100 days - Exhibited, and over for 2017!

Yus!  100 Days is now officially over for 2017...

In one way, its a relief since I can now just continue with the norm's of life without that 'must do 100 days' thought lingering in the back of my mind.   In another way, its also sad that it was a good way to enforce drawing practice - however it has left me with a habit to just do it so its worked out.

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100 days - 2017 edition

Foolishly, I figured I'd again take some time to do something creative for 100 days.  This time I've decided to keep it pretty much to one theme...  Caricatures and Comics... as its an area I've not spent a whole lot of time playing around in.

Where 100 days comes in useful is as a way to provide plenty of compulsory "practice" time.  When you have an audience (ie. the interweb) watching you, there's kinda this whole drive to not look lazy in front of the world. lol!

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Restoring the 2600 collection - one box at a time

I've been buying carts for my 2600 to increase my library lately...  However as expected over the years, most carts end up becoming loose and without boxes, manuals, etc.  While I don't mind that, for a collector, it would be great if there was some way to get those missing boxes and at least display those loose carts in all their original off-the-shelf glory...

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Retro bytes to PNG pixels with Python

After a long break from doing any retro game recreation in Python, I decided that since I had a few old personal game listings laying around from my ZX Speccy days that the idea of converting these to python could be fun at some later date.

However one thing the ZX Spectrum had that we didn't see on the ZX81 (with its lack of any real graphics capability) was user defined graphics, or UDG's as they were termed.

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Create retro-style text in illustrator.

For the logo that I needed for my 100 days project, I wanted a truly 80's vibe.  I love how easy it is to create an retro 80's chrome text effect with Illustrator.

In fact, I loved it so much I thought that I'd share how you can go about making one of these yourself.   I hope you enjoy this walk-through...

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Decided to do it... Again...

The 100 days project is back, in about 2 weeks time.  As I did in 2014 (given it didn't run in 2015) I've decided on yet another 80's themed challenge but this time leave it more open then a 3D image from an 80's 8-bit memory as was the case in 2014...

I've entitled it the "80's days challenge".  We'll see how it goes - and I'll post up anything I do that I think may be of interest here.

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Its not all about the 3D...

...but its something that not many feel they need.  And those are the traditional art skills - drawing, painting, sketching.  Yup, that's the stuff that so many graduate CG artists claim to not be very good at, and in all honesty you really don't need to be great at drawing or painting to produce good 3D artwork.

However what I feel (this is coming more from a personal perspective) is that taking time to learn, practice and grow these skills can benefit you and make your own 3D work even better.  I've been trying to instill this on my students, as well as other artists who don't feel its something that they would ever consider.

Because I love the idea of building up my skills with more then 3D related materials (I don't spend time actually practicing drawing), I decided I'd start doing this myself and take my own advice.

The 90's - a time when there was such a thing as 'free time' :)

Back in the 90's I loved drawing - I had no internet (or 3D software) so it wasn't hard to find time to do it.  So, for me, what are the benefits of drawing?

De-stressing

What a great way to relax those brain muscles!  My guess is that its to do with most 3D work containing a mix of not only creative, but technical skills.  Both sides of your brain tend to work hard - creating art, but operating technical software building complex meshes, shaders, lighting and textures.

One thing I find relaxes me, especially when my brain needs a break from marking student work or technical headaches with software, is to stop and do a little doodling...

brain-break!  Scrawl and doodle to get your brain back in order

Just scrawl stuff on a page, maybe coming back to it while sitting there working on stuff, and adding a scribble now and again.  Perhaps when one side lets go (the technical side) it causes the "chill out" effect?  I'm no neurologist, but it sounds like a (plausibly) good theory!

Seeing the world, rather then looking at it

I can look at reference for a shot, I can understand and interpret the details then utilize it to produce great renders of my own in 3D.  That's knowledge I can then use to produce more work.  However when I'm painting or drawing without the software tools I'm really seeing things in a new light (excuse the pun).

