Trees

In this piece I want to include trees in it, specifically peach trees, so to make the process easier I want to explore the sapling generator and see if it is something I can use to easily make them.

1.First, add the add-on in user preferences
2.Then to add a tree you add a curve then add a tree
3.Then on the left-hand side with the object tools, there is a section where you can customize the tree 

In the branch splitting section, you can customize how big the trunk is and how many branches splits you want on the tree.


 In the geometry section, you can customize the size of your tree and how you want the branch rings to look. (0 makes it random, 1+ makes specified rings)


 In the leaves section, you can select a specific object created for the tree


 Also, you can adjust the branches themselves in edit mode


 Now, peach trees look like this:



 When fooling around I have not been able to really figure out how to make a tree look like this but when I was looking through articles about the sapling generator I found this photo so I know it can be possible since the tree looks so similar.


 Upon attempting to make a peach tree editing the branches seem to be really easy since it is just the curves. However, the branches and leaves don’t see to go along with it. However, making a tree with this will be easier than working with particles. I do need to practice more though.


 Work Log:
Monday:modeled body
Tuesday:modeled body
Wednesday:modeled shirt
Thursday:modeled pants
Friday:modeled shoes

Artist 3 Blogpost

For this blogpost, I am going to review the art of yet another Instagram artist by the name of futarinokizuna_. Personally, I do not like their technique, but I do like their theme which is why I wanted to make a blogpost about their art.

 

The art is basically digital drawings that portray scenes being acted out by characters, in some cases these characters have a little story that is portrayed through multiple pieces. I like this part since it saves time to remodel characters and it lets me feel more familiar with the story and what to do if I were to be using characters that I have created in the past. Most of the backgrounds are also a simple color so the art focuses only on the people. This is not something I want to strictly follow but I understand how a simpler background can be more helpful when I am creating my art.

 


What I like about this artist is their theme and how everything the pieces talk about tends to stick together to a more specific theme than just looking inward. In pieces that I have seen the artist talk about family pressure, which was something I did for my last piece, blame, guilt, and masks that hide the real version of oneself. All of these things are different in their own way but they all also discuss some inner conflict that is going in inside the character and I could see that in every piece. I thought it would be cool to do that with my art. Specifying my theme may make it more complicated to think of more ideas, but I think that if I make some pieces that share a similar idea and than move on to another group of pieces that share a similar idea I could be able to do this. I mainly like this because it does not feel like I am moving on from something completely different and I have different parts that I have already made that I can reuse rather than starting from scratch. A similar project that I worked on last year that kind of follows this is the skeleton which I had a lot of fun making and ended up being really quick to make too.


Work Log:
Monday:No School
Tuesday:Worked on Hair
Wednesday:Worked on Hair
Thursday:Worked on Hair
Friday:Worked on Hair

Artist 2 Blogpost

For this blogpost, I am just going to pick out things that I like about the art of goatpierrot and things that I think are helpful for him when it comes to creating unity and how it can help me. So, this is a kind of portrait that essentially describes this guy’s art.

At a google search of his art and his name, it is clear that this guy draws clowns or draws people and adds on clown-like features like frilly clothes and cone-shaped hats. This helps build unity in his work since most of his work is this and it is kind of established as his thing. I can also see this as being a common theme of being a clown or being different from being shown in different ways in his work. Either way, I like it because it does not feel like he is starting with something completely different and new with each piece. Instead, it is more like a continuation of all his other pieces. I feel like this could be something fun to try not in the way that I am trying to have all my characters be clowns but more like I should continue on with a story or similar meaning among all my pieces. That way each artwork is like a little piece of a big general puzzle.

Another thing that I think really brings out unity among his pieces is the ways he draws. His pieces can range from being playful to detailed but still stay unified because his lineart and coloring remain consistent. His lineart is kind of shown to be shaky which is something that I find to really like in art and the way he mainly colors art is light and kind of rushed so you can see the details on it. Something I wanted to do this year combined my drawings and my models together and create a collage of them. This is not something I want to strictly follow doing but kind of following this general passion of modeling and editing my work could create this unity in my art.

Lastly, goatpierrot has characters that kind of link his art to him. However, from what I have seen these characters are not very common in his art. He also mainly sticks to primary colors for his art but he does have exceptions. Although these are common things he has that he can use to make art, he does not let it restrict him to make whatever he wants which is something I really like.

