Term 2: Human Anatomy: Muscles H/w Project Steve Brown Session 1

For this weeks assignment we were tasked with studying the anatomy of the human body, however unlike the previous assignment which tasked us with studying the skeletal anatomy we we instructed to study the muscular side of the human body. Below are my sketches of the muscles of the Head, Torso, Arms, Legs and finally the full body front and back.

The muscles wrapping the face are: the Temporalis, Procerus, Occipito-frontalis, Orbicularis Oculi/Oris, Masseter, Mentalis, Platysma and the Sternomastoid.

With this sketch I tried to reduce the number of outlines drawn and create the shape purely through pencil strokes and shading. The muscles of the abdomen are a layer resting between the rib-cage/vital organs and the skin.

I found it interesting to see such a major nerve and ligament be left exposed at the back of the knee joint, although it makes sense as muscle would get in the way of the bend. I like these sketches, in terms of basic shape I feel as though I caught the image of the leg correctly however they suffer due to a fair lack of shading, something I am trying to improve upon, especially in Life Drawing.

This sketch is not one of my best, I struggle to draw side by side like this mainly due to lack of practise as it's not a way I am used to drawing. However I was able to sketch in the muscles in their correct locations.

I have to say the individual muscle sketches I made before the final one turned out far better.

Term 2: Maya Session/ H/w 1: USS Enterprise

For this weeks session we were tasked with building the physical model of the USS Enterprise a project which would be completed as H/w.

To start we were shown to take 3 poly planes and attach a blinn to them, each blinn would have a texture file added to them, a file of the model plans of the Enterprise itself.

To begin the fuselage of the model I created a poly cube, with it selected I pressed the '3' key which turned it into the shape in the image above.

I selected the 'front' face and extruded it until it was aligned with the plans of the Enterprise and began to add edges through the insert edge loop tool from which I could begin modelling the fuselage into shape.

Here is the fuselage in shape and aligned with the plans surrounding the model.

Now because the model is still essentially a cube and by pressing '1' it would return to it's original shape I needed to reset the model so that it retained it shape even when I pressed '1'. To do this I used the smooth tool which retained the models shape but now I had the issue of too many edges and vertices on the model creating too many triangles. Thus using CTRL Delete I began to remove the edges and vertices not important to the overall shape.

The fuselage complete I turned my attention to the other parts of the model. Starting with a basic shape I made the connecting joint between the fuselage and the bridge with a poly cube. I entered 'Right view' and made all objects transparent, this allowed me to see the plans in the background and model the cube into shape from the foreground.

Next was the radar dish. Using the curve tool I drew half the outline of the radar dish (following the side plan of the model) and fleshed it out with the surfaces > revolve function.

Next I made the 2 joints connecting the fuselage to the engines, following the plans the same way I made the features thus far.

The engine cylinders were made with a single poly cube which I modelled the same way I modelled the fuselage, by setting the cube with the '3' key and using the insert edge loop tool to deform the shape using the plans as my guidelines.

The last portion I had to make was the bridge. This was made using a poly cylinder which had 24 subdivisions protruding from the centre to form the circle (the same number as the plans show) and 6 subdivision caps. By following the plan from the side view I began by using the extrude tool to pull out the extrusions on the bridges geometry and selecting each individual edge on the bottom face and using the scale tool to equally pull them into a cone shape. I repeated this on the bottom face until the geometry matched the plan and to create the bottom peak I simply pulled all the edges together until they passed by one another and pulling back to just before that moment to create that bottom peak.

I repeated this process for the top half of the bridge, except I morphed the edges to create a more oval shape for the top extrusions like the plans show. This created an interesting accident when trying to create the final 2 extrusions which would form the top of the bridge in that because of the positions of the subdivisions when I extruded it created this small tube running down the back. Although it isn't in the design I liked it as it showed a visible placement of an elevator shaft so I kept it in.

Here is my final model, there is one thing missing here (which I shall address) and that is 2 tube extensions from the engines.

Apart from that I really like how this came out, but to critique my own work I would say that the circular ports on the front of the fuselage need to be adjusted as they do not match the plans brilliantly and that the 2 peaks of the bridge, while I really do like how it turned out, are just that peaks. According to the plans they have a smooth curve rather than a point.

Term 2: Photoshop Session 1: Lizard Humanoid Shading

Today's session Had us use techniques to apply form to the lizard image shown below through shading. Our goal was to try and get the image to a point where it did not require lines to distinguish features.

To start I unlocked the base line drawing and set it to Multiply and lowered the opacity of the lines to 60% and locked the layer as I had no more editing use for the layer. Setting the layer to multiply allowed the lines to pass through any painting I did on another layer below the locked layer. Changing the opacity to 60% also meant that the line work passing through would not be so strong so I could focus on the painting.

I then created 2 new layers. On the lowest layer in the hierarchy I set the background to a monotone grey and locked said layer. On the layer selected in the image above I blocked out the colour of the lizard itself.

To create the appropriate lighter shade with the base colour one would use the colour picker tool, highlight the base colour and using the little circle selection tool, move the circle selection in a North East direction. This changes the colour to the lighter shade from the base colour.

I then set the opacity of the brush down to 40% and using the reference I began to build up the shades.

We were then shown how to apply a texture to our paintings; above is the skin texture image I used.

To do this we brought the texture image into Photoshop; from here we used Ctrl A to select the entire image and Ctrl C to copy the image. In the Edit tab > Paste Special > Paste in Place brought the image onto the our lizard paintings. We then scaled the image into the right size just for the head at this stage; we were then shown to use the Warp function of the Transform tool: Edit > Transform > Warp. This allowed us to essentially wrap the texture around the head to create a more realistic skin contour.

At the end of the session this is what I had produced. It's unfinished however I am really happy with how it turned out; I need to apply a different skin texture but in terms of the shading I think it came out rather well.