Fountain development

During the early part of this week I created my first piece of concept art I am happy the quality satisfies my FMP brief proposal. My aim is by the end of the project have a full body of development sketches, such as those produced in week one, per asset I make plus a promotional more polished piece of art like the one I have produced for the fountain. I do appreciate it’s a large amount of work but I also feel it will answer the ‘Display creative interpretation of the set genre and time period’

I did receive some feedback to the colour scheme of my fountain. Some people found the colour scheme to be a bit dull with all the grey used and suggested making the plant on the front of the fountain stand out a bit more against the same kinda gradient stone. Also using tinges of blue within the stone to give it more of a stylized look. Finally in the opinion of most I showed the concept piece to, the gums of the teeth looked much too radiant pink and healthy to be paired with the cracked and damaged dentures below. I implemented these changes using an image from Wayne Barlowe’s portfolio ‘Illuminations form the inferno’ as inspiration. Within the image the bright blinding red really draws the eye and excuses the background similarity of colour. The blood weed growing from the drain now has the same vivid red colour also using highlights of blue to simulate veins and blood vessels throughout the plant mimicking a more human than plant appearance. The gums I also changed to grey stone to match the rest of the fountain however Im still not 100% content with this. I feel I want more of a black and red colour mixture for the gums. Perhaps some experimentation later on in the texturing process. Now however I really should move on to 3D.

Working from this piece of concept art I started blocking in the round block shapes of the fountain piece. I’m noticing though the more I round off the shapes using smoothing groups the more I could hinder myself during the texturing process. I feel like if the stylized texturing process may behave weirdly if the edges are too rounded. I could be completely wrong but if this is the case I will address it later on. For now at least the rounded smooth edges to the shapes is pleasing.

During this week I also started modelling the skull asset. I knew straight away if I was to model it in the same way as the other shapes of the fountain, using 3DS max and changing the shape vertex by vertex it was going to take forever. Knowing I am competent to use Zbrush, and the organic clay like modelling qualities it offers appealing to me, I decided to make the skull in Zbrush and then re-topologise the higher asset down to the similar poly count of the rest of the fountain asset. I know it is a risk but I feel the time I could save is too much of a benefit to pass up. Also I really want to improve my general Zbrush skills as I would really like to branch into characters in my spare time.