Must Remember to Save More Often

Posted on June 6, 2017 by SusanG

Yep. You know it. I was busy working on the computer and the power went out and I had not saved my work yet.

That was exasperating. And to go along with the power being out for about 3 and half hours, which was bad enough, to make it worse, my carbon monoxide detector and possibly one of my smoke detectors, which are about a foot from each other, decided they
wanted their batteries changed. About 2 hours into the outage they started beeping. I managed to get one changed with a flash light only to find it didn’t stop the beeping. Since it was dark and I couldn’t remember how to change the other one, I got out the ear plugs. It was only for a little while longer but I wasn’t getting any sleep. Fortunately, the power came back on and I was able to take care of the other detector. It was also fortunate that it wasn’t too hot out when the power went out.

So what was I working on that I hadn’t saved yet? Funkatmyer. I was working on Funky’s jacket. I had gotten it separated out from the body and some basic tidy up work done. I took a quick render of it and was just about to hit the save when all the power went out. Here’s the render.

Given the time it was when the power came back on, I didn’t jump right in and try to either retrieve it from an autosave or re-do the work. I just turned on the computer, pulled up Maya, confirmed what I suspected before I shut it all down and went to bed. There just wasn’t any point in dealing with it then.

I did finally get back to Funkatmyer and his jacket. And the power stayed on. And I saved more often. I ran into an interesting and somewhat frustrating problem. At some point in the process of trying to get something to work, and I don’t know what it was, I managed to turn off the Undo Queue. Yeah. That thing that holds all your changes so you can ‘ctrl+z’ and undo back a step or more. Off. I found out by trying to undo something. It took me a while to find where to turn it back on but I did.

I was then able to get back to making up Funkatmyer’s jacket. Mostly I added some edge loops and did some face extrudes to give some detail. I’m still deciding if I want to do anything fancy with the collar. Though at the moment, I’m leaning towards not. I may save that for another jacket later down the road. For now, have a look at Funkatmyer and his jacket. I’m not sure if I’m going to do any detailing around the arm holes. Still thinking on that one.

As I was working on the jacket I realized, I think I need some detail on the helmet. I think I might want to do it before I had his earphones. I’m thinking that will be easier. Of course, when I get to the boots, those are going to need some detailing as well.

  

I’m still aiming to get the scene setup for Walter. I’ve not done it yet. But it is next on the list. Oh, and I may be revisiting Sticks at some point. Someone pointed out something about him that I may decide to develop some of his look a little further. That’s a bit down the road though. Walter and Funkatmyer first and then I’ll see who is lined up to get worked on.

In the mean time, I’ll be studying more for that test for the day job. I have 3 more chapters to read and then I need to get out the practice tests. It could mean a little less time working on the art projects. It should be temporary though. If I can study enough and learn it all enough so I pass the test on the first try then I’ll have more time for the art. If I don’t pass the first time, I’ll have to get back to studying. No pressure right?

That’s all I’ve got for now. With some luck the power will stay on this week and I can get lots done. Check back to find out how that works out.

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Please Do Not Feed the Mondays

Posted on May 30, 2017 by SusanG

Yes, that’s a clue as to how last week went. It was crazy. The day job felt like someone fed Monday steroids and it took the rest of the week to recover. Things didn’t go horribly wrong, but the didn’t go terrifically right either. And some of that continued into Tuesday. I think Wednesday might have started getting back on track but it’s a bit of a blur so I’m not sure. I do know that one of my cute little birds decided to have a freak out in the middle of the night and it took two hours to get her treated and calmed back down so we could all go back to bed. That made Thursday really rough. I was so glad I took Friday off.

As you can imagine, a week like that didn’t lend itself to my getting to work on fun stuff. No matter how much I wanted to, I just didn’t have the energy, mental or physical. I did finally get to a few things around my home that I had been needing to do. I got all the stuff that I had put aside to donate delivered to the donate places. And I got most of the stuff that was left in the dining room from the Art room re-do, put away finally. I have just a small bit of stuff left. Progress!

Unfortunately the pet bird is still having some issues. I’m not sure what’s going on with her but she spent two or three hours on my shoulder having an epic preen Sunday night. That’s after spending a half hour cuddled up against my neck and cheek. She’s sweet
and loving but this was over the top for her. I’m hoping she’s getting better. I could really use some sleep this week. And more time to work on Funky and some time to work on the scene for Walter.

I finally got some time to work on Funky. Not much time mind you. I added an eyeball. I know that doesn’t sound very exciting or like it should be that hard. Really, it probably wouldn’t be if I would plan better. But the size and shape of the socket means it took a little bit of work to get it just right. Mostly it was about getting the overall shape to fit and then getting the center parts right. It may be a little difficult to really tell what’s going on here with it all still just the basic lambert material. Trust me. When I get the final materials added, and some better lighting, it should make a difference.

I also got to working on the helmet. There wasn’t a lot to do to it. At least not at the moment. I needed to cut the slot in it so Funky could see out. Though now that I think about it, I’m wondering if I should have done something a little different. Hmm.
Maybe something to think about for the future. Wow. I guess that has Funky basically done. Now to work on the rest of his accessories, besides the helmet. Currently I have planned a set of earphones, some boots, and a coat/vest type of thing. Oh. Wait. I just realized or noticed. I had meant for him to have little more of a duck tale than he does at the moment. I want to take that into consideration as I’m creating the vest thing, so it lays right.

