Cloths Blogpost

As I progress through my latest project I have reached the point where I now have to cloth my characters. While I have been doing this I have noticed that I am not very knowledgeable on the clothes I want the characters to wear and how to make them look more realistic. So, this blogpost will be dedicated to doing research on the clothes and how to create good creases for these characters. I am basically already done with the son so I won’t include him in this.

 What I Want the Characters to Wear:
Father:
Since I want the scene to kind of relate to taking a gamble I want the characters to dress more formally because that’s how I imagine casinos. For the father, I plan on having him wear a suit looking kind of like this:


I only envision the characters upper halves showing so I am really only going to focus on the upper part of the suit. Upon first look, everything seems to be very smoothed out around the body so I should not try to add creases there and simply leave it alone once I model it. The arms however seem to be very creased around the elbows. The degree to how deep these creases are will be something I’ll base off of how bent the father's arms are.


When looking at the back there does not seem to be much definition or creases which means that I will most likely only have to work on making the back look like a back. Also, I will also need to add seems to the backs of the arms and blazer. Lastly, you can see both the collar of the blouse and blazer on the back.
Plans:

Mother:

For the mother, I envisioned a dress that was open in the back so I am also going to also have to learn how to make a good back.

The dress overall looks like it is a tight fitting dress and that it does not seem to have very many creases on it meaning I will only really need to focus on seams for details on the dress. When looking at the back there only seems to be two things I can add to make is seem like a back: the shoulder blades and the line down the spine. So, overall the mother does not seem to be someone that I will/should be spending too much time on.
Plans:


Work Log:
Monday:modeled body
Tuesday:modeled body
Wednesday:modeled boys clothes
Thursday:modeled boys clothes and began modeling hands
Friday:pep rally

ibis PaintX

When it comes to editing and drawing, I use an app on my phone called ibis Paint X. I prefer this program because it allows to do multiple things in the program for free that other programs would charge for. Recently, there was an update in the app that added new brushes and effects and I want to use this blogpost to make a record of all the parts of this app that I like and show what various special effects do that I find possibly useful throughout the school year.
Brushes:
 Originally, the ibis Paint X brushes I would only use were these:



these would only give a more pixelated and hard look which made me really reliant on the smudge tool for blending colors. However, for this update they added more realistic brushes that emulate pencils and brushes along with airbrushes that I have used in other apps for blending.

just airbrush

airbrush and smudge

just smudge

Another thing to note is that some of the brushes are “restricted”. This basically means that if you do not want to pay for the premium options you can watch an ad and use all the brushes for a limited amount of time. Once that time is over you watch another ad and get the brushes for free again and,for as long as I have had this app, I am pretty sure that you can just keep doing this.




Effects are now categorized on what they do. The ones I tend to use the most are the adjust color ones. The three I use the most are hue/saturation/lightness, color balance and extract line drawing.
Hue saturation lightness:
Pretty straightforward


Color balance:
I tend to use this option when I want to change the color of a photo because I much more options to get the color I want. I mainly use this to get an object to blend in with the rest of the environment.




Extract line drawing:
This option always shows up when you add a photo to the drawing and my advice is to always click no because you can always add it in later. I use this for a lot of things and it is probably one of the most important things for me when I make my art but it basically only does this:


So I can do this on the layer under it:



Or this:



The cool effects: As seen above that channel shift I did last year is an effect on the app but they also added a glitchy one this update


And there are also effects that can cause a motion appearance


Effects that create the Thanos snapping look



A glowing outline along with a shadow


gradients are also possible


And the manga background that I used to create the dotted effect on the lady


Other cool stuff:
Along with this they also have rulers that will keep lines straight and also have symmetrical ruler that will also maintain symmetry


And the last thing I want to include is their file of materials that I like to use to make backgrounds


Work Log:
Monday:modeled child
Tuesday:added age to parents
Wednesday:modeled ear
Thursday: finished ear and added ear to characters
Friday:modeled child body

Aging

So far I have most of the parts for my first project done and now I really only have to take some time to myself to put it all together. I can really only contribute to the fact that I did not model the character and instead left it as a drawing. Currently, I am just trying to make it all blend in together: Current Progress:



So in class I have moved on to another project where it is basically two adults hovering over their child and waiting for his next move. I am thinking of relating this to gambling and casino stuff so it is kind of like chance of whether he will do something his parents approve of. So in order to show the age difference I need to learn techniques on how to make others look older which is what this blogpost will be about.

