We’ve Got Balloons – Weekly Update April 5, 2016

Posted on April 5, 2016 by SusanG

Yes indeed. The letters now look like balloons. Really they do.

Since the ballooned or sculpted letters that I did last week came out so well I decided that I am sticking with those. Sometimes you do have to start over to make progress. This was certainly the case. I know sometimes we think we would have been so much better off if we had done something a certain way the first time, or even earlier in a process. I know I think that. This time, I’m aware of having learned some things by trying to do it the hard way first and then doing it another way. One thing I know I learned is that it is better to start with a more accurate or refined base to work from. You spend less time trying to fix it as you flesh it out. Doing that and then using ZBrush allowed me to more quickly and easily get the ballooned letters I want.

Though the letters were all ballooned out they didn’t quite look like balloons for me. They needed a little something extra. You know, that place where you fill them with air. So I sat about figuring out what to do for the air hole. I had thought about getting really detailed and making the part of the balloon and then a plug and such. Then I realized that it wouldn’t be seen. You will just be able to see the air hole bit, so to get really detailed for this project is just over kill, and a waste of time. See here, with the hole added just to the letters in ‘Happy’ it’s hard to really see the air hole bit. But it’s an important detail that adds to it.

CardBdayTake2_2016v2_03302016c_c_sm_wmTo create the air hole I started with a torus. There were two challenges with it, getting the right size and the right number of sides. I did end up with too many sides going around to make the ring but had just the right about for creating the thickness. It had to be small-ish compared to the balloons as well. But trying to make it the right small to go with the balloons as they were was difficult. So I scaled the balloons up. I selected all of them and then chose local for my reference and then made sure they were set to scale uniformly.CardBdayTake2_2016v2_03302016d_c_sm_wm Good thing because it turned out to be quite difficult to get zoomed in close enough to work on attaching the air hole to the balloons. So with the torus created then I extruded a loop of faces to create the part that attaches the hole to the rest of the balloon. I did the extrude a couple of times and then added some edge loops so that I would have a nice center loop of edges to work with. I selected the center loop of edges, on the inside as well as the outside. Remember, I extruded faces, that means I had a double faced tube basically. Since I didn’t want the inside ring to break through the outer wall I had to select both so I could scale them down in the x an y axis to shape the tube a little.

Next I had to figure out how to attach the hole. Well, first I made a few copies and got them lined up with the letters. Then I worked on where I wanted them on each letter. I was able to find good spots for them and attach them by removing 9 faces from the letter. I moved the hole in place and used the rotate tool to get it at just the right angle and then selected the letter, then attach and then the hole. Then I had to weld vertices from the letter to the hole. The only problem was that I didn’t have the same number for the letter as there were for the hole. So I made sure to make my attachments at even points around the hole and the once that was done I removed the edge loops that made up the extra points. I made sure to hold down the CTRL key while I removed them so I got rid of the vertices at the same time. All that work cleaning up that alien sure helped.

CardBdayTake2_2016v2_03312016c_c_sm_wm

I figured out that even though I had welded the vertices, It wasn’t totally welded. I needed to weld the edges from the letter to the hole. Once I got rid of the extra edge loops so that I had only one edge between the welded vertices it was pretty easy. Though, I did have to be careful not to snag more than the two edges I was trying to weld.

Believe it or not all of that went pretty quick. Once I had a path and a method it was fairly easy to do. By the end of the week I was ready for texture.CardBdayTake2_2016v2_04032016f_c_sm_wm

I knew, after working on Sticks, that I was going to use the Rubber setting of the Arch & Design Mental Ray material, and I figured I was going to need to make it transparent. I also want pretty basic colors and for them to be bright and cheery. We’re celebrating
after all. So I started with a primary color and got it transparent. Since I haven’t added lights to the scene yet, I had to view the letters from an angle to see if I could see through them enough. The only thing is that even though I choose fairly base colors they looked a bit dull. Probably that rubber setting. So I decided to try making them CardBdayTake2_2016v2_04032016d_c_sm_wmself-illuminating. Wow. That really made them bright and cheerful. I used the Kelvin setting for all the colors though I noticed some colors needed higher or lower settings based on how bright I wanted them, as well as how much orange I wanted mixed into the final color. Much cheerier now.

