Fmp Week 2: O' what a time to be alive

Hey Guys,

This week during my Final Major Project has been rather eventful. As mentioned last week, I am working on my 20 week long fmp project and this is the 2nd week in. My project to create 3-4 characters based on the Ancient American Civilization and Spanish Conquistadors has been developing; however I must say I did run into a number of challenging obstacles.

At the start of the week, I continued to work on my concepts for the characters I want to create. I concepted in a way that would support the 3D production of the character including: considering clothing type, materials, detail and animation poses. Hopefully this would help me overcome challenging obstacles I might face in the future.

Throughout the concepting phase I felt my concepts did not necessarily portray the characters in the way I would have wanted. This was because I was finding it difficult to stay historically accurate, whilst being creative. This issue was particularly challenging for the female character, especially as Aztec and Mayan women would lead very domestic lives.

However, I was able to overcome the issue, by speaking to my tutor Mike Kelly and doing some more research into Woman of these civilizations, to find out that some women could be Priestess. Following this, I came across this very interesting character concept by…, which I will use as inspiration for the female character.

Following this, I was able to create a proper planned project timetable for my final major project with the help of my peer Naim Simone. This made all the tasks clear, which has allowed me to understand all that I need to do to achieve my goals.

In addition to the planning and preparation, I was able to speak to Kevin McDowell, Rachel Cox and Rich Carey to help me figure out the right specifications for my characters if they were to be implemented in a game. I also was able to find the time in the evenings to practice feather creation in Zbrush, following the Pablander feather tutorial.

Unfortunately, I did not get the summer internship, for Chinese games company Netease Games, which I applied for at the start of the month.

However, this rejection gave me more motivation to apply to loads of other video games companies.

I started the Block out for my Conquistador character. I felt that, as he was the most challenging and clothed of characters it would be best to get a head start on his development.

This process gave me a great opportunity to demonstrate my improved knowledge of the human anatomy, which I can definitely see improvements on from previous projects. During the process, I even got the chance to improve my skills on facial feature sculpting and even practice making facial hair.

Following this, I continued the block out for the Conquistador character, I payed particular attention to the face and hands (as these are the most expressive areas of the body) and the proportions of the character. It was good to get some feedback on by mentor Teodora Kuzmanova.

When the body was blocked out, I began making his clothes in Marvellous Designer. I must say this phase was fascinating, especially as I was making 16th century clothing, something I had never tried before.

During day we also had a visit from Game developer ‘Jay Adeloye’, who worked on his game ‘Gear Gauntlet’. It was a pleasure to meet Jay and get some great advice on the video games industry.

What’s more this week, I also attended the life drawing class on Friday. I’m starting to fall back in love with life drawing, which is always a good sign.

More to the point, I can definitely see improvements with my drawing skills (not as rusty as I thought I was). However, to improve I will make sure that I work on:

• My confindence in my mark making and lines

• If I don’t have enough time to complete the whole body, like ‘Kan Maftic’, block out the basic shape and focus on a particular area

• Continue to experiment with different media: mid tone (newsprint) paper and charcoal pencils

• Spend longer working out measurements with pencil to avoid disproportional sketches.

On Wednesday it was my Birthday, Whoop Whoop Time to Party!

I celebrated the rest of my birthday at TGI Friday’s, which was very enjoyable, especially the food.

Afterwards, I was even able to watch ‘The revenant’ film, which was absolutely stunning! The acting and cinematography was tremendous and I would recommend the film to anyone to watch.

Over the weekend, I went back to London to visit my parents and celebrate my birthday. It was great to see them and therapeutic to be home. We went shopping and I was fortunate enough to spend the evening at a Ronnie Scott’s live Jazz bar. The performance by ‘Jeff Lorber Fusion’ was absolutely outstanding. My birthday has been absolutely terrific!

I must say This week has been very eventful, compared to the last, I have realized that for my final major project, historical accuracy, has been a big restraint on my creative skills and has aided the loss of inspiration for my project. Thus, for these next few weeks, I will be working hard to make sure that my characters have a degree of historical accuracy however the most important element of the characters will be their uniqueness!

Thanks for reading guys, I’ve had a terrific week and look forward to the next one!

Till next time!