Louie Askew - Games Art 2024: May 2025

As the project started , we created an entire server to talk into on Discord allowing us to create a private area for ourselves for us to share all of our work and communicate with each other once the Friday class was over. We used this server mainly as the source of placing all of our concept art and communicating for feedback which we keep organised thanks to the separate channels .

During the time period of the project after Christmas , our team slowly started to drop out and become unresponsive with the rest us making the project ten times harder to work on with more work being piled on. This point was evident when it would only be myself , Jess and Katie would speak the most during this time so we decided to create an entire private channel with just ourselves inside to work as no one else wanted to contribute which u can see from all of our blogs.

Class

Whilst also having the discord server open to us , we would also meet up during our Friday class to work on more tasks with more physical support and to have meetings with our tutor based on details that would be discussed above and below in different sections.

Roles

During the start of the project , we gave ourselves roles on our teams discord server on what we were originally working on showcased by the screenshot of my profile. Due to multiple issues with our groups , we ended up having to change a lot of our roles around so these were the final ones.

Edward : Backgrounds

Jess : Character Concept Artist , Sprite Artist and Coder

Katie : Director , Script Writer & Coder

Me : UI Artists & Coder

Examples of Team Meetings

Whilst being able to have team meetings inside of the class during our lesson , we held additional meetings via our discord team server in our voice channel. These meetings were mainly held during times that was needed and suited the time for all of our team whilst these meetings in discord were not weekly compared to the class ones we usually held these meetings in support of working on the coding aspect of our game so we can all work on our personal setups and communicate between each other.

Screenshots of meetings

OneDrive for our Group

To make the workload less stressful on us whilst Me , Jess and Katie were working on the construction of our game , Katie created a colour coded OneDrive for us too us during this phase as we were able to share our files amongst ourselves due to the facts of having issues with originally sending images through our teams discord however the quality of the images would become worse and compress.

Distribution of Work between the Team

Whilst during the very start of the project , we started off with originally 6 members which seemed like a blessing to us at the start as we would have been able to manage the amount of work each person had to create and make it easier on everyone's plates. That would have been the case however half of the group stopped answering our messages or even turn up to the lesson so we could not discuss any of the work we wanted them to have finished by the deadline given to us by our director Katie.

This entire process started to become irritating to work on the project with people on our team who would not even engage as we had someone in our group who dropped out of the entire course without even telling us and the only work we received back was based off old sketch's from months ago, another person who ended up working on something completely different without warning and finally the last person never turned up to lessons or answered our messages when we needed work back.

From this situation me , Jess and Katie had to split the remaining work between us all adding more to what we originally planned for just so we was able to finish a game in the end as we thought that we would be the only group in our class would end up not having a game. We fixed these issues by cutting unwanted assets from being fully finished , revisiting the script cutting it down and working on documents together that we all needed at the same time.

Showcase of me , Jess and Katie all working together in our own channel due to the rest of our group no longer responding.

Saturday, 17 May 2025

2D Toolkit - Environment Sketchs

Environment Sketchs

During this session , the lesson started by us going outside the classroom and drawing someone who would be resting on the couch for a set time limit.

Once that was over , we were given the tasks during the lesson of drawing a few environments inside the confetti building and drawing people who are studying around confetti as mine are based on one of the staircases around confetti and my people sketchs are from the LRC on the second floor of the building.

Perspective Tasks

After the session , I was tasked on drawing 2 separate environments that were not inside the confetti building with my interior environment being my desk setup inside my room whilst my second is the pond at the arboretum whilst on one of my breaks.

2D & 3D Toolkit - Toolkit Overview

Toolkit Overview

3D Toolkit

When it comes down to the entire year for 3D toolkit, for me it has had its fair share of challenges testing my skills inside a completely new software which I have never used . This can be evidently seen throughout the 3D toolkit blogs from the first character struggling to be finished whilst by the end of the year having an entirely rigged and poseable character for the final submission.

