Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Otters with rainbow tails

Otters are playful, social creatures who want to live near water with plenty of fish. Plant reeds and other lakeside plants to make the otters feel at home and settle in your land!

I really need to learn to loosen up when I draw; I'm too careful and slow. This one took waaaayy too long for the amount of time I have left, bah :( Will do my bestest to keep the next one quick and sketchy, like the drawing from the powerpoint presentation.

I've also updated the PDF today, and the newest version can be found here.

Sleep time now, zzz...

Monday, April 29, 2013

Scene improvements (I hope!)

I've made a bunch of changes to my lil' scene today, hopefully to the better!


I have...

- Stolen the jackalope's flowers and scattered them around the scene.
- Changed the tree to make it look more elegant; the trunk is neater and the foliage has been rearranged, re-coloured and gifted with some transparency. I also added some falling "leaves" in the air and on the ground.
- Wrestled with Maya to add a ramp shader to the hill. It also has a paper texture overlaid on top.
- Created and textured some leafy fabric plant things to give the scene some more interest.
- Desaturated the bear a little bit, and went over it with a speckled brush to break up the solid colours.
- Added a third stone texture.
- Made some general layout improvements.

I also put some paper textures on top of that render; quite liking the result...

Next I want to make some nice renders of the creatures to go in the PDF.

Oh, and the bunny render issue seems fine now? No idea what's going on there. Oh well.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Environment drawing


With title...

...and without. Not sure about the tagline. Hmm.
And some progress:
Phew! Stumbling into bed now...

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Paper taking over

Update:
The patchwork hill was really bothering me; I liked the idea, but it was far too busy. I've changed it to something more papery-looking, and I think it looks a lot better. However, I'm worried that the style is moving away from the patchwork aesthetic... But on the other hand, the paper look still falls under crafting. Hmm. Hope it's OK. I'll make sure that the environment drawings I do have some patchwork in them.

I've also made some non-papery mushrooms:

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Scene update

Carried on with the scene today:

I've desaturated the grass, sorted out the tree and made the rocks more papery. Also did a little paper cactus thing. These are just Maya printscreens because all the textures are still PSDs and won't render... Bah. More props next! Oh, and the layout of the scene isn't final in any way. It's a bit all over the place at the moment...

Cactus design by Papercraft Central (2009).
Full reference:

Papercraft Central (2009) Paper Model – Cactus Plant.
Available: http://www.papercraftcentral.net/2009/05/paper-model-cactus-plant/
Last accessed 23rd April 2013

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

A little update

Right, I've finished the lil' creatures. Hooray!

Here's the bear:

And its texture:

Bunnyhops:

Now, this is rendering oddly... See that line down the side of the ear? It's not supposed to be there. It's not in the texture and it doesn't show up in Maya. It just renders like that. :(


No idea what's going on there. Hmm. Anyway, here's the texture:



I've also started working on the scene. The animals now have a home as opposed to an empty Maya scene, and I've textured the hill:

I've made some TINY changes to the PDF, too. I was going to add some renders of the 3D models but I kind of like the creature concepts... While the models look quite polished the concepts are a little bit rough - in a good way - which seems to fit the presentation better.

Download the PDF here!

I want to finish the rest of the scene as soon as possible and then do some environment drawings. I need to figure out how to sort out that tree...Not a big fan of the blobby pink placeholder circles.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Texturing away

I've been in texturing mode all weekend and made some progress on both the bear and bunny:



 Both of them still need some little fixes, touchups and details, but they're getting there!

Will definitely have a look at the PDF next - just got distracted by the texturing... Again... :(

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Texturing the teddy

This is slooowly coming together:
Triangulated with hard edges.
Soft edges. Not sure which one I like the most!
The UV map is a bit of a pain; I've ended up with lots of little edges all over the place that need to be matched up...Arrgh! Oh well. Hopefully I'll get there eventually...
Also going to take a second look at the A3 pages as soon as this lil' fella is done!