TerryMosier : Blizzard Student Art Contest

TerryMosier

Yoooo!!! How's it going?

I am extremely excited to say that I will be entering the Blizzard Student Art Contest. This thread is being created to document my work and to get feedback from fellow artists here on Polycount.

This is going to sound cheesy but I am extremely grateful to have an opportunity to take part in this contest. This is going to push me to improve and hopefully create something to be proud of when I'm finished. I would love to win but as long as I complete my environment, learn a few things and improve a little, I'll be satisfied.

I have been playing WoW off and on since the beginning and goblins are by far my favorite race in the game. I plan on creating a unique structure that looks like it has been created by these little green dudes.

TerryMosier

Here is one of the first concepts that started from a sketch during a lunch break at work. I've made a ton of sketches for the contest but the idea of making a bomb clock tower was my favorite.

I'm not sure why I'm using pipes and running strands of christmas lights on them but goblins tend to make a lot of things for no particular reason so hopefully it works lol I'm pretty sure I've seen colored strands of lights dangled from goblin buildings already so maybe its not very original but I'm going with it anyway :poly124:

nfrrtycmplx

good luck!

TerryMosier

Words can't describe how excited and nervous I am to be entering this contest.

TerryMosier

Here is where I am with the model so far. I'm staying home from work with my kiddos tomorrow and the plan is to get up at the butt crack of dawn and hopefully get the tower completely modeled and UV'd before they wake up. Critiques and comments are welcomed with wide open arms

d4rk3lf

That's great progress so far, imho.
I like the idea, concept, and I like 3D model of the tower.

Pipes makes great sense to me, because goblins (in warcraft) are indeed steam-punk style. Maybe you could throw in some flags in there also (but flags that have cuts, not new flags, of course ).

TerryMosier

Thank you d4rk3lf I definitely need to add more props and things to this. Implementing flags or a banner is a good idea.

Brian "Panda" Choi

The concept seems too serene to be a Goblin area. I think you might want to take a look at your concept and see what you can add, because given the green lawn and fluffy trees, it doesn't feel strongly Goblin-y.

Add3r

What you have right now feels way too safe for the competition/theme. You REALLY need to push silhouettes, story, and composition. I am not trying to be that dick who just tears your idea apart and leaves you up to dry. Nah. Really go back to the blockout you have now and really start pulling shapes, adding shapes, and making an interesting silhouette on the tower.

If you look at past winners/runners up, they all have very distinct concepts. I can name a few, with vivid detail in my mind of what their screenshots looked like. You had the Pandarian Train station with the train being brewing materials like barrels, copper pipes, etc. Others included an Alliance/horde Merry Go round, a hawk inspired house on the edge of a cliff over looking a serene landscape, giving it a feeling that it was in fact a hawk getting ready to go on its daily flight.

Just stuff like that. I feel you are missing some key, interesting story points. You could make the tower feel more thrown together and ghetto rigged, larger pipes running around the tower. Give it a purpose! What does this tower do? Why is it on a hill? Ideas could be like a re-purposed light tower on the edge of a beach on an island, or a ghettoed together Tesla coil that absorbs lighting to power contraptions, something along those lines. Also, really think about your composition. You just have a hill with a tower on it, with simple path and foliage right now. If you are going to stick to that route for the concept, I suggest REALLY pushing everything about the tower. Make it so the tower could win the competition without the surrounding environment, as that is what its going to take. The environment is just to give the tower some purpose, but that is your focal point/hero piece.

Sorry for the wall of text, just trying to help a fellow Polycounter out! I have a friend who was a runner up last year (Pandarian Train Station piece) and now is an entry level artist on the Diablo team. Its a great foot in the door if you have a successful piece Goodluck! We are all here to help you! Do not be afraid to post progress, the more exposure and eyes on the project you can get the better. Believe me.

BeserK

Add3r's advice sounds spot-on!

On a more trivial, technical note, you can save a few polys by removing the centre vertex on all of your circular ends to one of the edges, doesn't save much, but it adds up and is just good practice

Also, you may still be optimising, but the two edge loops running down each girder aren't necessary, you could save a bunch of polys there if you were looking to.

Best of luck!

TerryMosier

JadeEyePanda - I had Lost Isles from the Cataclysm expansion in mind when I was creating that concept. I didn't do a very good job making it look that way either lol. I have reworked my idea after reading your comment. Thank you!

