We were asked to attend a brief photopgrahy session for this project. During this photography lesson we were taught the areas of a face that can be important to photograph to use later during the construction of a digital 3d model in mudbox.

I found this session not overly important but it did help me understand areas i can take close up photos that i can use in mudbox when creating digital work. I have a photography A2 level and i understand the formal elements and key elements of photography and digital photography.

We also had to take reference images of our parter during this session. This was to enable us to keep a image of both the front and side of our parter to look at during the digital modelling process. To make this easier for us we were given a backdrop and a piece of string to use to level the eyes of both photos.

I had to ask my partner to sit, and ask two classmates to move the string inline to my partners eye's while i made sure it was in line through the lens of the camera. Once this was done i could take a photo, then the partner would move to a size view and i could then take a photo again.

There was a problem with taking these photos at that was that there was a shadow caused by the lighting in the room and the flash going off. This shadow would have to be removed before getting a good reference photo. Luckily we could remove this in photoshop and for this we were given a brief introduction into photoshop.

After this Photography lesson we had a brief introduction into the uses of photoshop. We were shown how to use the basic tools to help edit and advance our photos. Luckily i have used photoshop before hand so i was able to pick up most of the tutorials easy.

To remove the shadow in my images what i had to do was to highlight the shadow i wanted to remove using the magnetic lasso tool and then create a layer mask. once this was done i could remove the shadow. With the shadow removed i had to cover the white gap. i used the Clone tool to colour the background into the area that had been removed. i had to do this with both images. after i then changed the levels of both images to make the images look better and show more detail. I used the Ruler to then make the images inline with each other. then i was able to crop the images to the same size ready for later use.

Here are my photoshopped images

These images are of the final maquette i made of my parters face. unfortunately i believe that i was unsuccessful and creating a good maquette that ported my partners face. i think this is because i tried to create the facial features on my first attempted. I believe that the head shape i created fits perfectly.

My next steps will be to create another maquette later on in the project and see if work with moquettes and digital work will help me model better.

Looking at digital 3D modelling using the software mudbox. In this i will be looking at how to digital sculpt characters as well using digital photography to help digital modelling. digital colouring and texturing to give my digital 3d model colour and realisitisity.

In my brief it stated that i have to create my own maquette using clay. The model/character i have to create is the head of a partner i choose. To do this task there was a couple of things that i had to collect and do before i could start on the making of my own maquette.

I chose my partner and took some digital photos as a reference to go by when i start creating my Maquette. These are some of the images i took for refecnce whislt making the maquette:




I also was able to collect the materials for the maquette. These consided of clay, sluping tools, stand and a polystarein ball.

For the stand and clay pictured here:


I had to take a tutorial in the woodwork shop. They took us around the shop and explained various tools and heath and safety regulations. Lucky most of wood was pepared and this left me to drill a hole in the center of the base. after this had been done i had to glue in place a rod that would hold the maquette. I didn't expect myself to be using wood and large tools in the games design course any time but after looking at maquettes and how useful they can be for character design and helping with art work this might be something i would have to do many more times during my course.

Maquette
Maquette is fence for 'scale model' a maquette is a small scale model that can be either a sstructor or a sculptor. A Maquette is used as a basic concept for many areas of artistic subjects. The principle is that you build a small model of what you want to achieve to understand a basic understanding of 3d form of what you want to create. It is a prototype for areas of delepment in media.

Mainly a maquette is a sculpture of someones head, this allows the artist to view a character from many different angles from the prototype and see what adjustments might need to be made later. It also acts as a way of seeing new angles and experiencing depth.

They can be a good way of a group of designers to come together to discuss aspects in a visual manor. Its also a cheap and easy way of creating a

This is a maquette from the popular animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire. This film was created in 2001 by disney. This film was a 2D animated film, but the use of 3D maquettes was important to the design and development of the film. you can see the detail in which maquettes can have as well as the character that can be created. The 3D maquette allows for the 2d artists to see different views of a character and helps them see how they can draw different perspectives while keeping the character looking realistic and the same from the different perspectives.


Picture: Vinny Santorini Maquette, 2000, Image referenced from:
http://www.digitalmediafx.com/Maquettes/VinnyMaquette.html

Wikipedia, Information dated 2009, Maquette, available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquette

Introduction

Monday 1st February
We received a brief today about what our next projects will be on. During the day we spend most of the day in our groups researching an area of 3d concepts. My group had the task of collecting 5 facts about Digital sculpting. Although this task wasn't the best way of learning what we need to know as an introduction it did give us a bit of an insight to the details of 3D sculpting.
We had to display our work in front of the other groups of the end of the day were we ourselves listened to there research. This gave us an overall basic understand of 3D concepts.

My next task is to create a clay proportionally accurate maquette of a colleague's head. This task means that i will have to gather the appropriate items to create the Maquette. This would include me having to find a colleague to model, finding an appropriate clay to use, find or make a stand for the clay model, also to take evidence and referencing photos.

im looking forward to this task because it will introduce me into sculpting and learning about head proportions and facial details. It would also help to practise practical work and working on a new medium. My self deadline for this task is Thursday 4th February