(Portfolio) Messy Study Desk
polycounter lvl 8
Introduction
Hey guys, how's it going. My name is Chris, a junior modeller currently residing in the Six, the North and Strong Toronto, Canada. I'm gonna be doing a long time project thats prolly going to last a couple months and this thread is going to be sort of my personal blog post. So expect wall of texts
I havent been able to work on my personal stuff lately. Lurked polycount for a couple months and I got so motivated by people doing their work that I decided to do it despite being really busy.
Purpose
Purpose of this environment is to challenge myself into doing really small and tight environment, be good at planning and doing story telling through composition.
I can't for the life of me do small environment. The last three environments I did was way too big, unpolished, underpopulated and it lacked story.
I also suck at planning things, what props to use, this and that. Back then, I usually ignore the moodboard and dont use any references.
I also want to learn about story telling and how important it is.
Anyways, overall, Story is important, it gives the player or viewer something to think about what theyre looking at. It gives life to the environment. References are important because youre actually recreating something from real life not just from your head. Also this is my first time making use of the moodboard and actually researching for prop references.
I got a lot of things to learn but im gonna make this one fun.
Feedback and Critiques are very welcome.
:)
Sorry for the wall of text guys, you didnt have to read it.
Thanks for checking this out and goodluck to you ! Cheers !
Hey guys, how's it going. My name is Chris, a junior modeller currently residing in the Six, the North and Strong Toronto, Canada. I'm gonna be doing a long time project thats prolly going to last a couple months and this thread is going to be sort of my personal blog post. So expect wall of texts
I havent been able to work on my personal stuff lately. Lurked polycount for a couple months and I got so motivated by people doing their work that I decided to do it despite being really busy.
Purpose
Purpose of this environment is to challenge myself into doing really small and tight environment, be good at planning and doing story telling through composition.
I can't for the life of me do small environment. The last three environments I did was way too big, unpolished, underpopulated and it lacked story.
I also suck at planning things, what props to use, this and that. Back then, I usually ignore the moodboard and dont use any references.
I also want to learn about story telling and how important it is.
Anyways, overall, Story is important, it gives the player or viewer something to think about what theyre looking at. It gives life to the environment. References are important because youre actually recreating something from real life not just from your head. Also this is my first time making use of the moodboard and actually researching for prop references.
I got a lot of things to learn but im gonna make this one fun.
Feedback and Critiques are very welcome.
:)Sorry for the wall of text guys, you didnt have to read it.
Thanks for checking this out and goodluck to you ! Cheers !
Replies
This is the blockout right now. I took a lot of inspiration from Scott Homer, one of my favorite artists. I dont know if this has enough story telling on it or visible.
Time constriction, it's killing me slowly. lol. I'll definitely put it like the other one. I'm just testing out the wall material for now. I actually have several different colours of wall, http://imgur.com/a/TqPPW But thanks, it definitely looks way more interesting with cut out.
Also testing out lighting with blocky and plane shapes. My friend told me about Koola, (Prepare to get your mind blown) and I'm trying to achieve this kind of lighting as much as possible.
EDIT : Lighting
Not so populated right now. Thoughts ?
Got feedback from people, I ended up putting a window. Also because where the window is right now, it used to be a boring part of the diorama. Lighting is hard to get IMO, it's one of the first thing I deal with, don't know if thats a good idea. But getting the right mood is hard with lighting.
Lightmapping issues that need to be fixed.
Anyways, here's an update. Making up the story was kinda difficult. It was going from artist table, to space nerd table then to hacker table. I doing hacker table since I can animate a lot more props with one stationary camera. i Feel like there's a lot of space above the corkboard. Dont know what to put in there tho, any suggestions ?
EDIT : the blinds are proxy meshes.
Currently I see a bit of a undecidedness when it comes to whose room I'm exactly looking at here.
Currently the ikea-like furniture designs that you chose, the big peace sign on the chair, colorful posted notes, messy yet organized looking clutter, Mac and Macbook-type computers leads me to believe that it's the room of a college student which I can buy into.
The stuff that's on the corkboard however first led me to the conclusion of the person supposedly being some sort of conspiracy-type which doesn't really seem to jive with the choices of computers and furniture as the others. (IE if it was a crazy government-conspiracy type I'd expect probably a more bulky desktop with probably a couple more older ones gathering dust, external hard drives and regular hard drives+disks, etc thrown about the place, possible microwave next to said hard drives incase of said-government conspiracst was afraid the g-man would come knocking and have to do an emergency wipe of everything, run down walls, survival M.R.Es and gasmask, etc.)
That's one way if you wanted to make it fit the crazy route more, although I'm not sure this piece is that since all the models and layout seems more like a standard college kid desk who loves Apple and is probably a hipster/drinks PBR and smokes American spirits only when they drink, possibly vegetarian?. The peace sign and Macs are a pretty loaded visual symbol hence why I'm giving you some insight into what I imagine the story is so far and if that's what you want.
