Concept art and art in general has never really been a strong point of mine and as such had never really been of particular interest to me either. Before the module i had a reasonable knowledge of photoshop in terms of its layout and the various tools, however, i had never previously used it for creating any artwork which was meant to look realistic, i.e. shading, materials, depth, shadows. I tried my best during the concept art section of the module and in the end actually managed to produce some pieces which i was reasonably happy with. Of my three final concepts, both the prop and the environment are the ones i am most pleased with. The overall design of the compass was good, it was both interesting being a both a sundial and a compass rather than just a compass, but still actually usable for exploring by not being overly ornate. The 360 views i made for the compass worked fairly well with the brass material looking pretty realistic. The perspective shot of the compass is perhaps the piece i am most proud of. For the environment i wanted to create a mysterious jungle temple. My very first thoughts when it came to thinking up the temple were to base it loosely of Incan structures with light coloured stone making brick walls as well as larger pillars. To give myself a good starting point for the beauty shot i made a very basic model in Maya which i was then able to draw over. The final environment beauty shot turned out fairly well, although during the presentation of my work various flaws were pointed out with it which would need to be rectified in order to make it look better. The creation of my character history allowed me to be quite specific in the kind of person i wanted him to be. I was pleased with the actual character i created as he seemed quite interesting, reasonably originally and yet at the same time his history made him very real. The artwork for the character was the part of the model which i struggled with most. Having never attempted anything like it before i found drawing, shading and generally making the character look real to be extremely difficult. Because of this i tried to keep the actual design basic, while still sticking with the general ideas behind the outfit of a jungle explorer. To be completely honest i'm not overly pleased with how the character beauty shot or 360 turned out. Despite my best efforts they were both still majorly lacking. I also struggled when it came to the facial expressions sheet, again having had no previous experience. Despite my original troubles with it, the final facial expression sheet was reasonably good although nowhere near a top piece of art. However, the facial expression sheet is still my most pleasing piece of character artwork.
The other part of the CDDA module was life drawing. Over the course of the module i have found the life drawing sessions to be incredibly helpful. They have given me a much clearer understanding of proportions, as well as perspective and even shading. I also feel i made great progress through the sessions, with my proportions in the sessions in the second half of the semester being vastly superior to those in the first few weeks. Life drawing has also given me more confidence when it comes to drawing human shapes, which allowed me to at least get the proportions of my character artwork fairly accurate which i feel was probably the best feature of them.
Overall, I have found the CDDA module very challenging. For me the life drawing sessions have been the most rewarding part of the module and the area in which i have most improved over the semester. I have mixed feelings about the concept art i produced, although i have now been given suggestions as to what i could do to improve it and hopefully i will be able to produce something better in the future.
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