To Give a Daydream Shape: An Exploration into 2D and 3D Art

After Setting Up Your Project Start with a basic shape like a cube. Hold RMB in viewport to open up the options When altering an image, if you see a black side of a polygon, you are looking at the inside of a shape. Face Mode is a single side Object Mode is an entire object Vertex is a single point of a polygon Extruding!!! Edit Mesh - Extrude (Add this to your shelf!) Do not click multiple times! Unless you're sure you havent actually extruded something without realizing Num 1 to go back to normal preview Num 2 is cage preview Num 3 to check smooth preview Num 4 is Wireframe Num 5 is Smooth Shade All Num 6 is Textured Isolated Select Hides everything that isn't selected Make circle hole Edit Mesh - Circularise oh no we have an Ngon Mesh tools - Multicut Hit enter to confirm the cut If you press G, it repeats the last used tool If you Ctrl + Delete = Delete Edge/Vertex Mesh Tools - Create Edge Loop (Add to your shelf!!) Mesh Display - Reverse Point Faces in the other direction

  For our opening doodle, they had us draw a picture of a face. Once upside down, and the other right side up. I picked out a cosplayer for a character I like, Bridget from Guilty Gear Strive.  They also had us do a simplified construction of a face using one method of determining facial anatomy. The resemblance is uncanny. For the latter half, we did a few different drawing on really specific parts of reference images. They called this process a 'study' and its something I've heard about before. I might do a couple studies of my own.

Thanks to Gale's lovely work, we now have a finished version of our Hero Poster. Some simple Rule of Thirds for our poster. We wanted to highlight Baby's face and the foot of the vehicle, so we placed them around one of those quadrants. Mostly horizontally, vertically didn't quite line up for the foot. We also used the Gestalt Principle of Common Fate - elements moving in the same direction are perceived as a group. With the hair flowing to show our character's movement, the same was done with our vehicle taking a step to convey that type of motion.

  I got some feedback on my model sheet drawings so I'll mention some of those here since I don't really know what to talk about for this last one. (I don't have the old version of my sheets so just pretend that they're there.) Liam (@Kiwilion) said that I should add some alternate views of some of her gear like the Aviator Helmet and the boots. The boots only have protrusions facing outwards so an inner view might be good. The headgear is also really obscured by the flower piece so another view would have been good. I acted on that because that was a good point. Jake (@faustsuu) said that I could have a 3/4ths view of the character to give the 3D Modeler some more context and something else to look at. I would do so if I had enough time (I didn't).

Did these! These were quite fun and I've checked these off with the TA and they said these were good.  

We ended up deciding on this design to be our final for our character, now given the name, Baby Yaka. We decided on this color scheme as to best show off her fairylike oneness with the natural world. We used a lot of practical looking brown notes in her color scheme to show her practical side, being someone who does deliveries for a living. We ended up with this sort of design as we went at it with a cute is king type of approach. We wanted her to look whimsical but still grounded. Which is why we incorporated flower motifs into her gear. We made the decision for our vehicle, The Yarrow Nest's color palette with our character's palette in mind. Though not exactly 1 for 1, we wanted for them to have a point of commonality in their palette. The greens, browns and the curtains were how we achieved this. We went with slightly different shades of brown to give it a more wood-like look. It also would not have looked as good with a shade that dark. We also wanted it to feel light-hear...

 Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor Its the industry standard for vector graphics like Photoshop is to raster graphics. Its good for making character designs for animations, as well as game or app assets like icons, environments, props, UI elements and visual branding elements. When creating a New File Raster Effects: Specify the resolution for raster effects in the document. Recommended is 72-150 ppi for screen, 150-300 ppi for print Workspace is just as customizable as Photoshop Shapes - self explanatory Paths - outlines that define these shapes, or can be used as lines or curves that aren't necessarily enclosed shapes. Objects - individual elements that make up your artwork: Shapes, Paths, Text, Raster Images, Symbols, Groups, etc. Group and Ungroup Objects Group Objects - objects can be combined into a group, so they can be treated as a single unit. You can move, copy or transform all objects in a group at the same time. Ctrl + G Shift + Ctrl + G to ungroup Pen tool ...