CardBdayTake2_2016v2_04042016a_c_sm_wm CardBdayTake2_2016v2_04042016b_c_sm_wmThe last thing I knew I wanted to get done for the week was to adjust the pivot point on allCardBdayTake2_2016v2_04032016i_sm_wm the letters. They kind of got reset when I sent the letters to ZBrush from 3DS Max. That made for rotating around one while it was selected, a bit of a mess. As you can see here, some of the pivots were quite a distance from the actual letter. So I CardBdayTake2_2016v2_04032016j_sm_wmselected each letter individually and then selected the ‘effect pivot only’ option and then chose center to object. That has moved the pivot point up in the z axis as well as over in the x or y axis, which is not entirely what I want. However, it is much better than having the pivot off by 2 or 3 or 4 letters distance.

So that’s how the card is progressing this week. I’m still deciding on what to do about the background and the ribbons or string for holding on to the balloons. And I’m thinking I may need a little something holding the bunch of balloons. Those are the next bits to be working on. I would like to have this card done and up for sale by the end of this month. I think. I might be close enough to make that happen.

I got some feed back on the Sticks scene. Positive results for the polished looking floor. So I think I’ll go with that floor, and probably the same background, though I am tempted to try a light green for the background and see how that works. Either way, it’s looking like the next step there is to figure out how to set things up for the start of the animation, and then get started animating. Oh, I may take a still or two of how it should end first. Then I would have something for the SusanG Productions website, as well as something new for the store header. Wow. Progress.

There is still more to come and lots to do and there will be another card to start on once the Birthday card is finished. I recommend checking back to get a look at how far I’ve made it on the card and Sticks. Will I make my deadline on this one? And what is to come after?

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What to Call This – Weekly Update March 29, 2016

Posted on March 29, 2016 by SusanG

I had a few of choices for the title of this week’s post. I considered something like ‘Duh Moments’ or ‘I Am Not a Colorist’ as well as ‘What Should I Call This’ and ‘This is Why We Read About Things’ there were even a few more. They are all relative to how the week went and I couldn’t decide so I just went with the stand in I was using. It has turned out to be a productive and fairly successful week in the art department around here. I did have something of a ‘duh moment’ this week, that I acted on, I have come to the conclusion that I might not make a good colorist, I have gotten a pretty good bit of work done, a nice bit of slacking off done, and learned something. That’s a full week I think. And now to figure out where to start.

Let’s start with the ‘duh moment’. I subscribe to a couple of 3D art related magazines, 3D Artist and 3D World. Though I am woefully behind on my reading of both of these magazines, when I remember to read them I find them enjoyable and informative. I was
reading one this week and came across an article about making balloon like letters in Cinema 4D. Even though I don’t have or use Cinema 4D at this time, the article was covering a problem I have been dealing with so I thought it worth a quick scan. A few weeks ago when I was working on puffing out the letters for the Birthday Card project, I remember thinking how much I wish 3DS Max had an inflate tool like ZBrush does. Of course, at the time I could have exported the letters to Zbrush and worked on them there and all, but for some reason, that just didn’t click. So this week, I’m reading the magazine article about creating balloon letters in Cinema 4D and the author tells how they start with the letters they want in Cinema 4D, chamfer the edges and then move them to ZBrush to use the Inflate brush, and a few others, and then take the sculpted letter(s) back to Cinema 4D. I didn’t read all the details of any of this, just those highlights which included that they did one letter at a time. Since I had thought about it a few weeks ago, and now had read about someone doing something similar, I decided to try it.

Instead of just taking the letters I have been working on and sending one or more letters to ZBrush, I started with a blank scene and modeled an ‘H’. I thought I’d try Mudbox first though, since I have it and haven’t been using it. But that didn’t work out well. I got a message about a problem with the UV’s and then I couldn’t get it to show up so I could work on it. I tried sending it to ZBrush using the GoZ plugin. That worked. Mostly. I had a little trouble because of how big I made the model in 3DS Max but I was able to tell that the idea was going to work. At least the part of getting it to ZBrush and the sculpting part.