Seeing for me is being able to start to really understand what is happening in front of me at a deeper level.  What I find happens when I draw things is that I absorb and retain knowledge more.  Its like the difference between going to a seminar and listening to it, versus writing notes while hearing what is spoken - you just take more information in when you're interpreting it onto paper or through your wacom tablet.

Extending creativity.

Yup.  Drawing things can inspire other ideas that you may have not considered, and its definitely something that a lot of designers do with gesture drawings, silhouettes, thumbnails...  When I'm doodling, I find not only do I draw ideas and designs, I can visualize additional ideas based on the ideas I started with.  (Its that idea-within-an-idea inception effect).  I feel it has helped me a lot in unleashing a little more imagination to help me take things outside the box.

Help me Obi-Kev, you're my drawing hope...

Say that you're now inspired and going to practice drawing to grow those creative muscles and use them to produce amazing artwork...  Having something to actually draw is the first challenge!  For me, I always love doing rough doodles and scribbles when my brain needs an escape from the computer screen...

Here's a few things I do that may offer some options to consider.

Find a challenge - and embrace it

Ok - so I use twitter - its a great way to get real time news feeds from studios, artists, websites and more.  While looking about one day, I found this...  A drawing challenge where someone would throw up a random shape with a red dot, and challenge people to draw something containing the shape.

Two triangle shapes become knights helmets

Banana shape becomes space alien!

Occasionally they throw up a 'portrait' challenge too

Because of the timezone, usually a shape goes up in the afternoon or evening, and its that perfect time to pull out a pen and scrawl an idea on paper.  For these, I figured they would make for a great "10 min doodle challenge" if I could bash out a drawing in that short time.  Its a challenge to come up with a drawing inspired by the shape, but its lot of fun and fun encourages practice!

Life drawing

I've always told students how great life drawing would be to becoming an artist... But as much as I offer advice, I never took it until a month or two ago when one of my co-workers dragged me to one.  I went, music came on and out came the model...  And then everything just chilled out and was an immensely relaxing experience...

light and form

getting the perspective right can be challenge - but its good to be challenged

Sometimes its about just taking time working on one part

Unlike drawing from image reference, drawing from a real-life model is constantly changing as the model poses several times.  Life drawing isn't about amazing art (though some of the more established artists make you question that with their abilities), its about drawing what you see...  And in short time frames, you're forced to see pretty quickly.

Its likely that you've got a life drawing class somewhere near wherever you live.  If not, drawing from life (sit in a park, on the sidewalk, in the office or go to the zoo and look at animals) can be another way to do this...  Though don't creep people out by staring at them while you draw...  Animals at the zoo don't tend to complain, so they're a safer bet.

Painting fan art

Ok, so that subject can be a little controversial I know.  It brings up visions of kids copying pictures of anime characters.  However in this respect I decided a couple months back to start to practice digital painting (it is an area I never touched).  I needed something to paint - so I decided to choose to paint "fan art" portraits from some of my favorite people from history, TV, film or music.

I started looking at people from the early years of home computing that I admire, however a couple weeks ago I decided to paint characters from the show 'Halt and Catch Fire'.  Its a great drama based in the 80's computing era (starting to see a pattern emerging here).  Well worth watching, some great characters and interesting stories behind each of them.

Donna Clark - starts like this...

...and she ends like this

As I'm doing this, I start to see the finer details in the images I reference.  The folds and wrinkles and how the light brings them out...  The way that the skin tones change based on where the skin is thinner and how much of the sub-dermis colour comes through, the form of the head based on the skull and muscles in the face - as you paint you see the way light changes, and highlights the ridges and form.  I did the four main characters from the show...  You can see the full painted images on my Art station , Deviant art or Twitter.

All 4 paintings - compiled into a banner... Just cause...

Its not just helping me see light and shape, its also furthering my understanding of the way the anatomy works visually.

So...

What it really comes down to when you think about things, each of these drawing topics are about seeing - whether its seeing an image based on a shape, the form and detail from a real life model or again the form and detail from painting...  My brain is absorbing that thing that helps me grow as an artist.

