To Senior Year

Sometimes I remember I have a blog and I tell myself, "oh, I should really delete that someday soon, I don't remember what's on it, but I probably don't want that out there".

I'm a senior now. I just finished my second to last semester a few days ago, and I graduate in only a few more months. My life right now consists of: How am I going to get a job? How am I going to pay off my loans? How am I going to polish my portfolio? Where am I going to print my business cards? Is this tweet okay to put on my twitter? Should I friend this professor on facebook? What should I say when I meet someone in the industry? What am I going to do about my apartment? Am I going to stay in Seattle or am I going to move? What if I have to move back home?? etc etc

So I came onto my blog expecting to delete it in an attempt to clean up my social media presence, but I'm glad I updated so regularly in my underclassmen years - I needed a reminder of how far I've come since I first entered art school.

I can't guarantee I'll find the time to write much after this, but I'd like to. I know I'm in a weird spot in my life, and I really want this.

In the mean time, I'll share the finals I made as a senior.

These were from my concept art class. I really struggled to balance this class on top of my other projects because it was at the end of the week. I really wanted to push myself in this class, but I could only put minimum effort into these paintings.

This was my pet project though. It's a 3D sculpt made entirely in Zbrush. I wanted to make her realistic, but my classmates and professors pushed me to make her in my drawing style, so it was a super fun journey to explore my own style in 3D. I want to rerender her to fix the shadows and background before she goes in my portfolio.

I overscoped on this one! I misjudged how many weeks we had on our final project, so I chose to do a full character that I wanted to make game-ready, but I spent too much time on the environment (which you cant even see in the final render) that I just had to cut corners. The character was sculpted and posed in zbrush and the scene was lit and rendered in Maya. I still need to fix the rim lighting on the character - the lights were shining through the character but it's not a lighting class so I ditched it to polish the character for submission.




Overall, this was the one semester where I felt satisfied with all of my classes. I might be nervous about the future, but I really put my best into the past few months and I feel like I learned A LOT.
I'll have to post my other assignments when I have access to the files.

Giraffa Aquatica

it's finals week! and here's my Bio final!

Bio was a fantastic class, and I'm going to be TAing for the professor next semester as he teachers the freshmen human anatomy. I'm super excited!

Anyway, for my final, I had to come up with an imaginary animal, write an abstract on it, draw orthographics of its skeleton, and make a final illustration. I chose to create a semi-aquatic water giraffe (a giraffe-opotamus?) 

I'm pretty pleased with the background too; it could be better, of course, but looking back at the first background I painted in photoshop this last semester, I'm glad to see improvement.

I haven't gotten a grade for it yet, but my professor pulled it out of the submission pile in class and made some very nice comments, so I'm crossing my fingers! 

Sleepy Lemurs

I acknowledge that digital backgrounds are one of my major weaknesses.
For my Biology class, we have to study an animal that fits our current unit, draw orthographics of its skeleton, and do an illustration of said animal.

We can use any medium we want, but my Bio teacher warns us not to do digital because we haven't finished out first photoshop class yet, and if our photoshop teacher were to see them, they 'wouldn't get a passing grade'.

I got a pretty low grade on this, but that's partly because a series of unfortunate events made me turn it in late (my computer at school blue screened as I was submitting it and by the time it booted back up again, I was five minutes late).

I took it to my photoshop teacher after though, kind of disappointed. I asked how I could become a better environment artist and had a good long talk; I haven't had the chance to use what he taught me yet, but I'm excited anyway.

(and for the record, my photoshop teacher said, "if I were your Bio teacher, I would get this a professional grade" so... cool.)

Rotisseries

Okay, and an assignment I didn't care for.

Advanced figure drawing again - the same week as our sequential drawings, we had to draw a figure drawing model in a rotisserie. Wasn't my favorite. Wasn't my week. 

Sequential Drawings

More advanced figure drawing homework! 

We had to pick two actions and do sequential drawings for them. I chose a diver and a girl doing a handstand. 

Got a 90%

Cafe Drawings

The first week of the semester, my advanced figure drawing teacher sent us out to do 50 cafe drawings in a week. It was super fun!

It helped me get back into the habit of carrying my sketchbook everywhere and seeing opportunities of drawing people/things. My friends and I took some time everyday to just sit in the school cafe or to go to the mall to draw people.

I feel like this assignment really pushed me, but I don't know what I got on it. My figure drawing teacher is new and doesn't know all of the policies yet (which includes giving us our grades after so many days of turning it in). Regardless, here are some of the 'best of's

Master Copy

This was our first assignment in my Photoshop class. We had to recreate a traditional piece of artwork digitally, trying to match textures and mediums. 

