Semester 2 W1 | Production Commence!

During the break I have did some research and learnt how to create the visuals according to my intended art style. I made some discoveries and started to build the scenes during the break. Before I go into the details, here are some photos of my the main reference for building the scene.

This reference is exactly the style I want to go for which is comical, sketchy, illustrative and a bit of quirk to it. This reference also has hints of the cybernetic world which I can draw inspiration from.

The characters and objects has a sense of chaos to them yet it is not too overwhelming, everything blends together very well, creating a world that is surreal.

In this chaotic and sketchy world, it is also neat and aesthetically pleasing. Something about the imperfections makes it so perfect to me.

I found out that the creator of this work used Quill to create the whole scene, which is a Oculus Software that requires the oculus headset to draw the scene. That being said, I didn't want to create the scene with that software as I will need to be coding certain interactive assets that Quill may not be able to do and I don't have full access to the school's property for long periods of time too. This is a disadvantage also because when other students need to use the headset, all data in the headset will be wiped too. Hence, I seek for another method to create this scene!

One night, I was scrolling through Tiktok and I came across this 3D/illustration artist that specialises in grease pencil on Blender3D. I saw the possibilities this software could do and decided to give grease pencil and Blender3D a shot. Grease pencil allowed me to create 3D drawings just like Quill, I can draw in different angles to create 3D illusions. The artist also taught tutorials on his YouTube channel and that really helped me get familiar with everything. I was not a user of Blender3D, was more knowledgeable in Cinema4D and since their UI is very different, it took some time to understand but eventually I got the hang of it hehe.

Knowing about Grease Pencil Tool, I searched up more tutorials and learnt it as well as executing it in Blender3D. My first attempt took a lot of practice and I managed to draw a building out with the tool.

The results of my testing was very promising, I really liked how it turned out and I proceeded with this style which I can confirm I can definitely do. The materials and layering was the same as using photoshop, the colours are easy to change with just a button if I didn't like it. The user interface was beginning to make sense to me and I was ready to embark on the journey of building the scene!