But do you feel you are terrible at drawing, so you don't?

That's the problem - the vicious cycle of "I can't, so I won't".  To become better at drawing, you have to practice - and that means doing it.  If you never start or try, you never will.

Just start - and keep doing it.  My advice is to also date your drawings (no matter how bad) and look back on them every other month to watch how you're improving.  Seeing growth is a great motivator.  You'll come to a point where you wondered why you never started sooner.

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Whats more relaxing then painting?

Good question...  Well, how about painting iconic people from the 80's computing era!  As I had to teach some art and design skills the other week, I needed to prep up some digital painting skills as its not something I've ever really looked into doing.

Afterall - I've never really use my Wacom for more then painting texture maps for 3D models, or scribbling/doodling in Photoshop.  However after running the class (with thanks to my teaching side-kick Ken at work for his tips and guide on how to best deliver this) I enjoyed it so much that I felt I wanted to do more.  And of course being somewhat obsessed with the 80's mean't I knew what subject matter I would probably target...

Numero-Uno : Uncle Clive

Sir Clive Sinclair

OK, so surprisingly (I know its hard to believe) he's not really my uncle (though I'm pretty sure he's someones!)

He's a huge part of the 1980's computing era.  Sir Clive Sinclair - the man who invented the Sinclair ZX81 and ZX Spectrum.  Amazing machines, which made a huge impact on the home computing market and helped forge the gaming industry as well.  If you want to hear about just where it all fitted into the history of gaming, check out From bedrooms to billions.  Its a great doco!

This was done on a Sunday afternoon over a couple of hours - and I have to say just how much fun it was.  Very relaxing, gradually building up layer-upon-layer (which sounds a tad like a Sarah Lee Cheesecake commercial) and softly smudging the colours together.

Online Art supplies - there's more then Photoshop

I mostly work with Photoshop when it comes to making textures for spaceships, however I used MyPaint for this because of its more specialised brushes.  MyPaint is a great opensource digital art program.  What I like about it most is that its got a great brush engine.  Loads of flexibility and ways in which you can get brushes to behave.  Some change size based on velocity - which helps a lot if you find you have to work with a mouse (if you do, really, really consider getting a wacom tablet) yet want that more natural 'pen' stroke.

MyPaint - great tool!

Only real issue I have with MyPaint is that it can get quite laggy with high resolution work.  These paintings were no problem - however after exporting the images I realised that I've painted them fairly low res unfortunately.  Other than that I like that I can work full screen and operate it easily with a few easy to remember keyboard shortcuts (rather then rely on menus and tool bars).  Plus it has an infinite canvas.

Other options...

There are more great tools then MyPaint - I've toyed with a few others, and while I like them, I still find myself popping back to MyPaint...  If you're interested in a few options, there is a very similiar tool called Krita.  Krita is feature packed (a lot more then MyPaint), however it lacks an infinite canvas.  The concept of infinite canvas is really appealing and feels a lot less restrictive.

Krita - another great tool loaded with features

Note : I demonstrated Krita recently at a meetup I run each month, and it was fairly sluggish.  The delay between drawing a stroke on my Wacom and the brush catching up was pretty bad and really didn't impress anybody who was watching the demo.  Whether this was my PC (its a pretty hefty box with 32Gb, 256Gb SSD, core i7 and Quadro K4200) or the software, who knows...  Its a free download - I'd be tempted to recommend downloading it for yourself and trying it.

If its just doodling and sketching, then Mischief is an impressive tool.  Its got a hybrid vector approach to artwork (you can zoom in and out without seeing pixels at all). It also has an infinite canvas and very fluid response (literally never gets laggy from what I've experienced). Its that fluidity that impresses me the most.

Unlike the others, this is a commercial product.  There's a very cool free version (minus the oh-so-useful layers).  Its not as feature-packed as the others (basic sketching brushes mostly) but that's not a bad thing - it has the tools you need for drawing and removes the bloating which is likely why its so quick and clean to work with.

