Reflective Essay Week 1 (Jan 11)

After reading the FNV interview, the idea that most stuck out to me was the planning. At one part in the interview they described the process of how they took ideas and drew up the concept art before giving it out the the designers. So when I was picking my reference images, I began mentally planning my scenes out. What buildings do i think i could do, and how am I going to go about doing it and such?

So my plan was to just find the images and reproduce them best I could. I learned a lot through the process 'cause in dealing with angles that were hard to reproduce. But I learned that I could "cheat" mess with angles and distant objects perspectives to create the proper illusions.

The image that I think turned out the best was the bridge. Just because I think its easier to tell that its a bridge. After the rendering a lot of the shadows were way different since I don't know any lighting yet. By far the image is not finished, I was just poking around with the image and I thought that it was finished enough to demonstrate my skills. After all, that was after only a few days playing with Maya.

I think I could have done better with the original images I found. I was just looking for something grand so I found pyramids and bridges but I think something like the inside of a cathedral would have been a better starting point. Its amazing to think how monumental objects like the pyramids are in real life, but when you put them in 3d its just some basic objects that looks too simple. I found that the pyramid shapes are a little harder to manipulate to cause that old deteriorating look since the way you edit the angles is more like a Christmas tree than the thousands of blocks their made of. So far I'm having fun with the program so I guess I'll learn.