Creature Artist

An existing game that has similar animals to my creature design is Ark: Survival Evolved, this is an open world survival game against dinosaurs. The similar creature in this game is the Sarcosuchus which is a type of prehistoric crocodile as this is also a reptile like my creature.  Although this creature does not have wings like my creature they are both reptiles and are similar as they are in the same animal group. The Sarcosuchus is covered in a thick layer of scales used for protection; this is also similar to my creature as my creature also has a layer of scales. The Sarcosuchus also is similar to my creature because the Sarcosuchus has various layers of sharp teeth used for tearing down food; my creature also has different layers of teeth used for different things. This creature, the Sarcosuchus is an amphibian which means that they can live both in water and on the land, this is related to my creature because my creature lives on the land in rainforests and jungles. 

Gene Deitch

Gene Deitch is an American illustrator, animator and also a film director. Based in Prague since 1959, Gene Deitch is critically acclaimed for creating animated cartoons such as Munro, Tom Terrific and more. Gene Deitch has also worked on big animated movies like Tom and Jerry and Dicky Moe. Gene Deitch was born in Chicago, United States on August 8^th 1924 (aged 91). Gene Deitch has also written some books in his time, some of these books are ‘For the Love of Prague’ and ‘Terr’ble Thomson’.

My Artists Statement

The artists/designer I am influenced by is Greg Nicotero as I am inspired by post-apocalyptic themes. I mainly work with a standard pencil and paper as I find this to be the easiest way to design ideas. I use techniques and methods like using bold colours and inputting fine details into my work. I prefer to work inside by myself and listening to music and I can concentrate more and get the work done faster.  The purpose of my work is for educational purposes, however in the future I would like my ideas and designs in real games working with big game companies like Daybreak or Bohemia Interactive. The parts of my work that I am most proud of is my Mudbox designs and experiments as I feel I put the most effort into these pieces of work. I would like to see my work develop in detail as I feel like adding more small details to my designs and models in Photoshop and Mudbox into my work will improve it and more realistic. My personal art style I think is abstract from looking at the work I have completed in my project so far. 

                                                                          Visual Art:

Graffiti –

Graffiti is still a popular form of street art to this day, but in many cases it is considered vandalism and is not approved by most people as they don’t consider it ‘art’. Graffiti started in 1967 when a high school student from Philadelphia started tagging city walls to get the attention of a girl, but it was only in the 1980’s that’s galleries began to showcase graffiti as artwork. Popular places of graffiti would typically be undergrounds like train stations subways etc. as these places were out of the way and they would not get caught as easily. Graffiti is created by using different colour spray cans and creating ‘art’, this is normally used to let people express their feelings in an art form and most of the graffiti found in public has a meaning and a purpose instead of just being ‘vandalism’.

Symbolism of Animals:

Animals have appeared in art throughout history. Ancient cave paintings show various animals including dinosaurs and deer. Some ancient Egyptian symbols include animals as well as pottery. Throughout History animals have influenced both art and humans. Many cultures through history have animals representing gods, power and in cases of Native Americans, used in names.

Dove: A Dove is an important symbolic animal in Christianity representing the Holy Spirit. The white Dove is referred to in the story of baptism of Christ. The descending Dove is a very common on grave memorials.

Crocodile: Fear, time, magic, honour, speed, stealth, strength, instinct, cunning, bravery, efficiency, resilience, solar power, birth/creation, dependability, indestructability, emotional depth, primal/ancient power. 

Butterfly: A butterfly is occasionally seen on graves most commonly on children’s graves as this represents the resurrection of Christ. There are three stages of a butterfly; the caterpillar, the chrysalis and the butterfly. The three stages are symbols of life, death and resurrection.

Monkey:  The monkey is a symbol meaning fun, charm and an energetic nature. It is one of the signs of the Chinese zodiac which shows a person who has many friends. It is a sign of natural curiosity, but can show self-indulgence and rebellion. 

History of animation

1824: Peter Roget presented his paper ‘The persistence of vision with regard to moving objects’ to the British Royal Society.

1831: Dr. Joseph Antoine Plateau and Dr. Simon Ritter constructed a machine called a phenakitstoscope. This machine produced an illusion of movement by allowing a viewer to look at a rotating disk containing small windows, behind the windows was another disk containing a small sequence of images.

1872: Eadweard Muybridge started his photographic gathering of animals in motion.

1887: Thomas Edison started his research work into motion pictures.

1889: George Eastman began the manufacture of photographic film strips using a nitrocellulose base.

1892: Emile Renynaud, combining his earlier invention of the praxinoscope. With a project, open the Theatre Optique in the Musee Grevin. It displays an animation of images painted on long strips of celluloib.

1895: Louis and Augustin Lumiere issued a patent for a device called a cinematograph capable on projecting moving pictures.

1896: Thomas Armat designed the vitascope which projected the films of Thomas Edison. This machine had a major influence on all sub-sequent projectors.

1906: J. Stuart Blackton made the first animated film which he called the ‘Humorous phases of funny faces’.

