Conclusion

Thoughts on the group and work as a whole

I have really enjoyed working on this project and it actually has turned around my perception on working in groups to a positive one!  Although the start was a little slow, I think it really picked up after Christmas, especially after we properly established each of our roles.  I feel we worked well together and we were able to adjust our art styles to  compliment each others work.  I don’t think there were many issues with communication, as we had created a group page on Facebook to post up our progress and Liam had found a website to enable us to upload raw files onto a virtual drive.   

Thoughts on my role

Before Christmas, I was struggling to visualise what we were trying to create, so I took an art style Hollie had found in a book and created the initial concept designs.  I didn’t actually like the style overly much, but I thought I’d explore options.  However, we all liked the scratchy style it had and it was also suggested at one point, that we should perhaps do the whole thing in a Steam Punk style.  Again, I wasn’t happy with the idea that we should make it all Steam Punk and thought we should may be use a few elements from the style to allow flexibility.  I found images of 1930 trains and decided to evolve my train concepts around the design of that and looked at Film Noir to help them develop.    

The rest of my work, I feel turned out well, but I think I need to spend more time on it overall.  I’m never happy and nothing is ever good enough!  But, I achieved what I set out to, especially the tone and colour of the backgrounds.  I love colour and I really wanted to create something that was bright and expressive.  I’m very pleased with the end result and enjoyed the challenge!

Migraine...

I've posted up the two animations on the virtual drive Liam set up on the internet.  I can't continue due to a persistent migraine so I've asked if someone can clean them up a bit.

Colouring Aaron's animations

I've just finished doing the basic block colours and shadowing.  Now it's the time to clean them up...

Updated cloud scene

This is my final layout for the Imp Express umbrella scene.  It was suggested by the group to make the clouds a little transparent and I also layered up the clouds to be able to had a nice effect in After Effects.

Toy Trains

Over the past week, I've been experimenting with the textures of the toy train that will feature in the final scene of 'The Imp Express'. 

Shader network of front carriage

Front toy train

The image above is a screen shot of the shader network I put together, with a custom wood texture that I added to the ambient colour attribute to give the illusion of the wood grain.  Then I wanted to add a bump map to create a realistic touch to it's surface.  Instead of just using a standard maya bump, I used the Mental Ray 'Mi_Bump_flakes' texture as I got a far more pleasing result with and also didn't add too much to the rendering time.  Then I created another texture, adding the detail pattern and writing on the side.  The result is above.


Then I did the other trains, just changing the colour.

Train Renders

I've been rendering these images of the main train and it's carriages.  Liam modelled the front train and I've done the carriages- now getting together the textures.  The textures are mainly custom shaders, which I will include in the images as a small breakdown.

 This is the first render, before I had added many of the textures.

Added some basic lighting and shadowing.  Plus placed some more textures on the carriages.



On the next few images I've yellowed the lighting to depict the sun and continued to add textures.

Work today...

Today I spent most of the morning and afternoon developing new ideas for train shaders and perhaps textures.  However, I think we've decided we are going to go with shaders for the train mainly due to the complexity of the unwrapping process!  I'll post some screen shots on in my next post.

I've also spent tonight thinking about the toy trains, as I've not really done much in the way of concepts/designs for them.  All we agreed on is that they will be simpler versions of the real train and maybe with some nice wood shaders.  Aaron has found some good shaders and I've been continually hunting for more and looking at tutorials on creating custom shader networks.  Thank you Lee Lanier for 'Advanced Maya Texturing and Lighting'!


Here's the rust texture shader network I used.

It's just noise.

*I've got rid of this now...it's horrible!

Train carriages and more clouds

These are the modeled train carriages, that are from my concepts.  I've also tried out some textures, which I'm a becoming a little jaded with as I'm struggling to get the results I visualise in my head.  However, I'm positive I'll get a good result with persistence.


And, the clouds.  These images aren't the quality that they will show in the final film as I've set them to show in PAL widescreen, so they appear squashed on here.

Final designs of the imp's room

The Imp's cave bedroom!

This is yet to be finished, but shows current progress of the sky background but needs more buildings and a street below!

This one is getting to more where I imagined it would!  I got some advice from our group director and added some more clouds- seems to frame it better.  I also added a faint view of the street below as there is a layer of cloud above.

First few concepts of the Imp Express

View street- people and cars waiting at crossing

I became highly influenced by some images of 1920/30s American stream trains and came up with concept for the train. 

For the images visit:  http://cruiselinehistory.com/?p=233

These were the initial designs I came up with during the first few weeks of working on the 'Imp Express'.  I had a few styles in mind at the time, but chose to look at film- noir and a 1930s design, with small fantastical elements to highlight the surreal parts to the story. 

I also did these before we had any idea of the style we were heading towards!