Project 4550: Superheroes

Over the last 6 weeks of our first semester, we were working on a project called 4550. The task was to design a superhero character and create a 2D killershot image that we would later create into a 3D image. Our style guide was Pocoyo, though we moved a bit away from that as the project went on.

DESIGN
Teacher: Luis Cook
The first week was spent designing our characters, and coming up with a good background story and setting for them. We then created our killershot images based on our ideas, and made some turnaround sketches of our characters that we could model after. My character is a young teenage girl called Amber, whose power is to turn into pure energy. Her superhero name is Shooting Star.

3D MODELING
Teacher: Leigh Russel
The next 3 weeks were spent modeling, UV mapping and rigging our characters, so that we could pose them as we wanted. All work was done in Maya.

LIGHTING AND TEXTURING
Teacher: Bo Mathorne
The last 2 weeks we worked on texturing, lighting and rendering, something I enjoyed very much. Compositing was done in After Effects and Photoshop CS6. The final result ended up looking like this.

Overall, I've enjoyed the project very much, despite technical difficulties sometimes during the process. I have learned a lot, and I look forward to see how much I've improved by the time we get our next big project.

First 3D project - Maya

I finally got to try my hands at 3D modelling, and I thoroughly enjoy it. It is of course very techical and new to me, but still it makes a lot of sense once you get it. I spent 4 days on this project, creating a diorama of a small environment. The sky was added later with Photoshop.

 

 

 

Date completed: October 12, 2012.

Teacher: Bo Mathorne.

Design and construction

Assignment from the design week. Our task was to create an environment with a character, and the subject was Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. We were allowed to use black, white and 2 shades of gray. The goal was to use the design elements we had learned that week to create a spesific mood in the picture. It took about a day to complete.

 

Completed: September 28, 2012.

 

The next piece is from the second week, where we had construction and rendering. Again the task was to create an environment, and we were encouraged to use a lot of perspective. I created a morbid Gargoyle Temple that is being visited by a group of happy Japanese tourists, and I had a lot of fun playing around with the contrasting themes. Finished in about 2 days.

 

Completed: October 5, 2012.

Teacher: Lawrence Marvit

Character design

Character design week, where we were going to design a character for a children's story, and make it into a maquette. I decided to design a fox character.

 

Process:

 



 

 Final maquette:

 

 

Completed: September 18, 2012.

Teacher: Julia Bracegirdle

Photoshop & After Effects

Photoshop/After Effects assignment, where the task was to make a panning background. It was a great way to get to know After Effects.

Teacher: Bo Mathorne.
Completed: September 21, 2012.

Still image from the video: