3D Still Life

*drumroll* 

TA-DAH! After 3-4 weeks of hard work, and one particularly hectic last week of intense dedication, I am proud to present my final project for our Photorealism class, made with my classmate Candice Mayer.

For our final project we had to pick a traditional still life painting from an artist of our choice, and reproduce it as photo-realistically as possible in 3D, using Softimage XSI. So we decided to use a lovely whimsical painting by artist Michelle Waldele as our inspiration. Below you can see our reproduction, followed by her original painting.

 Final Image by Fanny Berthiaume & Candice Mayer

Painting by Michelle Waldele (http://www.mwaldelefineart.com/)

All the modeling, setup, lighting, shading and texturing was done in XSI. The final render was then brought in Photoshop for final color correction, grain addition, some edge blur and very minute additions to some of the textures.

Overall I have estimated our work on this project to be somewhere between 50-60hrs each, from initial concept research to final tweaks in Photoshop. It was a lot of work, but I had an awesome time working on this.

Awesome Photoshop Brushes

Lately I've found myself discussing drawing techniques with a few friends, and it made me want to share some of the brushes I've been using. They've really helped me getting some sense of direction when painting digitally, which is still relatively new for me, so I'm hoping they can be of use to others as well.

Below are links to custom brushes I used, namely for my latest illustration (see previous post). The general brush set was made by an amazing concept artist I found on DeviantArt through a friend. I can't say I've explored every last brush in it yet, but so far some of them have been very useful.

I've also included a link to a bunch of blood spatter brush packs, the first of which I used for my latest painting.

A great general painting brush set :

http://danluvisiart.deviantart.com/gallery/9827508#/d1ytm3r

A bunch of blood spatter brushes :

http://www.youthedesigner.com/2010/09/20/33-blood-splatter-brushes-for-photoshop-users/

Cracked Porcelain

As a follow up to last week's post, here is my second go at a creepy creature/monster for a hypothetical live-action film. I had no desire to do something "disgusting" per say, as I cringe at the sight of twisted and nasty bodily stuff, however you want to interpret that, so I went for a different kind of creepy. We were free to do something that fitted anywhere on the human/inhuman scale, so I chose to give life to a porcelain doll. In fact she's a bit of a hybrid between a porcelain doll and your average disturbing little girl. I thought of her as a life size demonic figurine or something like that.

Anyway, this started out as the most unappealing assignment in my life, but it turns out I had a lot of fun painting this. Definitely doesn't fall within my usual style, but I had fun with it, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

The End of a Great Experience

This is a bit of a delayed post, which I should have written a week or so ago, but better late than never.

So as some of you may know, my part-time contract at Woozworld ended 2 weeks ago. I was very sad to leave, as it was a really awesome work environment, a great team, and the perfect job really for the full-time student that I am. Though I have cumulated a lot of experience over the years working freelance contracts, working on film sets and in small cinema and FX studios, this was my first job in a larger studio setting, and my first experience in the world of social gaming. I feel extremely privileged to have had the chance to join their fantastic team for those past 5 months, and I am so grateful for the experience.

Though I wish I could have stayed there longer, and I already miss it a lot, I can see how much I gained from that job, and it makes me look forward to whatever will come next. I'm glad for the new friendships, the work I accomplished, and the knowledge that however hard it may have been to get here, and despite all the doubts and bumps along the way, I'm on the right track, and it is possible to get up every morning, and go do something you actually love! :)

So I'm now looking for other part-time opportunities, whether in gaming or cinema. But meanwhile there's still school, which is enough to keep me plenty busy! 

To conclude the Woozworld experience, here are a bunch of assets I did for them. As usual, everything has already been released in-game, and is shown with permission. You can check out the game at www.woozworld.com if you'd like to know more.

Cheers!

Illustration Idea

So I did this illustration concept for my character design class, planning on bringing it to a fully rendered version, but I think I might have to put it aside for now and go in a completely different direction.

We were asked to design a creepy, scary "monster", which could be anything on the human/inhuman scale, basically the creepiest thing we could think of. I essentially rebelled against the assignment because I've spent the last 24 years straying as far as I could from horror films and everything the cool kids used to watch on halloween because I am very easily grossed out, and the thought of purposely putting myself in front of something that makes me cringe feels, well, repulsive. So I thought I'd be smart and detour around the assignment guidelines by doing a cartoon monster, something creepy but that I could safely nest into a fictional universe, therefore ensuring my sleep remains nightmare free.

Turns out I was fooled.

The said creepy thing needs to be designed for live-action, which completely throws off my concept. I really like it as is, so I don't want to just use that and push it towards a live-action version. I'd rather set this linework aside for a couple weeks and get back to the sketching board. I'll find the time to color this one at some point.

Now on to look at every nasty horror movie reference out there.

Joy.

