IDK

Man....I've really fallen out of the habbit of making somewhat-regular posts.....gotta break that.

Well there's been quite a bit going on since my last post (my last big post....the one below was just so my friend could see my torso rendering - i actually finished it.....so maybe i'll post that here too).

I went and had another outting with my friend McKay shooting his rifles (and i gotta say i'm developing a taste for it). There's a few videos of us shooting his cop killer an the german, trying to hit two frozen 2-liter bottles of water.







Um.......how about......Animation always has an appropriate place in my posts.


My current ANM project is dealing with character modeling (which includes modeling, riggind/binding to a skeleton, animating the skeleton, facial deformations - like make an "O" mouth - and creating a walk cycle).

First step was to pick a character and do a profile sketch in what's known as the 'Bind Pose'. The Bind Pose is the pose animators use to model characters before binding them to a skeleton (if you ever take a video game and make an 'image' of it on your computer and pull the 3D character models out of it, they'll ALL be in this pose by default).

So whether the character already existed or was one we created didn't matter, all that mattered was the pose and picture for reference.

So i chose Shadow the Hedgehog (basically the evil twin of Sonic).




So far, acording to my friend DJ, it's coming along nicely (and i agree despite how frustrating it is working with the type of 'geometry' we're using).

Here are some renders of what i've gotten done so far...the head won't need to be done until the middle of next week:








The Chaos Emeralds (glowing gems) i threw in there for fun because that's what all the games focus around and to give it a little something extra to make up for the fact that i think it's not as good as it could be (i might actually redo the model during the winter break).



Oh yeah - i was a Mormon Missionary for Halloween:

(which is funny because everyone...practically everyone, i work with is mormon and because everyone else i know knows where i work. (And the woman in the picture is one of the 'Ladies' at the justice court i help out at, Kimberley)

So here's me and McKay, both Mormon Missionaries (funnier still because he is Mormon):



My Grandma dressed up too, as a 50s cheerleader:

psst....don't tell her this is here....i don't think she'd like the fact that this is on the web when she's making that goofy face - i took the picture when she was saying 'shoe'.





I took the Arch of Constantine (the first Christian Emperor or Rome) and made a 3D model of something i want to put in my game (based off the design and concept of the Arch of Constatine:

Arch:



My Arch:



I guess that's it for now, i'll try and post something by friday, or on friday, to show you how everything else is coming along.

Late


Song of the Evening:
Monica - For You I Will

Holy ***** *** ****** Batman!!!

Damn it's been a while since i've made a post - tho i've thought about it several times as i was falling asleep. When was the last time i made a post....*checks*............*whistles* - damn, almost a whole month ago. Well a lot has happened since then....lets get it started!

Well let's start with the most recent thing and work backwards then:

My ANM:105 project for 'photorealism'.

We were supposed to pick a building, whether one we pass all the time or one we found online didn't matter, and make a 3D replica of it - complete with lighting, textures; the whole shebang. So i picked this cool little family-owned/operated cafe near my work called He Brews Cafe.













The first step was to create some orthographic drawings (orthographic basically means without linear perspective.....like building blue-prints). I didn't actually do any of the building; what i did instead was the windows - just basic measurements/ratios, and walked around the building measuring certain things (how many verticals were in the metal railling, the dimensions of the lumber, things like that).

















Then you go into Maya (the software we use for the class) and use those drawings for reference (you can import them into Maya and make a 'to-scale' model fairly easily).

After a long-ass period of time getting used to Maya's crappy UI and Hotkeys, i finally got the model finished (it seriously took about two weeks, a little each day, to complete). Once you do a whole bunch of other crap (bookmarking camera angles, blacking out the original building in the photo, and things that make me cringe when i think about them) you end up with an image you can insert 'renders' into:













Here's the model composited into that image with a kind of universal texture and lighting:












After you get the lighting right (basically trial and error), then you go on to texturing the finer details of the building (shingles, wood, metal railling, conrete slabs, painted front/sides, painted window frames, etc.):













Below is the video of all of those elements, but layered so you can see how they really fit together.

