06 // Full Steam

Now that the project is in full swing and approaching its end, I'm knee-deep in a state of modelling, lighting and rendering with Cinema 4D. Therefore this week, I'm only going to share a small selection of renders that will inevitably be a part of my final presentation.

The learning curve associated with the low-poly style is a simple one, thankfully. I have determined that the best way to create interesting shots is to focus primarily on a quirky style of modelling; playing around with it in an almost abstract manner seems to yield the best results. Add to that some creative lighting and dynamic compositions and you should have a winning image on your hands.

This will likely be the last post before the final presentation, so I shall see you on the other side.

05 // Get Out The Way, Foo

A quick post to show some progression on the low-poly look I've been meddling with of late.

I really just wanted to show you three pictures of a tree: 

04 // Back on the Wagon

Alrighty, the ball is more or less rolling on this one now, as developments are made daily. 

It took a while, but I managed to establish a location and set of characters for my story. By really focusing on getting these details down I was able to drag my sorry ass out of the block it had found itself in and get back on the wagon.

I don't have any real intentions of giving away the storyline within this blog for fear that it might be shot down in flames, therefore will keep it a closely guarded secret until the bitter end.

Rather, I'll present some images that show the development of the storybooard and some loose character concepts. 

It should be said at this point that yes, it is my intention to present the final work in the low-poly style. However, I felt there was some relevance to defining the characters' slightly exaggerated personalities through some digital sketches; a process that helped myself in visualising a solution to the problem of how best to portray these animals in the low-poly world.

Up next: further low-poly tests and defining the style.

03 // Experiment + Experience

It may seem as if I've neglected the Advanced Project of late - which in all honesty would be true - but it has been this way for good reason: the sheer intensity of the workload attached to Graded Unit 2 has meant that just about all of my time has been applied to churning out a helluva lot of work for that over the past couple of months. Now that things are beginning to calm down slightly in that sector, I'm finding that I can once again take a few exploratory steps around these parts and share some developments and evolve my ideas from the previous 2 instalments.

Okay, so I don't really have a great deal of work for show - merely a couple of test pieces - but the work I will be presenting today should clarify the style around which my Advanced Project work will be based. 

First of all, I spent a morning following along with a YouTube tutorial that helped me to grasp the fundamentals of creating the low-poly style within Cinema 4D. The tutorial can be viewed here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjuD81GAmjQ

The tutorial was simple to follow along with and yielded great results, offering a solid foundation upon which I should be able to apply my own skills to create dynamic, innovative scenes for my story-based project. 

It is worth noting that while the tutorial is aimed towards the Cinema 4D user, the teachings can be applied to just about any 3D modelling package with which you are comfortable using. Or so I'm led to believe.

Of course, this is not the only tutorial out there; typing "low-poly modelling tutorial" into YouTube opens up a whole heap of videos for a variety of 3D software packages, so get stuck in!

So, having followed along with that specific tutorial, I then used all that fresh knowledge to see how the low-poly style might be applied to a different genre. At some point in just about every one of my projects, I like to dabble with Sci-Fi styles and themes, so where better to start with this one? Even though I still haven't decided upon a story as such, I felt it would be wise to at least test the possibilities of using this style of graphics for such a theme.

The following 3 images show: my results from following along with the tutorial, and 2 spacey pics. That's plenty.

02 // Revelations

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post here - having been kept busy with a side-project - so now might be a good time to share some of the many thoughts and considerations that have come to me over the last few days.

Continuing on from post 01, where it was established that my main inspiration comes from grand scale, atmospheric paintings laden with storytelling elements, I have tried my hardest to figure out a new avenue that my work might take a wander down. 

Of late, I've been primarily focused upon learning as much of Cinema 4D and After Effects as is possible within a short time span and have found myself enjoying it much more than before. Perhaps because a lot of what I have been learning over the past 2 years in relation to digital painting is applicable to 3D/2D motion graphics - composition, colour theory, character design, environments, lighting, visual story telling etc - I feel that I've levelled up a good bit further lately just from taking the time to look deeper into other design-related fields. Graphic Design is fast becoming a definite interest of mine and might be worth considering as a serious field of study in the future. Along with Architecture, CGI VFX and Music. But I digress...

What I meant to say is: from spending that much-needed extra time within Cinema and AE I have come across a visual style which I think might be appropriate - and a lot of fun to make - for my Advanced Project: Low Poly 3D.

An article in webdesignerdepot.com, written by Martin Gittins, nicely sums up the style thus:

"The low-poly look can be seen as a reaction to the impersonal perfection of computer modeling. I think there is a very definite reaction against the over-polished lifelike 3D-modeling and rendering now possible in CGI. There is a desire for artists and designers to create something that does not try and mimic reality, but is more abstract, and tries to capture the essence of an object rather than represent it as realistically as possible.

There's a historical precedence for this in art, at the start of the 20th century, when various expressionist movements emerged after the advent of photography; when photographs could capture an exact likeness, there was no need for art to do so; expressionism sought to convey feelings and sensations rather than acute representations.

Fast forward to the 21st century and abstraction and expressionism is flourishing in the digital arts."

Nice one Martin. Couldn't have said it better myself.

So here are a few examples of said graphical style to make the page look pretty until I elaborate further in the next week or so.

01 // Inspiration

Having first selected the brief for this project to be the writing one...

Writing Brief.

 Write your own poetry, script, comic book and illustrate, perform or direct this project. Submit all development and final presentation both mounted on board  and on disc. Your work could be submitted as an e-book or an interactive media piece.

It's time to start gathering some inspirational material and kickstart them creative braincells.

With any luck this should provide me with something that roughly resembles solutions to all the unanswered questions I'm currently faced with. Or at the very least it'll be nice to look at.

So, onwards...

p.s. It's worth noting here that these are all pieces by artists that inspire me. Sourced from my own private collection, the only artist I can remember from the top of my head is Brandon Lau, who produced quite a few of these. As for the others, I'm unsure of their names, though if anyone can help fill in those blanks, I'll credit them accordingly.