I think the dark color scheme is better suited towards if you went conspiracy theory, the brighter yellow-orange does have a bit more pop to it and suits a college kid's dorm or a recent graduate. I also might try think about if you want to establish the gender of whose living there or not, which may ultimately guide you in unifying the room and texture patterns. I could imagine some playful things depending on if the person is a girl, boy, likes certain colors like pink or navy blue, maybe their favorite color is purple or green? Do they throw their clothes in the hamper or do they reuse the same pair of jeans a few times a week from the floor? Do they care about their diet? Are those sugar free redbulls or do they not give a fuck about sugar and carbs? Are they a smoker? If so do they smoke indoors by their computer? Have they lived there long if were a smoker and thus some of the walls have begun to yellow where they smoke or ash burns from where they dropped their cigarette? Do they chew gum? Do they chew their pencils? Do they even have pencils or prefer mechanical ones or ball-point pens? Do they print out their work? If so is it a nice printer as they do alot of scanning of magazines and faxing, or just a simple $30 one they picked up from Walmart? Do they like to listen to music? Are they a big fan of a band or have the hots for someone and have a poster of them on their wall? Are they more of a person that doesn't really want people to "judge them" so they keep more conservative decorations or would rather have a nice landscape painting or a photograph of a lighthouse? Are they in college? Do they smoke weed and worship Bob Marley and probably have one of those posters in their room? Are they into Star Trek or Star Wars? Do they like sports? Do they like Boston or New York? Do they even like cities at all and miss their hometown in the rural valley? Are they medium-lower wealthy or medium-high wealthy? Did they have to take out student loans or did their parents make six figures and paid in full for their education? Do they have a fulltime or parttime job? Does said job require a certain type of clothing/uniform/hat or is it business casual? Do they like hats? Is it summer, is it fall, is it spring, or is it winter? Did it just rain and there's footprints of water leading into the room? Do they mop their floors or they haven't mopped in a year? Have they lived there for 3 months or 3 years? Did they scrap the floor when they moved in the desk? What year or degree are they pursing if in college? Do they play an instrument? If so do they play in a band, concert, just for fun, when they're drunk with their friends, or play that one riff from Red Hot Chili Peppers to try and hook up with a girl?
Are they single? Married? Engaged? Divorced? Focusing on their career/school? Into long-term relationships? Into flings? Just got over a long-term relationship and depressed or are they over it yet but are just going to do casual dating for now? Trying to get back together? On a break? Do they have family? (photographs, movie tickets, teddybears, necklaces, birthdaycards, framed photos, cellphone with Voicemail : 3 Missed Msgs from John or Jane, text recieved John or Jane let's meet up, etc. as examples of why I'm asking these questions and how they can relate)
Are they a cat person or dog person? Or fuck that they like snakes. Are they religious? Agnostic? Occasionally and on the holidays? Conservative or Liberal? Do they practice safe sex? Are they hygienic? Afraid of germs? 5-second rule if they drop food on the floor? Is their floor 5-second rule acceptable? Did they pick out all of their furniture or did their parents go shopping with them? Do they have any hobbies? Are they super-good at one thing, decent at a lot of things? Decent at a few things but a little but more focused in one area? Are they a light-sleeper, a night owl, an early bird, a heavy sleeper and need at least 2 alarm clocks to go off and wake them up, if they work do they keep a work schedule? Do they procrastinate? Do they do things on a whim? Did some of the furniture come with the room or was it all brought when they moved in? (dorms tend to have wooden or some kind of standard type of desks and a crappy or standard chair or maybe nicer depending on what dorm you live in, some people move the desks out and bring in their own or usually bring a nice chair if they sit in front of their computer all day.) Upperclassmen tend to have apartments or the nicer dorm suites, graduates definitely usually their own apartments although occasionally a dorm.)
But yeah you don't have to read through all of that, was just a list of questions that might trigger ideas if you're stuck on the story or not. Hope you don't mind, you obviously don't have to answer or address them all in a piece as that would take foreveer.
I will say in my own perspective which may be different from other opinions is your piece might actually lend itself well to a person whose studying in their senior year (hence the nicer desk but noticeable IKEAish stuff) or possibly early grad, and is currently studying to become a journalist due to the board and why they have both an Apple desktop for long-term research and writing, as well as a laptop for classes and portability. Maybe they like to take photographs and have a dSLR camera on their desk which might add a nice little complex-shape model for you to do and would tie the story between whats going on on the chalkboard and the rest of the room more. You could also add in a University poster or small triangular university flag on the wall, or a framed communications BA degree if they're going for their masters. OR you could go into a more science-route and model that telescope that I see was in one of your older screenshots instead of a dSLR or whatever, since that may be an interesting piece due to its different materials and shapes, though i'd probably change the chalkboard to be more astronomy-oriented like star charts, a poster of the recently photographed pluto, etc. Booknames are always fun to come up with whenever you do something like these, Biology 101, Calculus, Mastering Photography, A History of Photojournalism in the 1960's, Grey's Anatomy, How to Play the Guitar for Dummies, etc. is a relatively quick thing to make that can greatly affect someone's reading of a story.
Anyways that's enough blabbering from me, nice job so far keep it up!