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Before that, yesterday morning in fact (Saturday), one of my good friends McKay took me shooting because i wanted to do something since it's been a while since we hung out. This was the first time i had every shot an 'actual' gun (the only thing i had ever fired prior to that was a BB gun), and i have to say that i thoroughly enjoyed every second of it.

McKay's 'Pride & Joy' and the rounds that go with it:

There really isn't a picture of me fireing it, because i preferred to have video....it's just so much better - unfortunately McKay was being a goober and managed to get the moments 'in-between' the ones i wanted him to get....so my initial reaction to the kick-back of this high-powered rifle was sadly not recorded :(

Here's a video McKay got of me, my first reaction (mostly the laughter)

I did get a good shot of McKay holding it....the rifle i mean.....his rifle.....*blushes*













And a video of him shooting it so you can see how good the kick-back is:

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My latest art assignment: Drapery - you better B-leave it.

My last post had me in a pissy mood because my art instructor had given me a C for my work when i thought i should've gotten at least a B- (which of course is a little more that a C+....but still not a "C").

So i was pleased....to some degree....to find out that a much more complex assignment and subject landed me a B (which is what i wanted anyway).

So i bascially submitted each step i took to my instructor to make sure i was doing it right - but since i had obviouslyfinished each step before submitting, had she actually said there was something wrong with it...i probably wouldn't have done anything anyway because it's all in charcoal.....not so easy to undo as graphite.

So here are the steps I took:
- - Pencil Outline (supposed to be charcoal...who cares)

















- - Charcoal outline (fine line, medium tone)

















- - Dual Tone shading (light tone overall, medium tone for shadows)

















- - Final Rendering (of course i skipped the interum steps...but it was mostly *charcoal* *smudge* *smudge* *erase* *rinse* *repeate*)

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Umm.....OH YEAH!!!!!

Holy Christ! I was in JCPennys the other day (Thursday i think it was) and was talking to my grandma who works there. As i was walking away from her register, someone calls out (at the time i didn't know what they were saying...all i heard was my name at the end of it). So i turn around and lay eyes on the last person i had a crush on/asked out/hadn't seen in over two years: Aloina (pronounced Ah-lone-uh...somewhat like 'alone').

Man, you wouldn't believe the mad rush i made to land a hug on her to make sure she was actually there. We used to hang out all the time at work (Wal-Mart) and flirt in passing (well i was flirting anyway...she was just being playful).

Oh man - i honestly can't even try to explain how happy i was - my cheeks were sore from the constant smile i had on my face. *sigh* Ah, the good ol' days.

*will not open in new window because the dimensions are 1200x1600 pixels*

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And then.....

Well i guess i'll throw it in the mix. Because Maya always seems to piss me off when i use it, i started working in Blender (my 3D software of choice and upbringing) making a newer version of something in my story: the Curator's Study.

There isn't much detail in it yet, i only had about an hour or so to get to where i was, but there will be soon. I have a feeling about this version of it too - i think it'll stick if i get everything right as i go.











The layout/design of the rug (red) and the course it follows is based off a design i developed for a mechanized piece of....something - like a compass/altar (have yet to figure out how it's used in my story....all i know is it will be somehow):

*will not open in new window because the dimensions are 1683x1856 pixels*

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I think that's about it. There of course were a bunch of other things that happened...but some are kind of special moments and others were fleeting and can't be recalled at this moment.

So hopefully this will teach me to post more regularly.


Tomorrow's Agenda:
- Start New Art Assignment (same process/length as drapery, but with the human torso)

- Go through and give critiques on fellow students to kind of make up for the lack of it in the previous week.

