Over the summer, we must document what we have learned that could help us in the next year of DDA. Over the past few weeks, I have been trying to improve my drawing skills. While this might be a challenge for most artists, I am not most artists. I am not an artist at all. This puts me in a very advantageous position, because there is so much room for improvement, that I will have improved my skills exponentially by the end of the summer. I will document my improvement in this blog post by updating it every fortnight. Hopefully, by the end of the month, I will have improved vastly.
Week 0: As I said earlier, I am not an artist. The very most i can draw is a stick figure in a default position, but I will try to improve my artistry in the next 2 weeks. I will attempt to draw something every few days. I don't know what exactly I will draw, but I will try to do something outside my comfort zone (everything) to improve my drawing skills. We will see how much I have improved. Week 2: I have not improved. Well, I have improved, but just a little. I've found that my dexterity is awful, and drawing basic objects symmetrically that isn't a box is near impossible. I'm sure that if I stick with it for maybe a year or so, my skills will become somewhat decent, but I can't condense a year into a summer, so I will play to my strengths. If I can only draw stick figures, why don't I use that to my advantage? If this class focuses on game design, I could draw the move set of an enemy or boss using stick figures. Week 4: Along with lacking the dexterity and motor skills to draw, I also lack basic anatomy, even of a stick figure. Drawing the limbs of a stick figure never looked right, and I could never position the enemy or player character right. This being said, I attempted pixel art in an attempt to find something I could do, and it was a success. Maybe it's that most pixel art websites give many tools that help counteract the problems I have, but I'd say the art I've produced so far is somewhat decent. I will stick to pixel art for now, and see what else I can produce.
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It is very important to stay focused in this class. A lot of the information you learn in one lesson will very likely be relevant in many other lessons you will learn. Not focusing is doing a disservice to yourself, because you won't know what to do when you have to work on a lesson. I myself have tried my hardest to stay focused in DDA-II, but sometimes I lose my focus, and it can be hard to get back on track. I've tried to conserve breaks to a minimum, so that I can stay on track. It can be hard not to just take a small break and watch one 5-minute video, because next thing I know, it's 7:00 and I'm watching a 3-hour long video by Joseph Anderson analyzing The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild. (Great channel, by the way. I highly recommend watching.) Sometimes, even that isn't enough, and I'm just staring out the window watching my dogs run around the yard. Whenever this happens, I try to make sure that I'm not drifting away by constantly telling myself "stay focused." I've found this method to work quite well, and is usually my go-to method to keep myself focused. Overall, I've tried to make sure I pay attention to every lesson we've received in the quarantine.
In summary - Be sure to pay attention to the lessons you are provided, as they will be useful later. - I try not to take breaks, because that snowballs into free day. - I try to tell myself to stay focused so I can understand lessons and finish work. For the semester 1 contract, I had to create a scene that shows what I learned in semester one. I created the entrance to a mansion, and a bed with a teapot breaking next to it as my model, because I thought they would be good for demonstrating the techniques I learned in semester one. The entrance consists of a stair in between two columns supporting the roof, leading to a door into the mansion. It may not seem like much, but all these objects demonstrate my knowledge of the work we learned in semester one. The columns were made using Loft and Array, using the Loft tool to make the columns themselves, and then using the array tool to arrange multiple capsules to be subtracted from the columns with ProBoolean. Next, to create the stairs, I created a straight spline, and used the Sweep tool to turn the spline into a set of stairs. Then, to make the door, I used a box primitive to create the door itself, and used ProBoolean to subtract panels from the front of the door. I then created an archway for the door using the Sweep tool, and I made a doorknob for the door using the Loft tool. Finally, I made a shingled-roof by creating the shingles with the spline tool, and then using the Array tool to arrange them on top of the mansion. Next, on the back of the scene, I made a bed to demonstrate the cloth tool. I placed a plane on top of the mattress, and applied the cloth modifier to it, so it would become a blanket, and fall on top of the mattress. Finally, I placed a teapot in the middle of the scene, and applied the F.R.A.C.T.U.R.E. script to it, so that it would shatter into a hundred pieces once it hit the floor.
To summarize, - I created a mansion entrance to demonstrate the techniques I learned in semester one. - I showed how I created the objects in my scene to show what techniques were used to create certain objects. |
AuthorHello, my name is Simon Sanchez. I will be writing things about my work and other things in this blog. Archives
May 2022
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