During this break over the transition of 2nd year to 3rd year , I want to become more effective with working inside of ZBrush as for my final characters , I used plenty of different tools before this project causing plenty of different setbacks due to never having experience with the program so I want to be able to work more on my development during the break.

For 3D toolkit , I believe I have managed to showcase my development throughout the year utilising ZBrush and being able to create my own characters and having them slowly come to life even if it takes multiple hours to gain a functioning model.

2D Toolkit

For 2D toolkit, it was a super helpful module overall throughout the year covering different approach's to forming the human anatomy or cutting the background into 3 separate layers which became beneficial for my personal growth as when it comes down to human anatomy and background design its where I struggle the most in my personal artwork.

Whilst creating work either its personal or for assets in university projects, I took the different aspects and methods we have learned throughout 2D toolkit such as photo bashing to support creating environment or the task of creating hands which was such a massive support for myself personally.

During this break from the tasks from 2D toolkit, I want to set myself working on hands constantly to improve my understanding and utilising photo bashing to understand the background more thoroughly.

Toolkit 2D- Inclined Planes

Friday, 16 May 2025

3D Toolkit - Rigging Collection

Rigging Collection

These Blogs connect all 4 of the sections we went over to compact the blogs for easier access however for my case is whilst we were shown throughout the lessons how to rig , I had to give myself extra time and lessons to figure the controls and process out whilst not being in the lesson so I compacted these blogs together to showcase my personal work on trying to figure out how to create the rig by scratch.

Notes given for the Leg Rig

Before Starting off the leg rigs , since the lesson had passed when we looked over these rigs , I looked through the NOW and read through the notes as my guide to create the leg rig

Whilst designing this rig and placing and renaming all the different IK Handles required for one leg, I realised that the other leg would still be needing the exact same process however my rig for this showcase did not suit the proportions of my character relating to the final project so I continued with this rig as a showcase.

Next Step : The Spine Rig

In my opinion whilst working and rigging onto the spine , I found this section to be the hardest to work with due to the constant backtracking with the controls and losing which controls have been binded to what piece after constant tracking back and forth and hope in the end there are no issues.

Final Steps : Skinning & Weight Painting

When it comes down to Skinning the model to set itself up for the weight painting process, I started by creating a simple model of the joints in the leg with the cylinders representing the thighs and the shins whilst the sphere was the knee joint.

After this model was created and inline with the rig , you have to bind the model to the rig so it is able to have the model itself showcase the rigs functionality with their being two separate types of binding as there's a hard bind which is used more commonly when working with hard surface modelling such as working with mech character whilst there's a soft bind which is used when wanting to give a model the sense of more organic movement.

Model being Binded together

Entire Rig Showcase

Screenshot of the Model in the current state of the rigs entire build

Rig Functionality

Screenshots of the Rig working as intended without an flaws or issues with the rig being able to handle the legs movement without any restictions.

Weight Painting

When looking through how weight painting functions after scanning through the program, I figured out that weight painting works in the terms of values and how much influence is placed onto the rig joints. Looking at our test , we can see the example of weight painting being showcased here as it is split evenly in values at from the top of the leg it starts off with a value of 1 then as the it goes further down lowers in value as it reach's to the lower leg and hits zero value.

Issues with the Spine

Interactive Bind Skin

The Interactive Bind Skin tool inside of Maya is able to create a heat map over the top of your model which is able to be altered and moved to your liking as an alternative method instead of weight painting your entire model however it comes with the drawbacks of not being able to have as much movement in the model.

3D Toolkit - Character Planout / Gantt Chart

Character Planout / Gantt Chart

Before starting the sculpting process of my next character , I started by creating a Gantt chart to support my scheduling as when it comes to time management and sorting out schedules , I consider myself being unable to stick to a tight schedule as I struggle to stay focused from time to time so by changing my scheduling from having just a few words along a blog I changed to work with a gantt chart to attempt to stick to a more professional style of a schedule.