Add3r- You are definitely not a dick. In fact, I think the exact opposite. What you (Berserk & JadePanda's too) said really hit home and made me sit back down and explore more ideas. It helped I think. Well, I hope it did lol. You'll be able to judge that once I get more recent work posted.

BeserK- Ironically I had just finished optimizing the girders doing exactly what you noted. I don't recal ever seeing girders used in WoW and had debated just using simple metal beam with some bolts in it. Hopefully the girders are an ok idea.

I wanted to take the time to reply and let you know that I appreciate the comments and thank you guys for looking out.

I'm excited to show what I have come up with. Hopefully I will have more concepts and screenshots of my work in progress posted up on here this evening after work.

Thanks again and again! You Rock!

TerryMosier

Ok, I've been extremely busy but I am finally posting some progress tonight. It would be nice if I didn't have to work a full time job this month while I finish up my entry for the contest :P LOL. Luckily my wife and kids know how much this contest means to me and have been very encouraging and supportive thus far.

I meant to post some the in-game references i've gathered when I started this thread.

TerryMosier

Some more concepts.

The clock tower is the same but I wanted to draw it again for fun.

I really need to work on drawing up what the crates, plants and tent are going to look like.

I am imagining this as sort of a tiny base camp that you would stumble upon and find an innkeeper in the clock tower so that you can vendor some items and get food and drinks for health and mana. Don't forget to set your hearthstone and check the mail while your here

I created a job/quest board for wandering players to gather quests as well.

I think I might need come up with something different for the wall if I have time.

TerryMosier

Rendered a test block out. I'm trying to figure out how to lay the scene out and what camera angle to use.

Keep in mind that I won't be trying to create a huge environment and filling up the background. At least right now I am not planning on it.

Trees need to be added still too.

TerryMosier

I wouldn't mind adding a power supply of some sort as well.

TerryMosier

I wouldn't mind getting multiple opinions on how to go about modeling the sheet metal pieces on the roof of the clock tower.

I thought of doing it two different ways.

One, modeling individual pieces of bent up sheet metal, UV'ing them and combining them in to a group to form one quarter section of the roof. Then I would duplicate them 3 times to fill up the other missing quarter sections.

The second way I thought of making the roof was to paint a texture and model around that and then duplicate it around.

What do you think?

Thanks in advance!

Also, I plan on adjusting the silhouette of the side view of the clock tower soon.

Gearman

Really cool stuff! For the sheet metal I'd just model them as boxes, paint them flat, and then cut and bend them afterwards. It'll make handpainting and uv'ing easier in the long run.

Also, I think that if your bomb clock is going to be the centerpiece, then the silhouette could probably be a bit more interesting. Right now the width is still pretty uniform from top-to-bottom. I think if you approach it from the angle of "How did the bomb get up there, and why is this big old bomb being used as a clock?" and try to come up with a bit of lore behind the how and why of the thing, your piece will come out much stronger.

I can very easily picture the building once acting as a clock tower, or maybe even as just a lookout tower, and one day the engineers got a bit too carried away, underestimated the power needed to launch a bomb across an ocean, and it crashed on top of the tower. The bomb was too big to move, so they strapped a giant clock to it, and called it a day. By adding things like straps or large iron braces to keep the clock face attached, and maybe even some bracing to prevent the building from falling over, and some bits of debris around the base you can accomplish two things: tell a very interesting story, and give yourself a very good framework to draw from.

I've added a very quick Photoshop modification of your sketch to give you an idea of what I mean. I would really take a second look at your basic shapes and play with them now, to make them a bit more interesting, before moving too much further. It'll make your final piece much stronger and more interesting.

TerryMosier

Thanks for the feedback Gearman.

Add3r mentioned (everyone agreed) that I needed to push the silhouette as well and I ignored it like a fool. Seeing what you quickly did with the silhouette is waaaay more interesting.

The original idea was supposed to be that the bomb was tossed there on accident and the goblins tried to make the most out of this mistake by turning it into something useful, a clock tower.

I'll try making changes to the tower now.

Thanks for taking the time to help me out

TerryMosier

While I'm not 100% happy with what I turned in, being able to submit something was nice.

Gannon

255% more wonky needs to be thrown on that tower ASAP! You had something going in the concept that was headed in the right direction and the forgot to execute it!