Its also quite cheap to upgrade (or just purchase)at US$25...  Well worth looking into if you love to sketch (and the idea of super-smooth line work thanks to its ingenious technology)

Michief - fast, fluid, minimalistic...  Awesome...

But - lets get back on topic.

I found that MyPaint has a great brush called smudge+paint - it does exactly what it says...  Based on the pressure of the stylus, it behaves very much like a chalk or soft pastels.  Hard pressure paints a solid colour, lighter pressure smudges things.

The general process blocking in areas of solid colour by pressing hard, then softly smudging them together couldn't be any easier.

MyPaint has a large library of awesome brushes to choose from!

There are also a large range of other brushes, though apart from smudge+paint, the only other brushes I needed were a splattering brush (course-bulk) which I mention later on and a simple pencil brush to sketch out the general illustration.

Numero-two-no : Jack Tramiel

Jack Tramiel was the founder of Commodore computers, a company who also greatly impacted the 80's computing market with machines such as the Commodore 64, VIC20, PET and Amiga.  Sadly he passed away in 2012, but of course his legacy still lives on.

He was a little more challenging to paint - mostly due to all the folds and wrinkles in his skin - but I learnt a lot about painting detail and shading from doing it, so it was well worth the effort.

Interestingly he had a lot of freckles on his forehead, which I managed to pull off just as easily using another of MyPaint's paint brushes mentioned previously - the course-bulk which produces a randomly splattered pattern as you paint.  I also used a very small sized one to add some subtle stubble around the mouth...

In fact, I actually used that same brush to add the small amount of speckled skin marks on Sir Clives head as well.

Like any piece of art, I could keep working on this - I realise that there were a lot of finer wrinkles on his skin such as the ones on his forehead, etc that I didn't put in.  However I like the softer look of the painting, so I'm pretty happy with the result.

The Process

I found the process of painting really easy to get in to.  A very rough sketch was made using the photograph as a reference.  I just need markers to position the details - but its the same for many artists.  Even if not laying out a sketch first, there is reference of some kind whether its a model, a photo or a personal doodle.  Of course, there's always those amazing artists that just have a feel for form and capable of creating something amazing from their imagination.  One day...

Placing that in a layer of its own, the reference photo to one side, I added a layer below the sketch and I just started to block in the colours in large areas.  The photo helped give me a guide to the colour tones I needed, and then it was down to a lot of painting and smudging to blend it into a final piece of artwork.

Sketch, paint, ta-daaaaaa!

Funnily I felt it always starts off looking rather 'bad' when you're just laying in the colours.  Nothing feels more embarrassing then having people look over your shoulder early and see something that has the appeal of a painting made by a pre-schooler with blobs of colour that look flat and splattered on the screen.

Once the key shades are in place that define the shapes in the sketch, I switch the sketch off and it becomes a hand painting process - observation of the reference and just painting in the lighting and tones by eye is really enjoyable.

Its all about seeing what's in front of you...

What I love so much about the process is that it helps get your creative side of the brain to take over, and then you start to really see what it is you're painting.  It clicks, and you get that epiphany where it all makes sense.

Back in the early 90's I decided to teach myself to portrait sketch.  Obviously it was easier back then when there were no distractions like Facebook... or the web in general!  What I'm loving about painting is that it brings back that thing I loved about pencil sketching - the way that your mind starts to see the detail...

1992 - yup, its me...  In glorious pencil

I'll definitely be doing more soon.  That satisfaction of finishing a piece of art that you feel proud of as well as the pure joy of sitting quietly and gradually throwing colours onto a virtual canvas is somewhat addictive...

So, who's next?

I've been considering keeping this 80's theme rolling and possibly including some of those unsung heroes who had an impact on the gaming industry back in the early 80's.  Carol Shaw (who wrote River Raid for the Atari 2600) is said to be the first female game programmer (or at least one of the first).   Dona Bailey who, along with Ed logg developed one of my arcade favorites, Centipede.

There are many name and faces behind the amazing games of the past that people just don't know about (or in many cases, care).  The hard part is the lack of decent high resolution photography for these people back in the past.  Of course I also love the well known icons as well - Wozniak, Miyamoto, Bushnell, etc

What I'll paint??  Well, I guess we'll just have to see what inspires me next...

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100 Days - Game Over...

Well, the 100 days challenge finished back in October, and I must say it does feel like a big weight has been lifted.  The live exhibition has been - compiled a small handful (around 9) slides of work for their projector (there was a limit to the physical space - a slide show was the next best thing).

It was a great event held at local art gallery Thievery studio back in October, loaded with visitors and some really amazing and varied work from many of the locals that took part in the event.

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800 bits - 27 days later...

I've made it 27 days so far - and I have to say I impress even myself in just how many small CG projects I've managed to pull out of my hat so far.  I thought its worth a short catch up on some of the things that I've done/used/etc to get me this far.

Before I do, I felt its worth also mentioning a fairly amusing comment I got from someone who spotted my work online.  They thought I'd been posting up photographs - and said that I should really make them look 'less real and more 3D' otherwise nobody would realise I was creating 3D images...

Its not often I will hear someone tell me that they think it looks too real and ask me to make it look more computer generated.  Too funny, but I know where they were coming from on an artistic direction.

"This is too real... Make it less real so its obvious that its fake"

Its all in the software

For this challenge I decided to use LightWave rather then Maya.  Originally I thought it could be a great challenge to pull this off with Maya (having taught Maya exclusively for the last 4 or so years) but knowing the amount of time that some areas of Maya's workflow take was enough to warrant going back to my roots (as it were).

There are also some tools and features that are just not found in Maya, and these would allow me to get what I wanted at the quality I wanted with the tight time frames of a daily project.

What took the most time?

In the last few images, a series of isometric-styled computer hardware renders, production time and rendering can be done in 1 to 1.5 hours.  That's because they are comprised of simplified iconic models with basic colour textures.

However for the first 20 or so, an average of 3 hours was normal with some of the more complex ones taking up to 5.  These I attempted to go for a more complex realistic visual, which is why the time was so vastly different to the more recent projects.

In general, my gut feeling is usually 10% modeling and 90% everything else.  In this case, modeling objects was more around 15%.  Where the most effort seemed to go was on the composition, lighting and rendering.  Surfacing didn't take as long (with fairly low amount of Photoshop effort required - but more about that later) for most things, however the amount of additional tweaking I would do while rendering was where this would increase.

Hmmm, deciding on an angle...  Tricky...

It takes a surprisingly long time to get that shot just right, and often the shot I had originally envisaged didn't look as great on screen once it was rendered - which meant a lot of adjusting and testing.  However this is the area where LightWave really shined...

Don't over-model...

The tip of the day - just model what you see in shot.  For instance in the first image I produced of a ZX81 I never modeled any of the sockets or insets of the machine because they weren't seen - and I simply positioned the cables to sit in the correct locations.

Another example here is a BBC computer where the image rendered was of the BBC logo in the top-right corner.  Did I need to model every key?  Nup...

Model what's seen, not what you think you might see...

Bumps, bumps, bumps...

A lot of 80's computers were built with plastics, and as we know, not all plastic surfaces are smooth and shiny.  This is where adding bumps to the surface helps break up the surface and simulates the appearance of these types of materials - and I can honestly say that I did this with literally every project (given just how much plastic was involved obviously)

It may be tiny, but its essential to getting the look

As I said, this wasn't as time consuming as the cinematographic aspect of each project.  One reason being that I made use of a lot of procedurals for adding extra texture to plastics and other types of surfaces through their bump channels.

Bumps, bumps and more bumps...

I also took advantage of LightWave's gradients to assist in controlling some of these to behave the way I needed them.

