Notes from watching DVD:

 

- Most sculptures will start with an armature/design

- Chavant sulpher free clay over an 8inch armature. (can be tacky so not ideal for detailing)

- Harder, more waxy clays can be better for detailing and tools

- Calipers for a maquette are essential for determining scale and size accurately. (he did it in a 1 to 1 ratio) 

- Work with what you're good at - 2D/3D

- The bigger the design, the bigger the tools you should be using

- As soon as something goes against the grain (in nature) people notice it - it needs real anatomy and movement to make sense. Stan Winston applied this theory a lot in Avatar, as most of the animals had 6 legs. 

- For the detailing; working with the clay, trying to see shapes based on anatomy....

- Having a lack of knowledge isn't necessarily disadvantage; too much anatomical knowledge can inhibit creativity

- Trust your instincts when working through doubt

- DON'T get frustrated, that can kill a sculpture

- If the design is going to shown to a director/producer, be sure that its well light when photographing it.

- Halogens are bright and warm as well as relatively cheap

- If you're sculpting something in minature, you don't actually want it to appear minature in the photos

- Get rid of all ambient light

- Position black wrap (available from photography stores) around the light and you can position and manipulate the light source over the maquette

- Background should be a relatively different colout to sculpt so it stands out (blue)

- Consider exposure

- 8x10, 300 resolution in photoshop (the size used in industry). Might want to go bigger if the piece is particularly large

- Drag and open in photoshop

- Start by duplicating and turning off that layer as a safety net

- Using lassoo tool around image. Then copy and paste onto new layer.

- Refine away rest of blue background using the magic wand tool. Hold the shift key down and click and it will select more of the area. Hit delete and all blue will be gone

- Turn on black background layers and white and you can then see any remaining blue

- Can earse any remaining blue with the eraser tool zoomed in, takes a long time....

- Can contract it (3) invert it and contract it and will remove outer edge of image

- Refine edge tools

- Use lassoo tool, select just the arm and duplicate it in a new layer. Hide other image and use magic wand tool to remove blue on new arm.

- Edit, Transform, Flip horizontally. Keep it behind original image

- Make a mask layer of join (area you want to edit with lighting) and then edit lighting

- Teeth: take the smudge tool and choose a sharp brush, and can lengthen and sharped up the teeth

- Use a web image imported to photo shop, crop with lassoo tool. cmd C and cmv V will copy it and make a new layer of it. Size of teeth can be manipulated - lighting and angles are more important

- Use eraser tool to sculpt the teeth in photoshop

- Adjustment, selective colour - to change teeth colour

- Use transform to shape it in length, width etc

- Free transform, warp. You can freeform edit the shape of the tooth

 

Sadly, after about 90 minutes in, the DVD stopped working, but I still found it incredibly informative and inspiring. Having a very limited knowledge about photoshop, this really helped me learn some basic ideas for how to create and improve a character, as well as what to consider when sending images to clients and/or studios.