Skip to main content

CG Character Development Session 12

Session Review

Shaman King: Yoh and his guardian ghost Amidamaru
This mornings peer review for my reference character image was met with expected responses and I agreed that based from the images I collected in session eleven it resulted in a generic armoured science fiction warrior that started to resemble the Yautja Predator character.

Furthermore after beginning a simple character modelling tutorial on the educational website Lynda.com I had l noted down the procedures of setting the reference images in Maya which was highly valuable for when my I begin production of my own character.

Moreover. after talking to a friend and actually expanding upon my character's background and thinking more of depending on the environment and lifestyle my character had it would highly determine the appearance of the character.

I eventually settled for a nomadic tribal shaman and after noting down the key aspects I wanted to express with my designing redesigned a cultural rich  and more visually appealing character with a simple sketch that will be re rendered into a reference image this time on an A3 sheet in order to draw the accessories with the extra paper space.

A spirit ceremony takes place
In addition, the tribal mask for the character despite having technological attachments, it will be used to invoke and channel the characters ancestral spirits or deities. The reason for this is because in African culture these spirit masks are used for the purposes of invoking the depicted spirit.

After further secondary research, I learned in more detail that a chosen or dancer will wear for either celebration, initiations, crop harvesting, war preparation, peace and for troubled times. The mask is owned by a senior male elder and is owned by the family available to all members of that community including children.  In addition, the masks can be worn in three different ways. The first being worn vertically covering the face or encasing the entire head as a helmet or the other being worn as a crest, resting on top of the head. When worn the spirit would then possess the wearer and the wearer is then able to communicate with the spirit.

A wise man or translator is next to the dancer in order to decipher the message of the spirit these rituals are usually performed with traditional song, dance and music with traditional African instruments. So for my character he wears his mask as a link to his family ancestor strongly similar to the manga and anime Shaman King where each shaman had a guardian ghost to battle and advice them.


References

 http://www.rebirth.co.za/African_mask_history_and_meaning.htm

 https://www.boundless.com/art-history/textbooks/boundless-art-history-textbook/africa-in-the-modern-period-33/traditional-and-contemporary-african-culture-a-comparison-201/the-spirit-world-723-10817/

 http://www.vub.ac.be/BIBLIO/nieuwenhuysen/african-art/african-art-collection-masks.htm

 http://www.historyofmasks.net/mask-history/history-of-african-masks/

 http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZBXOg30xPaQ/maxresdefault.jpg

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBXOg30xPaQ

 http://www.s94065996.onlinehome.us/cel-galleries/wishlist/shaman-king/sk-wish-grp-3.jpg


By  Sebastian Jones

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nomad Production: Finishing Touches

Session Notes Taking a moment to resume progress with the character I have made sure each part of the model's vertices, uv mapping, textures and topology areas clean and organised as possible before attempting to pose the character in Zbrush. using a plugin named Transpose However, while successfully importing a clean model of my character into Zbrush using the spheres to rig the character proved challenging considering I am still new to some of Zbrush's features and thus proved far too time-consuming for the academic deadline. Nevertheless, I have downloaded KeyShot 5 and attempted to render features of the nomad such as the tribal mask and truly show it off by making the render look as detailed as possible. Browsing ArtStation once more and observing others renders I pasted and edited a lovely forest green grunge background along with applying subtle lighting effects I learned from Photography to create a colour and vibrant render sheet. Henceforth, after combini
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 1: Class Introduction and Character Development Session 1

Session Review Returning from the summer holiday, during today's introductions session,. This session as I assumed was simply an introduction to the rules and regulations of th module and workshop session where the class and I play around in Maya and reacquainted ourselves with the tools and interface. Thankfully I had remembered and learned the majority of the core modelling and editing tools in Mayas interface in order to continue my progression and experiments with 3d modelling. In adoption, I can now compare Maya to what I learned in 3d Studio Max from my time in college and over the summer holiday. A useful tool in Maya used to save your object selections Furthermore, the moment the real production began the moment I got the green light to  produce a series of sketches and contemplate on the series rough sketches and produce my first design  of character by the third academic week. The reason why it is essential to create the character illustration is  in order fo
Post a Comment
Read more

(OLD) CG Nomad Final Session Log

Session Review During the events of this final academic session of the nomad, my current concentration was focused on applying more detail to the nomad's helmet and creating a new skin texture. Moreover, the reason for me creating a new skin texture from the previous face skin was because of the previous skin had a harsher completion on the character and a fellow classmate found it unnerving. Moreover, browsing through my photography CDME module folder, I used a portion of my skin an d re shaded indigo in order to create a smoother and more tillable face skin for the nomad. I must say I was very impressed with the quality of detail with the final skin render (figure a). Furthermore, returning to the class I continued to face difficulty successfully, uv mapping the characters head.  However, thanks to constructive criticism from both the lecturer and fellow classmates I proceeded to follow a tutorial from Vimeo, which I personally felt was much simpler to follow a
Post a Comment
Read more