             


Work Log:
Monday:modeling tables
Tuesday:texturing tables
Wednesday:rndering tables
Thursday:modeling grown boy
Friday:modeling grown boy

Artist Blogpost

In my marking period blogpost, I discussed wanting to review more artists and take inspiration from them and so in this blogpost I will be doing that with the Instagram artist yyyaaannnnnniiiccckkk. One thing that really caught my eye about this artist is how they cut parts of one photo and duplicate them around the character as well as the use of colorful lines. I want to observe these components in their work and figure out how I might want to use them in my own work.

These are some of the artist’s work:

One thing I want to talk about is their use of colorful outlines and drawings. This is something I have kind of used before with the drawings of the sun and moon among the flowers. However, I feel that this artist uses it to show the internal workings of the character by building it onto the character while I was more or less just creating a scene on top of a picture. While the two things are very similar, I like this idea of showing the inside with white outlines and drawings rather than solely relying on the outlines for the scene. I do however do not think using so much coloful outlines would be as beneficial for my work as it is for this artist. I believe I would go too crazy with it and make the work too crowded so I do want to keep this to a minimum of outlines or movements in the scene rather than this elaborate concept that the artist creates.

One thing that I have tried but have never been able to do as well as this artist is to select a certain part of the main photo and duplicate and transform onto the character. In terms of placement, the artist seems to keep it relatively close to the original position and you seem to be able to identify where they are because of the shadows on the skin. I really like how high quality the cuts are and it makes me really think about how I am selecting things in order to achieve the best shape possible. I really like how it looks, but I believe that this is something that would only work out best for me if I stuck with only doing it on the background. I think this is mainly because my characters are not made to look like real-life humans that this is more difficult since you cannot really distinguish where the cut begins and ends making really one big mush.

Work Log:
Monday:Drone
Tuesday:Field Trip
Wednesday:Field Trip
Thursday:Wellness Summit
Friday:Worked on circle table

Review Blogpost

Shriya:
This year, Shriya decided to focus on the theme of nature and human nature. For her animation, she decided to base the scene off the Conodoguinet. I think that this is cool that she is taking the places around her and using them as inspiration for her art. Her original story was supposed to be about two girls going around the river and encountering obstacles but it eventually became a story about a child growing up and the mother having to accept it no matter how hard it is. I liked that she kept an open mind about the story of the animation and worked with what worked and what did not. I think that maintaining this mindset she was able to take what she got and still made a great animation out of it which is why I would like to try to keep an open mind as well. For this animation, Shriya used particle systems to duplicate. I think this is very helpful and if I ever need to create duplicates of something, using particle systems will be helpful.

Vivian:
This year Vivian is focusing on the theme of looking inward where she is basing her animations off art pieces she has made. These drawings are people unraveling to express the idea of people slowly unraveling over time but for her animations she wanted it to be more realistic so someone can look at her animation and see themselves in the character place. She decided to show this through screenshots rather than animating the character on one day. I think this is cool because it shows change over time but does not create a lot of work that animating the scenes would do. I do not do animation but doing screenshots and incorporating that into my artwork sounds like something I could do. I also like how she uses both the character’s body language and facial expressions as well as the room to show this idea of unraveling over time.


Caden:
This year Caden decided that he wanted to continue creating vlogs like videos where he showcases his personal life and music. I like how he uses his work to showcase who he is as it makes the work more meaningful and purposeful. In the future, I should try making my art more personal to me to add this extra meaning to my work. This will not be all the time but once in a while, it would be good. In his vlog, he does not narrate what is going on. I like this because it makes his blogs feel more like those home videos rather than some big Youtuber yelling at a camera for thirty minutes. I also like how he already has a plan for what he wants to do for the next marking period since it allows him to get more work out. I should do this so I do not get stuck without an idea and so I can just continue to work.

Sophia:
This year Sophia has focused on making interviews, comedic videos and photographs. One thing Sophia focuses on is making things that she generally likes to make. As always I agree with this and always try to do the same with my artwork. One thing she also mentioned is that she has a structure for what she wants to make for her videos but she also kind of does her videos on the flow. I kinda like this way of working. I feel that having a strict plan feels a little constricting and maybe I should keep more of an open mind of what I do want to make to help the process feel freer.