- Heroes (this trumps everything else....all stops when this comes on)


That's about all - Later

Song of the....Week:
Anthony Hamilton & Miri Ben-Ari - Sunshine to the Rain
---------------------------^
-------> Speaking of Miri Ben-Ari, who is an extremely tallented violinist, I start my violin lessons this coming Wednesday (or will at least try to, tho there might be a potential scheduling conflict that may force us to use a different day of the week)



And here's a pic from a long time ago for you Brad:

*will not open in new window because it was made in Can-a-duh*

Artistic Value...

My homework for my analysis of Form class was to draw the four basic geometric shapes (cube, sphere, cone, and cylinder) and shade them in full value (which is a greyscale basically). So the first one i did (sphere), which i hadn't intended on being my submission, actually turned out pretty nicely - and i enjoyed every minute of it thoroughly. It's not exactly an "A" in the teacher's eye because there are some flaws in it...but i'd give myself an "A" for effort and the end result having never done this before.






This was my second attempt having just finished the sphere. It's a little blurry near the bottom...which is how it scanned for some reason, but you can still see a vast majority of it and i'm proud to say that although it's not a 100% symmetrical cone, and there areshading errors in it...i think this is pretty good for someone with no prior charcoal experience.











This is the picture i took of the four shapes at once (i figured it would take me a while to draw and shade so i took a picture so the shadows would move). This was my reference during the two/three days it took me to do the picture below (which i know kind of defeats the purpose because sometimes your subject can't sit there for that long...unless they're dead - which wouldn't be life drawing anyway).

So here's the end result after two/three days work (including sketching the shapes and contour lines, going over it in one shade, adding contrast by doing black/white, then shading and smoothing out the transitions between values). I'm pretty proud of it - i already sprayed some fixative on it and will probably frame it and send it to someone (not that my art is all that, but for my and what i can do...it's at least a bag of Ruffles)

Here's the second pass at my bumper, with improved lighting and adjusted flare intensity (much improved).

Bumpers...

So my assignment for my ANM:105 class this week was to work on a bumper for my demo reel. A bumper is basically a little intro, usually no longer than 10 seconds or so, that'll basically become your calling card. Columbia TriStar's bumper of the 'statue of libarty' and 'Pegasus' infront of a cloudy background is pretty memorable.

So since i don't have a title for myself besides noob, i figured i wouldn't waste time doing something like 'Lighting' or 'Texture Artist'. So i decided to go with the mock company title i had been holding in my head for some time now: 'Omicron Entertainment'

I fixed some of the errors that were obvious with my previous assignment/post where people were not associating the large O with the rest of the word.

There are some issues with the flare intensity making it hard to clearly make out the surrounding letters - but all that's easily fixed by moving a slider down a few incriments; the only reason i haven't done that yet is because rendering it takes a while (and if i make it as perfect as possible on the first pass then it won't look like my skills are improving when it gets better the next time around).

That's it for now - homework for FND:110 tomorrow

New Title

This is the fruit of my evening's loi.....labor. I didn't spend that much time on it, because i started with an image size of 720x480 (which is what everything we do is going to be output in....*shudders* Don't fret, i'm going to always render high-quality images for you guys and lwer them for school. So i started out small and didn't feel like correcting it to bring out the detail i had wanted - next time.

I should've made Omicron a lot bigger.....*puts on to-do list*

ANM:105 sketch

Here's another piece of homework for my ANM:105 class (which, actually, probably should've preceeded my previous post). It's basically just me trying to figure out another title/logo, and how to do a little 10 second animation of it for when the time comes. This is my first time ever doing any kind of storyboarding (though i'm not saying what i did was all that great), but i was surprised at how fun it was.

So since i figured that most people didn't know the large "O" in my previous pictures was attached to the 'micron' and was supposed to read 'Omicron', i figured i'd make all the letters the same size (or something like 'small caps'). So my next post, which might be later tonight (or wednesday if not tonight), should have another pic of my title with a little lense flare in the second "O".