There’s always something more that needs doing. At least until a project is done.

I’m still excited about getting things worked on, in spite of last week’s craziness. I have made some adjustments to my schedule and commitments and it should free up a few extra hours for working on fun stuff. It doesn’t mean I get away from the other stuff though. I still have a test to study for for the day job. I’m still making progress on that, though I think I might need to step it up some. I will do my best to keep things balanced enough that I can get Funky finished up and get Walter all setup. And sometime really soon I need to get my travel plans set for the ZBrush Summit. I’m planning on attending that in person this year. I did that in 2015 and it was a lot of fun and really worth the trip for all I learned. So I’m going to try that again this year. But I have to get the flight booked and the lodging set first.

That gets you are all caught up with Funky and the week I had, remember to come back and find out how things are going. You never know what might happen or how far I might get.

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The Bird Has a Name

Posted on May 23, 2017 by SusanG

This has been a busy week. And, Wow, productive. I’m pretty excited about it. I’m looking forward to more of this. I’ve got ideas and I’m getting them executed and, yeah. Just cool.

I could sit back and try to figure out what I did this week that makes it feel like it’s been so good but really, I’m just going to roll with it and try to keep it rolling.

I told you last week that I have an idea for my business cards. And I do. And now this week, with the progress I have made on the FunkyBird I am starting to get an idea for how to revamp the SusanG Productions website. I’m not completely there yet. But the idea is forming, it’s percolating.

I spent this week working on FunkyBird. I got the wing cleaned up and added the extra bit of refinement I wanted. It was a little too flat so I added some edges and made some lanes that I could puff up to look a little like bones going through the wing and the fingers. That helped a lot.

At that point I kind of wanted to see how he was going to look with two legs and two wings so I decided it was time to cut out the one side and mirror over the other with the leg and wing. I had to adjust his leg first though. I made it nice and chunky and it turned out to be a little too chunky because if I had mirrored it over as is, it would likely have fused the two parts of the mesh together. So I moved the leg out into a little wider stance so that the mirror wouldn’t cause it to get messed up.

With FunkyBird having matching sides I was ready to work on the beak. I thought about just doing half and then doing the mirror again and chose not to. I just worked on the entire beak, the whole thing. Just tried to keep the poly count low at first to make it easier to keep track of the vertices that I was moving around. Then I added more edges to help refine the look. It took a bit of fiddling. When I started out, and with such a low poly count, the tip kept coming out very rounded even if I tried to make it pointed. To get the point to stay I finally had to add more vertices, attached to edges of course. That, let me maintain the point and gave me more to work with to add even more detail to the beak shape.

 

Things were flowing so nicely that as I got the beak done up, I was right into getting a spot for the eye socket. I added some edges in a ring around the faces that I wanted to use to extrude inward and then once that was ready I extruded the faces into the head to create the socket. Then I selected the vertices that defined the corners and such and moved them around to make the shape a little more rounded looking. I’m not near done with this part. I’ll be working on it this next week for sure.

Someone said to me, a few weeks ago, that the WormGuy really needs a better name. And they were right. For that matter FunkyBird needs a better name. So as I was working on FunkyBird this week, I came up with their names. The WormGuy, turns out to be fairly simple, his name is Walter. Walter Worm. The FunkyBird, turns out he’s got some flare. His name is Funkatmyer Aviter. Funky for short. Yeah, quite a guy this one. He should be fun to continue to work with.

For the week coming up, that should be interesting. Of course the day job is going to be busy. We’re into the big project that involves a lot of my knowledge and expertise and for that matter will require a lot of knowledge transfer. The catch for the day job this week, is that I took Friday off. I’m extending my three day holiday weekend to four days. Just because, why not. As for the fun stuff. I’m thinking Funky is going to get some more work. I still want to work on that scene for Walter. It might be time to start on one of Funky’s friends. There’s this dapper looking Dawbry that’s interested in getting modeled. And then Squiddy might be ready to be fleshed out a bit more. Who knows what the week with bring. Come back and find out.

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Workflows and Pipelines

Posted on May 16, 2017 by SusanG

Have you ever noticed that when you have an idea of something to create it sometimes takes a couple of iterations to get it really right? If you look at the process all the artists go through to make an animated film you can really see this. You might see a really rough sketch of a character on a napkin and then several different versions of it in pencil or charcoal or paint or Photoshop. Then you start to see the 3d iterations. Whatever it takes to get the idea from you head out to where others can see your vision, that is what a workflow is to me.

After working on the leaf for the WormGuy scene, I think I might have figured out a way of working to get my ideas out of my head and in a form that I can animate or pose or whatever. What I learned from doing that leaf was that even after sketching a leaf, once I had made it in ZBrush, I was better able to see what I was going to need to do to make it in Maya. Now, as I’m still perfecting my skills in both, it may still take some time to really get what I want. However, it is sure worth trying out more often.