Assassin's Creed Character Concepts

These are my proposed concepts for an hypothetical 4th Assassin's Creed game set in 19th century Victorian London. The chosen historical period is completely hypothetical, based on personal preferences and some speculation. 

This is by no means AC official art. The logo was thrown in there solely for the sake of clarifying the fact that it was inspired by the franchise, but was done for a school assignment.

I have done my best to remain faithful to the previous games' iconic elements, as well as the historical period I have chosen, though I don't pretend to be an expert in either, so please forgive any major discrepancies.

Photorealism - Project 1

This is the result of my first Photorealism project. We had to reproduce an everyday object in 3D based on a picture. The image on the left is the original photo, and the one on the right is my work. The entire thing was created in Softimage XSI, with textures created and/or tweaked in Photoshop, before being imported in the 3D software. Photoshop was used for some minor color correction at the very end as well.

Hope it looks convincingly photorealistic! :)

Superhero Design

Still for my character design class, we had to come up with a hero or antihero character concept. I try to challenge myself on every assignment by getting out of my comfort zone and attempting new styles and/or techniques, making this course a good opportunity for exploration. In this particular assignment I  went for more classical proportions and anatomy, which is definitely not my usual style. I also wanted to try creating something more moody, and dark, while keeping it feminine. Also, superhero stuff in general really isn't my main area of comfort and interest, so the whole thing felt completely unlike myself at first haha

I'm pretty happy with the result, though I think I could have pushed the highlights a bit more. Her face is getting lost more than I'd want in the dark mass of her hair.

Satyr Concept

A character I designed for a pretty open-ended assignment. We had to come up with a character based on a fictional universe of our choice. Basically we could do whatever we wanted. I drew this simple sketch of a boy satyr a couple of weeks ago which inspired me, so I developed it further and came up with this little guy.

It was a great exercise to practice textures, which I tend to put aside when I draw characters, shamefully.

Doddles and stuff

Just some doodles from the weekend. I need to pick a character and develop it further for my next character design assignment. Not really sure there's anything in there really striking me with inspiration, except maybe that little Satyr boy in the corner. I'll definitely have to keep searching.

Fanta Designs

Last week for our character design class we were asked to come up with a new character for the recent Fanta campaign, with the intent of launching a new fictional flavor : Papaya. If you don't know what Fanta is, it's some kind of orange crush which used to be available only in Europe but is now all over the world. Their new campaign is very young, colorful and energetic, and their characters have a bit of a Playmobil look to them. You can check the work of Psyop, the studio responsible for the campaign, on their website :

http://www.psyop.tv/?s=fanta

Below are my original designs. I picked the girl character to move on with and develop further. I'm pretty happy with the poster mockup idea, so I'm working on coloring that as well.

Hope you like it!

Goodify

Lately I did a small contract for Goodify, a startup company who "makes it easy for organizations to track, reward, amd promote its good doings". The needed a landscape illustration for their homepage, as well as their Twitter and Facebook pages. It had a to be fun, bouncy and colorful, which I think turned out pretty well in the final illustration.

The whole thing was done on Illustrator. Below is the image I delivered.

You can see the final result on their homepage (at the very bottom). They made a few minor adjustments to best fit the website, which I think make it look even better!

Their website :

http://goodify.com/

Their Facebook page :

https://www.facebook.com/Goodify

Their Twitter account :

http://twitter.com/wegoodify

Flip A Crêpe

First somewhat interesting 3D animation assignment made at Centre NAD. We were given a rig of an arm holding a pan, and we had to animate it so that it looked like the character was flipping a crêpe. 3D animation definitely isn't super intuitive at first when you come from a 2D animation background (errr f-curves...I'm sorry, what?), but I think I'm slowly starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. This was actually pretty fun to do, once I figured it out after spending 3hrs flipping a fake crêpe and staring blankly at my computer not really knowing where to start.

You can watch it on Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/49400486

New deviantART account!

Guess what? 

You can now follow me on my new deviantART account as well as on my blog! Double the fun right! 

http://minimonstermill.deviantart.com/

Homage to Shaun Tan

So school has officially started again, and it's quickly becoming clear that this will be a pretty intense year! I have fallen back to part-time Illustrator status at Woozworld, working about 15hrs/week, and am slowly getting back into the full-time student life. I'll do my best to keep updating this blog with new school work as well as Woozworld material whenever I can. 

To kickoff the semester, I'd like to share my first assignment for my new Character Design class. As a quick way of evaluating the general drawing skills of the class, our teacher asked us to reproduce an image (illustration, painting, silkscreen, etc.) in the medium of our choice. And as a second part to our homework, we had to offer our personal interpretation of the piece, with no limitation of technique or style.

I chose an image from Shaun Tan's wonderful and inspiring book The Arrival. I really love how he merges detailed realistic settings and characters with the most unusual creatures. He has a great way of mixing the natural with the fantastical, and reminds me a little bit of Hayao Myazaki in that respect. Their styles are very different from each other of course, but they both seem to nail that delicate mix in a way that resonates with me.