Using a slope-driven gradient let me produce smooth edged keys on the BBC

Cameras

To pull off some shots, many of the scenes were fudged.  That is, elements are moved, scaled and rotated to suit the shot and assist in making effects like fogs and depth of field behave the way that you need them to.  Its pretty common in CG to 'work to the camera' with anything - its often the only way to pull off many shots.

Tiny tapes, HUGE TV set, fish eye lens and fog to haze it out in the distance

I also took advantage of a Photoreal camera type that allowed me to apply a lens profile to the render to generate a true fish-eye effect.  While that effect can be faked with Photoshop, you won't get quite the same result as a camera that sees the scene around it by processing the render through a lens.

Depth of field can also be viewed in real time (and very quickly) in the viewport, and that assisted a lot in fine tuning the final effect.

DOF preview in real time helped a LOT in getting the shot

Themes

I knew I wanted interesting interesting ways to display items, and while camera angles and various rendering styles are one thing, I figured I'd also try playing with how to interpret the ideas.  One in particular was when I wanted to produce something to represent the arcade game Dig Dug.  Originally I'd thought all the video game related artwork would be sprites built from 3D cubes (which can look cool) but in this instance I decided to try something different.

We'd been talking at work about post-it artwork just the day before this piece was done. In the last building we were, I'd drawn up some Defender sprites on the windows with post-it notes...  And I figured why not replicate that same idea in 3D.  Then I thought a glass window or office may be a little ambitious - so I went with what we do at work often - producing display boards and hanging the work from thin nylon...  Well, virtually that is.

Virtual art exhibition, anybody?

This was built from about 5 variations of post-it note (ie. a divided plane and a variety of bends) model and by placing them a little imperfectly with some random rotation I managed to get something that looks a little more human.

Lighting and Rendering

Along with surfacing, one of the key features that LightWave has is its Viewport Rendering - or VPR for short.  This feature alone is worth its weight in gold, providing real-time rendered feedback as you adjust and move elements about in shot.  When I was surfacing I used this a lot to see the result of tweaks to bump maps, reflections and node-based materials.  As its a render, it also allowed me to preview my fish-eye camera, as well as depth of field and adjust as I needed.

New Style

All that photo-real style work does take a lot of effort in modeling, surfacing and rendering.  So, I decided after 20 days had passed I would swap my style and try something new and different to keep the work interesting...  I also wanted to see if I could make things faster to create.

A whole new style

For the next set of images, I went for an isometric-angled simplified design - creating machines I recall from my youth (and mostly the ones I wanted, not the ones I owned) in their iconic form and giving them a simple shading style.

Advantages here - I didn't have to worry about fine detail modeling, as I was after the shape and form of the machine and not an accurate model.  Keyboards could be simple blocks, icons and branding didn't have to be added to the model...  Though I decided to model the branding and place it next to the machine.

Taking a break from detail modeling and rendering for a while

The shading was all done by driving the surface luminosity (or incandescence in other applications) through a mix of occlusion shader and a gradient ramp driven by the surface slope to allow shading of curved surfaces.  The floor was a flat plane and simply used a radial gradient to create a 'spot light' style effect from the center.

That meant no need for lighting, calculating shadows - which then made render times a little faster to boot.

So yeh...

There's still 70+ days to go - its a fun project, though at times it feels like it overwhelms everything else around me when I know I have to complete something that night.  With work, time is tight so I squeeze in things when the day is done and I'm sitting in the office...

I'll do another update when I make any new changes in direction...  And obviously a post when I'm complete!  Feel free to check out the project so far HERE.

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Day 1 done - 800 bits - the challenge is officially on!

Well, day one has ended.  However I broke my own number one rule - not to be too ambitious and try to keep things simple and achievable.  It started out great, but then it managed to slide down into my usual 'perfectionism' trap, followed by a mind that keeps coming up with more ideas and going off track very quickly.

Thankfully I put the first image up - however with so many ideas I want to create, I let the first one become a huge daunting task that went haywire at the start.  So as day one finishes, its time to self-reflect and enforce some rules for myself so I don't get caught out again.  Essentially - its time to start breaking some habits when it comes to my own personal projects...

