Ventures Portfolio Pieces

I want to create a finished concept piece per week covering characters, props, environments, and vehicles. It is common in the industry to be able to finish a presentable concept in 3 days, but given that I have venture assignments to work on too, I am giving myself a week between deadlines. In the end I would  end up with almost 15 new pieces.

7 of these will be a variety of genres.

• Modern character: teenager who surfs and collects seashells (room matches, mentioned below)
•  Sci fi character: girl wearing mecha suit and not.
• Fantasy weapon set. Powered by water.
• Fantasy/history merchant’s cart. Horse is tired
•  Used Sci-fi vehicle (beat up RV style)
• Modern teenager’s bedroom (collects seashells)
• High rise sleek office.

The remaining 9 will all be connected to a story I have developed, which while not in the fantasy genre, it is inspired by it and has architecture heavily inspired by history.

•  2 Characters
• Multiple quick designs of extra characters
• Display of food (food plays an important role in the story)
• Display of furniture and props
• Display of jewelry and accessories
• Carriage with horses
• 2 Environments:  hallway, bedroom 

Research pt 1: Toon and Line Render on Maya

 So I have started working on my research and testing out different looks for the Toon and line render.

1. Inspiration and Sketches 

So my obsession with art nouveau is not over and I wanted to work on a simple design for this research project so I decided to make a gate or entrance that is inspired by the style.  Below you can see my pureref images as inspiration and reference along with my initial sketches. 

I decided to go with #1 since the variety of shapes and forms could best push my Toon rendering exercise. 

 2. Rendering

Below is the toon and line render along with one of my Arnold renders. I was having issues getting the toon render to properly show in Arnold so I will keep working on that because there is more I want to show through the renders that seems to require it. Specifically I want to add more noise linework to make the render look more illustrative. 

 One day I will understand why blogger formats pictures like this. Today is not that day.

3. Putting it all together

This is the first pass at mixing the AO, lighting, normal, basic, and toon renders. I still have to add more textures such as floor tiling, glass reflections, water, and I need to push the shadows more.

Doll Workroom

Finished it yay

 

 

 

 

Doll Workroom 2

I wasn't able to finish the piece yet but I am close to what I want. I am still laying down base colors and will render them soon.

The floor, walls, railings, couch, and wooden furniture are complete, I am working on all the little decorations. Will touch things up as needed for the render.
I do want to make both a day and night version, one with the light coming through the window and one where the string lights are lit up.

I both love working on tiny details like this. Once the piece is done I will be showing a lot of detail shots too. 

Doll Workroom Concept pt 1

Sketch for the finished room. The modeling was simple so what s left is lineart and coloring. I may cut back on some details if it is too busy. May remove the string lights since they look very busy in the sketch. 

 Sketches

Pureref images

The bottom middle one was the biggest inspiration for this concept. 

Fantasy Building 2

Ok so I kinda decided to head a different direction than usual. Normally I make the model, render it, use the renders for different effects, then paint on top and add some textures. I decided to push this one further into a more finished painterly style and I ran out of time. The detailed lineart alone took much longer than expected.




By the time that it is finished I would like for it to reach the level of polish as the image below, which is what inspired this new turn. I do need to add more textures and such, specially on the ground.


I will finish painting on 7/8 and present a new concept for 7/14

Fantasy Shop 1

 An Art nouveau styled fantasy shop. 

Still have to fill the interior. 

These curved details took much longer to make than I expected haha

I ended up mixing the base architecture of #4, added the details an columns from #2, with a bit of an open layout from #5

6/30 Architecture -  Late: finished Stair, foundation details, doors
7/3 Furniture - Desks, chairs, potions, boxes, curtains, other merch
7/7 Painted

Renaissance 2

 In bocca al lupo

I aimed to push the lighting and shadows already set up by the renderer to be more extreme to create a darker atmosphere.

Renaissance 1

Here is my first pass at rendering the entry room. I do want to experiment more with the arnold render and practice more with it before continuing work with it. I also want to model some furniture such as couches, and a chandelier. 

 Close up of column top. 

I found some rigged models that I can use to quickly add people to my concepts. Thing like flowing hair and clothing will be added in the concept drawing. 

 Close up of entrance

By next week I will finish what I mentioned above and use a combination of painting and photobashing to finish the look of a Renaissance Entrance hall

Cliff City Details 2 + Renaissance Sketch

Here is all my work over the last few weeks. I decided to scrap the boat model and focus more on the house. 

 

 

Overall I lost a lot of motivation to work on the last batch of work because the details I decided to focus on felt like something too simple to dedicate a lot of time on. I guess I wasn't feeling very challenged and got bored, specially when compared to how I felt with the town concept. 

So I'm making sure that for the rest of the semester I focus on much larger concepts that challenge me and require a lot of 3D help to properly convey my ideas. 

Here are some sketches for an interior of a spooky Renaissance mansion interior, based on a personal project. 

6/16 I will have the room built, with a sketch and basic coloring on top.
6/23 I will have the concept finished with textures on the side and some sketches for closeups.

Cliff City Details 1

This week I wasn't able to get as much done as I wanted to but I did get started on modeling out the house and boat concepts. May sketch more boats later on.

I also tried to fix up the cliff drawing a little more, specifically that some things were too sharp even though it is at a distance. Hopefully its less noticeable.

Next week
House and boat concepts finished
Flag designs finished
All properly presented with textures and information

Cliff City Concept 2

Here is the final concept piece for the cliff side town.

Below is a version of it without the girl because I'm not too happy with how she turned out. Since I used a different rendering style for the city, I couldn't quite get her right quickly.




For next week, I will further develop this environment and design:
2 unique boats
A detailed house
Flag designs (not 3d but it would help develop idea)
Lay out all of this with materials and information for a 3D artist to use.

Cliff City Concept 1

Here is my progress for my cliff side city concept.


This is the render from Maya

Here is a simple sketch to show some of what will be added in the painting step

Below are all the buildings in the town (besides the lighthouse). Each has a different front and backside to populate the city as quickly as possible without it looking too monotonous.

Cliff City Concept Sketch

5/19 Finished 3D blocking and sketch
5/ 26 Finished coloring and painting

Environment Final

Environment is pretty much finished. I would like to get more feedback on the lighting to tweak that before industry review. I would also like to add some godrays coming in from the window.