Rtattles Portfolio

Beautifying Friends

2010-05-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

I've gotten approval from my friends to post these picture but they're mainly for my job search purpose. ^^

First is my friend Sandy:

Here's sort of what she wished she looks like.

This is her actual photo.

Next is another friend, Sash. One day, she showed me a picture of her new haircut, and I laughed - she's ALWAYS gets the same haircut. She's a quiet person who like quiet styles, but sometimes, she's TOO quiet.

I went to to repaint her hair in Photoshop.

See, she does need slight curls to give her a lift! She looks so much happier! Okay, so I enlarged her eyes a bit.

Click on pic to enlarge!

Ok then Sash and I entered the topic of coloured contact lenses and were wondering how we'd end up looking, and had a good LAWL session over it. I said OK, I'll try to colour her eyes in Photoshop. I decided to give Sash some light make-up as well since she doesn't believe in make-up, and it'll be funny to see how she looks like with additives and enhancers on her face (trust me, it'll be PRICELESS)

Turns out, it's not too bad. She looks somewhat Eurasian now though.

Trying out outher eye colours. We had our fun. ^^

Fighting Fish

2010-03-14T23:00:00.000-07:00

I was looking at this picture today and was wondering what's the difference? lol Then I saw my signature beside one fish and remembered that the fish on the right was drawn by me. I was kind of distracted by the background. The betta fish on the right is drawn but the background is a background I found off google. With colours like that, Bettas should belong to the rich seas and oceans instead, but again, they'll be glaringly attractive preys as well.

Environment & Background

2010-02-22T02:16:00.000-08:00

Let's just say our environment is currently a MESS. Too many small changes going on, and it's beginning to feel like they'll warrant a major big change soon! I have tried several mock-ups and we're still changing, partially due to polygon count that's slowing the whole computer down, so can't imagine what the rendering time will be like. Our team decided that we will add some mountains in the background, and I've generate some cloud simulation using a 3D container in Maya, looks pretty good but comments from the tutors is that it might be too realistic.0

As can be seen, the 3D contains have their limitations when it comes to coverage.We were advised to try doing 2D sets using flat image planes. I've been tasked to try matte painting. Painted a set of mountains, but apparently they're not toony enough, I'll leave repainting a new background to someone. lol

The background is painted, while the sky is a sphere with a blue scale ramp with a little glow intensity. The matte painting was a failed attempt, it wasn't long enough for the scene lol, so I brazenly duplicate 2 copies and join mirror images together to form a longer background.

Table set up for the scene, please excuse the bonsai, it was a 3 mins quick slap-together. lol I actually like the white table, but the team thinks it's too modern.

Sakura Tree

2010-02-22T02:06:00.000-08:00

Of all the props, trees and plants are probably the most painful to make because we simply have no idea how they should like. It's easy if it's realistic, since we can just copy a real plant, but having to make them cartoony makes my head swoon. Too round and people complain that plants don't look like that. Too lush and people complain it's a jungle. Is it me, or are people hard to please nowadays? Anyway, got a base model from Ken today, and gave it some tweaks by make the trunk thicker and curved to one side. Dropped lamberts on them, and test rendered them. Turns out, rendering the pink "leaves" using Maya Hardware with a slight transparency produces an interesting effect. Looks like something done with a paintbrush and cartoony. Jerald doesn't seem impressed and wants the pink flowers to look more like flowers. I'm extremely in love with the effect though. lol But again, I'm always easy to please. A few friends suggested that it looks like a scrunchy.

Wooden Bow

2010-02-10T02:29:00.000-08:00

Made these today for our Cupid. Wanted it fantasy but people complain it's too elvish looking, so perhaps will try another shader.

Ok, so I was told to generate more bow designs, and got some drawings from Jerald. His bow is rather similar to mine, except his swirls faces forward. Then we got on to an even earlier drawing of his bow and saw Cupid holding a bow with wings, so I got onto Maya and modeled away. Turns out, the response was pretty good. It was immediate choice actually, everyone picked the wing one the moment they saw it.

Since the bow design was FINALLY finalised, I could proceed on to generating colours for the bow.

and...our arrows. The colour scheme has been changed to pink arrow with a black tip to make it look like a love poison arrow. Yah, sort of a merge between the two arrows in the picture. ^^

Concept Stage

2010-02-02T02:55:00.000-08:00

I'm currently in my final semester at 3Dsense and we're into the production phase. I'm not a great drawing artist but I like to colour ^.^ I've been assigned the job of colouring moodboards. We're making a short clip that lasts about 1.5 minutes. It's about a Japanese samurai looking man who had issues with his wife, and Cupid decided to step in to help, however, things went not quite the way he expected.