Overview of Gantt Chart

Beginnging of Sculpt

Start of the Project , I created the entire head sculpt including its separate horns , ears and the details surrounding the back of the head due to giving myself more time on the head sculpt that I thought I would need , I moved onto the body sculpt ahead of the schedule planned.

Creating Body

After creating the head sculpt and finalising that process , I gave myself around 2 weeks to complete the entire body sculpt and creating the clothing that would cover his body by using the masking tool and extract the pieces out of the Zbrush model.

Feet & Importing into Maya

During this phase of the project , I finalised the additional pieces of my characters body such as the different segments that are not connected to his body as one whole piece such as the claw and feet which are their own separate subtool and once this step was done , I sent the model over to Maya to begin the next steps meaning retopology and UV unwrapping the model.

Retoplogy & UV Unwrapping

This Week , after importing the model from Zbrush , I completed both the retopology section and UV unwrapping parts of this process ready to pass on the model to the next phases which is starting to texture the model.

Textures & Rigging

During these next set of weeks before the final submission , I worked on finalising the textures on my coral character and started working on the rig giving myself plenty of time to work with due to the difficulties I was having during the weekly sessions I gave myself more time to work with rigging encase anything was to broke during the process however due to complications and lots of errors , I had to utilise the Auto rig function inside of Maya to complete this project.

Weight Paint and Final Renders

During the final week of this project set , I finished the project by finishing any additional weight painting that needed to be fixed during the final week before exporting the final rig along with the textures out of Maya and into Unreal Engine. With this Project complete , by using a Gantt chart instead of my usual way of working with scheduling I managed to create a better working pace for myself and not causing issues near the end of the project.

3D Toolkit - Placing Model into Unreal & Turntable

Placing Model into Unreal & Turntable

Final Aspects after creating the model for 3D Toolkit came along in a turntable showcase and placing the rigged model into Unreal Engine 5 which are showcased in this final blog relating to the creation of this toolkit.

Textured Turntable

Textured Process

Screenshots of Coral Character inside of Unreal Engine

Here are some screenshots taken inside of the Unreal Engine Program with the model being fully textured and posed.

2D Toolkit - Wireframe & Bones & Musculature Studies

Wireframe & Bones & Musculature Studies

I decided to collect these three weeks worth of blogs togethers due to the similar natures of these weeks

Wireframe & Musculature Studies

Started off the lesson by creating a wireframe of a human body to work with by create the entire height of the model consisting of 8 heads . After creating the simple wireframe , we were given 15 minutes to overlay what we believed the positions of all the muscles were from memory, we did this to analyse where our brains thought the muscles where which would be important when creating poses.

After the said 15 minutes were over , we were able to look at references of an actual humans muscles to fix what mistakes were made from our memory version.

After these warm ups , we were given the task of looking through references and selecting one and laying over the muscles over the top of the posed wireframe which is what I created with this basketball player reference.

The next task from another lesson linking towards these studies are to create a block out of two characters interacting from a moment from a movie which I did by taken a screenshot from the latest Deadpool and Wolverine movie at that time and created a block out after following a simple wireframe and layout of the body proportions.

Bone & Muscle Studies

After these sections , I was looking through the NTU Now and found these references for different sections of the human body and decided to start practicing by having the reference on the side and draw the image as I saw it by working through each step of the body starting of with the foot.

Following the diagram which worked in my favor as someone who wants to work more towards the 3D industry and trys to look at anatomy as if it was placed inside of a 3D software such as Maya working with different faces which is how I saw this diagram.

Foot Bone Study

Skull Bone Study

Leg Bone & Muscle Study

For the legs , hands and arm references they contain a separate diagram of the muscles overlapping the bone diagram showcased before which is what I replicated in my sketch's of a second bone sketch then lowering the opacity and working on top layering and labelling the different muscles and what they are called.