Really, I am. I am getting close to having the Birthday card finished. I’m excited to be this far along. But there are still a few things that need to be done to really finish it up.
To start with, after I got the materials all applied to the balloons, I repositioned the balloons more like they would look if they were floating in the air and being restrained by strings. Then I added a background. I wanted to see how it was going to look. At first I set it up the background with self illumination like I had the balloons. I sort of had to in order to compensate for the self illumination in the balloons. But that was too much. It managed to make it look washed out. Something was going to need adjusting.
As I was setting up the background I tried the Autodesk Standard material and played with some of the different shaders. I tried a couple of different options and settled on Phong and then set the color and left the self illumination off. As I was doing that I noticed I had the option for a translucent shader. So I decided to see how that would look on the balloons. I started out testing how the red would look. Part of why I went with the self illumination on the rubber material originally was because with the color applied to the
rubber shader, I couldn’t really get the color vibrant enough. With the Standard material and the translucent shader I was able to get the red more vibrant without washing out. I kept on setting up the other colors to see how they would hold up using the same type of
setup. Before I knew it I had set up all new materials for the balloons. They 
looked pretty good so I added an area light to the scene to make it look more like it is outdoors.
Wow. At this point I was in a bit of shock to realize how close to being finished I was getting. But first I needed strings or ribbons, something attached to the balloons to hold on to them. I had to figure out how to create that. I thought about trying an extrude along a path or maybe a spline. I finally decided to try something that sort of came up in the rigging tutorial I watched. In the tutorial, lines are used for some of the shapes and helpers. The thickness gets adjusted so they aren’t too big but are just the right size to be able to see them, and select them when doing the animating. And then the line is set to so that it can’t be seen when rendered. So I decided to try creating a line, giving it just a bit of thickness and setting it to be viewable in the view port and also to be renderable. Of course then I had to get all the lines set up so they started at a balloon and then came together as if being held by hands or something. I was able to do this fairly easily because when I created the strings I created them with multiple segments so I had enough vertices
to work with. Once the strings were shaped correctly it was time to try applying a material to them. I gave the strings a canvas material. I figured it would give them just enough texture, even as small as they are, to add to the scene. I think it worked.
I could stop here. And I have thought about it. But I don’t think it is quite there yet. It needs just a little something. I think I’m going to add some hands holding the strings. I have thought about making these the hands of Sticks. But his hands are more like blocks than hands. They would be difficult to recognize for what they are at the moment. Maybe later, when we all get to know Sticks better. For now, I need something more hand looking. But I don’t want to create realistic looking hands and I don’t really want cartoon hands. I know. Mechanical, or robot looking hands, that’s the idea. So I set about creating a robot hand with a wrist and part of the forearm. I’ve made pretty good progress with it and I’ve just about finished modeling most of the first one. I need to add the finger tips, the wrist and the forearm, and then attach
all the pieces. But, like with Sticks, I will just attach the pieces and not weld anything. That should allow me to maintain the shapes and the mechanical feel when I pose it. Of course I will need to rig it and then skin it to make it easier to pose. So I will be revisiting the rigging tutorial.
I expect I will be revisiting the rigging tutorial often, at least until I really get down the concept or have done it enough that I have the whole process memorized. I have several projects in mind that will be needing that sort of rig.
Things are moving along nicely and I have a feeling I’ll be rigging the robot hand by the end of the week. Who knows, I might even have it all rigged and posed by the next update. Wouldn’t that be exciting. Of course I’m always planning on getting to the animating of Sticks. And if I do manage to get the hands completed and rigged, there are plenty new projects to start. Check back to find out how far I get and what happens next.