Vehicle Concept Art 5
Glen and I made a wager over who would get to post their stuff to the blog this week. I’ll leave the outcome as a thought experiment for our readers.
The biggest difference between the truck and the pirate ship from a production standpoint was that while the pirate ship was my own design, this is the same truck that Glen drew a few weeks ago. For me, the time that goes into creating a model is anywhere from 80-90% designing and 10 or less actually modeling.
Like always, my thought process here was that anything I don’t want to draw each time the truck is in frame should be part of the model.
Jason Jansky says:
July 14th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Sweet. Nice work. Really looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with (for those of you who don’t know, I’m a friend of Adam’s from animationmentor.com). So Adam, do you have specific “blue prints” when you approach actually modeling something like this, or do you more or less wing it? Everything looks so well proportioned and in place, I don’t see how you could do it without some really technically accurate drawings. Anyway, looks great and will talk to you soon,
Jason
Adam Weber says:
July 14th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Hi Jason! How’s your break?
Designing takes some time, sure, but once I know exactly what the final is supposed to look like (as I did with this truck) my next step is to put together a mockup so I will know what the basic shape will be and can visualize what it’s going to look like when finished. (this stage takes a bit of imagination but it’s very effictive)
Once the planning is done I just jump in and wing it mostly in one shot. I am no stranger to modeling, so the model above really didn’t take much time to throw together once the preliminary work was done. So no blueprints, no cad, no crazy measurements, I just jump in and wing it.
And boy do I enjoy every minute of it.
Glen Moyes says:
July 14th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
I provide Adam with drawings when I can, like the concept art for the truck and the lamps and chandeliers for the pirate ship that we’ve shown previously. If I do a front and side drawing of the same object that’s the closest we ever get to a blueprint. Luckily for me, Adam has a knack for working in 3D so not all of the concept art I give him has to be front and side drawings. But it seems like whenever I do a 3/4 view of an object I mock it up in 3D anyway, which gives Adam a head start if I give him both the concept art and the 3D mock-up that I painted on top of to create the concept art.
Schematics for objects are really hard to come by, which is why we have to wing it. It’s like figure drawing. You look at the reference, block it in, check a few proportions, draw what you see or interpret it, and be creative. Once you get enough practice with it you can do that kind of design process in a 3D environment.
It’s kind of funny when you think about it actually. I often go from a 3D mock-up to 2D illustrations, and then Adam takes both of those to make a more refined 3D mock-up which we’ll then use to paint over again for the final illustrations for the comic. From 3D to 2D to 3D to 2D. I suppose that’s what happens when a bunch of people who want to do 3D animated shows decide to make a comic book.