Environment Design Rocks!

[wasgodx]

I won't have the time to make it to the deadline as I'm busy with paperwork for a visa and everything but I'll be sure to post it tomorrow nonetheless.


Dreading to see everyone's work!

[Cyprinus]

Very disappointed with me this week :< I lost almost 3 days last week because I had a terrible headache and in overall didn't feel well, which totally jumbled up every plan I had made. Then, when I finally found some time for the assignment, I decided that I didn't like what I had already started and started over. And also, I feel like I procrastinated terribly on this. It's a bad habit of mine when I run into frustration with something, and with this piece it happens a lot, because I lack experience and the visual library. That's why I end up with this single, lame sketch. I simply wasn't able to do more this time. I understand if you can't even really crit this, Amit, because I don't feel like I really did progress compared to last week, although you gave me so many useful hints. I also feel like this is still not the best composition I can come up with. I'm not even sure anymore if this is still environment I'm doing and not illustration o__o

Anyway, what I tried is using photos a bit. I didn't use one single one but I tried to mix it up a litle bit. First time I've done this. I think for the final image I want to draw and paint every thing myself, also for practice, but I felt that it helped me getting a better feel for the scale. What's constantly getting in my way is that I don't know how the mech will finally look like, the only thing I know is that I want it partly dismantled, and under the first two or three layers metal you can see the next layers, made of metal, but I imagine them looking much like a human skeleton and structures. I hope that a) this time I can finally make it to your stream and b) I can build up at least a bit of my library until I have to hand in the next stuff.



I know that technically I still have some time left, but I'm handing it in anyway. I've got a lot on my schedule today and I don't know if I'll have more time later on...

[Amit Dutta]

@Cyprinus.  Don't get too down, we all have off days/weeks where it is hard to see how to go forward. If you absolutely need to get work done to deadline (or I'd maybe be suggesting a short break to recuperate), this is the way to handle it:

Identify, and attack your largest problem first, and keep hacking away at it until you have solved it. Then pick the next largest, and repeat.

So in your case, the composition isn't too bad, I really like the scale in this over your previous, so this is a great improvement. I can see some tweaks we can make which I will suggest in stream.

In terms of largest problem, I agree with you that you need to sort out the design of the robot.  It is such a huge focus and the main subject, you can't avoid it now. Sketches....sketches...sketches. Ref gathering....more sketches.....ref gathering......silhouettes.......sketches.  The more you do design iterations before, the easier it will be to take this forward. You can design on the fly, but that takes a lot of skill and knowledge and fundamentals experience for it to come out well, especially when you have to draw it in difficult perspective, so I want to see the robot's main design before we even attempt to begin the final. This is fairly heavily evangelion inspired I guess, and you had an eva in your ref, so really study their design...not to replicate necessarily, but to see how they may have solved certain things. The eva's shape language and proportion is very strong and unique, probably their best features, so you need to develop the same for your mech.

You can break the task up into parts as well, such as main silhouette, proportion and shape language, then later focus in on particular parts to figure out how they might look if they are important in the comp. Maybe even do mechanical studies that might be pertinent, how the joints work, what the internal structures (only if these will be visible in the illustration) are like.

Also, you are right that this is more illustration than environment design, but if that's what you want for your folio, I'm happy to provide you with feedback on it and push it as much as possible.

[DomSinkevic]

Connected the thumbnails and pushed it as far as I could. For some reason I thought that submission is on sunday (until Amit clarified the deadline in the forums). So I could only finish up the citadel Ira thumb.

[ZombieChinchilla]

Yeah I'm not feeling too good about my piece this week either, haha. Not sure, I'm feeling a little lost about where to go from here with this. I think I'd rather not do a game design anymore, and focus on this as more of an illustration. Maybe I should do more thumbs and perhaps do more illustrations? I'm struggling to get the full story across in one image. Plus I'm not too happy with the atmosphere...I might just start from scratch next assignment. I think I just need someone to point me in the right direction with this, so I can figure out where to go from here.

[Aumes]

Hey guys. I'm done for this week. In retrospective, i feel like i messed up with stuff. Bad planning, that's what it is. Perspective sucks, depth is weird, and the consequences are the pouring hours...! Endless fixes. 
Well, i'll be more careful next nvr.

I hope you're all doing better.



