Mischief UX Self Portrait 2017

As a first step in an overhaul of my portfolio and website, I wanted to create a unified graphic that represents who I am as a designer- a little bit of history, but also a visual description about the areas where I am the strongest or have the greatest interest. Since the last few years have involved non-traditional interfaces and UX design- Kinect apps, Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality as well as touch interactive and 'traditional' digitial design for web and print, I decided my approach needed to be on the whimsical side to fit it all in...Though I needed to do a little bit of finishing in Photoshop, almost all of the linework and color was done in Mischief, which has really become my go-to application for drawing and quick sketches. 

 

Modo modeling: Cuckoo

It's that time of year again, the holidays, when I seem to forget about making a card until the last minute. Last year's card (which I will need to dig up) was an homage to Richard Scarry, since he is beloved in my family, but I do like to mix it up with a 3d card every other year if possible, and I think I have an idea that fits the bill. Usually, when I throw humor into the card on the holiday card, it misfires, like when I had a cannibalistic gingerbread man interpreted to be expecting a family addition...I started a model a little while ago, and then projects came up that shuffled it to the back of the deck; but I dusted this one off in Modo to help announce the new year.

Initial pass for rendering:

Diving in to some polygonal edits on the piping. 

Modo and Unity for Event Visualization

The last few months I have been focusing more on 'traditional' 2d design and UX, but recenty a project has necessitated building components in 3d for event design, which has been a challenge due to the time constraints, but it's also allowed me to stretch my 3d capabilities. I had only been dabbling in Modo previously, but now, I have been using it for direct production, and it' been a blast! The render below is the first draft of concepts on the booth design to the client. 

As with any 3d application, scratching the surface and occasionally using the program doesn't teach you much about the strength of the tool, the flexibility, or the shortcuts and how to get around. Initially, I had a bit of a hard time with the way that Modo treats objects and textures, as it is very different from Maya, which I had been using as my primary 3d application for several years. To bridge the gap, I started modeling in Silo, and began to transition into the Modo modeling and UV tools. Scene layout is a bit more straightforward than Maya, and I am starting to enjoy the navigation of the windows, though I have been using 901 rather than the newer 10 due to my designs being done of MacBookPros; I have not heard good things about the render times on a Mac with Modo 10. 

For updates on this project, check out the Invision board.

Update on Thursday, October 6, 2016 at 2:49PM by Matthew Seydel Connors

The client need for the visualization has necessitated fast edits and many renders. As much as I am enjoying Modo, on a MacBook Pro the renders were just taking too long to keep production on assets humming. Right now, I don't have the luxury of a second machine for rendering, so I needed a render pipeline that would allow me to post continuous changes. Which is when I remembered that my Unity license was getting a little rusty...and porting all of my Modo assets to Unity took a lot less time than I thought tha it would. 

Once the scene came through, I could continue setting up and verifying my objects and textures through Modo, then throw them over the wall to Unity to be able to show changes nearly immediately. 

Mad about Modo

We all know that Maya is a program of amazing depth for 3d, but lately it's been dragging me down; lots of crashes and unpredicability, especiallly when using it on a Mac laptop, had me on a quest for a better option. I decided to dig back into Modo, which I had tried a while back, to see whether it could work for my needs, which most of the time is modeling and rendering, very little animation. The good vibe I have had with the Foundry's Mischief made me optimistic about what Modo could achieve. 

To run it through its paces on the modelling side, I picked up and starting modifying assets  that I have for a book project that i keep coming back to. The interface is a little daunting, but so far the model or item selections and modifications are pretty powerful, though sometimes my external files need more tweaking than I would like. As I build more content in Modo in the future, I am sure this will become much more manageable. 

The other big need for me is on the rendering side. Mental Ray in Maya produces excellent results, but often I need to see what the elements within the render look like right now, or make changes very quickly, which aren't features that Maya is very strong at, at least not on my system. I am still getting used to the toolset within Modo, but so far I am pretty pleased with the way that the render look overall; I will need to work on how to cut down the time. The render below took 14 minutes on my MacBook Pro with 8GB or RAM, and then took another 10 minutes to edit in Photoshop to make the image. 

Mischief for Mac Desktop

Mischief is an app that I have been playing with lately; it's a very fast and

inexpensive drawingapplication that has an infinite canvas and is neither

vector or raster, but a hybrid. I have been using it for making annotations

on edits while working on UX and modeling concepts.

I've also started to use it on concepting; it's taking me some time to

appreciate its simplicity, mainly due to my reliance on Photoshop...

which is such a swiss army knife that you can get distracted or slowed

down by its features. 

Arguably you can use other apps for a similar purpose, but on a Cintiq,

 t’s very fluid for drawing; my hands seldom leave the screen/keys.

I have just started to experiment with using it for more robust drawing. 

I came across this excellent video of illustrator Ryan Dening on Mischief

which makes it pretty clear that it's not a shortcut to talent, but a way

to keep from getting bogged down in deep software. Mischief is fairly

simple, clean, and elegant. 

https://youtu.be/vHudyA4QdP8