Storyboard Rotation

Week four notes

Notes

Summary

I learnt to:

  • Adding visual texture in Adobe substance painter
  • Preparing models from Maya to substance painter
  • Baking models
  • Exporting Textures out of substance painter

How did I find it?

Bringing in the model from Z-brush to Maya was simple, creating a Low Poly and a High Poly model in Z-brush to export into Maya. The reason for creating two different models is to have the Low Poly model as the base model in Substance Painter then the High Poly model be put on top of the Low poly model to make it appear high quality. This is just to create a good looking model while reducing the amount of time needed to render the model. If it is meant to be functional this method will not work out.

Baking is turning mesh into texture, this ensures the textures will show up on the model. The only semi-difficult part was remembering all the settings for Baking and among other functions. Overall these past four weeks were only simple due to my note taking as it helped a lot when applying them to my own Retro-Device project.

Substance Painter Notes

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Drawing a Storyboard

Making of a Storyboard

What was this for?

An week one assignment where I was assigned to create an Storyboard that is between 20-60 panels, it can be based on the prompts or on a story of your own. At the time my mental health was quite low so I created a storyline of a cat which embodied my emotions talking to its inner self (Inner demon) proceeding to a panic attack where it realises it had an hallucination.

Critiques

The first draft I did I spent a long time on the details and used text as  some of the conversations where the inner self was talking to the outer cat. Some critiques I was given was the fact that the character could be expressive when entering the house showing their current depressive mood. I was also told that the text was unnecessary as that could be told through story telling and body language instead.

Revisions to the Storyboard

Due to these critiques I decided to change the entrance of the cat to show more of a depressive body language as well as having the inner demon snake down the light to swallow the light in itself, a metaphor for your heart feeling swallowed by darkness. I changed the inner demon to swallow the cat whole only to realsie it was sleeping and looking exhausted at the end for dealing with its inner demons. I used exaggerated features on the inner cat to give it a more grotesque and ominous feeling to the scenes it is in.

Overall I believe these changes have benefited this whole Storyboard and have improved it immensely. If I were to do this again I would think more about composition and overlapping images to create a more claustrophobic feeling for the outside cat. I would also think more about body language as that can replace dialogue and text entirely.

Storyboard version 1

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Storyboard version 2

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Storyboard week two

Storyboard week two

Observational Drawing

This part of second week was a struggle for me as I do not do observational drawing too often, however I liked how this pushed my boundaries of what I was comfortable with and what I am familiar with doing.

First part was to draw texture in ten minutes. I definitely could have done a lot more different texture types that was more interesting than what I had done in the end even so this was a good array in the short amount of time.

Next task was contour drawings which I struggled with. My lines ended up very muddled and unclear. A way I could improve this for the future is to draw larger so there is more room to add designs as well as using a thinner pen could yield a clearer result.

Contour drawings of hands is one of my least practiced areas. I am very content that we decided to cover this as it really helped me with studying my own hand and the details within hands I hadn’t really studied before this class. This also made me feel more comfortable about my hands and be more comfortable about myself when referencing them (They are quite small when compared to others).

One more task was to draw the whole room using paper adding them next to each other creating a flat artwork of a 360 degrees image. This was the hardest task yet as I spent too long on the details and rubbing out my mistakes that I only used 3 pieces of paper for the artwork. If I were to do this task again I would sketch very loose and quick shapes that resemble the objects in the room. this will help to teach me to make mistakes and help my style be a lot looser (helps with my anxiety with making mistakes too).

Observational drawing 1

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Observational drawing 2

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Storyboard Week one

Storyboard - Creating stories

Drawing within the frame

In this exercise I had to use a prompt to show different storyboard concepts. The prompt I chose was ‘Running away from a monster’. The concepts I used were contrast, depth and design of the shapes primarily. Contrast between the figure being large behind the smaller shaped cat at the front. Depth of the smaller one in the front being loomed over by the sinister cat. Design of the shapes of the claws being sharper compared to the round smaller cat.

This was a good use of three of the concepts but to emphasise on certain aspects to make it more impactful, such as making the weaker cat even smaller to make the contrast higher in the image.

Creating a narrative using a Moodboard

This was a group based task with being told to choose a certain fairy tale and create a Mood-board from that. I decided with my group to do Little ‘Red Riding Hood’. We started by looking up artists that could inspire the type of theme we would go for. Seeing a twisted version of Red riding hood we decided a grunge sort of series would be a good idea to start with. we used song lyrics to make a story where red has a lavish life however she gets bored and astral projects into another world where she teams up with the big bad wolf to do crimes. We added twists of a dark and weird/wonderful to the mix which is definitely what the story embodies.

If I were to do this task again I would add footnotes to be able to look back easily and understand the story plot, I would also add more locations as the story would be a series so more different scenery is required for each episode.

Overall thoughts

My overall thoughts on the first week is that it is developing my initial skills of storyboarding and helping me think more outside the box when creating mood boards as they are references that are very vital and need to be memorable when taking ideas and stories. They also have to be very clear and concise so it made me think more analytically rather than only aesthetically when making them. 

Drawing within the frame

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Little Red Riding Hood Mood board

Moodboard

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Smoking Happiness (3 Panel Storyboard)

I struggled a decent amount with this rotation as it had a lot of aspects I was not that well trained in such as life drawing and observing living beings’ positions as well as their expressions. This rotation opened my eyes to the world a lot more than before. It pushed me out of my comfort zone by drawing live subjects and smaller details I feel more confident in this than beforehand.

I enjoyed the story and the mood-board aspects as I was more familiar with them however, I pushed my creativity further in those parts too. I was linking and creating ideas with my peers as well as creating stories in my storyboards with more emphasis on body language while conveying strong emotions without text. I improved immensely in these areas within this rotation.

This task was initially difficult as I didn’t gather as much scenery as I hoped to have, however I looked upon my sketches again coming up with this basic three panel storyboard with some colouring to it.

My first story idea was of this being that sits upon the lights and poles looking upon a city however that wasn’t much of a solid idea, so I decided to create a more sombre story with the bleak streets of London and the cigars on the floor.

My final story ended up being a person perched on the pole smoking a metaphor for happiness which brings colour to the frame. While The rest of the frame is black and white to emphasise the strength of the happiness drug. In the second frame she studies the drugs to make up her mind to let the happiness go. Letting herself embrace the greyness of the real world.

Smoking-Happiness-1
Smoking-Happiness-1

Reference 1

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Reference 2

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Reference 3

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