Any way, so I chose the very last image from his book, which you can see below. I have included both parts of my assignment, which was done entirely on Photoshop using a stylus. My first impulse was to use pencil on paper, which I'm more comfortable with when it comes to something this realistic. Though I use a stylus on a daily basis, I'd never "painted" in such a style on Photoshop, and I felt a bit threatened by the idea. But since I'm all about learning new techniques and working in different styles, I gave myself a little challenge and kept my use of pencil and paper to a rough sketch. I'm pretty happy with the results, and proud of myself for stepping outside of my comfort zone here! Turns out painting on Photoshop is super fun too!

Back to School!

So it's official, summer's over!

After four months of going from job to job and contract to contract, cumulating experience and making new contacts, it's time to slow down on the professional and refocus on the educational. I have had an amazing break, and am extremely grateful for all the great people I got to meet, and the great things I took part in. It's a little hard to put a stop to my full-time job at the studio, as I have gotten really fond of the place, the work, and the team, but I am thoroughly excited to start my third semester at Centre NAD! Plus, I am lucky enough to be able to remain at Woozworld part-time for the school year, which pretty much means I get to have my cake and eat it too for the next few months! :)

For the occasion, I am posting a few more images of some of the things I drew for Woozworld in the past month. Again, all material below is property of Woozworld Inc., and has been released in-game already. You can visit Woozworld at www.woozworld.com

Woozworld update!

It's already been 2 months since I've started my job at Woozworld! Time has just flown by, it's crazy. I still love it as much, and more so now than ever. We moved into our new offices last week, to accomodate our rapidly growing team, and the place is great. We're super close to Jean-Talon market, which makes for an awesome neighbourhood, and the studio is sooo much bigger than the previous one. Also, I have a window seat which is pretty sweet!

And most importantly, I've become pretty comfortable with Flash, which really helps the creativity flow. Once you've wrapped your head around the technical stuff, it's actually a lot more enjoyable and simple to go ahead and draw. I started off doing garments only for the first few weeks, which turned out to be a good thing. Outfits are probably the hardest thing to do because the process and file structure is somewhat more complex than for other elements. So I think it's good I got that mastered first.

I was very excited to move on to furnitures and environments afterwards though! Now I'm drawing anything from clothes to chairs to cites and secret grottoes! Best job eveeeeer! :)

I figured I'd show some of the earlier stuff I worked on before we moved, when I was still doing mostly  garments. Everything down here has already been released in the game, and I checked with my boss to make sure I was allowed to show stuff online! Please note that the character isn't one of my own designs but simply our template puppet which we use to draw all of our clothes. All images below are property of Woozworld Inc., and you can see them in game at http://www.woozworld.com/.

In case you're wondering, we always draw the rotations as well. So we end up with 8 drawings for each outfit, which allows the 2D characters to move around in every direction.

Enjoy!

(I assume someone from Woozworld is probably watching again so hi! :))

The Klein Shine

Hey guys!

So as I mentioned in my previous post from (yikes!) a month ago, I had been working on a graphic design contract for someone very special. While representing Ubisoft at the C2MTL event in Montreal this past June, I met Mr. Harry Klein, who likes to present himself as "The Best Shoe Shiner in the World". Needless to say, I haven't seen very many shoe shiners in my life, and so Mr. Klein's stand and his presence at such a high-class event as C2MTL surprised and intrigued me. 

We shared a few conversations, and I soon realized Harry wasn't only a great shoe shiner, but he was also a very opinionated and passionate businessman, who was always wiling to go the extra mile to give his clients the best possible experience. From his official uniform to the classy custom-made leather chairs he designed himself, he spared no details when it came to marketing his services. The only thing he was truly missing was a logo, and the unified branding that goes with it.

Long story short, he asked if I would be willing to create a new visual identity for The Klein Shine. Branding has become over the past 2 years a bit of an on-going personal interest for me, and so I was very happy to be able to try my hand at it once more.

Mr. Klein had a very specific idea what he wanted, and so he requested that the image of a cherry be used as part of the new logo. As he works frequently in large corporate events amongst other businessmen, his presence has frequently been described as "the cherry on top of the cake", as it always adds a little extra touch of unexpected classiness wherever he goes. We both liked the idea, and so I started working.

Above is the option he picked from my initial submission.

I then made some modifications to come up with this final version of the logo.

The business cards, in both French and English.

New stationary paper (I also made a French version).

The final printed cards, which were printed via Moo.com who did an AMAZING job. I highly recommend their site for anyone who wants great quality business cards. The picture doesn't do the printing any justice at all, trust me.

All in all, I'm very happy with the results. I don't pretend to have much experience in graphic design, and all I know is entirely self-thought. But I like to think I managed to capture the essence of Mr. Klein's unique service with this new branding.