Sci-Fi Cannon Concept Art

The objective of this task is to design a sci-fi cannon, model it in 3DS Max, or Maya, and paint over a rendered finish of it in photoshop.

To begin I produced a moodboard of existing designs, which met the sic-fi cannon criteria, in order to develop an understanding of the basic form of a cannon.

Next I was told to watch an example video of what I was to produce, and the techniques I was to use:

- The video was made by the Senior Artist for Planet Side 2, Roel Jovellanos.

- 00:20 - Designed out basic features, and layered in distinct characteristics from shapes in greyscale Photoshop.

- 00.59 - Brought in the colour palette.

- 01:13 - Blocked the model in 3D into Maya using a thumbnail sketch for reference.

- 01:31 - Put in basic shapes of the colours.

- 01: 53 - Rendered out a 2D image of the 3D model, and imported it into Photoshop to begin paint-over.

- 02:10 - Brought in textures to overlay and skew onto the design for effects.

- 03:28 - Dodged in the highlights. 

With an idea of what I needed to do, I started to produce my cannon in 3DS Max:

Once I had finished modelling I then experimented a bit with lighting and how i would use it to promote the design of my cannon.

This render is an example of the light source coming from below the cannon, which i thought looked interesting, but didn't show much detail of the top.

This render had the light source coming from directly above, giving a daylight feel to the model. I like this idea but may need to change the camera angle.

After changing the camera angle and adding a second light to highlight some of the darker sections, i arrived with my final render ready for painting.

Final paint over. 

  

Alien Landscape Concept Art

My idea was to produce the plant on the top-right of the image above, however after producing it in 3DS Max, I tried to export it to Mudbox, and some how the file corrupted indefinitely, forever being lost to the void.  

Wrinkles Concept Art

Decided to look at the more basic forms of wrinkles, e.g. facial humans; but then found some images of animals with wrinkle features, and I'm probably going to focus on that area  to avoid the obvious approach of using elderly humans.

To get an idea of how to use shadow and light in wrinkles, I sketched a few studies.

I then came across the idea of using a hairless cat for my final piece, because their entire body is covered in wrinkles.

Final Piece:

I went for a more simple approach with this piece, so that more attention is paid to the details in the wrinkles.