What’s up everyone!

It has been a while since I’ve updated on this, but I’ve been chipping away at it in my free time. There’s more work to be done, but I am happy with how everything is coming along. Right now, when I look at the scene it feels barren and not as mountainous as I would like. I will be taking another pass at sculpting rocks and adding more rocks to the scene and adding mountains in the background. I also feel like I’m missing a bit of a storytelling element and I want to give that some love.

Here's how everything has changed since my last update:

Hey everyone! Back with an update. I’ve been able to get back into a bit of a groove working on this. 

I spent some modeling out props for the environment and tweaking the lighting here and there. I was able to get snow set up in Substance Designer and Unreal. There is a great tutorial by Jacob Norris - Forest Snow Ground Tutorial https://purepolygons.gumroad.com/l/Tut-FGS-all?recommended_by=library. It has been super helpful especially in furthering my knowledge on how blueprints work in Unreal and setting up shaders. I’m going to continue tweaking the snow and improving that to how I want over the course of the environment because it is going to need some work along with the terrain.  

I was also able to create a Cherry Blossom Tree for the background behind the shrine. SpeedTree was new to me, but I found it easy to get the hang of everything and there was another very helpful tutorial in Artstation Learning. It’s called Tree Production Using Speedtree with Dekogon and Kat Yang does the Tutorial. It was awesome and I highly recommend it to anyone who needs an introduction to SpeedTree   https://www.artstation.com/learning/instructors/dekogon-studios. 

It helped seeing where I left off because sometimes I felt I wasn't making enough progress. It helped to put things in perspective comparing my current state to where I left off at. There is still more work to be done, but I am excited to push further.

Old State

Current State

Since my last blog post I had started my first freelance opportunity in August and I finished up in November. I am extremely thankful to get my first opportunity in the industry and since then I was able to get back into this project and pick things up. I have different milestones set for this environment which helped sooooo much in picking things back up. Progress is Progress. Enjoy your wins no matter how big or small! This next phase of the environment is what I enjoy the most and that is sculpting. I want to try and be a bit more in-depth in the next update.

What's up everyone! I am back with another update and I've made some great progress since the last update. My environment was starting to take the shape and tone I wanted to hit so I started putting more focus on finalizing and improving the models in my environment. Just having different references to look at helped a ton when creating the models. While I was doing this I still took time to improve the lighting and the block-out where it was needed.

Since my last update, I felt that the warm colors were too strong so decided to tone that down a little more because I wanted the environment to feel more calm and peaceful.

I had never used Marvelous Designer before, but it was really easy to pick up.  It is absolute magic. I used that to create the carpet, curtains, and the black flag hanging on the wall. I plan on creating a design in Substance Designer for the carpet and of course you got to have that Pirate symbol on the flag. All about the pirate life :).

Something that I kind put off to the side was the placement of some of my camera shots. I think they could still use some work and it'll be something that work to improve as I'm progressing. I wanted to create a short video going through the environment when I finish.

The candles will be lit sooooon....

I plan on creating a shader for the candle flame.

This update will conclude my work on the block-out and I am going to be doing some sculpting on some of the models which will be the focus in my future updates. It's great to see this environment come to life after some of the changes I've made. It helps a ton to get some feedback and thoughts if you're a little unsure on something. The more eyes you can get on your work the better. 

What's up everyone! As of recent I've been able to put some time into the environment. Even though I haven't been able to work on it as much as I wanted to, that time has allowed me to rethink the look of the Environment. Previously I wanted to set up it with a diorama look, but I stepped away from that because didn't want it to take the focus off the Treasure Book. I wanted to keep the focus on the interior with a personal touch. I LOVE both realistic and stylized art, but I tend to lean more with stylized and its something I want to get better at with this project and in future projects.

As I was getting more models into the environment to get a sense of the spacing I started to tinker with the lighting to set the mood. I wanted the interior to feel a little more warm/intimate, but there is that subtle cool light coming from the outside that adds a little glow to the book. I'm happy with the current lighting, but it will be something I continue to improve throughout the process.

My next goals involve finalizing and improving the models and getting those prepared for ZBrush. There are some areas where the block-out could use some improvements, but I'm happy with how its coming along. I'm only in the Block-Out stage, but this environment went through many different changes from my original concept. It's okay to change something if you feel its not going the way you want. You may have some frustrations in the beginning, but it will all be worth it in the end :). My original concept was a little too big so I scaled it down to something that I really like, but also focuses on what I really found cool about the treasure book I created which was the sense of peace and wisdom I got from it. Until next time everyone! Going to continue working at it.

Hey everyone!

This is completely new to me, but I wanted to document my progress on the current environment I'm working on. I wanted to do something small, stylized and hand-painted. I've been busy with school and my capstone project that I'm working on with an awesome team which I hope to show off in the future. I've been working on this for about a month and trying to work on it whenever I get the chance. I'll try and dive in a little more below into what I'm creating. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. 

A few months ago, I made this Treasure Book and decided I wanted to build an environment around that prop with a pirate theme. This was a concept I had found on Pinterest https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/814659020071693160/ (Here's a link to the Artist behind the reference Jack (https://www.behance.net/Deviljack-99/moodboards 
https://www.behance.net/gallery/56088805/Jac). What really pushed me to do an environment around this book was the fact that it just had this sense of peace and wisdom about it and I wanted to explore that tone and feel in my environment.

In creating this environment I wanted to keep it small and focus on setting it up like a diorama. I challenged myself create my own concept and environment design. Still very early in creating this, but wanted to establish and set the mood with cool colors with more of a night time scene.

I do want the book to be the of focus in this environment, but I also wanted to keep in mind this is the Captain's Quarters and you're a PIRATE. I definitely wanted to keep up with that theme and the features of a pirate. This is the Captain's Quarters and I wanted the room to have a sense of elegance.

 To end off, this will definitely be something that challenges me especially since I want to incorporate Zbrush into my workflow on this environment. I know this will take some time with current projects I'm working on, but I try to set goals and work on it piece by piece when I get the chance. Just starting on a project can be daunting. The Block Out stage is crucial and something I want to get right before I move forward. its important to realize its a process and everything does start to come together. I'm going to do my best to keep making blogs when I make a good amount of progress. Something I realized is that it can be frustrating when you want to work on your own projects, but you're just so busy outside of it. Something I try to preach to myself is to take it a day at a time.