Guildhall Visit and
Life Drawing
I was pretty excited about that week, as we made a visit to
an old guildhall in Leicester. It was a roughly 400 years old building, which
has been partly renovated, but some of its damaged/aged sections were kept,
like some uneven, wooden beams, partly dented or collapsed walls and slightly
deformed windows. As I went inside this guildhall, I was immersed by its
charm; the atmosphere on the inside felt odd and different to me. This was
partly due to its older appearance. Even the flooring brought my attention; it
was made up of large, smooth stone slabs. The ceiling had these huge, chunky,
wooden beams, which supported the roof. In other words, it seemed that the
appearance of this guildhall strongly relied on its internal structure being
exposed and the arrangement of wooden beams.
During this visit, I also drew many studies. Some of those
were quick drawings, focused on the actual structure and surroundings of this
guildhall; while other drawings described the various surface properties and
textures of the many materials used to construct this guildhall.
As an
additional form of reference, I took some photographs of textures and areas
around the guildhall. All of these studies were essential, as on the following
week I will be starting a village project, in which I’ll be designing a house.
For this reason I will need to gain a basic understanding of how older Tudor
buildings, such as the Guildhall, were constructed, as otherwise I will be
struggling to come up with any strong or convincing ideas.
Apart from this trip, I’ve spent a few days during the week
on visiting local areas, such as public parks and a canal to draw people from
observation. This was partly a task set for my Life Drawing section of the
course. The aim here was to time myself; to draw someone and describe as much
of their appearance, and pose as possible. The toughest part of this task
though, was that I did not always know how long someone would keep their
specific pose. My subject could suddenly walk off or get up from where they
were sitting, so I needed to mark down their proportions and pose very quickly.
A technique that worked well for me during these drawing trips was continuous
line. It made me focus more on specific aspects of my drawings, like body
proportions. This is because I limited my movement by not taking off my pencil,
what in turn made me think more about the direction in which to draw my line.
It allowed me to instantly fill in my page with a shape of my subject’s body
and basic pose too. Then if my subject hasn't moved or re
positioned, I continued on that drawing more. Also these studies were
meant to be drawn using at least 4 different mediums; I used a coloured pencil
for the first few and then moved onto a black marker pen for the next 5. I
planned to repeat this visit in the following days, to continue my drawings, as
there were still two other drawing mediums that I wanted to use: a graphite
pencil and a different coloured pencil.
Stylised Rock
I was tasked with designing and modelling a stylised rock,
using no more than 600 triangles in 3DS Max. I began by making silhouettes in Photoshop CC,
which were inspired by my research into textures and my mood board/reference
sheet. The modelling was more complex this time and I needed to make a
physical model of my rock idea, in order to better understand it and apply any
necessary changes before I make a final model in 3DS Max. Part of that problem
was also the texturing/unwrapping, as I needed to make a physical stylised texture
to see how it turns out on a physical model. This way I would have something to
base my digital texture from.
Rocks have a lot of different combinations of shapes and
sizes. This is why I think designing a model of one was fairly simple. It was
meant to be stylised and at the same time believable. This is where I
encountered the most problems though, as I needed to find the right balance.
One way of doing that was to add a form of history to the appearance of my rock
ideas. For example, one had a carved top section, shaped like a tear drop, with
a gem stone sticking out of it. Also a message was left on it, which I wrote in
Traditional Chinese; saying “here”. The purpose of this message was to
strengthen the sense of history behind this rock. Someone may have been here,
and marked it for a reason or maybe it was decorated in memory of someone. I
tried to apply this style of thinking to most of the ideas that I chose to
develop further.
Portal Inspired
Arcade Game Cabinet
As an initial project for Gurus and Grasshoppers, I was tasked with designing
an arcade gaming cabinet. It was up to me to choose what game to use for this
project, including the style in which to design my cabinet. I have decided to
use “Portal” as my game for this project, partly to make it more difficult.
Choosing a modern sci-fi game was an even bigger challenge to me, as apart from
coming up with ideas inspired by this game, I also spent time thinking of ways,
of making my designs look modern and futuristic. By “modern” I meant that
Portal was a fairly modern game, set in a futuristic, scientific facility, full
of clean, open areas and my game cabinet needed to clearly resemble this style.
I included some of the in-game objects/robots, in my mood board. This was
because I needed to have something to compare my designs to, so that I can
really see whether I was heading in the right direction with my work. This
improved my ideas; they were more recognisable and at the same time fitted into
the Portal’s world more.
 |
| Concepts |
When it came to my colour palette, I immediately noticed it
was going to be fairly limited, as white is used primarily in the environments,
in the first Portal game; there were only a few blues, reds and oranges. The
only way I thought worked in designing my game cabinets, so they resembled the
game, was to stick with the clean, dominant-white appearance. So far my concepts resembled the game fairly well, they still lacked the white colour, as I was still deciding on their final shape and didn't want to over complicate them.
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