My professor told me it looked very professional and gave me a 96%

(original on left, mine on right)

Hey, it's me

Oh boy, I haven't written in so long that I've kind of been lost. I don't really remember the semester?? My school is such a time vacuum. Even though it feels like summer was just a few weeks ago, it also feels like I've been stuck in semester three for as long as I can remember.

Anyway, this year is focused on digital art and 3D modelling. It's hard. At last, 3D modelling is hard. Digital art is fine, and I love it and I feel totally 100% in my element.

My photoshop class has been going just fine, and here is one of my prouder accomplishments so far:

It's me! yee

Took me about 6 hours of sitting on my living room floor to paint, got 93%.

Game Team Showcase!

Well, my game team did it

Freshmen games aren't taken very seriously (for obvious reasons). I was told only one freshmen team gets onto the end of year student showcase, but I heard there's two others? Whatever, we still got onto the showcase too.

I'll share the link to the download as soon as it gets put on the school game gallery. I've played the intro, and it's super spooky!

I got behind on my work though, haaa. As an artist, I don't really get to hear any deadlines. All the programmers hear them in class and from their friends, so I think they just don't realize that the artists don't get the same treatment? Game teams aren't a requirement for us, so we hear literally nothing.

But, that meant I had to work 28 hours straight on my remaining work because SURPRISE! Everything had to be done right away. I don't mind, but there's a lot of things I wish I could have fixed/done differently. At least I know for the future?

I definitely have a goal to be more professional when it comes to deadlines; that's what I focused on already through all of this, but it didn't always work out as planned

Acting For Ani Skit Storyboard

I love storyboards because really, the least amount of effort you put into them, the better

Final Painting

Well, there it is! My last assignment for my color theory class. The following weeks will be spent preparing for the final test.

I haven't gotten a grade yet, but my professor saw it as I was handing it in and gave a very enthusiastic, "wow, nice," so you know........ basically set forever.......... (I hope.)

The theme's supposed to represent conflict. We had to pick four colors from the CMYK color wheel and desaturate them.

Hey Dreamy Dreamy

Our second to last painting assignment, we had the theme 'dream'. We just had to make two colors and do value scales for them and a warmer and cooler version

Inverses

I got really upset with these paintings. I still got B's on them, but I was still really unhappy with how they turned out. 

They're the compliments of each other and the inverse. (on a CMYK color wheel)

Tints n Shades

Our first color paintings, we had to just do standard value scales for each painting. 

This was only my second painting assignment.

trunk man

My Bio teacher gave us more than a month to do these? We really didn't need that much time, but it was kind of our prep assignment for our midterm. Since I had so much time to do them, I redid the assignment four times, but when the night came to turn them in, I could only find my first one ahhhhhhhhh

so much for all that extra practice, right?

I got an all right grade, considering though.

Modified Walk and Run

We just finished our modified walk and run in animation this week. We had to come up with them ourselves, and it was really our first 'creative' project. A lot of it was spent learning how to make good enough video references, thumbnails, and plans to produce a solid product.

Some of my peers got really complicated with their animations, but I tried to keep mine simple

I haven't gotten a grade on them yet, but I'm not expecting much. I got caught up with my other assignments, so I didn't get to put as much time into them as I wanted. My animation class lands on a bad day of the week, workload-wise.

Walk and Run Cycles

Animation has been kicking my butt this semester. Pretty much my entire animation class revolves around walk and run cycles, which is actually really difficult?

We have to use that Zed character from the first assignment of the semester, but here's my first actual walk and runs from a few months ago: 

Game Team Cityscape

I really love working on a game team; it's been a super fulfilling experience. 

I haven't really done much because there's two other artists, but I was given a pretty big project to tackle this week. I had to draw a cityscape from a topdown view in only a few days. I didn't get as far as I had hoped, but after this Friday, I'll have more time to finalize it.

Click for full view!

Sketch

Color Blocking

Work In Progress Shot 1

First Final Draft

game team dump 1

I'm behind on my game team work. I'm the concept artist, so the other artists depend on me. Without the concepts I produce, they can't start their assignments. 

I'm only a day behind though, so it's not that bad.

Here's a bunch of stuff from my first deadline:

Color Palette

I'm supposed to get a t-shirt from them eventually too so I guess that's cool

In Class Still Lifes

Well, painting is hard, but I enjoy it.

I feel pretty comfortable with where I'm at, considering this semester is my first time actually painting

I sat in on another class to get some extra practice; I think my prof appreciated the notion. Here are my still life paintings from class. We had about 2 1/2 hours for each one, but I took an hour lunch break on the second one.