Digital Art Piece building up Shadow, Lighting, and Silhouette

 

I was really inspired by the use of shadows as a tool for 3-Dimensional Construction, exemplified by the work of Carlos Huante.  I did my best to begin with flat base colors with a vibrant palette so that I could avoid doing any construction with line in this piece.

I suffered from a lot of art block when trying to figure out what the subject matter should be, but ultimately I'm quite happy with how that shadows on the reaper character and the serpent beast turned out.

Here is a piece by Carlos Huante that I used when building my shadows

In particular, I loved the blending on this particular work.  I've got quite a way to go before I can say I really captured what the artist managed here, and were I to do it again I'd certainly build more color into the shadows.

Work-in-Progress Crate Asset

Building a crate based on a barred crate concept from the game Tera.  When I get to the texturing stage, I intend to really give it some waterlogging and damage to give the model a story.  3D art isn't my strongest suit but I'm pretty happy with how this ended up so far!

The initial proxy model

My reference material

Basic 3 Point Light Study

 I ended up actually using four lights, but I'm too thrilled with how the end result looks to really be too worried about it affecting my grade!  Masks and Blur tools are my friends now and forever.

Here's the original image!

Ball Bounce Third Pass

 Experimented a bit with camera animations and additional angles to make my kick poses shine.

Primitive Level Render

 Testing out my level design skills as well as the power of Lumen and the Unreal Engine 5.0's Render Power!  It's some seriously cool stuff.  Interpolation was a challenge for a bit but ultimately it was a very good learning experience.

Use of Value and Contrast

 This is a value study based on the 3D model artwork of Nick Zuccarello.  It served double duty in a practice of more realistic, blended shading (which I am a bit of a novice at) and photoshop painting and shading workflow in general.  I have a strong preference for line over value, but it's important to expand horizons, particularly since I want to have stronger conceptual skills in the art field.

Bouncing Ball First/Second Passes

 I've been working for a week or two on this ball bounce animation.  Since the start, I felt like I wanted to add a little bit extra to make it pop.  I learned a lot through the experience of overcomplicating this assignment, mainly that my workflow needs some adjustments so that cleanups can be a lot easier.  As it stands, I keyframe far too often. I feel it lets me manipulate the objects better but also makes my graph editor an unholy nightmare of spaghetti.  Still, I'm planning to really convey the power and speed I want going into next week's final pass.