Perspective in Environment: Sci Fi Room

We were asked to draw a sci fi room in 2 point perspective, using references from sci fi movies and TV as inspiration.

Above are some stills and set images from some recent futuristic sci fi movies. I used recent ones because a lot of the technology in old sci fi media is now real in some form, so I wanted to use current depictions of what the future might look like as inspiration. I also used a picture from The Jetsons cartoon. I like how vibrant it is and would like to incorporate that into my design, even though the look of the cartoon itself is very dated.

Here is my initial sketch:

We needed to include a desk, a chair, instrument panels and a doorway. I wanted to explore what a sci fi themed bedroom/living space might look like and due to the room needing instrument panels and a workspace, I decided to combine home living with work. I imagined what a future "cubicle" at a desk job might look like; employees literally live at their desk. There is a bed in the corner up against the window, a desk with a panel incorporated into it and another panel opposite it connected to the wall. There are many screens around; the ones around the desk are for work and the ones on the windows display messages such as "Good morning!", the time, weather and other status updates. The plant in the corner is synthetic. The screens and panels will have a holographic quality to them. The door is the kind that opens upwards automatically, so there is no door handle. The room is very cramped so I want to keep the colour scheme very simplistic and bright, as I feel like this would be implemented to keep the employees "happy".

I really like circles and contrasting them with sharp edges, however I found that circles are very hard to render in perspective, so I changed everything to squares.

Here is my progress.

First I used the reference image provided to get some accurate perspective.

Once I had the base for my room, I started adding in the objects and values.

Here is my final image.

As well as the shapes, I changed the plants a bit.

I found this assignment very laborious as I mostly used the pen tool to get my straight lines. I think I will get better at this with practice. I also found the perspective tricky in the beginning to figure out. I thought the horizon line was in the middle of the image, but this made the perspective wonky and it wouldn't line up. Then I re-read the file given to us for this assignment and saw an example of 2 point perspective with the horizon line above the image. I decided to try this and it worked! I definitely need to do some more perspective studies. Overall, I feel more confident designing interiors, which is not something I am very good at.

Tentacles

For this week's homework we were asked to design a character that has at least 4 tentacles.

I decided to go for an octopus woman.

I went on to do more research into tentacles and created a moodboard of the most interesting images I found.

Here is what I came up with. 

I didn't leave myself much time to finish this, so in future I need to manage my time better. I really like where it was going, so if I had more time I'd add some dramatic lighting and try to make it look like she was underwater.

Perspective Analysis

In this lesson, we learnt more about perspective by analysing a few images. We had to take these images and figure out the eye level as well as the vanishing points and putting in some perspective lines. 

This one was quite easy because there is only one vanishing point and the straight lines in the image make it simple to plot in some perspective lines. Also, the eye level is the same as the characters in the image, so that helped with finding the vanishing point.

This next image was also very easy for me. I looked closely at the straight lines in the image, the windows and the bottoms of the buildings, to see where the lines change direction. Then it was easy to find where the lines become horizontal and this is where I placed the horizon line. Plotting the perspective lines was then no problem.

This image was much harder than the last two. Although it has some obvious straight lines, the horizon line doesn't seem to be within the image itself. I placed it slightly above the image, but the lines do not add up exactly. I am unsure if this is my mistake or a slight mistake by the artist. I eventually settled on the above.

I have done a bit of perspective before joining the course, which is why I found the first two images quite simple, however I have never tried to place the horizon line outside of the image before, so I struggled quite a bit with the last one. I feel like I have a better understanding of perspective now but would still like to practice a lot more.

Lava Character

In this assignment, we were asked to create a lava creature using the painting techniques learned from the class session. 

I knew I wanted the character to be humanoid and thought of a type of siren that lives in pools of lava. This type of siren attempts to stop people from running away when a volcano erupts. I looked up references of dreadlocks because I thought they resembled the way hardened lava sometimes looks, like in the second image below. 

Along with hardened lava, I collected some images of molten lava as well as a couple of representations by other artists. 

Here are my initial sketches.

These were very quick because I had a clear concept in mind already - I wanted to show her habitat, so naturally I'd want to draw her in a pool of lava. After a couple of scribbles trying to think about how she might be mostly submerged as if she were bathing, I came up with a little drawing of her just standing. I thought this would make a more interesting illustration, especially because she is a siren and her looking dead at the viewer would add to that feel. I also played around with a few different hairstyles before settling on the middle one - long dreadlocks left out. 

I scanned in this page and traced over the sketch, blocking out some shapes and values. 

Next I defined a light source (the pool of lava). 

Once I had a rough idea of what kind of lighting the light course would make, I started to create the rocky skin often found on lava characters and also golem characters. It resembles cracked, hardened lava. This was by far the most fun part because I was surprised at being able to do this despite never having rendered rocks before.

