A Little More Progress — October 11, 2016

Posted on October 11, 2016 by SusanG

I started out the week with the best of intentions and even motivation. The ZBrush Summit was a great event. I had found a bit of motivation to get back to some modeling and I was really ready to tackle something, anything. Then, as the week went on and Hurricane Matthew started to become an issue, that kind of fizzled.

I would think of something to start and then find that I just didn’t have the mental energy to pursue it at that moment. This happened a couple of times. One evening I was thinking I wanted to work on something on the computer and yet I didn’t feel like starting something new, I totally forgot about the Halloween Card until after I worked on the Ovation painting and I was headed to bed.

I’ve been having a small challenge with the Ovation painting. You might notice an20161010_165031_c_sm_wm inconsistency in the coverage of the dots. The nib I was using quit on me. I’m guessing it’s because of metal fatigue. I don’t know. The result was that I couldn’t get the ink to
flow using that nib. So I had to find another one that would work. I tried several and thought I had one that was working but it was giving me really blobby dots and I didn’t like the look. I found another one that would give me more regular dots but they were really tiny and so didn’t cover near as well. I finally found one that behaves the way I want. It took a some time to get comfortable with it. I was still able to make progress but you can see the unevenness in the picture. The good news is, that it won’t even be noticeable when I’m done.

And since I finally remembered that I had the Halloween Card to work on. I got back to that this week. I finished up the candy piece that I had been working on. I needed to twist the other side and make it look like a wrapper. I also needed to deform it like happens when the paper gets twirled. Then I crumpled one side a little because of it being on the ground. I made copies but I made them instances. Which, I thought would be easiest since I’d done that with the Christmas balls for the Holiday card. But I forgot that I’d made 3 copies and then made instances off of those so I could have them different colors. Because of this, I may end up with all my candy of the same type. We’ll see. I did put them all in the cauldron, ready for Trick or Treaters. One of the things I did as part of modeling the candy was to use the turbosmooth. I hadn’t made much use of it so far on this project since most of what I’ve created hasn’t really needed it. But once I got the crinkles and such in the candy wrapper, I tried it and decided that it really finished it off. So turbosmooth. Then I was looking at the cauldron and realized that it could use a little turbosmooth too. Here are a few pictures from this week.

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I think I might have found a little more momentum for finishing the Halloween card. I think. At least with getting the candy done and placed in the cauldron I’m getting more excited about it again so that’s good. I’m hoping that means I’ll remember to work on
it more this week so I can finish it. I’ve got a stool to model and then I will figure out how to import my jack’o lantern into the scene and get it placed. After that it will need, materials, lights, and a camera. I keep thinking I’m so close but really, I’m only close to having the modeling done not the whole thing.

It will be interesting to see what I get done this next week. In addition to the card, and the paintings, I’m still working on the grout in my shower. And now that the work on my part of our building is done, I’m getting a little antsy to re-arrange and reorganize my studio. And maybe paint it. I’m starting to think maybe the squirrels and the projects have joined forces.

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Mostly the ZBrush Summit — October 4, 2016

Posted on October 4, 2016 by SusanG

Wow. It’s October already. It certainly doesn’t feel like what I still expect October to feel like. Though to be honest, I’m not sure October has felt that way for several years. Maybe it’s time to expect October to feel like early September? Of course, it doesn’t really matter if it feels like October out or not, the calendar says it is almost Halloween.

Since I am now into the last few weeks before Halloween, I think I may want to shift gears and get back to finishing up that Halloween Card. No, I didn’t do it this week so no new photos of it yet. This weekend was the 3rd Annual ZBrush Summit from Pixologic so I spent most of my weekend, from Friday afternoon to late Sunday night, in front of my computer watching some really great presentations and getting lots of tips, tricks and interesting information.

As noted, by the 3rd Annual part, this is the third year for the ZBrush Summit. I’ve attended in some fashion every year. Last year I went in person and this year, like the first year, I watched from home. It’s a lot of fun to actually be there. The other people in attendance are, so many of them, as talented as the people presenting. While I got a lot out of last year’s experience being there, I think to get the most out of it you need to get involved with the community and get known, at least a bit, that way, and then go. The ZBrush community is something else. Helpful, encouraging, talented, diverse. And that’s what I know just from the summits. I admit, I’ve been a bit intimidated by some of the talent in the ZBrush community. Some of the posts on Facebook as well as on ZBrush Central just blow me away. This year, though, I am going to try to get up the nerve to post a sculpt on either ZBrush Central or Facebook and see how it goes.

