Image retouching of furniture

I recently re-touched some photos of antique furniture for a friends furniture restoration/sales company. The aim was to make the often poor quality photos look more professional/visually appealing, as a result making the customer more likely to buy a product. I enhanced the photos in Adobe Photoshop, I added a border and sharpened up the colours. I also reduced the exposure as the was a lot of sunlight blurring the images.

Below are some of the images before I enhanced them.

Below are some of the enhanced images.

Doing this task has shown me that subtle light differences and colour enhancements can amount to big changes in the quality of an image, However subtle images can also greatly decrease the quality of an image.

Bedroom Modelled in 3DS Max

After seeing architectural models such as kitchen designs, exhibition stands and buildings I thought I would have a first attempt at modelling a room myself. I have already modelled a chair so used that in the scene. For the room i chose to create the walls in an L shape as it would present more of a challenge than just a square room in terms of modelling it and navigation. I looked at a few pictures of bedrooms to look at layouts and how the furniture looks.

After building each part of the assets (TV, Desk, Bed etc) I began putting the room together. I first modelled the walls to a realistic size using real life units, and then cut openings in them for the windows and doors. When i got the proportions right i started importing the furniture. below are some basic renders of the project so far. It still needs lighting, texturing and some other assets need modelling and importing.

As a first project using multiple models in one scene i think this is a very good first attempt, the models look realistic but would look a lot better once textures are added. Whist progressing through this project I have become much more efficient at modelling in 3DS Max as well as more efficient at navigation around a 3D space. I have improved greatly at the use of 3DS Max as it took me the same time to model this whole seen as it did to create one small model when i first started. Of course much improvement it needed.

INSANE Rock Festival 2012 - Warm up

Every year I organise a music festival at teh Black Market venue inw arsop alongside an american guitarist called Lord Bishop and the managment company Panorama Music. The festival is now in its 3rd year so this year we decided to have a 2 day warm up gig in preparation for the full 3 day festival in september.

The warm up was a massive success and featured bands from across the UK and Europe, bands came from as far as New York and Austria to play at the festival as well as some local bands.

The promotion of the festival had to look as proffesional as possible in order to compete with the bigger music venues around the area that had the funds and time to do much bigger promotional campaigns.

Below is a copy of the poster/flyers that were printed and distibuted around the manfield area.

Organising this years festival is proving very hard work as the september show is looking to be the biggest INSANE Festival yet with over 30 bands from around the world playing over a 3 day period. we learnt alot in preporation for september show by organising the warm up, plans for promotion, backline setup and booking are all in place well in advance.

Below are some photos from the warm up show

Tret Yersen

 Badland Bandits

 Lord Bishop

 Cecil Drackett

 BB Blackdog

 The Pulpits

 Rising Sense

 Paraffin

Axel Boldt 

 I even got up on stage with Lord Bishop to play a few songs

Day job just got pretty big

As my day job at the side of university i work as a roadie as well as a tech at a local music venue. Ive worked with hundreds of acts over the years as from local bands to bigger acts such as The Levellers, Tenpole Tudor, Lord Bishop and The Wonderstuff. This weekend I worked with a the band Ferocious dog at the Bearded Theory Festival in Derby. This is the biggest gig ive ever worked at, and definitely the most enjoyable. To be trusted with thousands of pounds worth of equipment and to fix anything that went wrong during the set shows that i must be getting good at what I do. Working at a high profile gig like this has shown me that the pressure really is on as the slightest mistake could make the whole show on a big stage go wrong and to take extra care when setting up instruments and amps.
Below are some pictures from the event, note pictue of me at the side of the stage ready to run on incase anything went wrong (something always doesn't go to plan, no matter how well prepared everything is). The video also sees me run past the camera to fix a cable on the stage floor.

Given a real brief by the Post Office

During my final days at Linneys I was given a brief by the Post Office to improve the looks of a presentation that they had to give about how the business is progressing and becoming more organised. Unfortunately the brief was flaw and could not be easily understood, even by the experienced designers working around me. I was also told not to use animation, this caused alot of problems. I overcame this by adding more slides in the presentation to how things were progressing.

This task showed me just how much my Photoshop skills have improved since i first started using it, before this task i had never done anything that had more than 20 layers in it, this project however had several hundred layers all with different graphics on them. below are the finished slides (all created in Photoshop by 'hiding' different layers within one file to create different configurations to save)

The first slide was to show how organised the current business landscape was, throughout the slides it showed how structured the Post Office were becoming. I had to use the same House style that was used throughout the Post Office assets Linneys created so certain colours and graphics had to be used. The turnover for this task was supposed to be 4 hours, however I managed to finish it in 3hours, which shows how efficient I am becoming at design work. I also never received any amendments to do which shows I achieved what they wanted from the brief.

The little things.....

After spending some time now with he multimedia team at Linneys something is becoming to very apparent when watching the designers work and looking at project progress through different stages. Its the very minor and individually unnoticeable details on and project that together make a massive difference. For example something simple like how light bounces of an object in a fully rendered model, or the very slight camera movements that are used when editing live footage and animated scenes. I hear the designers say " its just that one little detail that makes the piece believable" on a daily basis, and they are correct when they say it.

A designer showed me a two versions kitchen he had made in 3DS Max, the original and one that had been tweaked ever so slightly. thought the differences were subtle, they were very noticeable and made a massive improvement, which is something that the client will want. I see more everyday that Linneys is as successful as they are because they look at the little things...

My introduction to organic 3D modeling

After experimenting with and building some simple objects in 3DS Max like a Chair, Table, a tv screen etc, I began to become quite efficient so i decided to play around with something simple.

I began modelling a hand (without a texture) to see if I could get the contours of the polygons right even when modelling with thousands of them. After creating the basic shape I quickly realised that getting the proportions of the hand right was very difficult, for example have the joints in the right place, the right length fingers etc. I tried many different shapes and settled on a "creepy" looking hand that would maybe seen on a Tim Burton style of character.
Below is the finished model. As you can see, there is a grater amount of polygons in an organic model rather than a solid object.

For a first attempt at modelling such an object I am very happy with he result, however there is alot of room for improvement. I believe using reference points to create a model from may prove useful as I would be able to get the position of the joints and knuckles in the right position, as well has other contours on the palm.

I will make another model like this toward the end of my time at Linneys to  gauge how much  improve over a period of time.

Beginnings of a project

After observing the multimedia team at Linneys for a few days now i have seen many 3D versions of sales dislays, some for shops and some designes of kitchen and livingrooms. I have been told by the designers that building a 3d Version of a kitchen is much cheaper that building a physical room that could cost many thousands.

Afrer looking at various designs i have desided that i will have a go at designed my own space. whether it be a kitchen/office/bedroom etc.

I began experimenting with 3ds Max to create various props to be incorporated into the scene such as; chauirs, glasses, pencils, tabels etc.

Below are examples of a couple of 3D Models i created.

These are just some simple models, but still took a few hours to create as i wanted them to look right. Over teh next few weeks i plan to become more efficiant when modelling so that i can create a whole scene whists i am working at Linneys

Entrusted with a task

Yesterday I was trusted with rendering still shots from a 3D version of a 'Nerf' sales display in 3DS Max. This wasn't a hard task to complete however very time consuming. The still shots were to be used in a presentation by Linneys to a potential client. 

Below are some still shots that I rendered.

I keen eye is needed to be able to provide shots that show the sales display in all its glory. Learning how to Render still images on 3DS Max is a skill that i needed to learn very early on in my development of using 3DSM.

This task has also shown me the quality of work that must be achieved if working on a clients brief, especially whilst working at Linneys