PhD mind mapping and No Knead Bread; Jim Lahey

Found this great link, as a helpful online tool, to help me get my thoughts and ideas into a structure, in preparation for an industry facing, arts practice PhD application

No need to panic Mr Mannering....

https://sketchboard.io/

No knead bread...for some food based creativity
http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread

Good Bacterial Raincoats!

Great lecture by Prof. Nicola Stanley-Wall, as part of the Discovery Days 2017 series at Dundee University...https://www.dundee.ac.uk/revealingresearch/newsandevents/discoverydays/
I was particularly struck by the notion of 'good bacterial raincoats'...
The image below, that resembles a leaf/doily/jellyfish is, in fact, a microscopic protective film (good bacterial raincoat) caused by bacteria. The film is so waterproof, that water (as shown here by way of microscopic beads of water, dyed with food colouring) cannot be absorbed at all; hence the reason the droplets stay completely spherical.

It reminded me of the instinctual process I went through when creating the water droplet for Thaw...
and knowing 'for some reason' that a water droplet, on a leaf, is deformed....I didn't realise that this was because some of the water is absorbed by the leaf....

Initial water droplet that I created in Maya - simply using a polygon sphere with a mia_material_x water shader

Sphere deformed by a lattice; to show water blobs influenced by water

Ice Shader in Maya, using Blinn, Noise and Bump maps

Experiments with ice-shader techniques in Maya...following this tutorial link 

and then further experimentation and adjustment of settings....

Test heads using the mia_material_x presets

 Blinn material with the transparency turned down

 Assorted tests adjusting the transparency settings, Raytrace options, refraction and glow intensity

 The Raytrace settings at '4' give a fiery look, which could be a good effect when the ice men are about to melt

 Using a ramp shader and a bump map with a noise node in hypershade...the bump map depth is set to 0.005 to give some texture...
Next step is to continue adding lights so that the features begin to stand out

Ongoing reflective practice and concept development

Ongoing reflective practice...

Throughout the design process, I find it good practice to refer back to original concept artwork and design development, to make sure that the final images are progressing in line with the original intent of the concept art...

 Visual inspiration

2D Photoshop concept art, inspired by the above image

3D model in Maya...the hand of the actress will be filmed in the green screen studio at DJCAD....other effects (such as the technical 'fog and junk' haha) will be composited in Nuke....with of course my favourite 'God Ray's...

I've used a bright winter sunshine backdrop for this shot, but will do some alternative tests using a lilac backdrop to recreate the above concept art and see how it compares...

Direction and spot lights and water shaders in Maya

Playing with direction and spot lights, and water shaders in Maya....

Water shaders in Maya and Lattice Deformers

Testing water shaders on a simple sphere...
This link was great http://mentalraytips.blogspot.co.uk/2007/06/nice-water-with-miamaterial-arch.html
Using a Mental Ray mia_material_x > presets > water and setting the transparency to 1, created a great water effect

I wanted the water droplet to appear realistic in it's shape and was deformed by the leaves...

This is a great link http://mayazest.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/slow-motion-rain-drops-in-maya-vray.html
on how to simply deform spheres using a lattice, so that the droplet would 'hang' and be deformed by the leaves,

I realised that I could insert the poppy as a 3D object, which could look great with camera movement and water reflection...

Simple image, with a background plane, a 3D plant, water blobs and a 3D poppy set inside water.
This is with one directional light only...just placed for the purposes of a quick render
...more reflective, back light and light from underneath to be added...

Another couple of links that were useful too

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-E092CABE-4709-469A-82CF-44B6C8F97A24-htm.html

http://simplymaya.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40768

Water droplets in Maya and Powell and Pressburger

Quick tests using leaves with bump and texture maps, plus some water droplets with different mia material finishes, and presets of glass, water, chrome.

I particularly like the effect of a bright yellow directional light, pointed straight at the leaf...it reminds me of the vivid technicolour of Powell and Pressburger films

The Tales of Hoffman - Powell and Pressburger