The 5%

I believe this is the first bit of 3D that I've put up here, hopefully not the last.
This project was to find an interesting old building and model it I choose the "XY" building in the town centre:

This project was set over 3 weeks and it was a pain in the ass  challenge to do, for a variety of reasons. The fact that all of the reference photos initially took were in awkward perspectives  meant they weren't ideal for texturing, or reference in general. Going back to retake these photographs I realised that there was actually no way I could position myself to get rid of this perspective, so I had to suck it up and just adjust the heck out them, if I wanted any kind of decent texturing.

So there was that.

There was also the fact that my model was terribly flat. you see there are windows on this building, there are no windows on my bare model, I thought the textures would take care of that part, see above issues with the texturing.

I also spent the first week trying to model this building:

which quickly just became dull to me. the individual aspect of this building appealed to me, but the building as a whole, not so much.

But the biggest issue I found was just staying motivated. Because I don't really know what I'm aiming for. Since I'm fairly new to 3DS Max I have no idea what "good" looks like. I know what good looks like in the general sense, as my aim was to make a realistic model of the XY, but I had no idea how close I could get to that within the specification without just doing it. So I have what I like to call "It'll looks crap until it's finished" syndrome where 95% of the time I look at my work and think: "Oh God, this is so terrible what was I thinking? why am I still doing this? what am I even doing?" With the 5%of my thinking at the end being: "Ok this works." So it's really just powering through that 95% until I can make sense of it all.

With this model the 5% came after I added lights, placed my model on a plane and rendered it out.

Ok this works..

There are of course issues with the finished model, and things I would add, but I am pretty happy with how this turned out in the end, and glad that I actually made it to the 5% Stage of thinking, instead of uninstalling Max and curling up in a corner somewhere.

On a final note, when researching this building, I found out it was a night club. Completely ruined it for me.

Employability Week

"I always say that the two secrets to success in animation are Do great work and be great to work with.”
 (Chris Oatley: Former character designer and visual development Artist at DisneyToon Studios)

Though I do not plan to be an animator I feel the advice still stands in game art. This week was loosely dedicated to employ ability  and  honestly I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to that. I don't know where I'm going, or even what my options are. My goal is to finish the course and get a job after it but I don't know the specifics of what it really takes to get into the gaming industry, or even what I want to do in there.

Though to be fair I've only been here for 6 weeks.

So right now I'll just keep it simple, and focus on doing great work, and being great to work with.


Chris Oatley, http://chrisoatley.com/    Portfolio website filled with awesome pod casts and articles.

Bradgate Park

Around a week ago I visited Bradgate Park to draw the landscape as part of my course and have returned there several times because Bradgate is well on its way to becoming one of my favourite places.

First off it was not at all what  I expected. In my previous experience “parks” are fairly small, small enough that you could walk the perimeter of them in under 10 minutes. so I expected a small sized park. This was not the case with Bradgate, a quick Google search has found that Bradgate park is over 850 acres . So yeah, bigger than what I expected. So once I was over the size of Bradgate, and my initial thoughts of  “ This reminds me of Skyrim. I'm blatantly in Skyrim right now” I got down to work.

This is exactly how my day went

Between the mini hikes, rain and 60 mph wind \the general public trying to subtlety look at what I was drawing or approaching me and making small talk. Or me worrying about other people kids climbing up the rocks with more bravery than I ever had at that age, and dogs that want to be everyone’s friend. Bradgate is a very chilled place to draw which is one of the reasons its becoming a favourite place of mine. Another reason is the rocks.

Yep, the rocks.

I loved the rocks here because looking through the camera lens  at the right angle they turn into A scale model of a whole environment. Which is pretty awesome.

One final mention of my trips to Bradgate. Whilst hiking (ie adventuring) I saw a area of colour on the rocks, I initially thought that some kid of exotic fungi was growing out of the rock and I wanted to get a better look. To get to to this I had to trek across some marshy plants, I thought the ground was fairly even, it wasn't and I sunk quite a bit, but I did manage to get closer. Upon closer inspection the colour that caught my eye was actually a memorial of flowers, though my pictures don't do it justice it was a very well placed simple memorial and it's something I want to revisit .

Here's some of the work produced from this trip

A Begining of Sorts

I’m going to just go out here and say I am terrible at written introductions, so if you’d like to humour me for a moment  imagine that I have just approached you, shaken your hand firmly and said “Hi nice to meet you, my name’s Sarah Wright”and then disappeared into the night. Awesome. Now that that’s out of the way, let the rambling commence.

Putting in a bit more background to this blog, my name is Sarah Wright and I’ve recently enrolled in the Game Art Design course at De Montfort University in Leicester. I come from a small town in Suffolk which I have lived in all of my life. I love creating and designing and telling stories, that’s why I applied for game design and that’s what keeps me doing what I’m doing right now because I could not imagine myself doing anything else.  I’m coming into this course from a fine art and product design background; neither of those required 3D modelling. This course is around 40% 3D modelling, so that’s going to be a learning curve and a half (I am currently working on my first assignment Dalek_model_5, so stay tuned for that.) I’m not sure what’s going to happen during the coming weeks, months and years here just that they’re going to happen, so let’s do this, and let’s do this well.

To wrap things up I’m going to talk about the name of this blog, because I feel like some explanation is needed. Before I left home I talked to my Granddad over the phone about my course, and being nervous about moving away. The first thing he did was put things into perspective for me. He and my grandmother moved all the way from Jamaica to England so my father (and eventually I) could be born here. I’ve moved 2 ½ hours from home. So perspective. He also told me that everyone on this earth is on a journey. We are all also pushing a rock in front of us, some may be ahead of you, some behind, some could have taken the left path instead of going straight ahead, but we all have the same rock. Our destinations aren't the same (if we even have them), or our paths, or who we travel with. It’s just the rock. And I like that way of thinking, rather than look at those in front and think they’re carrying a smaller rock, and that’s the reason for their success, it’s still the same rock, and if they can get where they are with their rock, I can get there with mine. Hence the name of this blog, as the next three years is going to be one hell of a push.