Sketchbook: BioLumi
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Hello World
To introduce myself currently a student in my final year of animation school. My current career goal is to get a job as an environment artist. I also have always wanted to learn how draw.
During the school year I have been going to class an hour early everyday to sketch, but I found that I was ingraining bad habits without knowing it. I'm hoping critiques will solve this. If I graduate not having learned drawing fundimentals I might go to an atelier over summer.
My current 3d work
My current 2d work
Current skills I need to learn
For 3D
I am in the process of developing a photogrammetric workflow including specific models tiling textures and zbrush alphas. I can now create the individual models without much challenge, but I run into problems with baking displacement, and creating tiling surfaces. I need to flatten the geo in zbrush some how before baking.
At work I am developing a foliage workflow. We're working in speedtree and I can import those models into maya. Right now I use a paint geometry script to populate environments with proxy geo and then I use replace object to add the final trees. I think there is a better more procedural workflow. We're working in maya 2015 so mash isn't an option.
For Drawing
I became discouraged after I saw my hard plateau and stopped. At the time I was studying with a combo of direct copying from andrew loomis and drawing each principal. I would draw several images until I understood what he was describing. This worked well in the beginning, but I couldn't remember any of the anatomy, it also made my work extremely stiff. It's like I couldn't enter the flow state when studying this way. I also have issues with art blocks.
So my next attempt to learn will be to watch timelapses and copy the technique, but not the subject matter. I'm hoping this will show me how to incorporate technical knowledge without losing flow.
Replies
The second one is good, texturing is fantastic, the rocks on the ground stand out a bit to much due to the bright color. But looks great, but there is little variation so you dont know what you should be looking at, I personally would get rid of the tree's in the middle right and place an interesting object back there such as a mountain (I believe there might be one already but the tree's block the view). Also be careful with the camera position relative to other objects, in the real world you never find a situation where all the objects star right in front of you. Placing an object like a fern close to the camera with blur can help blend the viewers perspective and draw them into the scene
The third looks fantastic, your follow-up helps a lot with volumetrics although there's too much contrast with it, try adding a lot more fog so the furthest mountain is blurred. While bumping up the brightness of the shadows. Perhaps try using a HDRI at dusk (bright oranges and deep blue. The sudden stop of the cloud looks quite unnatural as well
Your 2D work is significantly better with composition, color and lighting. The timer's perspective skew makes people feel uneasy the further you tilt it, it works well in that scene but be careful otherwise you lose focus on the content as the uneasiness overshadows what you are trying to convey
For environment population look into Forest pack pro
Those sketches are fantastic, I could easily see an amazing museum rendered piece from that to show off modelling, texturing and lighting skills mostly (with ability to add in muscles and skin if desired). https://www.artstation.com/artwork/A0evo here is a great example of something similar if