1908: In France Emile Cohl produced a film, ‘Phantasmagorie’, which were the first depicting white figures on a black background.

1914: John R Bray applied for patent on numerous techniques for animation. One of the most revolutionary is being the process of printing the background of the animation.

1919: Pat Sullivan created an American cartoon ‘Felix the Cat’.

1923: Walt and Roy Disney found the Disney Brothers Cartoon studio.

1926: The first feature-length animated film called ‘El Apostol’ was created in Argentina.

1927: Warner Bros introduced ‘The Jazz Singer’ which introduces combined sound and images.

1928: Walt Disney created the first cartoon with synchronised sound called ‘Steam Boat Willy’.

1945: Harry Smith produced animation by drawing directly onto film.

1964: Ken Knowlton, working at Bell Laboratories, started developing computer techniques for producing animated movies.

1988: Willow introduced morphing into live action film.

1993: Jurassic Park use of CG for realistic living creatures.  

1995: Toy Story, first full-length 3D CG feature film.

History of digital modelling

-Early 2D design-

7^th – 13^th Century: Books were created by hand, one by one. These books were usually religious in nature.

11^th Century: The Chinese developed a form of simple printing.

15^th Century: Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. From there, the production and distribution of printed text and images in volumes was made possible. Century’s late printing was done mechanically.

Mid-19^th Century: Colour printings were available, however, before any book or newspaper could be printed, the production and layout still needed to be done by hand.

-Early 3D Design-

1950: Ben Laposky uses oscilloscope to display waveforms which were photographed as artwork.

1951: Mr. Potato Head invented; later starred in ‘Toy Story’.

1960: William Fetter of Boeing coins the term ‘Computer graphics’ for his human factors cockpit drawings.

1963: DAC-1, first commercial CAD system, developed in 1959 by IBM for general motors. William Fetter creates the ‘First Man’ digital human foe cockpit studies.

1967: First full colour real time interactive flight simulator for NASA by Rod Rougelet.

1968: Sutherland Head Mounted Display, developed in 1966, shown at AFIPS.  

1969: Graphical User Interface, GUI, developed by Xerox.

1970: Pierre Bezier from Renault develops Bezier freeform curve representations.

1975: Phong shading was created by Bui-Toung Phone (University of Utah).

1977: Computer Graphics World begins publication.

1978: James Blinn introduces ‘Bump Mapping’.

1980: Turner Whitted of Bell Labs publishes ray tracing paper, an improved illumination model for shaded display.

1982: ‘Tron’ the first most expensive computer graphics movie was released by Disney.

1983: Autodesk introduces first PC- based CAD software.

1984: 1^st computer generated 30 second commercial used for Super Bowl.

1987: VGA (Video Graphics Array) invented by IBM, Adobe illustrator was created.

1989: First release of Adobe Photoshop, Industrial lights & magic creates the Abyss.

1992: Release of 3D effects movie, ‘The Lawnmower Man’.

1993: Jurassic Park was released.

1995: Release of ‘Toy Story’ by Pixar and DreamWorks was founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

1999: Star Wars Episode One – The Phantom Menace, uses 66 digital characters composited with live action.

Project Plan

Week 1: - Mind Map, Moodboard, Robots in reality, film and games.

Week 2: - Experimental sketches, silhouettes, texture experiments.  

Week 3: - Observation drawings, artist interpretation, developed sketches.

Week 4: - 2D artist research, robotic limb experiment.

Week 5: - Robotic limb experiment, joint research.

Week 6: - Initial sketches, photoshop final concept design.

Week 7: - Photoshop final concept design, Maya 3D model.

Week 8: - Maya final 3D model.

Week 9: - Maya texturing 3D model, Maya UV mapping.

Week 10 - Maya animation, Maya rendering.

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Week 11: - Finalising Maya 3D model.

Week 12: - Finishing Up

2D Artist – Artyom Liner

Artyom Liner is an architect and a 2D artist, Artyom designs his own art work using ideas from other peoples’ art work. Most of Artyom’s art has a post-apocalyptic theme to it, here are some examples of Artyom’s work that he has created.

This is my rendered final piece with added textures, I attempted to add ambient occlusion, but failed ad the UV's on my final piece are overlapping each other which prevents you from adding ambient occlusion.

I also made this, which is an experiment to show what a scene would look like when ambient occlusion is applied. The ambient occlusion worked on this scene because I moved around the UV's so they were not overlapping and the applied the ambien occlusion, I then messed around with the setting to find something I was happy with, then rendered it.

This is a screen shot of my UV's for my Final piece, there all overlapping and messy and this is why the ambient occlusion wasn't working when I tried to apply it to my Final piece.

These are the UV's for the models that I successfully applied the ambient occlusion to and as you can see they are all neat and positioned equally which is why the ambient occlusion was successful on this scene.

This is the animation I created in Maya with my final 3D model and added textures, this is a simple 2 second animation of the jaw opening and closing to show how the actual model would move.