excited at the challenge of animating such an agile creature. Adding colour using a vivid light filter I think really brings these creatures out. 38, 41 and 43 I think came out really well (though 41 might be a different direction to where I could go)

  As well as Four I looked into some further exploration for the key rooms. I was planning ot explore colour with these as well but that could be something for tomorrow barring other tasks.

  These black and white thumbnails are starting to seem a little on the drab side but it is all experimentation. I was mostly inspired after discovering an Iamag page displaying 70 environment concept art pieces from Zootopia. Some being polished and others being quite flat (looking at it the flat-colours are primarily for depth of field), but it was inspiration nonetheless.

  Though I also want to train myself to increase my output, spend less time on the tiny details that just eat up time which is largely why these might look a little less polished than the last images.