Cheers

[Olooriel]

I'm doing terribly this week :( The first one at least improved somewhat in values and detail, after I scrapped my attempts at keeping it nighttime to play up the glow of the fire... I did not manage to split up the single body of water into a grassy marshland however, so I just added some more trees for now.

In the second one I mainly tried to add the water to get that marshland, so I failed completely. I also failed at making the figures more dynamic, so I finally gave up and went back to the way they were.

[Amit Dutta]

Alright, guys it seems like it was a tough week! If you feel you are struggling, I only want you to focus on doing ONE finished piece in the remaining few weeks. I'll let you know which one in the crits. Trust me there will be more than enough to work on dealing with just one.

Zombie, there will not be enough time to do more finished designs if you reset next week, so just hold up a bit until you get my crits and I will give you some focus. Forget for now whether it's for a game or an illustration or whatever. we have a general setting and idea so we need to just get you through the process.

[vossgraphite]

I definitely think I'm a bit behind, but I'm thoroughly enjoying slowly chipping away. Refined two of the main environments for my world and made a 3D blockmesh for one so I can start a final piece. I also have been thinking about props and objects  in the world so I started sketching out the design of one of the bots which i would like to eventually do a proper render of. Everything still needs more work though, never happy with it :) 

[Broadway]

Damn vossgraphite, that looks sick!! 

This creepy taxidermist thing took me way longer than I thought it would... I have a few more ideas for this location but they're still in notan form. Probably should have done this one in 3d first and saved time. Used a bit of 3d/photo cheating for the middle deer head and the ceiling forms but I should have cheated more :)

On the plus side I found a bunch of pics of the plastic forms they put inside mounts (stuffed dead animals), which somehow I'd never seen before. And they're super creepy. Score!

Also some revisions for the barn, trying to make it more interesting. I'm not sure if it needs architectural/lighting variation, or if there should be some weird object inside that you wouldn't normally find in a barn. Hmm.

Still in progress: more taxidermist ideas, map, water location, revised bedroom piece (made a 3d model of the bedroom last week but I haven't yet found a nice camera angle... thinking of redoing the layout entirely)

[ZombieChinchilla]

I'm unable to view my or anyone else's submissions for week 5 on the google page. I didn't miss the deadline, did I? Could have sworn it went through...

[Adam Lina]

I feel really embarrassed. I was going to submit what I had done last night but I fell asleep. I didnt get much done on my second piece.

[monkeybit29]

Hello!
So here's what I managed to get with the critique you provided me.
I had to do it over a couple times because sometimes it would end up looking worse than with what I started with.





I start doing some sketches for the architecture, but I really struggled with getting ideas and finding a method of sketching that was quick to make them (perhaps I just need more practice).



Although they didn't come out as well as i'd like, I really enjoyed doing the sketches. Which brings me to another topic:

I am primarily a 3D artist, and there are plenty of times (especially working from vague concept work) where I have to actually draw the asset first to get a feel of how i'm going to go about modeling it.
Below are examples of the level of finish I want to be able to get to. Do you have any tips or guidance on what can I do to achieve this level of finish? Or perhaps reccomend any artist who do line art type of work that I can copy and learn from as well?

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736...99961c.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736...7e6136.jpg

Thanks a lot! :^D

EDIT: awwww f***! I missed the deadline! My brain thought today was Friday for you guys too since it's Friday 10:35am at the moment here lol boo

[KurtJeremy]

Yep its confirmed, this concept making stuff is kicking my ass.
I honestly feel a little bit doubtful as to what i have gone for in terms of concept.  cos further in the development i found myself struggling with the architecture stuff and the mechanical part of war. 
after watching you're last crit lemme just explain what are my expectations  for this world that i have in my mind.

Im aiming for the image of a world that has been ravaged by war. Post apocalyptic.
but with the twist on an outside force. and that the force of nature. 
i want to convey it like out of a disaster movie. where random tornadoes and such. like what i did to thumbnail no.4 here. but im already struggling establishing the setting so my pieces lack the "epic factor" that i want.

so my concerns right now and hopefully you can help me with this are for making for a dynamic composition where some action is taking place. (this being a war story after all) and avoiding the static , very relaxed composition that i have here.

i have more questions that i would like to add right now though i got nothing, its 3 am in here and i need to sleep to refresh my mind. 

one thing for sure though ill be online for the next stream.

