First shot at a prop concept- need help understanding material spheres
3yr
Prathamesh Pagare
Hey everyone, I'm trying to work on my design skills some more along with my fundamental training. I'd like to know more about the concept design process from peers here as well, instead of just online tutorials. I tried to spend as little time as possible on each of these, so I spent around 5-10 mins coming up with each design.
I picked a simple topic, prop design for games- an ancient, eastern, fantasy kitchen table set of sorts in line with The Elder Scrolls' fantasy artstyle. I started with a teapot.
I'd like your feedback and guidance with respect to design work before I go forward, particularly on how to render materials (or in this case a material sphere) for the 3D artist, and for my own reference when I begin to paint it out.
3yr
Great work and great questions @Prathamesh Pagare. One piece of critique that I wanted to give, outside of the question that you had, was that your silhouettes seem a bit too similar. Most of them are one large rounded shape for the body, with a smaller circle for the handle. In terms of varying up shape design, the one that stood out the most would be the bottom right. I think it would help to look at design references outside of teapots to add some variation. You pointed out a bird motif for the spout on pot 1. This is great to be aware of, but also, you could push that bird motif to just make some crazy shapes that would make your teapot really unique. Since you are just experimenting in the silhouette phase for these, don't be afraid to try some thing wacky that might not work. As you said, these are only 5-10 minute designs anyway, so scrapping a failed design isn't a huge deal.
For your questions about the material sphere, you definitely want to make sure the lighting is working really well if you're going to use it as your paint reference. I did a brief paint over where I adjusted the values to make your shadow area a bit darker, and fixed the shape of the terminator, just so that there is a more clear definition of the light and shadow areas. On top of that, I punched down the bounce light a bit. In your original image, the bounce light was so strong that it was hard to tell what areas were in the light and what areas were in shadow. You definitely want the light on the sphere to feel solid, and this way, you can pick and choose colors/values on specific planes to apply them directly on to your final painting.
Hope this answered your questions, let me know if there was something that I didn't make quite clear, or if there is something I didn't fully address. I currently don't work in the industry, so I don't fully know what you'd need to provide on a material sphere when handing this off to a 3-d artist. I focused my critique to give you information that will help you as you take one of these silhouettes to a finished painting. Cheers!
Prathamesh Pagare
3yr
Thank you so much for your feedback! I couldn't see this in time and went ahead and finalized a design which you will find attached in this comment. Upon reading everything here I did go back and try out new designs. I used the Met Museum's library to come up with ( what I think ) were some really cool designs. If someone hadn't told me to look outside of teapots I never would've thought of it, thank you so much. Your suggestions on the material sphere and the paintover is also very helpful, I have to understand value control and lighting better, as you'll see in my image attached below. Thanks once again!
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