March's Sketchbook

I am developing shaders at the moment.

These are examples of some texturing tweaking of the clothing and sub surface scattering shader for Vaiva’s face.

Vaivas Body Colour Map

A little nuance.. I ran out of space for photos on blogger, so from now on I'm joinin photo bucket.
Vaiva's body colour is almost done. I'm thinking to revisit the top and match it to skirt's colour because it doesn't seem to blend that well now.



In couple of next days I'll be developing surface shaders .

Vaiva's Texturing Progress: The Head

Friday I have started texturing Vaiva. The head was challenging in that every storke was either working or not. Head's texturing so far is purely a colour map, meaning surface shaders are not yet created. It is a common aproach I take, after work placement in picassopictures, where purely colour map had to look as if it had many layering to it. So  I move  to creating surface shaders only after thecolour pass looks as good as possible.

Original Concept:

What I found extremely helpful was James Gorney's face colour zone scheme:

 I've looked at some eye shading tutorials. It went through a detailed process in photoshop and maya. 

The rest of the body as well as surface shaders ,  I suppose,  will come along over next week :]

Details and Finessing of Vaiva's Model

Monday onwards, I was defining the character to its details. I have added amber chest, interior of the mouth, chicken feather part of the dress.

I have resolved body parts which needed great detail: chicken like feets, hair and face. 

In Mudbox I've created high rez meshes and imported those back to maya to extract normal maps.

Not without a reason many sculptors noted that essential mesh doesn't take too Long to build up, but the fine detail takes 10 times longer.But modelling, I believe is now finished and I'll  work now on texturing (!)

My First Fashion Shoot in i-D Magazine’s Style: Doppel Identities

The inspiration for aesthetics came from magazine i-D, analysis of which was delivered here. The theme for fashion shoot  I chose was double identities. Or if in more particular, the glamour identity pulled over. The beauty and the fake of it. The manikin qualities overwrighting  organity.   

 

 

 

 

 I was responsible for art direction, photographing and postproduction . The mask is also made from before.

One soft light and white colorama was mainly used . Images were aestheticaly postproduced for atmospherical and mood change. 

It was an amazing experience to be a hptographer to find the aesthetics, find the  model, the props etc. By the end of the shoot I was really exhausted to my surprise.

Old Man's Mood Studies

The life drawing gets entertaining. We are asked to use different mediums and expressive techniques to convey an emotion , a state or mood. This time it was narcoleptic, melancholic, sneaky and pompous.

CAPS: Research for Fashion Photoshoot: i-D

 The Magazine:

i-D is a British magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art, youth culture and

 different issues around the central theme of identity. i-D was founded by

designer and former Vogue art director Terry Jones in 1980. Over the years the

magazine evolved into a mature glossy but it has kept street style and youth

central to every issue.

 

Tipped on its side, the "i-D" typographic logo reveals a winking smiley. Most issues of i-D magazine have featured a winking cover model.

The magazine is known for its innovative photography and typography, and over the years established a reputation as a training ground for fresh talent. The magazine pioneered the hybrid style of documentary/ fashion photography called ‘The Straight Up’. At first, these were of punks and New Wave youth found on English streets and who were simply asked to stand against any nearby blank wall. The resulting pictures—the subjects facing the camera and seen from "top to toe"—are a vivid historical documentary photography archive, and have established the posed "straight up" as a valid style of documentary picture-making.

 

Photographers :

• Nick Knight,
• Wolfgang Tillmans,
• Juergen Teller,
• Terry Richardson,
• Ellen von Unwerth,
• Kayt Jones 

Analysis for Preperation:

The issues have developed but retained 'core mantra' : 'Originate, don't imitate'

Essentially it seems that there is a dominant light from one side and slightly from above, which is modeling the shadows. For shadows are gradient and soft, it must've been soft box light or beauty dish.  Also, face is lit the brightest, perhaps using white or golden reflectors.

The background is not overcomplicated, and grey or white colorama is used. Some pictures use ‘screen’ or postproduction techniques to partly obscure the image. Most of the times, models are dressed in bold clothing,often limited to black and white pallet. 

It can be noticed that the image is complimented with lots of geometrical shapes to tie the image together (For example a reflection of the mode on the wall, which reaches to the end of frame) and direct the eye of the viewer towards model’s face ( hand towards the face, décolleté as a frame for the face).

To keep the photo-shoot guided, I have gathered some pose references for the model from i-D magazine history images. 

 The pose references and Example images of i-D issue work as moodboards for the fashion shoot

To end the analysis, it seems that i-D’s shooting style and approach resembles that of Brassai’s : full of soft gradient light, tonal values. I’D’s photography quite often goes with desaturated or almost desaturated imagery.

 

  And one particular image of Edward Steichen:

CAPS: Product Shooting for Toys Brochure

Given the task to prepare several images for Toy company’s brochure had set particular challenges. It has to be visually engaging and appealing, and fit within commercial shooting standards.

 

To reach this , experimenting with product’s placement, lighting and techniques of postproduction was put into practice.

Lighting and placement:

For clean aesthetics and focused directing white colorama was chosen for the shoot. This has lead to a very ‘light’ , unencumbered images.

Placement of the product was put into a careful consideration for if the product was placed incorrectly, it  caused some  visual information loss. For example bear-toy and colorama had closely same tone and chroma values , therefore bear almost disappeared in images.

Donkey-toy was  to be used for contrasting.

 Another example was tricycle’s lamp: when facing studio lights directly they would bleach out any texture of the tricycles light bulb.

When Light angles and composition was set , this was the outcome:

For Lighting there was two lights used with one white reflector for softening of the shadows .

Postproduction:

Having reached 90% of the quality during the shoot, postproduction asked for minor tweaking of exposure, shadow intensity and colour tints. Some images benefited from slight increase of sharpness, clarity or noise values, for emphasizing fur on stuffed toy’s.

And the rest of images :

Vaivas Body Modeling Progress

It is nearly done and ready to be UVd and taken to Mudbox for fine details.

These stills are little bit dated, as I have talked to Alan and done some tweaks to her crown, face and general topology.

Nudes of March

This time the session was particularly interesting for we were asked to interpret an emotional state in different visual languages. So cool! there's an indication to what was the feeling on the corner of every image. Also, some 2min. poses at the end of the page.

Sketching out Vaiva's Body Model

Progress in modelling Vaiva's body. So far it is only a sketchy map out, with only hands being modelled to the fine detail.
This is helping me now to see how 2d designs translate in 3d. I see which areas need to be more punchy.

Detailed modelling is on its way.

Vaiva's Head Model Turnaround

Vaiva’s head model  consists of head mesh, hair and the crown.

There are hints of chicken-like anatomy in her facial features: elongated sharp nose, round big eyes. Also royal grace is another intention: long thin neck, small chin in an overall thin face, but at the same time her face doesn’t lack volume in cheekbones or the hair for contrast. With some of the asymmetry in her model it is aiming to break from the “tidy’ harmony, for the character is of a twisted kind.