Auburn: Over the summer Auburn began by writing a bunch of ideas for films she wanted to make so she was never stuck with no ideas. I like this because I always feel like I have an idea but once I have time to make it it leaves or it just does not sound as good. So by writing it down, I will have this idea preserved for when I can finally create it. This marking period she is focusing on making a documentary about veterans so she can preserve their stories in a film. She prepared by making questions that she would ask all the veterans so she has the same content from all her interviewees. After filming some interviews, Auburn has realized that she was having trouble keeping track of all the footage by adding timestamps to areas that she knew that was important. I like this idea and I feel that by better organizing my files so my workspace flash drive and computer can be better organized in case I need anything from previous projects.

Work Log:
Monday:Blogposts
Tuesday:Blogposts
Wednesday:modeled table
Thursday:modeled table
Friday:filled out the evaluation sheet

Planning Blogpost

After glancing at my current work I decided I liked how the characters and decided to render them.



Of course, they still do not have hair and I am still debating whether I will just draw the hair in or model it in the sims style. I have ultimately decided to do both on one model in my free time and make a decision that way. I also like how the toon shader turned out because it gives flat colors, but also shadows too. Some of these shadows look a little awkward though so I am currently fixing them in ibis PaintX. I have also noticed that parts of my original plan are not really going to work so I drew new ideas to help that. This blogpost is to verbalize that.



 I already envisioned the family at a table, but I decided that rather than making this the main focus I want it to be more at the bottom half of the piece while text and the other objects take up the top half. I also that including white outlines and drawings would be cool as a way to kind of showing what is going on internally rather than making the parents show it physically. I also envisioned this table to be like those tables where people gamble at where the child has to choose following what he wants for his future versus what his parents want. I also decided on three other gambling-related things that I want to model and make pixel art out of to kind of emulate all of this as being some sort of game. These are basically supposed to make it seem more like doing what he wants versus what his parents want is like a gamble. I also planned to make them more in sequence. For example rather than just copying a bunch of fortune cookies, each duplicate would be slightly different like telling their own story.




 Work Log:
Monday:end of marking period posts
Tuesday:end of marking period posts
Wednesday:end of marking period posts
Thursday:end of marking period posts
Friday: began modeling table

Displacement Maps

One thing that I have noticed when I am modeling is that I do not really like using bump mapping and textures. I like to physically make the creases in the clothes and just add color to it through a material. For example, in my recent project, I sculpted those creases in the crystals because I felt that I had more control over it and could better visualize it if it was already there both rendered and unrendered. So, on Instagram, I have found a lot of posts that show realistic humans and then pictures of those models unrendered. In the unrendered photo, you can see all the details on the skin and the clothes already there, but to model all this is definitely impossible, so I wanted to figure out how they do it. That is how I found displacement maps. In this blogpost I am going to discuss how to create these and include tests so I can see what I can and cannot do.

 I have based my tutorial on this video:






Tutorial:
I am using this picture of my carpet to create this tutorial displacement map.


First, your model needs to have geometry so subdivide if needed

Next, add the displacement modifier

Next, in the textures tab make sure it is on displace and not brush or brush mask

Then, add a texture and import your image
*in my custom texture brushes I mentioned that the image needed to be black and white. I believe that this is the same for these displacement maps.*

Then, in the modifiers tab adjust the strength to change the look of the map
Before:

After:

Next, if you want more detail, add a subdivision surface modifier
*this needs to be above the displacement modifier*


Tests:
Making the Texture Black, White and Grey:


Not as graphic of a change as black and white, so I should be including greys in the texture. This means I should use greyscale rather than just black and white in ibis PaintX.

Color Textures:


 Colored Images do work, this makes the whole process much easier since it removes a step in between.

Two Different Textures on One Object:


You can only have one displacement map at a time on a mesh in blender render, so the only way I can think of doing this in blender render is by making them separate objects and adding the separate meshes to them.

Complicated Images:


It works, but it does not look too good.

It only looks good when the strength is down really low which I do not think will be that helpful. Work Log:
Monday:Blogpost
Tuesday:Blogpost
Wednesday:Blogpost
Thursday:Worked on mother
Friday:worked on son