As far as the cool news from this year’s summit. They are releasing ZBrush Core. It comes out October 14th. It will be considerably less expensive than the full version, though not pocket change. It does have a lot of the really cool stuff that the full ZBrush has but they have tried to trim it down a bit and make it less confusing. They are also changing the transform line tool to a regular transform gizmo. The gizmo got the biggest applause when it was announced. The presenters, Paul and Joseph, acted a little surprised at this. I don’t know why. It’s one of the most basic tools you need and yet for me it’s been one of the most difficult to figure out. I can use it now but I am not a wizard at it for sure. So the transform gizmo is exciting news. The other exciting news is that they are working on ZBrush 5. It’s not near ready yet though. So they will be releasing ZBrush 4R8 to give us
some of the tools that are in the Core now. And 4R8 will be a free upgrade for those with ZBrush 4R7 already. That’s cool! Ah, a proper transform gizmo. That will be so nice.

The second day of the summit, Saturday, had a nice blip in it. Apparently a large portion of Los Angeles lost power. Yes, including where the summit was being held. That caused an interruption in the LiveStream for about an hour. They did make it back to finish out the program Saturday they just cut the after presentation interviews out. I confess, I didn’t stay tuned for the entire rest of Saturday. I was back again at it on Sunday though.

Some of the people that were presenting were from Naughty Dog Studios, Square Enix, Anatomy Tools, Blizzard Entertainment, Bethesda Game Studios, Disney Animation, Laika Entertainment, Oculus and several others. Everyone had a great presentation and offered so much information and tips and tricks and how they do things and things to keep in mind. My brain was full after the second presentation Friday night. And yes. I learned stuff. Stuff that will be helpful in both my computer art as well as my traditional art. And as I have every year so far, at the end of it I can only think, “I have so much work to do.” That’s not just the work for projects already on the board. That’s practice, and learning, and studying. The summit’s over. I guess it’s time to dig in and get back to work.

20161003_002740_c_sm_wmIn addition to spending the weekend watching the summit, I did get a bit of art done this week. I’m a little surprised myself. I’m mostly surprised at how far I’ve gotten on the Ovation Guitar painting. I had started the second layer of color, the flame red. And
I’ve managed to make pretty good progress with it. I’m nearly done with that layer and after that I think I’ll work on a few of the holes and maybe the strings next. I need to do the binding but as I’ll need to mix the color for that and there is a lot more of it to do than say the strings, which I’ll also need to mix the color for, I’ll probably hold off on the binding until a weekend.

I did a little sketching while watching part of the summit this weekend. I haven’t done that in a while and decided that I might do well to doodle while I was watching and listening to some of the presenters. So that’s what I did. I have no idea who this person is. He does look like someone though.

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wormguy_10012016c_sm_wmI even managed to get myself into ZBrush and play a bit. I worked on the worm some. I did a little more refining and gave him eyes. I’m going to have to redo him though. Some how as I was building him I got everything really turned around and off center and so I wasn’t able to use symmetry, though now I think I might have been able to fix that. I might need to ask the summit guys. Hmm… Anyway. As a result of being off center and not being able to use symmetry, he’s a little lopsided. But if you only look at one side at a time and not straight on or in a 3/4 view, he looks pretty cute. I did spend a bit of time trying to get UV’s for him both in ZBrush and 3DS Max. That took a long time but I finally got something and it was going well and then I crashed 3DS Max. I tried to go back in and apply my file back but, yeah, that didn’t work. It was a mess.

And finally. That guy from the sketch kind of stuck in my brain. Probably because of how I started him on the paper. I used a couple of strong base shapes to start from, not the typical oval shape. I’ve been watching some of the sketches that Danny Williams
(PointPusher) posts and that’s a little like how he starts so I though I’d try it. It turns out that it can help to start out that way in ZBrush as well. Though to be fair, in ZBrush I did still start out with a sphere. Then I masked off part of it so that it wouldn’t be impacted when I took the move tool and pulled out a big part of the bottom section of the sphere. This gave me the chin and jowls. I made use of the masking technique a few more times to make adjustments to areas and not impact the areas around them. It’s a pretty cool trick. It’s also great for things like eye sockets and nasal passages. Mask off the hole, invert the mask and then pushed the now unmasked area back up into the head. For this guy I used a lot of the move tool as well as the clay build up brush, and of course the smooth brush, I also used a brush called Damian Standard and the inflate brush. I think this might be
my best sculpt so far.

