When I decided on this Birthday card project I thought it would go a fairly quick. Since I’ve only just finished the ‘H’, I’m thinking that’s not going to be the case.
I finally got the ‘H’ all nice and poofy balloon looking over the weekend. It took a lot of time to get it just right. I thought I had it full looking and then from one angle or another I could see the legs looking flat instead of rounded. So I kept going in and tweaking vertices and edges to get them in just the right place to create a curved surface look instead of a flattened surface. I finally got it looking enough like I want to call it good and move on. I will probably go back and do some more fine tuning when I add the balloon tail. That bit where you tie off the balloon after blowing it up so the air doesn’t come back out, the tail, or knot.
That’s something I haven’t really touched on. How do I want to show the balloon-ness with the tail at the end. And how do I show the string attaching to the balloons. This is related to that question of whether to make them mylar style balloons or latex style rubber balloons. I’m still working on that. Though I appear to be leaning towards the latex style. But my plan is to get all the letters balloon-ified then go back and add the the tail later. I’m sort of hoping to make one tail and then make adjustments to it per letter as I attach it.
After finishing, at least for now, the ‘H’, I moved on to the ‘A’. This didn’t seem to take as long. I’m not sure if it’s because I started a little more efficiently or I just don’t have it quite there yet. I have a feeling it may be a bit of both. It is certainly not as poofed out as the ‘H’. It looks more streamlined, or like it was made from the long balloons like are used for the
balloon animals. I did start with the edges I had and didn’t add extras at the beginning. So fewer edges mean fewer vertices to manipulate. Though I do tink I might need a few more edge loops. At least two on each leg, one above and one below the bar. If I do that I will definitely need or want to go in and exaggerate the poofiness more. Its a tough call since it looks pretty good as it is.
I probably give the impression that I spent a really large amount of time each day working on the ‘H’ and the ‘A’. Unfortunately, I got into a sleep deficit during the week that because of several mundane tasks and chores I just couldn’t recover from. Which means I had more non-productive days than I care for. This is important because during the week I work on my projects in much smaller time chunks than on the weekend. And that can really have an impact on how long it takes me to finish a project.
I did figure out how to navigate in the 3DS Max view port while using the grip pen for my Intuos tablet. Of course if you’ve been using a Wacom tablet for a while you probably already know what I did or needed to do to fix this. And when I ran into the problem
I sort of maybe remembered what I needed to do but I didn’t think to try it until this weekend. I went into the the utility for the tablet settings and changed the setting for the button on the pen. It was set to either right-click or double-click and I changed it to middle mouse. And it worked. Yay! I would say it worked like a champ except it really didn’t. It worked fine, just not optimally. I made the top button the middle mouse and I find it a bit awkward for regular use. My plan is, for the Cintiq I will set the bottom pen button to the middle mouse. I think it will feel more natural.
I’m starting to get a little excited about possibly using the Cintiq for 3DS Max. I think I said I wasn’t so sure about it because my regular monitors are 27 inches and my Cintiq is 22 inches. That was before I ordered the arm mount for my desk. I’m a little height challenged and I’ve had some trouble getting comfortable with the Cintiq with my desk and chair combination. I’ve tried some different configurations, none of which have worked very well. I saw a picture of some animator’s or other computer artist’s desk
with their Cintiq mounted to their desk by this swing arm. So I started looking for one. I found it and have had it book marked for months but I hadn’t purchased it. Until this last weekend. I finally ordered it and will have it early this week.
I’m very excited at the prospect of being hunched over my Cintiq like it’s a sketchbook or drawing table and tweaking edges and vertices for hours on end. This could get dangerous. So check back next week to find out what happens with the arm mount and if I manage to pull my eyes away from my balloons long enough to go see Zootopia or if my irises become pixelated. If they aren’t already.
Post Script: While preparing the images for this post I discovered that there is much more work I need to do on both the ‘H’ and the ‘A’. Guess what I will be doing this week. Maybe I’ll get to start on the ‘P’ soon.