Reference and planning

I did actually do a lot of initial brainstorming and research...  I felt I was fully prepared, had everything I needed at least churning away in my cranium...

I did a handful of thumbnails - I even have an overall plan for some structured shot layouts when it comes to a few.  I finished the 3D model - great, so it should have just spun off from there and been done in just a couple of hours...

BUT...

I went and started to refine details, after which I modelled a few other items in for the next few images.  I had an idea in my head for the composition, but of course next thing I know, I'm deciding that I want to make something else because my brain is seeing possibilities - a dangerous way to work.

Generally, here's what happened...

What I did with the first image was to  

(a) decide to start with my first computer (that was the hardest part - truthfully!).

Then...

(b) I did a quick grab of reference images I've been collating and built a 3D model.

This was actually the easy (and quick) part of the project

That was actually real easy (heres a timelapse video showing the modeling process).  I then...

(c) collated a lot of items from other projects (my ZX Spectrum projects - Tapes, cables, cassette cases)

and built new textures for them based on classic ZX81 games I had back then.  Where time started to get wasted was when I...

(d) started to fumble about with my composition.

I moved cassette models, I tweaked the camera, I placed lights, I tested a few things...  It just became a case of fiddling way too much.  However I opted on two camera angles...  I rendered them out.

Finally...

(e) I did some post grading on them

... with a little lens distortion, abboration, vignette and grain - plus a dash of subtle sepiatone and compiled the images into my bubblegum card template.  Upload - and I was done...

until I...

(f) discovered I'd not paid attention to a few cable details

...which I wouldn't have had to worry about if I'd just done the machine on its own like I'd originally planned, and quickly adjusted my 3D scene, re-render and update the one online.

KISS

One of the challenges with CG is of course to meet deadlines, often under a lot of pressure.  Time pressure will be my daily job during the week, which in itself can take up almost 12 hours of my day when I include travel to and from home.  That's going to put a lot of stress on meeting that daily deadline.

Part of the plan is to definitely "keep it simple, stupid".  Composition will play a big part in this, and I've decided that I can definitely focus on key details that don't require me to model a vastly complex mesh.  As much as I'd love to build a fully detailed 3D object that I can render from any and all angles (such as this ZX Spectrum) I know just how long a project like that takes.

Keeping my compositions focused on the key subject matter using effects like Depth of field and building a themed layout will let me lower the complexity and hopefully retain the visual appearance I'm after.  That's just going to have to be how it is from now on - come up with some pre-prod at the start of the day just to clarify an idea and then stick to it.  There's no more first-day headache of changing direction as I go...

It doesn't actually take THAT long

I built my first new asset for day 1 - my very first home computer, the Sinclair ZX81. It was less then 40 minutes from start to end.  I limited the details down on the model - based on the composition not seeing them.  That shaved a lot of time down.

Textures are also mostly colours and bumps.  That in itself shaved plenty of time not having to manually paint up image maps.  (Here's that timelapse link again, as well as this lovely 22 second timelapse of the little work it took to surface the model (its so short, but it indicates just how easy and quick the process was))

Round, eh, I mean day 2 and onwards...

Day 2 I'm going to continue with this initial history.  I'll make use of models I've already built in the past rather then reinvent the wheel as it were.  Its going to be a test and a half, but there's 99 days to get good at it.

My process from here on...

I figured its worth noting a little about the process I've decided to go with here. 
Obviously I can't muck around like this every time I make an image.  So the general process from this day on will be

(a) Make sure once I'd done my pre-production thumbnails... I STICK with the one I plan to do and do not deviate.
(b) Reuse what I can from my own personal library (ie. my work, I'm not one to use free 'stock' off the net)
(c) Model anything new based on composition
(d) Render, grade and slap it together.
(e) Upload, and then prep up for the next one...

Its part (a) that's the clincher really.  We'll see how we go for tomorrows challenge...

