Little Boat

As a standard portfolio piece this week, I decided to formally learn how to make a convincing ocean. Surprisingly, the ocean texture is noting more than a fully metallic material with a dark blue gloss. The wood grain texture is completely procedural and calculated through blender. The sun and the boat are both organized using the rule of thirds. I intentionally broke a "triangle" of elements in favor of more negative space below the sun and to the left of the boat. Instead, the sun is placed along a direct diagonal to the boat. I finished the piece with some blender compositing by adding light bloom and contrast.

Edge Lighting

This week, we were given a test of our Photoshop skills by taking a regularly lit portrait, and adding edge lighting to but the normally lit photo in a sunset context. I tried to keep the colors natural in this piece by sampling from the background around my friend's head. This color choice kept the lighting natural. I was debating on whether or not to keep the background in focus but the DOF the lens blur adds gives the subject, in this case the head, the proper attention while keeping the general context of the background. Lastly, the composure was originally arranged in a rule-of-thirds method but I instead opted for a center oriented subject.

Tutorial: Creating Topiary

http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-courses/creating-topiary/

This week, I've been following an excellent tutorial by CGCookie on how to make topiary in Blender. I've only chose a mesh I waned to use so far with the branch network and leaf particle system yet to be implemented. The complex branch structure is made using a clever add-on called IvyGen. After the branches have been implemented, the leaves are placed over top as a particle system with Cycles materials and realistic UV textures. Hopefully, I'll have a finished product ready for show after the long weekend.

Image property of CGCookie.

Cinemagraph

At first, I found the idea of making a portraiture gif to be rather daunting. After discovering the greatness of cinemagraphs, however, the project became quite fun. The process involves taking a still video and setting one frame as a static layer and then using the others to add selective motion, like in the hands flipping the pages. As a global ascetic, I tried for a moody feeling by shifting the subject to the right and adding a gradient vignette across the left. This added the negative and positive space I was looking to achieve.