Week 4 - Eric Brough's Workshop/ Astronaut Modeling

Week 4 Class & Astronaut Modeling -

During this week we learned about Displacement Mapping and the process of how to apply it to our environment of our moon. I was surprised how amazing this tool is and how a big of a help it can be with modeling especially with our Moon's surface. He also gave us a website where we can find great textures and displacement maps for our commercial's environment.

The site is:

https://www.solarsystemscope.com

Amit also showed us some amazing works of Mashru Mishu, and gave us advice with modeling, texturing, proportions, and topology with Mishu's works. His works just blew me away, they were all amazing, especially his character models. The models were well defined including the textures. Here is a link to his ArtStation profile if you are interested in taking a look of his works: https://www.artstation.com/fx81

Once I got home I did a lot of research on how an astronaut suit looks like, there were so many examples and also different kinds of variations but the best example that I saw is Dorothy Ballarini's work:

She really got the look of what an actual suit looks like, so I decided to use this as my benchmark.

Here is the link to Ballarini's portfolio, please do check out her work they are amazing: https://dorothyballarini.wordpress.com/category/3d-art/

I made a screen recorded video for the modeling of the astronaut as well:

I did my best in modeling the helmet the way Amit showed us last week, I also continued on creating the silhouette of the body of the Astronaut and sent it to Natasha for fixing the proportion and the topology.

Eric Brough's Workshop -

On Thursday, there was a Workshop that was held in the Auditorium that I attended to. We were visited by Eric Brough, He is an author and educator who specializes in Islamic Geometric Design. Me being a Muslim and loving Art, motivated me during this Workshop. The Workshop started with Brough introducing himself to us, he told us his story and how he became who he is today.

He taught us about the Islamic Geometric Design Family Tree, and different kinds of patterns used in Islamic Geometric Designs. He also showed us examples of these design that are used around the UAE.

During his lecture he also mentioned that we were going to have 2 Workshops and that he'd choose 2 students with the best designs that he'd like the most in those workshops, will each receive a copy of the 2 books that he has published which are " Islamic Geometric Patterns " and " Islamic Design Workbook ".

During his first workshop he gave us a simple pattern to start off with, and after working on that pattern he placed everyone's works together to create a complete pattern.

This is the one I made for the 1st Workshop.

For the 2nd workshop he gave us a more complicated pattern, and told us to go imaginative with the design. I used a Islamic design/ word from the Quran's book cover.

This is the one I've done for the 2nd Workshop.

After the 2 Workshops that we did, Brough chose two students who had the best designs in the Workshops. He chose me from one of the students, I was honored to be acknowledge by such a talented artist.

I received a copy of his book, " Islamic Design Workbook " I even managed to get a signature from him and chatted with him for a while about his other works and plans for the future of Islamic Design, he was a great guy.

After the 2 Workshops, Brough asked us if we would like to do one last workshop with him before he leaves since we had more time left. Some students left but I stayed because I was really fascinated in how the patterns would easily come along once you complete the step by step drawings of the patterns.

Here is the outline that we started of with the Pattern, this was a really tough one but once you get to each point and follow the template, It was easy from there on.

And this is the final design of the pattern.

I really enjoyed this workshop, I never even knew that those patterns I see in the roadsides of U.A.E existed until Brough mentioned them and not just in the roadside, they also existed in buildings. It was a really great experience and fascinating workshop.