As to pipelines, these are usually the whole process and programs that a studio uses to create a finished product. It usually includes the modeling program or programs, programs used for texturing, rigging, animating, lighting, rendering and compositing.
I’m still working on what my production pipeline will look like. Right now it’s pretty short. 3DS Max or Maya and that’s it. Whichever program I’m using, I tend to use for everything at the moment. Though I’m looking to add something for texturing. And if I stay with Maya, I may try out Renderman for rendering. If I go back to 3DS Max, I’m not sure what I’ll look at. For ZBrush, I could use KeyShot since I have a version of it as well as the bridge software to go to KeyShot from ZBrush. I haven’t really figured that out yet though.

So that’s a bit about workflows and pipelines. Now back to projects.

After watching “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” I was inspired to work on the FunkyBird. I’ve made a lot of progress on the wing/arm thing. It’s got finger type things. I’ve got them a little farther than just roughed in. They are almost ready. I think. Though I want to add a bit more detail to them. I’ve used some renders of it as I was working on it all through this post. As you can see, it’s pretty close to being ready.

So, once I’ve finished up the wing I think it will be time to start on the face. I’ll need a beak or maybe more like a bill for the mouth. I’ll have to go back to my sketch to see which it will be. Also, I’ll be ready to start on the eye. Yes, just one eye. The FunkyBird is a bit cyclops like. That’s how things stand with the FunkyBird. I’m motivated to finish up the wing, and a little unsure how to approach the face at the moment, but I’ll get there. I could let it stew in my brain while I work on the WormGuy scene.

Yep, I think I want to get the WormGuy scene a little farther along. In addition to the card I want to use the WormGuy for I also want to use him on my business card. I think I’ve come up with a basic design to start with. Now I need to get the art work ready.

And the last bit of update news for this week, I’m reviving my techie blog site. If you’ve not encountered it, I mostly cover technical type stuff, like software I’m working with and maybe websites I’m building. I also discuss some of the video games I play and bits about them. If you want to check it out you can find it at: suguayproductions.com/sgp. Just a little heads up. That started as my experimental site and I still use it to try things out sometimes so you never know what you might find there.

And that about covers things for this week. Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to go finish watching the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood marathon on Twitch. They are showing 886 episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Check it out. www.twitch.tv/misterrogers it supports your local PBS station.

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The Wing Got Some Detail

Posted on May 9, 2017 by SusanG

The first week back to the day job after vacation was a little rough. When I got up in the mornings I found myself really wanting to work on some of the stuff I had been working on while on vacation. Unfortunately, with the work I needed to get caught up and such, I was too tired at night to work on things. And now I’m starting the second week back and…I had that same feeling Monday morning. I was ready to work on more of what I had worked on during the weekend.

That’s not to say I got a huge amount of stuff done as far as art this weekend. I did spend a bit of time relaxing and not doing much, even played some video games for a little while. My brain felt a little like mush Friday afternoon so that was about the best I could manage. I have a few video games that I started while on vacation and I think I’m going to try to make a little progress in them more regularly. I’ve been pretty hit or miss on my video game play lately. I think it might be just as good a thing for unwinding as say scrolling through Facebook or something like that. I may try it more often. Anyway, it was Saturday before I got back to art things and it was the FunkyBird that got the attention.

I spent a fair bit of time trying to clean up the placement of vertices and even out the edges and get the shaping to look nice. I tried to find a way to isolate just what I had selected so that I could view it in wireframe mode without all the rest of the body. It’s probably there but I couldn’t find it. Why would I want to do that? Well, when viewing everything in wireframe mode there are parts of the wing that are difficult to identify. Because you are looking through everything, you get other parts of the body in there as well and tracing the edges can be more than tedious. I did the best I could and was able to get things cleaned up nicely. I also added some edges (in the style of edge loops) so I could make the wing edge more smooth and rounded instead of squared off.

I didn’t try to round off the end edge. That’s where the fingers, or whatever they will be, go. I got to work on that too. I added more edge loop style edges in the in betweens so that I had more geometry to work with and could get the shape or at least the beginnings of the shape I want. Once the edges were added then I could select the new faces and do some
scaling and moving to create an indented area both ways. Now I have where the fingers will go well defined so I can get started on those. I’m thinking of adding another set of edges along the top, and maybe the bottom, of the wing to get something that looks a little more like bone under the skin. Oh! And while I was looking at it, I had an idea for the flower I want to have in the Worm Scene. Sorry, back the the FunkyBird. So here are a couple of shots of how it looks now.

I hope to be getting back to the FunkyBird more this week but with the flash of inspiration I just had for the Worm Scene, who knows. Some Squirrels need to be chased. They are the ones where they inspire new ideas, or offer an opportunity to learn something new and cool. Guess I’ll be doing some Squirrel chasing soon.

That bit on the FunkyBird was all that got visible work done on it this week. I would say I have hopes for this next week to get even more done during the week, however, there’s a big project at the day job that is likely to take up time and brain power so I don’t know how that will go yet. In addition to having a path for working on the FunkyBird, I now have something to pursue for the Worm Scene. And who knows what else. That could all be motivating even in the face of bleary eyes.

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