Key Differences in age: 

 Newborn:
•No neck
 •No chin
•Evident nostrils
•Wide mouth and eyes
•round face

Toddler:
•puffy red cheeks
•double cheeks
•pouted mouth
•face still round

 Child:
•face is more contoured but still soft
•ears are larger
•chin and nose start to become more defined

 Teens:
•eyebrows start to look developed
•eyes are still large
•face becomes a little more contoured
•longer nose

 20-30:
•eyelids are visible
•eyes are smaller
•face is more chiseled(no more soft)

 40-50:
•eyelids are heavier
•soft signs of wrinkles
•crows feet

 Old:
•pockets under eyes
•more prominent lines
•looser skin
*increase to show more age

 So for the characters in this project I am planning on making the adults be in their 40s-50s while the child is actually just be a teen. For the parents however I do not want them to the same exact things to define their age like one parent having more defined crows feet while the other has more noticeable smile lines.

Plans:


 https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/human-anatomy-fundamentals-drawing-different-ages--cms-21905

 Work Log:
Monday:modeled general face
Tuesday:modeled general face
Wednesday:worked on making general face look like the dads face
Thursday:worked on dads nose
Friday: worked on moms face

CC Hair

Over the summer, I started to watch Sims 4 youtubers which eventually lead to the less family friendly Sims 4 youtubers. Something I noticed that they shared was an interest in cc or custom content made by others in the Sims community. Upon looking at those who create custom content I found an interesting and simple technique they use for creating realistic hair. Here is a video from the youtuber MunchKin who uses blender to create these realistic hairstyles:

 


So essentially he uses realistic textures on a clear background to create hairs and then copies them and rotates them so the same texture is seen in all dimensions. This really interests me, especially since he seems to be doing it in blender render so I want to see if I am able to get the same effect and get it to appear nicely in a blender render. I will be using this secret model for a personal project to test this out.




For the stands of hair, the youtuber creates a plane and adds an image texture to the plane. Then he sets the image to UV. Then, in the materials tab, he goes to the section labeled “transparency”, checks it off and proceeds to set the alpha slider to 0.



Then, he goes to the textures tab to the section labeled “influence” and checks off the part that is also labeled “alpha” but does not slide it down to 0.



He then proceeds to position the hair to where he likes.

 In the end, this is what I got:

 Not rendered:



Rendered:



Overall I like the general appearance of the hair and how quick it was to create this look is definitely a good thing. However, I cannot see this working for everything I make. For example, I definitely think the way I made hair last year for my pieces worked well for them as they were more cartoon looking, but if I can imagine more realistic hair for a model this is definitely a good way to do that. 

Work Log:
Monday:No School
Tuesday:Texturing glasses and lighting
Wednesday:Texturing glasses and fortune cookies
Thrusday:Rendering glasses, crystal, and character
Friday:Rendering and texturing fortune cookies

Planning Blogpost

For this blogpost I will be going over the general concept of my first piece. This specific piece will be focusing on relying on false reassurances to avoid facing reality. To illustrate this, I will have a character surrounded by superficial things like horoscopes, tarot cards, fortune cookies to represent the false reassurances telling her that she should expect good fortune in the future. My original thought of the project looked like this:



This looks a little bare but I do like how the character turned out so I am thinking of drawing another one and using that for the character rather than 3D modeling her. I also think that it should have color in it. Going along with the general color scheme structure that I mentioned in the themes blogpost, I thought of the color schemes gray, white, pink, blue and gray, blue-violet, white, black, pink. I personally like the first color scheme because it is simple but leaves a lot of options for me to choose from when creating this piece.



I also envisioned this as all these false reassurances are surrounding the character so I created this set up that will include both modeled, photographed and digital or hand drawn pictures. I mainly focused on a witchy supernatural look to it by using things like tarot cards and fortune cookies. Currently I know that the fortune cookies and crystals are being modeled while the magic 8 ball is just going to be a picture since I actually have one, but for the tarot cards I am either going to draw them digitally or by hand depending on which one turns out better. After looking at tarot card setups I see that one is having a card on top of a card representing the challenges one is presently facing. I plan on using this to further reiterate the message that depending on these false things are holding them back in the present.



Lastly I imagined glasses on this character but I decided to 3D model the glasses because I know I will not be able to do as good of a job if I were to draw them. I also wanted these glasses to have pink lenses to show the optimism in the character when looking at these false predictions.

 Work Log:
Monday:modeled cookies
Tuesday:modeled crystals and glasses
Wednesday:textured crystals and added details to crystals
Thursday: worked on textures for glasses cookies and scene
Friday:worked on scene