Original Colours

This is my original piece for this scene. I didn't know what colours to use so all the colour combinations are quite random. Decided to give the furniture plain catchy colours because first thing that came to my mind is IKEA!

Second colour study, with more pinks and purples to give the place an enchanting hue, but it's a little dark for my liking.

Slightly different from the original, the roof gets a stronger reddish hue. I thought it will make it look more outstanding but it's somewhat stealing the lime light from couple with their tea table.

This is version 2 edited according to request by my teammate because she thinks the bush looks overly blended with the background. I increased the greens and toned down the reds.

Environment Mood Boards & Colour Study

Original Colour

Darker rendition with a more brownish house

Reddish Roof with more Autumn-ish colouring

Purplish/Fantasy in Spring

A version generated by request to keep original roof colouring with dark brown walls.

Original/Plain

Evening Time

Morning around 9-10am

I was thinking of Summer when I coloured this version, but most people mistake this as evening.

Spring Time filled with flowers

Just plain shiny at 12pm in the arvo

Portrait Lauren

2010-01-18T21:17:00.000-08:00

Our 2nd last portrait for the foundation phase. Jon said I could choose whatever I'd like to draw, and I've chosen to draw my niece. It's not great since it was sort of done in a hurry ( I was rushing other assignments), but the resemblemce is there.

Portrait 5, 6 & 7

2010-01-18T21:14:00.000-08:00

As we progressed through the weeks, I can tell I was getting better at observations, although texturing was still a major obstacle to overcome when drawing. I swear I'd go blind just looking at all the patterns repeating themselves.

Portrait 3 & 4

2010-01-18T21:08:00.000-08:00

2nd week's portrait. I think the man looks slightly out of shape, especially the chin.

Portrait 1 & 2 (First Portraits)

2010-01-18T18:43:00.000-08:00

My first two portraits. I used to think they were pretty good considering I'm never good at drawing. lol It's also my first time having to draw anything life-like. Very tedious and difficult for me to grasp, but I did it! However, in retrospect, this is actually quite terrible done considering how off they look to the original. lol

Make-Up 4 AbZ

2009-10-31T05:34:00.000-07:00

My friend asked me if I could add some spice to her photos, and here they are:

Original Picture

Removed Blemishes

After Some Extra Spice & Everything Nice

Another original photo:

This is Abz after some Scotch, Brandy and other hard boozes:

Pony Mock-up

2009-10-16T15:34:00.000-07:00

I find this worth posting because it's the first time I ever tried using my Photoshop skills to do some "prototyping", and the outcome was pretty GOOD!

Moondancer is a unicorn pony, and a childhood favourite of mine. Sadly her actual toy looks kind of deformed, and there existed other poses from the later era that are more eye-candy. The above pony was what I created in Photoshop from the two source images below.

I've actually done this as a quick mock-up to ask for a pony commission, just so people know what I am talking about. I was surprised I found someone who was willing to take on the job! Anyway, the actual product came out pretty close, and I really like the new Moondancer.

This is part of the process where I'm pointing out to the lady about the symbol design that the moon is tilting at a wrong angle and it's overly curved. The colour wasn't exactly satisfactory either. In sum, I needed her to change. lol "Change" is always a scary word for people doing the production, but hey I paid the money, so I had to be pleased!

This is the final product - TADA! Of course the lady couldn't replicate exactly what I wanted on picture because this is handicraft, and she's limited in a sense that there's no engineer or whomsoever to solve her problems, but she definitely did well! I would say the likeness to what I wanted is 99%! She also tied a nice bow on the mane of the pony, which was a bonus, since I didn't ask for it. The little baby pony beside is an official release, so in fact, the custom pony looks quite "factory".

Rebel Girl: Drubble

2009-09-25T02:42:00.000-07:00

Alt Colour

After Photoshop

Original

Another photo-retouch, except this is due for assignment. Blended out most of her freckle, give her face slightly more pink, and well....crazy colours for hair and lips. I like how she looks kind of emo, so I named her the Drubble the Rebel Girl.

Photo-Retouch A+++ *****

2009-09-25T00:30:00.000-07:00

Photoshop lessons have to my favourite! I'd give it an A+++ ***. It was definitely pure fun. Above is the pic of a normal lady turned ....psychedelic. She may have liked staying the way she looked, but I prefer her like this. Isn't purple skin gorgeous? I like her lips especially.

Added a pic of her with normal skin tone with blue hair and lips, and purple eyes.

