Racetrack and Graphite

I spent a lot of time this week doing portrait drawing sessions with friends. I used a medium graphite stick for the following 15 minute sketches.

And I used a stick of charcoal in these 2 minute sketches to quickly capture the form.

I also quickly drew some weird cartoon characters to test if my knowledge of facial proportions is coming along without reference. I think I've improved vastly in the last 2 years but still need to get much better.

This week marked the beginning of the professional brief from Codemasters. We're getting personal tutorials from the concept artist Lee Piper over the next few days.

I started by blocking out a static mesh in 3DS Max and used the terrain tool in UDK to make a drivable track.

Made some quick assets in 3DS Max, trying to replicate a cartoon style.

I then made simple tilable textures and put the assets in to populate the track and get a sense of scale. I'm currently still working on a concept of the perspective view of the track, here is my progress so far:


This still needs to be fleshed out a lot more, needs more trees and rocks everywhere and the bridge is out of perspective. If I did this again I would draw out an isometric view to tackle the perspective issues.

I also painted a quick anatomy study in photoshop to tackle that difficult underarm area that is so darn difficult to model in 3D! Need to work on feet more I think.

And a quick head speed paint, I love the asymmetry of her face:


I'll be working on this race track all throughout the summer break, hopefully it'll be near to a professional standard by the end of it. The project should be a good practice run for my FMP and will keep me involved with UDK, maybe I'll grow a new love of environment art too. Thanks for reading please leave crits :)