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And that’s if for this week. I’m not quite sure what I’ll be getting up to for the next week. It is October. I really need to get back to the Halloween card. And I’m on a bit of a roll with the Ovation so I’m thinking they will probably be in there somewhere.

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Getting Ready for the Summit –September 27, 2016

Posted on September 27, 2016 by SusanG

It is time for the ZBrush Summit. It starts on Friday and I’ve taken the day off from the day job so that I can get some things done before I camp in front of my computer all weekend to watch the live stream. I’m excited about it. There has been a lot of great information come out of the last two Summits and looking at the schedule for this year, I expect there will be even more great information from this one. Before it starts though, I have to get some things done, like the chores and a bit more art work.

I got a good bit of work done on the Ovation Guitar painting this week and even got back around to working on the Halloween House for the Halloween Card. I didn’t get any  more work done on the Gretsch painting though. And those aren’t the only things I need to work on. Besides art projects, I’m still dealing with that shower that needs new grout, and now has a deadline. That means that I’ll need to stay on top of things a bit.

Yes. I worked on the Ovation painting. I finished up the first layer of the crimson. It was a little like working on the Gretsch. I was working on it and just kept going and then before I knew it I was almost done with the layer. I finished up that layer the next night and then couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen when I added the flame red. So I had to start on it. I was really happy with the way it looked and I would have worked on it more that night except that it was late and my hand was starting to cramp. So I worked on it the next night. And then the night after that. Here are some pictures of the painting from this week.

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I’m a bit funny when it comes to working on some of the 3D projects. When I first started working on them I would work on a project even if I only had 20 minutes at a time. Maybe because I had a lot of fairly basic things I needed to model for the scenes. Though all those bows for last year’s holiday card, weren’t what I’d call basic. Still, I find that I’m not quite as good right now at sitting down for those short sessions on the computer which is silly because if I would, I would be even closer to finishing the Halloween card than I am. I am closer though. I got one more component modeled to completion and another started. I made a cauldron to put candy in and I started on the model for the candy. I used cylinders as the base shape for both. And then I used a torus for the handles for the cauldron. To get the twist for the candy wrapper I wanted to use the soft selection so that I could select one
edge loop and rotate it and then the effect would be gradual. But I couldn’t get it to work so I just used the rotate tool and rotated the edge loops individually. That made a mess of the end cap sections and I had to straighten those out so that the faces won’t be all mangled when I apply a material to it. Here are a couple of screen renders of the progress.

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As always, I have plenty more work to do. I’ve got to finish the other side of the candy and I have a couple more items to model before I start adding materials. From there I’ll need lights, and I think this one is going to require the use of a camera to get the right angle. I am excited to get more of the Ovation painting done. It’s coming along really nice. There is also the Gretsch to get back to, I think I’m ready to start adding some of the detail to that one. Let’s see how much I get done before the ZBrush Summit takes over my computer this weekend.

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Steady, And Hopefully Not Too Slow — September 20, 2016

Posted on September 20, 2016 by SusanG

Where to start? I don’t have a really good introduction for this week and what I worked on. I just worked on stuff. I also had to get a haircut and try to go to a free training event in relation to stuff for the day job. Which doesn’t excite me nearly as much as the upcoming ZBrush Summit from Pixologic. Still things got done.

I did go to the free training, though I waited and went in the afternoon, for a number of reasons. I can’t say that the sessions I attended were that exciting. I didn’t expect them too be. I don’t do very well sitting still and listening to lecture on computer stuff no matter how much I might want to know about the topic being discussed. It just doesn’t work out well for me. So that part of it was a bit of a bust. However, I did have a really enjoyable conversation with a couple of vendor reps from Baton Rouge.

In addition to that bit of socializing, I also got some work done. I managed to finish off the porch light for the Halloween House for the card. I finished the detail for the globe and added some thumb screws that are to hold the globe in the top cap part of the fixture. All of the pieces for the light started out as cylinders. From there I made tweaks and minor adjustments. Mostly I did things like round off the edges or scale an edge loop. I did attach and then weld two cylinders to make the fixture part that attaches to the wall. For the globe, or jar, I rounded off the bottom edge so that it wasn’t so sharp. I also added some edge loops so that I could scale a set in and make it look like there are ridges in the jar like you sometimes find on glass jars. If you remember last week, the base of the light was buried in the wall. Now it sits against the wall like it should and I scaled it down
so the proportions are better. This time, instead of attaching everything and then sorting things out when I go to add materials, I attached only what was going to be the same material and everything else I just grouped. When I scaled it, I selected the group.
Here are a couple of renders of the porch light as it is at the moment.

halloweenhouse2016_09132016a_sm_wm halloweenhouse2016_09132016b

I finished up the second layer of black on the Gretsch Guitar painting. When I sat down to work on it I wasn’t really planning on finishing the layer up in that session. But I just sort of kept going and at one point I realized I was nearly there so I couldn’t stop. Next up will either be to start on the aged chrome or to work on the small area of binding at the bottom. Oh, dang. I just realized, I may need to change what I was intending to use as my background color for the painting so that you can still see the binding. Hmm…I may need to think about that. While I contemplate that, here are some In Progress pictures.