Here are a couple color variations that we landed on. We have a couple ideas already for what we like, but we asked around and see what other people might think Ashton said they liked the use of the curtain, as well as the warmer tones. Stephen said that they liked the darker base colors, also the pop of color the curtain gives. Luke (@slimy.toast) likes the 'minecraft birch' colors on 6. Jack (@venomgrinch) likes the wood texture on the legs of 5-8 Kai (@chaiera) likes the helmet! Thought the pinks and yellows in the first one were too bright for their taste. Jo (@loverboy) said they liked the glove and boot colors in 1 and 6. Andre (@beanooo) likes how the dress in 3 gives the illusion of a flower and its sepals. Callie said that they liked the balance of the colors of , but thought 1, 2 and 4 were too bright, while 5 and 6 were too saturated Thoughts: We will definitely keep the cohesion between the curtain pattern and the dress. Might not follow the feedback for the legs, w...

  We combined some aspects we like from the other options and added those to the version we liked the most. Then picked out some colors that we liked for it! We ended up going with mostly 5 for our final, but gave her red hair. We also have the patterns on her dress like the first 3. I'm glad that we stayed pretty restrained on the colors with how busy the design might have looked. My helmet idea stayed in! Yippieee!! We ended up liking the colors in 3 the most, I like how the colors make them kinda look like chicken legs? But the heavy use of green in the chassis helps to unify the designs of the character and our vehicle together. The curtain sharing the small pattern on her dress is also meant for the same purpose. Finals!

We had to do a bunch of expressions at the end of this lecture. I started off pretty well but I couldn't get a good read on the last four... I think this was an anatomy study or a form study, it was one or the other.   Our opening doodle this time was to draw what we see in front of us. I took this lecture online so heres a drawing of my desk (minus the mess).

After getting our variations mostly out of the way, it feels like we're really getting into the thick of it at this point. Really liking how the vehicle is looking especially. The character looks great, though I feel like my addition to it seems pretty minimal but whatever helps the project go smoothly. I like her headpiece a lot but I feel like putting an aviator headgear-adjacent helmet would make more sense, so I might try to fit that in when making color variations. Personally, I wish we pushed more into magical girl aesthetics but I suppose stopping it there gives it a fae enough appearance, I GUESS. I jest though, I'm liking how its looking so far and look forward to making the model sheet for her.  

Here are our vehicle designs. We went about this a little differently from our character since we didn't have as clear of a starting point from our vehicle that we were fully 100% on. We originally divvied up the work like this (Me - 1 Character, 2 Vehicle) (Gale - 2 Character, 1 Vehicle) I was placed in charge of making 2 early variations, then we asked around for feedback for some more definite direction on where we wanted to take it. All we know so far is that we wanted bird aesthetics to it. (rather than sticking to owls, we kinda just generalized it to something bird adjacent to restrict us less) --- This one has a more 'cart' type of approach to it. Looked at a swan boat and took the wings and slapped on some wheels. I wanted a birds claws to grasp at one of the wheels, so it did. But it ended up looking a little too much of a mishmash of bird motifs. We liked the bird claw a lot so we tried making those in lieu of the front wheels. To change up the rest of the vehicl...

  Here are some line of action studies that we went over during the week 4 lecture. I think I did pretty well. For our opening doodle, we had to sketch the back of a head (the person in front of us at the time). I probably could've done better.

One of the TA's in my workshop mentioned the one on the rights similarity to Baba Yaga folklore and Wyrms. Moe also mentioned the Baba Yaga and liking that direction Perci (@boopydoopy) likes how mechanical the legs in the 2nd one looked. We liked this feedback and landed on something that looked like this! Austin liked the compactness of this. Zachy (@zdawg18) liked the overall shape of this variation.  

  Setup: When opening a new scene in Maya, 9 times out of 10 you will want to set up a new Maya Project. File - Project Window In the Project Window, hit New and name your project something sensible. Then select an appropriate project location. Then save the scene in a Maya ASCII file format. File - Save Scene As Then name it something sensible in your scenes folder in your project file folder. Ideally you also have some numbers for different versions that you will end up making. Example.001.ma Navigating our 3D space: Before anything. Hide the box of evil (the view cube). Right click it and hide it. It will help you in the long run. Do not get attached to it. Perspective or 3D view Alt + LMB allows you to orbit or dolly. Alt + RMB allows you to truck or zoom in or out     Scroll wheel can also zoom in or out Alt + MMB allows you to pan. Orthographic / 2D View Alt + RMB allows you to truck or zoom in or out     Scroll wheel still zooms in or out Alt + MMB pans H...