Whizzer the Pegasus Pony

2009-09-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

There's a reason why I love digital painting! I get to colour all the things I love! This assignment involves colouring a character I like. Being a die-hard pony collector, a pony seems like a natural choice. After browsing on the web for ages looking for the perfect outline, I gave up and took up an outline of Whizzer the Pegasus Pony. I think she looks the best by far. I'm extremely pleased with how her hair turned out, albeit maybe a tad too shiny, but I LOVE SHINY! I don't think she was originally that shiny. I forgot what I did and the the light and contrast went a little beserk, and there was too many layers to trudge through to correct the mistake. The different is slight anyway - between SHINY or not so shiny. This outline is probably used to death in many My Little Pony comics, merch and storybook illustrations, but the colouring are always flat, so I took the real toy of her as a reference and tried to give this attempt some sense of volume, yet I didn't want to make her too realistic. I wanted to imitate how the old generation 1 ponies were presented on their packaging. It was a fusion between semi-realistic and pastel 2D water colour-eque drawings, and I really wished I could draw and colour like how they were done on the packaging! It was actually what really got me into collecting, I simply LOVED how they were drawn - that particular style. I gave the pony's body a slight shine to give it a plasticky vinyl quality. The only part I am not too pleased is Whizzer's eyes. They're supposed to be jewels, but I don't think they look shiny enough. The background is completely done by me. It's not hard to make a blue backdrop and painting a rainbow and smudge some clouds on, but I still like to take credits for it. lol There's nothing wrong about being shameless.

Apples & Fruit Basket

2009-09-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

Don't you just love painting apples? They have to be my favourite fruit over bananas, orange, and oh definitely mangoes, guava, strawberries....you get the picture. The apples on the left are my references, and the ones on the right with my little "Chai" signature beside them are drawn by me! These are blended with a size 3 hardbrush and then an overall quick smudge at the end with a size 45 softbrush.

Another fruit themed assignment that I enjoyed painting. I was intending to paint an entire basket of fruit, but having been away for a month has piled on quite mountain heap of assignments from other subjects that I need to restraint myself.

Figure Drawing

2009-09-22T11:18:00.000-07:00

All thanks to my army reservice (thanks and no thanks by the way), I missed many of my figure drawing lessons. I was hard-pressed for finding decent looking drawings to come up with a best 15. I only had 2 classes before this had to be summited. Good thing I chocked up enough sketch to cough out something.

Hairspray: Edna Turnblad

2009-09-22T11:03:00.000-07:00

Can you tell who this is? I was wondering who to draw for my last portrait, and I decided I would do something I love. I was watching Hairspray on repeat countless times in a week, so I guess you can classify that as a Hairspray addiction. After much deliberation, I've narrowed my choices to just Edna Turnblad, cleverly acted out in full scale character by none other than the talented John Travolta. Here's my tribute to him. He was SO hilarious in the movie. The hair and the sequins on the dress took me forever, but it was worth it!

Man, Dog, Tree

2009-09-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

This is probably the most terrible of all my assignments. This is before I learn to digital paint of course. Alright, so I need to find excuses to explain away why my colouring skills are the equivalent of a primary school kid. I'll be honest, I am not the most artistically inclined person and I lack patience...and skillZ... I was basically adding whatever I could from any opinion that any passerby could provide. I didn't know what blending was when I was doing this assignment. I was colouring to the best of my ability, which I know, is rather lacklustre. No need to cry.

This work still deserves a bump though, for all the effort I've put in.

Three Lil' Pigs

2009-09-22T09:15:00.000-07:00

Click on picture for larger version

An illustration assignment where we were asked to draw WITH PERSPECTIVE in mind based on the theme of either the Lil' Red Ridinghood or the Three Little Pigs. Okay, so most of my drafts didn't make it through the approval stage, but this one was lucky to barely make it. It was wayyyyy more complicated at the beginning but the random explosions were cluttering up the view, so I got rid of them. I had colour balancing issues with this picture because I swear it was much lighter and brighter when I was colouring it on my laptop but the pigs looked roasted when I brought them onto the screen at school, and I never was able to get the same "right" tones even after tuning the lightness and contrast. I ended up choosing vividness over the other elements. Definitely not my best piece, but I think it's decent enough to show it publically on the web.

Fat Phoenix

2009-06-04T02:17:00.000-07:00

Colour Study/Character Design

Plz click on pic to view larger version

Our class' first colour study exercise. We were asked to create a simple character using simple shapes, and I came out with a bird using a circle. Decided to make it extra special by attaching tails to it and make it a fat phoenix - HEHE. It'll be nice if it implodes on impact as well (haha literally a fire bird), so no hugging the bird please... for your personal safety.