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The Ovation Guitar got a fair bit of attention as well. I filled in that gap I created when I adjusted the shape and then I just kept going. I got all the way across and started back the other way. I finally stopped when I got to my fourth or fifth time of reaching a stopping point. I’m getting a bit excited about this one. Instead of doing the second layer of crimson I think I will make the second layer flame red and start to build up the quilted look some. I hope. First I’ll need to finish off this layer.

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I also made a small update to the SusanG Productions website. I realized that while I had intended to add a link to this site and to the store, I hadn’t done it yet. So I made that quick update to the site. I still have one more small update I need to make right now. Then I need to start planning for a gallery sort of link for the paintings. I want people to be able to see them. So the gallery is a “to be added” feature.

As you can see, a bit of progress on several things this week. I’m hoping to get even further in the coming week so that when I hit the weekend of the ZBrush Summit I can sit back and enjoy the Live Stream of it.

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That First Week Back — September 13, 2016

Posted on September 13, 2016 by SusanG

You know how the first week back from a vacation, especially one that is more than a week, is really hard? It’s hard to get up, it’s hard to get back into the swing of things. And you know how a short work week, because of a three day weekend can be really tough because even though there are only 4 work days there is still 5 days worth of work? Those weeks just seem to take it all out of you. My first week back to the day job, was one of those short weeks due to the Labor Day holiday. It was Thursday before I had enough energy at the end of the day to work on projects.

I made progress on a few things this week. I worked on the Halloween House and both paintings. I’m very pleased with that. I even remembered to post a W.I.P. of the Gretsch painting on Instagram. As much as I want to work on a few other projects. Or at least
feel like I should be working on them, I have tried to prioritized projects and have chosen, the Halloween Card, and both paintings as my priorities, at least to the end of the year. It is still my goal to have the Halloween Card on the store on or before Halloween. I would also like to have at least one of the paintings finished by the end of the year, though both is my preference. I think goals can be helpful. I’ll have to see how this works out.

With that, here is the progress on the Halloween House for this week. I got the posts in first. As I was adding them I found I had to pull the edge of the roof back a little. Originallyhalloweenhouse2016_09122016c_c_sm_wm it covered the steps but that didn’t look right when I added the posts so I adjusted it so that it was at the edge of the porch. I also got the rafters added. That really finishes up the structure of the house front. So it’s on to the finishing touches like a porch light. Which I started. At one point I think I stared at the model of the house for 20 minutes trying to picture in my head the right kind of light to use for the porch light. Once I finally decided on it I then went to the website for one of the hardware stores and started looking through the lighting until I found something I could use as a rough reference. I’ve got more work to do on the light, and part of it is buried in the wall right now. Once it is complete I’ll have to scale it down a little. For now I need it a size that is easy to work on.

And the Gretsch painting. I have started the second layer of black on it. It’s moving along pretty good. I think, since the hardware is all aged, and not super shiny, that after this layer of black, I will add in a base layer of grey. That will start to fill in those areas and then I can go back in and add the additional colors on top of it.

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The Ovation painting got some love this week. One of the things that I like about it is that it’s a different color than the Gretsch. It gives me something to work with other than black. Nice to have a little variety since, if you remember, the Gibson piece was mostly black as well. I made a lot of progress on the Ovation piece this week. I was really pleased. Until I started taking the W.I.P. pictures and realized the body wasn’t quite the right shape. I confess, this is the hard part for me when it comes to drawing guitars. Some of the body curves are tricky. So looking at it, I decided now, before I get too much farther, is the time to try to correct that. After a few tries I finally got to this. Now, where I thought I’d finished all the way, side to side, down to that point I have to go back and fill in a bit. Oh well. As I was adjusting the shape, I had to erase some of the guide lines so I could see my adjustments.  While I was doing that, where I had already worked, and in the areas that I could, I went ahead and removed some of those guide lines as well. I like being able to see it without the guide lines.

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For now my plan is to stay focused on these three projects. I will be sharing more progress posts and pictures as I go.

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