[Cyprinus]

It's really inspiring seeing everybody's work! And man, monkeybit, I adore your brushwork!! Also, I'm reading that I'm not the only one struggling and that comforts me a bit, how does the saying go in English? A problem shared is a problem halved!

@Amit

Thank you so much for your pointers and advice on how to go on working. I've tried only a few mecha designs before although I really enjoy the subject so much, and I really found the silhouette method helpful. It's time to plunge into a giant sea of studies and stuff. And you're totally right about evangelion, it's a major inspiration, as well as Pacific Rim C: I've got the production book for pac rim and I think I'm going to reread what they wrote about the mech design process. I bought it when I had an eye injury and I can't even remember if I read it afterwards ö_ö shame on me!

I'm glad I was able to improve the scale part, I've redone and resized it multiple times during the process....about the illustration vs. environment design part, how could I push it a little more into the environment direction? I wonder how it became more illustration along the way, because it sure didn't feel like it when I started out, somehow. Maybe it was from the beginning but I just didn't see it, because for me, who never actually draws any background in any illustration, everything that has a decent amount of architecture or landscape feels like an environment orz (this sounds incredibly stupid) I have a feeling that it's because now the mech has become the main focus? It's really kind from you to let me get away with an illustration in your environment design class ;_; I feel a bit bad about it, somehow...!

I have a feeling that I still want to tweak the composition a bit here, because it doesn't feel like 100% for me yet. Initially I liked the landscape format thumbs more, but it felt easier for me to work with the scale in upright format.
Something else that came to my mind just while writing this. Maybe, if we'd zoom out a bit again and just put a giant chopped off mech hand in the foreground to demonstrate the scale? The characters could even be sitting on the hand, for some reason I don't know yet...
The more I think about it, the more possibilities open up. Makes it even harder to decide on something....

I'll have some more thoughts about it but I'll wait for the stream and your further advice!!! Thank you so much for bearing with me!!

[Broadway]

Hey Cyprinus, I really like the concept of your piece! Derelict ocean mecha = pretty sweet :)

I have a couple suggestions for places to get ref images that you could pull from for the robot design:

http://www.photobash.org/ (lots of great tech/robot categories)

Since you're looking for a more Evangelion/anime type look:

Fighter jets
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=fighter+jet

Stealth tanks
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=stealth+tank

Stealth helicopters
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q...helicopter

Supercars
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=supercar

If you have a general shape you want to use (human skeleton, right?) you can probably at least get started by just cobbling large details from these references on top of the base shape and you'll get some interesting looks. I'm guessing the Evangelion designs probably used a lot of fighter jet/supercar references bolted to a humanoid frame and "organicized" a bit by adding some bends to make them look a little more anatomical in places. They tend to have chest/head areas made from pieces directly cribbed from vehicles (wings, exhaust ports, missile pods, etc), with the limbs being a bit more normal organic forms with just armor plates going along the forms + some wing/fin/exhaust cowling details on the forearms, knees, and ankles.

The Pacific Rim ones are a little more varied and add in reference from industrial robots for the joints/underbody, I think, but the same concepts apply.

Hope that's helpful!

[wasgodx]

Broadway I love you. That first web is.. WOW.

I couldn't enter but anyways, here it is. I'm having trouble with closer ice.



Glad to see everyone's work!

[Cyprinus]

@Broadway

Thanks so much for your input and those links <3 !!!! It is indeed helpful, above all how you broke down the design concept a little. I notice that I literally understand nothing about the stuff I like. I really have to sit down and analyse much more. A friend keeps on telling me that as well, but I don't know; somehow I feel better when I'm productive bringing things down to paper, but I guess analysing is necessary as well.
Not sure why I'm sometimes so reluctant to take something into my work/study routine although I know it's helpful...!

[Amit Dutta]

Sc..ramblin' today!

The crit stream today will start a bit later than planned. Drop by my channel at around 7:00pm NZST (in about 2 and a half hours) Sunday Nov 22

I will be starting with a photobashing demo showing some techniques and then onto the crits.
Cya soon!

[vossgraphite]

Sc..ramblin' today!

The crit stream today will start a bit later than planned. Drop by my channel at around 7:00pm NZST  (in about 2 and a half hours) Sunday Nov 22

I will be starting with a photobashing demo showing some techniques and then onto the crits.
Cya soon!

Really sorry Amit, I'd love to attend but if you thought New Zealand internet was bad, try rural NZ internet (sub dial up speeds!). Cheers though!