So I decided to create a new scene for the card and model the letters with basic boxes all over again. This time though I made my boxes much smaller so my letters were smaller. I also modeled the letters a little differently. I defined the shapes better to start with so my work in ZBrush would really only be smoothing and inflating. I didn’t want to have to define or refine the shapes themselves them very much. Though I did have to do a little refining with the bump type letters. Still, I was able to keep that to a minimum and limited to the use of the Smooth and the Inflate brushes. Here’s what the starting letters looked like.

CardBdayTake2_2016_03252016a_c_sm_wm

 

One of the other things I read in the article for Cinema 4D was that before sending the letters to ZBrush the author chamfered all the corners. I think this helps ZBrush keep from making those hard edges that would take more work to smooth out. So I made a point to chamfer the corners as well. I had some trouble with the interior ones and ended up only chamfering the vertical interior edges. That turned out to be enough for ZBrush. Once I got the letters into ZBrush, before I started smoothing and inflating, I hit them with ZRemesher once or twice. This worked out any hard corners and helped with the smoothing. I didn’t do this on the first letter or two. Though I did ZRemesh the letters, it was after I had done some smoothing and inflating. After working on a few letters, I figured out that I was better off to start with the ZRemesher. I also note that I did not add any subdivision levels in ZBrush. I think, because of a setting for ZRemesher that I didn’t check or bother to look at, or something in the process of using GoZ back and forth I ended up with all the letters having a lot more faces, edges and vertices when they got back to 3DS Max. And this what all the letters looked like with the chamfer and before I sent them to ZBrush.

CardBdayTake2_2016v2_03252016d_c_sm_wmOnce I finished inflating a letter and smoothing it back out I then was able to send it right back to 3DS Max. I didn’t even have to tell it to go to 3DS Max, the plugin remembers where it came from and sends it back there. At least if you are working on all of it in the same session. I didn’t test what would happen if I saved the ZBrush project or tool and came back to it later. Once I sent a letter to ZBrush I finished it and sent it back to 3DS Max before I stopped my session. Using ZBrush to do the inflating after creating the letters in 3DS Max turned out to work so much better that I was able to get all the letters created and inflated and back to 3DS Max in just a few days instead of the weeks I’ve been working on the other letters. I feel a little odd about the new letters, that maybe I’ve sacrificed some design idea with regards to howCardBdayTake2_2016v2_03262016c_c_sm_wm balloony I was trying to make them. However, I think they look nicer, less clunky and awkward so I think I will be going with these new letters. Have a look.

CardBdayTake2_2016v2_03262016d_c_sm_wm Now that I have letters all ballooned out, it’s time to think about the next steps. For starters, I’m thinking of creating a plastic plug sort of thing instead of a knot for the part where the air would be added, and to hold the string. I’m hoping it will be fairly easy to model because I think the hard part may be incorporating it into the balloons, especially with them now having so many faces and edges. I’m also thinking of creating a background image for the sky. A nice blue sky with some gentle spring type of light clouds. I will likely do that in Photoshop and then add it as a material to the background plate in 3DS Max. I’ve not done that before so that will be a new trick. I may need to look at some of the other images that might be part of 3DS Max to see if I can find some information on resolution or dimensions. Then again, I may just have to experiment. Those are the next steps for the card. I have to say, I feel much better about the Birthday Card project for the moment.

For all the work that I did on the Birthday Card project, believe it or not, it wasn’t the only thing I worked on this week. Once I had all the letters ballooned I decided to take a break from that project and go back to working on Sticks for a bit. One of the things I’ve been needing to do with my Sticks scene is to work on the color scheme. I want it to read well at a glance, and be easy to see Sticks. And while I like the colors I started with they can make it difficult to distinguish the floor from the wall unless I use a more distinct material for the floor or the wall or both. I do have a couple of materials I like for the floor but for a
basic header image I think it might be too much. Then again, since it’s meant to look like a stage production, a bit reminiscent of  the variety shows from say the 1960’s and 1970’s, they might work out just fine. At least for the animation, if not for the logo. I spent several hours trying out different combinations. Though it was recommended to try some things that would really be outside what I would expect, I found that really difficult to do. This is where I decided, I am probably not going to be a colorist. Or, maybe I just have such a setSticks_COlor_Tests_03262016a_c_sm_wm idea in my head that I can’t get past it. Still, the wildest thing I could come up with was a lime green wall with a grey floor. The wall glows though, and it lights the scene. Here are a few of the combos I tried. If one really strikes you as a cool combination let me know.

Sticks_COlor_Tests_03262016e_c_sm_wmSticks_COlor_Tests_03262016j_c_sm_wmSticks_COlor_Tests_03262016r_c_sm_wmSticks_COlor_Tests_03262016y_c_sm_wm

I worked on the Studio sign for a little bit this weekend. I was still wanting to do stuff but too tired to concentrate on the screen so I put dots on paper for about half an hour. I don’t have a picture of it right now. I’m still working on filling out the background with the second layer and color. I might have about 20 percent done so not too exciting yet.

A while ago I mentioned that I would work on posting something about why I think I need to learn to use Maya and some of the differences between it and 3DS Max. I haven’t gotten to that post yet however, the situation with the letters may be a good example. With the 2016 release of Maya Autodesk incorporated some of the Mudbox sculpting tools into Maya. The idea being, I think, that you are less likely to need to leave Maya to work on your mesh. I expect it would save time and make it easier to use the sculpting tools from an interface you might already be familiar with. It’s a good idea. And if I were more comfortable in Maya then it could have been the best tool for the job with regards to the Birthday Card project. So, there is one of the reasons to learn to use Maya. Although, I haven’t investigated, to verify if it would have worked in this specific situation.

I am really pleased with everything I was able to work on this past week. I feel a lot better about the Birthday Card and I think that will help to keep my enthusiasm for it. As I said, the next steps on the card are, I think, creating the air plug and the background. Once the plug is modeled and copy attached to each of the letters I will need to figure out the tether for them. I’m thinking of the flat ribbon, but maybe not. It may depend on how easy it is to create. I think I know what I will need to do to create it but I haven’t even attempted it before so it could be interesting. I don’t expect I will get to that in a week, but who
knows. I could end up with another really productive week. Of course, I am interested in working on the Sticks animation. And that could limit how much I get done on the Birthday Card. You’ll have to check back to find out what I actually get done.

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Maybe That Will Help – Weekly Update March 22, 2016

Posted on March 22, 2016 by SusanG

Maybe that will help. At least I hope so. I don’t think I will question the why of how this works out. I will just be happy if it gets results. As I expected, the week was taken up with disaster recovery testing at the day job. It was a bit trying and took a little time to get shifted back into creating art. I finally gave up and decided to play a game. The first one wasn’t especially satisfying. So I decided to finally install the game that has been sitting on my desk for over a month. I thought it would be fairly easy. Then I saw it was 4 discs. Ugh. Still I didn’t think it would be that bad. However. Things really didn’t work nicely and in my frustration I got a bit annoyed and pissed at the whole process. As it turns out, it might have been just what I needed. A bit of a kick in the pants to get a little fire lit for myself. I guess I should have installed that game sooner.

Yes, I have been thinking that I needed to take a bit of time and goof off and play. But, I haven’t done it yet. I mean really, how serious can I be about trying to get art and cards created if I’m going to be playing video games, it’s reckless enough that I take time off to go see a movie. But I think maybe I need to make more of an effort to strike that balance. It might help me get some of these projects worked on. I know it’s counter-intuitive. Still, I can’t help but think that if I’d taken some play time a little sooner, I might have made better progress over the weekend. All is not lost though. I did make some progress.

BDayCard2016_03202016e_c_sm_wmI worked on the ‘B’ more. I’m not anywhere close to calling it done. This one has been trickier than the letters I’ve already worked on. I suppose I could skip to one of the other letters that still needs to be puffed out, and come back to this one after that. Oh. That’s worth thinking about. Anyway. After I created the one bar in between the bumps instead of the two I still didn’t like the look. It was too thick and the area that was the split between the bars was inset and it looked weird. So I puffed that out a bit to match the rows of faces above and below it and I compressed that area a bit. I seem to recall that I just selected the edge loops in the area and adjusted some up and some down but I probably could have used the scale option and scaled it in the z axis. