Scene update

Carried on with the scene today:

I've desaturated the grass, sorted out the tree and made the rocks more papery. Also did a little paper cactus thing. These are just Maya printscreens because all the textures are still PSDs and won't render... Bah. More props next! Oh, and the layout of the scene isn't final in any way. It's a bit all over the place at the moment...

Cactus design by Papercraft Central (2009).
Full reference:

Papercraft Central (2009) Paper Model – Cactus Plant.

Available: http://www.papercraftcentral.net/2009/05/paper-model-cactus-plant/

Last accessed 23rd April 2013

A little update

Right, I've finished the lil' creatures. Hooray!

Here's the bear:

And its texture:

Bunnyhops:

Now, this is rendering oddly... See that line down the side of the ear? It's not supposed to be there. It's not in the texture and it doesn't show up in Maya. It just renders like that. :(

No idea what's going on there. Hmm. Anyway, here's the texture:

I've also started working on the scene. The animals now have a home as opposed to an empty Maya scene, and I've textured the hill:

I've made some TINY changes to the PDF, too. I was going to add some renders of the 3D models but I kind of like the creature concepts... While the models look quite polished the concepts are a little bit rough - in a good way - which seems to fit the presentation better.

Download the PDF here!

I want to finish the rest of the scene as soon as possible and then do some environment drawings. I need to figure out how to sort out that tree...Not a big fan of the blobby pink placeholder circles.

Texturing away

I've been in texturing mode all weekend and made some progress on both the bear and bunny:

 Both of them still need some little fixes, touchups and details, but they're getting there!

Will definitely have a look at the PDF next - just got distracted by the texturing... Again... :(

Texturing the teddy

This is slooowly coming together:

Triangulated with hard edges.

Soft edges. Not sure which one I like the most!

The UV map is a bit of a pain; I've ended up with lots of little edges all over the place that need to be matched up...Arrgh! Oh well. Hopefully I'll get there eventually...

Also going to take a second look at the A3 pages as soon as this lil' fella is done!

A3 pages

Here we go!

First pass done. I think. The presentation is made up of two A3 pages put together:

...but it can be divided up into two pages, too:

I might swap out some of the concept art for final renders once they're done. Seeing it like this I'm also not sure about the green background for the "Creatures" section, so I might change that riiiight now!

Sneak peek

Here's a little WIP screen of the A3 pages:

I want to create a really playful and bright infographic-inspired presentation with bold colours. I'm quite liking it so far!

I'm currently using Illustrator but will switch to InDesign once the final base layout is finished. The page is currently a little big bigger than two A3s, but once it's in InDesign I can set up a nice grid system and mess around with the layout. I'll also add some renders of the final models once I have some, and/or remove the backgrounds from the concept images.

This is really quite fun! It's like doing a scaled-down pitch document; lots of prettiness and nothing but the most important, high-level information. Me likey!

A stroke of genius

...I just had a look at those lovely low poly creatures and of course - those meshes are all triangulated! That's why they look so nice. (Well, that combined with the insane talent of their creators.)

...I think I like it!

And I almost forgot: he now has a little tail now, too.

I tried to make a more intricate tail, like in the concept below, but it just turned out looking messy and nasty and horrible. Simple is good.