What if Metropolis - colourcomp!

I added some more shapes that would be buildings and I'm really starting to like the idea with the yellow sky.

The What If Metropolis - Colourcomps

After a one on one with Jordan this afternoon I tried to follow his guidance to make some colour comps.

This is my original image (WIP )and Jordan was worried that without colour comps I would get lost in detail and not portray Kandinsky's style properly. We took thumbnail 35 and drew on top and around it and  in 3 Jordan showed me what he means and 4 is my idea of what that would look like. He also told me that I have to make sure that I keep leaving brush strokes visible as that is one of Kandinsky's traits so I will work on that. I am very happy that I can have a yellow sky instead of being bound to a blue one as it would go so much better with the over all mood.

Idea for Concept Art

This sketch is an idea for the layout of part of my city, I have scanned it in and started colouring it in with the help of the lasso tool as well and my biggest problem is that three people had a look at it and the first response was "cute" .... I will upload the coloured design when it has more to it than three buildings! But may have to overthink stuffs if it keeps getting called cute.

But I think the scene would work as the foreground is water which runs under the bridge (not defined yet) and there is a hill in the background which holds a big part of the city and conceals the rest. As hills and rivers are featured in many of Kandinsky's environment paintings I feel that he would build his city around those two factors.

Maya UV Maps Tutorial

I have just finished the Maya tutorial about UV Maps which will be very useful for the "What If Metropolis" project as Kandinsky's work will need lots of different textures. I found it quite easy to follow the tutorial and finished within a reasonable time frame, just sometimes the different versions of Maya throw me off a little.

Idea for animation

Today I scanned in the frames I have done for my Zeotrope animation so far and played them back at 24fps. The video starts with a present jumping into the frame, turning into a snowman who loses his head and picks it back up and turns back to the present which jumps out of the frame again. after seeing the loop animation a few times I am positive that there is too much action for one second so I will concentrate on the snowman scene and make sure that works well as a nice loop. If I have enough time I might do the present scene as a little bonus, as this was my first idea and I still quite like it, but I think the snowman is a more interesting animation!

Maya Common Shaders

In the common shaders Maya tutorial we had a look at how to create different materials like chrome, glass, glow, gold, inner glow, matt ceramic, plastic and silver by changing the specular shading settings and using environment textures --> environment chrome.

Maya Old Alley: Lamp and Crate!

I finished modeling the lamp and the crate today with the bevel tool giving me headaches but now I use fraction not offset with (hopefully) the same results!