VFX artist come web designer?

Right well, I know I have a few things on the go at the moment and though my summer job is taking around 50hours a week of my life away from me I'm trying to keep some motion in the creative work load. Keeping it varied I decided to look into the world of web design, I know the fundamentals and a little more but want to become a little more acquainted with the www for a personal portfolio website. To begin with though I wanted a small project to practice and experiment with formats and styles, html, css, flash etc. A good candidate project was one suggested to me buy a friends dad who used to give me a lift into college on his way to work that wanted someone to update his companies site due to being a bit off a visual shocker [sorry Ian] http://www.utt.nl/ . At the time I kind of shrugged it off as I didn't feel I knew too much about the web at the time but I think if I can produce something of a standard the I'l present it to him as a free-bee for the the free lifts that were greatly appreciated.    

So here's what I have so far really. http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1310070260 I wanted to experiment with a flash based web site as its all a little more interesting that linking from page to page with no real.. wow factor. It took a few days but after following a good tut on-line I managed to come up with this, the scripting to a while to fully understand and trying to find problems in script equates to the 'trying to find a needle in a haystack' saying. However problems were overcome and plan to move onto designing the site so make it hopefully visually pleasing no I have the body of development created. 

Matte painting

The first of many. Recently we were informed about the course change options at herts uni and were advised to look into what profession we wanted to go into as the second year would be much more focused and specialised. So I delved into the course pathway modules to see which would offer me the most in terms of what area of the industry I wanted to aim towards. Visual FX. So obviously I was more inclined to look into the VFX pathway however I still researched the others to see if they could offer me more. Sadly not but I still think it was important to look. Main skills of the VFX course that came up were things like rotoscoping, tracking, lighting & rendering and.. matt painting. Something I am really keen on is concept art, I find it of high interest however I'm no artist. Yet Photoshop is my friend :) and has been for a little while now so I've learnt over the past 4/5 years how to make the most of it. 

Now having the life story out of the way I can move on to the matte painting its self. being the first I didn't really know how I would go about creating it, however seeing as many VFX reels as I have its pretty clear how its done. I had a few attempts at it and referred to 3dhit (http://3dhit.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=18582) for feedback where I took that on board to get to where I am. It still needs work but I plan to go back and retouch things for when I compile it into a show reel. Enjoy :) [hopefully]     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5cDYzFjJLY

Finnished?

Well I think I have got to the stage where I can say I'm finished? Since I kind of got on with the process rather than stopping to blog every day I'll go from start to finish, from modelling right through to texturing and lighting.

Lets start with the basics Genrally knowing where I want the project to end up i firstly came up with this, looking at it now its a pretty poor shot and you cant really see much, pinched it off 3dhit where i originally posted it but I'll take you through it. Basically what I want to produce is 19th century american skyscraper/steel structured building with a overgrown roof garden. From the previous research I have established what these kind of gardens consist of and have done my best to replicate some of the features, i.e. the water tower that seems to feature quite heavily on most american roof tops, billboards skylights and television/radio aerials. 

From here onwards its time to kind of dive into the realm of paintfx. We had a few brief lectures on the subject but I was pretty much going in from scratch. It took a while to work out what does what but I ended up with something like this, now I didn't want to go mad on the pfx but from here I was at a block, I mean I knew it wasn't finished however I didn't really know what to add. I was going for an early morning sunrise look but after posting on 3dhit there was many opinions and ideas thrown around to get me back on the creative train to get this piece finished. (http://3dhit.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=18413&st=0)






OK, so after taking on the comments and feedback from the forum I finished with this. A lot was mentioned about the composition of the scene and that it had no real main focal point and that it was almost as if I was trying to show off the assets in the scene. To resolve the issue I lowered the camera angle and tried to focus the viewers eye more towards the centre shown by all of the angles leading towards the plants in the middle of the two green houses. Typically deadlines arrived and since it has been a month or two since completion I still think there is much more to do to really bring the scene up to a higher standard but hopefully its something i can tackle i the near future when I have some free time.