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800 Bits...

I've signed up for the 100 Days project, a challenge that pushes people to do something creative every day for 100 days (starts 11th July 2014).  Not surprisingly, being a somewhat over-grown nerd from the 80's and with my passion for CG, I've entitled my entry 800 Bits - 100 computer generated images inspired by the 80's computer and video game era - an era and culture that was my childhood.

This blog entry is really just to get the jumble in my head down onto 'paper' as it were and try sort things through...  So its a little bit of a verbal waffle, but please do feel free to read it nonetheless... lol!

Prepping up

The 100 day challenge is not a competition.  It states on the sites FAQ that its important to keep it simple and not to become to complex or technical.  If course you'd quite rightly assume 3D probably isn't quite as simple as it sounds...  I can imagine not only the pre-production (thumbnailing ideas, etc) but the production process will easily consume at least 3-4 hours of my time to achieve a final image (once its textured, composed, lit and rendered).  Obviously this means I must make sure I'm at least partially prepped up so I don't fizzle out after just a week or two.

It sounds easy enough...

The real challenge I've run into after deciding on this concept was whether I would be able to actually come up with 100 things to create images of, let alone worry about the artistic part of the project...  To help motivate ideas, I've made a creative decision to try and visualise each image in the style of collectable bubble gum cards.

And here I thought I'd thrown out all these cards...

Each card should contain not only a nice piece of rendered 3D artwork but also a short factoid about the content of the artwork itself - which at this stage I'm thinking may be nicer as a personal statement from a memory or feeling related to the artwork.  Essentially a short sentence about why I chose to create it and what does it mean to me.

Make a memory list

To get me ready for the 100 days ahead (starting end of this week) I'm making a list - a long list - of things I recall from my childhood.  My aim is to not to simply create a variety of 3D retro items one by one, its to create imagery based on memories - I want this to have some personal connection other then just an obsession to recreate old computing history...

100 days of 100 whats?

I had a home computer and fondly recall the hours after school that I'd spend programming it - what I did, I learnt from, the equipment I used...  Its all fond memories (and still hoarded away in boxes some 30 years later) just aching to be visualised.

I remember when I was a kid going into the department stores and playing games on the home computers that were on display, hanging out at David Reid Electronics (what was the major electronics retail chain here in New Zealand, before they sold it to the Dick Smith franchise) drooling over the latest cassette games and new home computer goodies.

At school there were always kids with LCD games on wristwatches and calculators, and the visits to skating rinks and ten pin bowling that often ended up being video game playing sessions.

Obviously the project is not just 100 individual items, and mixing in ideas and thoughts to that list is just as important as the items that I recall.  Where these ideas will take me, I'll discover over the 100 days...

Should there be a style?

A good question I asked myself was should I stick to a format and style? I could go for a specific artistic rendering style and look.  I could create the images based on a set layout.  However the more I think about 100 images all looking like the same style, the more uninteresting things become in my head.

I want the artwork to be interesting enough to keep people wanting to see what the next image will look like, and more importantly to not limit my creativity by enforcing rules.  I'm still tossing this idea around - I like the idea of a style/theme across all the designs (say, images in a classic pixel-art style or flat illustrative style) - but I also like the idea of variety and variation, like 100 small pieces of artwork from different artists...

It may be that I do a mix - different artwork, in small groups of specific styles. Pixel art style, isometric illustration style, etc.  The starting date is closing in - and while this may seem like a hard decision, I am also thinking of just letting my creativity decide for me based on what I feel will best represent the content.

Ready to roll...

I'd say I've got most of what I need thought through, but where the real creative side of the process comes is in the execution and production of each days piece of work.  Each day I am going to assume will be a mix of morning bus ride pre-production, and the rest of the time production.  I'll have to control my urges to be over-ambitious and keep things real - simple, clean and pretty.

Its going to be a good challenge to see how well I manage with this... But in the end, it will be worth the effort.  I'll post more to the blog when things are in full swing - if there's time obviously! lol!

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