Monolith Development

Creating the monolith was a challenge. Many previous iterations of the obelisk took on a column form. I however wanted to make the monolith look artificial out show a off world architectural style.

Monolith Mood Board

Location Sketches

The above image shows my thoughts about the placement of the monolith as well a rough floor plan of one of the environment I have planned for the comic.

Monolith Sketch

I was eager to avoid the generic round stone or Pyramid top square shaped column approach that were made. However  wanted to integrate curved and angled elements to my final design. I liked the idea of Dead Space's Marker and I even considered making it look a bit like that. I designed the monolith before for a previous project but that version resemble more of the dark portal from Warcraft instead of an obelisk.

Original Monolith from Spatial Constructs project

 Perspective Grid 

Grayscale Illustration of the Monolith

I wanted the final iteration for the monolith to show curved angles and they helped connect with teh organic creatures and appeared like a fish's tail. In addition, I have been slowly making changes to the monolith's design and determining which iteration is the best approach. I like the fish tail motif because it has a native and worldly appearance.

Rough illustrations of the main protagonist encountering the Monolith at the bottom of the chasm.

Here is a colour test to see if the combination of blue, yellow and green can work as a suitable colour scheme for this object.

Gray Scale Iterations

Final Iterations for the Monolith object

To fit the mood of the development work I applied the same brown crumbled up paper art style.

 I also create some hieroglyphs drawings

Early Hieroglyph Sketches

Hieroglyph Iterations

 These are iterations of these drawings are meant to appear on the monolith. I was thinking about allowing the front to show the main hieroglyphs of father Dagon killing a blue whale. I have chosen a blue whale because it helps emphases the creatures' large scale.I also found that hieroglyph drawings were quite difficult to draw with out including perspective.

Monolith Model Sheet

However I felt that there should be more space on the front for the monolith. This may lead to me extruding the model to appear wide enough for the hieroglyph markings to appear.

Revised Monolith Model sheet

Monolith Moodboard Accessed on 24/10/15

http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/077/785/i02/monolith-1.jpg?1439493575
http://www.unmotivating.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/A-Sandstone-Monolith-in-the-Black-Sea.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61bIvQ8YNSL._SX425_.jpg
http://www.konbini.com/en/files/2015/08/71b816cf7dd2bebf1eed94becbe972ac-810x539.jpg
http://www.georgefox.edu/college-admissions/located/slideshow/oregon/or-haystackRock-l.jpg
http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/174552/Crystal_monoliths.jpg
https://usoksglobal.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/moonwatcher.jpg
http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/places-you-wont-believe-actually-exist#.rybQjD13Z
http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Low-Angle-View-of-a-Carved-Column-the-Monolith-Gustav-Vigeland-Sculpture-Park-Frogner-Park-Posters_i8285465_.htm
http://www.specialart.ch/galleries/monolith/monolith_2.jpg
http://tuttocartoni.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/schwarzenegger-incontra-lovecraft-dagon.html

Page 1 Development Week 2

I began work on producing the first page. To make the environments, I decided to produce minor 3D objects in Maya 2014 to help get an idea of the perspective.

3D Screenshots of the Street.

Here is how the scene was going to be played out. On the ground  there would be a newspaper which was going to be used to establish the setting.

Screenshot of line art over 3D model

I originally had an idea to begin with a screenshots for an alternate opening shot.

3D Screenshots

I eventually found a way to highlight edges in a vector style  which helps with establishing the traits for the background to help make it resemble line art.

3D Screenshots with vector lines applied 

I then took the screenshots and then painted over them in Photoshop. Here the first iteration of the first page featuring the 3D background. The bottom panel was left as an abstract element because I was not sure what it was going to be.

Rough sketch with screenshots

This was an alternate opening where the first panel starts out as a close up. In each panel after the first one, the camera pans out and we see more that the story begins in a urban environment.

Line Art of Page 1

Supervisor Meeting Week 2

I spoke to Brian in regards to what I was wanting in this comic. He told me that I should consider revising the specific architecture. I had a habit of drawing buildings with the triangular roofs whereas america buildings do not share this. He even suggested that I try and use google maps from the street view as a way to get a picture of what it could be like to be actually there. I made some further adjustments by revising American apartment buildings.

http://www.steinerag.com/flw/Artifact%20Pages/Chicago.htm
http://mycentralnewyork.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/deco-delights-or-mostly-modern-chaumont.html

Modified Establish Shot

Although this is still needing further development it looks more affiliated with America architecture.

Reference

Greenway, T., Morse, S., Hargreaves, J., Perrins, C. and Tilbury, R. ed., (2011). Photoshop for 3d artists v1. 1st ed. Worcester: 3D Total Publishing, pp.157-173.

Semester 2 Week 1- First Day Back

It was great to catch up with my fellow fourth years as well as speak with my supervisor after the holidays. I asked him a few things about the project such as how I could rearrange the dissertation's structure and if I should consider following the structure of my research proposal. The good thing is I have made good progress over the holidays but not as much as I hoped. After my talk with Brian, I began making simple 3D objects that I could use in my comic as background objects. While I am not happy with the way the 3D sticks out and that I am only using these assets as a way to be more efficient in the comic production pipeline. I took some photos of the 3D assets, went into the render settings and applied an edge line to the renders via the Maya vector engine.
I used the reference material I gathered for the moodboards to help with getting the right shapes for the models. The visual documents I produced also helped with the construction of the models.

Screenshots of Low Poly 3D Environment

Here is another tutorial that I found which allows for line art but in a different way.

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JunxueLi/20130902/199419/2D_Art_Quick_Manual_for_rendering_line_art_in_Maya.php