Here I used a layer with styles effects added - inner glow, outer glow and colour overlay. We learnt how to do this in the last class. My version was pretty close to the one that Steve gave us, but I just tweaked the settings a little bit. 

I created a layer on top of this to add extra yellow details on the lava in the cracks of her skin and hair. I also added a yellow layer set to overlay at 10%, to unify the image, and also lightly painted some yellow onto her legs as the colour from the lava would reflect onto her grey skin.

Here is the final image, which I cropped because I felt the composition looked better this way.

Upon reflection, I feel that her pose could be more dynamic, even though she is only standing up. Rendering the rocks was very time consuming, so next time I would look into a quicker way of doing it. Also, there is nothing in the background which takes away a little bit from the overall impact of the illustration. Other than that though I am very happy with this piece and feel quite confident at rendering lava now.

Lava Painting Techniques

In this class we were to practice techniques for painting lava. Below are my first attempts at directly painting lava with a standard brush, using yellow, orange and dark reds. This is not bad for a first attempt but the colours look quite muddy and overall it's not very convincing. 

We learnt about styles in Photoshop and how to create our own. Then we were given the image below and were asked to paint lava onto the creature using what we had learnt. 

I used the magnet lasso tool as instructed to cut out the creature and added a dark background.

Next I went around the edges with a soft round eraser to integrate it more and also edited the levels and curves. 

Then, using a variation of the style Steve gave us, I started to paint on some lava.

Finally, I took a yellow brush on a new layer and tried to make the lava stand out a little bit more, as the thinner lines only came out orange on the styles layer.

Although I am happy with the image, I think it looks much better smaller. If I could redo this, I would pay more attention to the thinner lines and make sure they aren't scratchy. When working on my lava character next, I'll make sure to keep that in mind and use what I learnt here.

Pixel Art

In this assignment, we had to design a retro toy and draw it in an isometric pixel art style. I decided to do a robot toy as was recommended, due to the simple shapes and bright designs. 

Here are the reference images I used. 

Here are my initial sketches. 

I picked my favourite three and turned them into silhouettes to see which design was best. I went for the first one because it was my favourite one from the sketch stage. Also, I felt like the 3rd one would be too hard to do in the style on my first try, and the 2nd one was too common a design. 

I made three different colour concepts. The first one was based on the iconic robot design (top row, middle image in my moodboard above), so I decided against that one due to it being already done. I picked the pink design because I could imagine it more on shelves than the bright green one, especially as it is more gendered and toys were more gendered in the 40s and 50s, when these robot toys were most popular.

Using the tutorial, this is what I ended up with, at it's original size, at a bigger size and also integrated into the image provided. 

I think it blends in quite well with the picture, partly because I directly colour picked the colours from the scene after noticing that all yellows were exactly the same (except for the cheese which is lighter). Unfortunately, the design had to be changed while I was drawing it in the isometric pixel style. I found triangles and circles/spheres to be very hard to work with, so I changed the head and torso to cubes. I also changed the feet to yellow as I felt like the initial design had too much pink. Also, the image is a little too big. We were asked to have it at 128x128px but mine is 150x200px. This made it difficult to integrate into the scene because I needed to resize it, but whenever I tried to make the robot smaller the quality was lost. I got around it by sizing up the robot 200% and the scene 300%; this made the robot appear to be around the same height as the other toys in the scene so I was happy with this in the end. Next time, I will keep the canvas size at the required pixels from the start.

Futuristic Weapon

For this assignment, we had to come up with a futuristic weapon.

I am not very good at weapons, so I thought hard about this one and tried to be creative. I thought of what kind of future would this weapon have been born from. Usually, new inventions are made to combat current problems. At the time of writing, there has been a lot in the news about young black boys in America being shot often by the police there. I also read a lot about it happening to those suffering from mental health during a breakdown. I thought, what could be made to change the way these police interact with the public? I also don't like the fact that dogs are used in service to police and military.

That's when I came up with P.A.W.S.



Are you a police officer? P.A.W.S. is your new best friend. The Police Apprehensive Weapon System combines the tracking capabilities of a police dog and the stop power of a taser. There is no need for guns anymore! Simply input the suspect's data and let your P.A.W.S. friend track them down. No data? No problem! P.A.W.S. is constantly scanning and updating its own database. The suspect will be caught in no time. P.A.W.S opens up and emits a green light that engulfs the suspect and restricts their movements. Its cute appearance is very non threatening and will keep the public at ease while the suspect is being caught. While there IS a destroy function, it can only be used if authorised by the highest of higher ups for very dangerous operations.

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I really like this idea but I did not leave myself enough time to turn it into a full illustration. I learnt to use my head and get creative in situations where I feel out of my depth.