Do Not Disturb

I began this project by gathering references for all of the different objects in the scene and setting up my camera to match the perspective of the concept. Then, I spent my first week focused on blocking out all of the main shapes. Early on, I realized that lighting would be a crucial component in making this scene come to life (and quite challenging!) so during this first week, I also decided to do a quick colour blockout and set up my main light sources. 

During the second and third week of this project, I focused on detailing my scene, sculpting objects such as the dragon, bricks, floor tiles, bread, and blanket in Mudbox, and retopologizing these sculpted objects back in Maya. This stage of the project definitely took the longest, and involved a lot of back and forth between Mudbox and Maya, but I learned a lot! I then moved on to UVing and began texturing in Mari. To reduce the amount of bricks and floor tiles I needed to sculpt, I decided to just sculpt the bricks/tiles that had significant damage in the concept, and then a handful of less obvious ones that I could repeat to fill up the rest of the wall/floor. Then, I used a different UV set to add in the broader colour variation and stains on the wall seen in the concept. 

As the goal of this project was to match the concept as closely as possible, I knew it was unlikely that I would be able to maintain the realism of the scene; however, I still wanted the different models to make sense in terms of size, placement and shape from all angles in case I decided to render the scene from different angles. As a result, I decided to change a couple of things in the concept, such as the back foot of the dragon, as I could not find a way to make the concept make sense in terms of physiology (yes, dragons are not real, however, I figure their back foot would not be backwards:)). In hindsight, perhaps it would have been better to just focus on matching the concept for this project, however, finding the balance between the concept and real world references was good practice for future projects.

At first, I tried to texture and shade the models based on real world references; however, I quickly realized that I would not be able to match the highlights or colours in the concept by abiding by rules of realism, so I decided to begin painting in highlights to my textures. Also, I ended up relying on light linking quite a bit to match the concept’s lighting as closely as possible. I love the way all of the objects in the concept are composed of so many different colours and shades and felt as though that artistic touch was missing from my initial texturing pass, so I decided to go back and blend in more colours.

I ended up spending an extra week polishing my scene with the final stage of the project involving some colour grading in Photoshop; then it was time to hand it in! It was a challenge, but I really enjoyed working on this project, and am very excited to keep learning and creating. Thank you for taking the time to stop by!