Journey of Art
This submission is a summary of the problems I've encountered & the solutions I found along the way making this project. Hi I'm Alek, I'm a rookie and this is the start of my journey into CG. :)
The Carnival
concept by Kate Pellerin (@poopikat)
The Process
I have decided that for this project I'm going to include the art tools and make it seem like the artwork is coming to life.
1st Problem:
How am I going to translate depth of this image?
Does the portal I'm imagining going in or coming out?
Solution:
I decided to work with I can for now. So first of all, the scale. I modeled the art tools first. I choose to make the x-axis the flat surface so I can work with the camera not looking down.
At the initial blocking stage I thought, let's put the scene behind the paper for now. I think I'll figure something out in the composition stage.
2nd Problem:
Scene relationships.
How far and how big each objects are in relation with each other?
Solution:
Now I do have an advantage, thankfully I was just camera matching the whole frame. But I still have to find the right balance of the scale & spacing of each individual piece because they all relate to each other. With every adjustment, sometimes you create distortions on the objects on this side, sometimes objects on the other side make awkward clipping or collision, & etc...
So what I did was to take the stairs as my main reference for depth because of how it goes along all the way to the back. But what about the width of each individual steps? I tried to make the child's shoe size as reference for that, & it worked pretty well.
It may not be perfect but, it just have to work.
3rd Problem:
Efficiency
As much as I'd love to pour hours and hours of love into this piece but, there is a deadline to meet.
Solution:
Around this time I'm at the polishing stage. With every little step along the process comes endless more questions, decisions. Should I make this / that into one object or separate?
If you can see the pumpkin on the left side from the image above, there is somehow a wooden frame that holds the lantern inside. Modelling this manually became such a mess and time consuming, even for the topology, and unwrapping its UV. So when I worked on the bigger pumpkin on the right side. I choose to use boolean, even though I am not familiar with it. I decided to try, and I'm very glad I did! Sometimes using tools you're not familiar with is the solution. Remember, it just have to work, specially efficiently.
4th Problem:
More "how"s
Solutions:
From the images above sculpting the curves will be the efficient way, but the problem is there doesn't seem to be a way to camera match in Mudbox, and I only know how to use Mudbox.
I have to keep reminding myself, I'm not engineering something for industrial purpose. This is Art, there will be imperfections. "You just have to reach that line, and move on.", paraphrase from my Foundation Term's Supervisor at Think Tank.
I gotta lay the foundations first, and be not afraid to come back later to make adjustments. Be not afraid to go back and forth.
5th Problem:
Fear
Solution:
By this time I have pretty much modeled everything I can see from the concept. But there is still one I haven't started at all, the Child (except the block shapes & shoes). Everything is pretty much polished at this point but the main subject of the scene still isn't there and I'm running out of time. I still wanted to work on the grasses and mushrooms which are all made by the same shape, just resized and rotated. But I'm still afraid to touch the very important part of the scene. I don't know what kind of anxiety this is, but I've struggled with this for so long. I'm sure other artists are too. I should be doing the texturing at this point but, I'm still getting the courage of starting on the subject.
I came to the point where there's nothing left to do but to just do it. I just told myself, I'm still learning, I'm a rookie. This is just my first big project. Many more scary projects will come. Come on Alek! Just keep trying, just keep growing. I may not be good at it now, but trying is surely one good thing I can do right now.
So I made 2 backup copies of the whole project. And go and begin the mess!
6th Problem:
UV
Solution:
I took this one so much for granted. I thought it'll be easy, I thought It'll be quick. But, opening everything up in Mari in time for texturing... every little mistakes came to light one by one.
This is something that experience really play a big role. You have to know when to separate things or combine them.
Also, there will be back & forth between pipelines so it was really huge huge mistake that I keep making things so perfect before moving on to the next process.
There is something called MVP (minimum viable product), you just need something workable with. Because there will always be revisions, there will always be updates. Even for art that never ends. Even for art also needs to grow. It doesn't come out one perfectly complete thing over another.
7th Problem:
The fun part
Solution:
Yes this is a problem. When time has come for the Look Development stage, I have no more spare time to play & experiment with the most enjoyable part for me. But this is still good opportunity. Since this stage is what I enjoy the most, even if it is in the least of the things I know in CG, I can grind for more hours here without getting tired, figuratively. This is going to be unhealthy physically, but I need to regain that mental & emotional energy from the past few weeks.
Remember to also blink, stand-up & stretch. :)
More problems. No more problems.
Solution:
There are a lot more problems I've encountered that I haven't talked about.
And there are a lot more problems even in the rendering stage for me to list. But they're basically the same thing. All wrong things you've brushed off before will also reflect here. But this time my confidence is back, my momentum is back. I can go back and forth, do quick edits, render break, and again.
I'm also not afraid to try out new tools I've never touched before like XGen. What they say about it crashing a lot no longer scares me. This time I'm making Even dual copies to another folder, & also another drive of my project. So no amount of crashes, and mess I personally created for myself scares me. I can always go back. :) And this time knowing better.
And this momentum really revealed a lot of more ways I could've tackled every step of the project more efficiently. The choice of whether I should just use the tool I'm familiar with or try out new ones.
Maybe this is what it means to be a CG artist.
Every step to make a choice of efficiency, quality, priorities, & even personal health.
There are a lot of ways to do one thing.
Many solutions to a problem.
Even a lot of tools you haven't touched before just for whatever you need.
We keep learning.
And I just started learning.
Before, I can only model hard surface at blender.
I didn't imagine to have come this far in just 4 months! So I wanna say a huge huge super special thanks to my Supervisor for the guidance, & friends at Think Tank for their support, and to my family for giving me their encouragement and strength.
Thank you very much for your time. I hope you enjoyed reading. ^^
Comments (2)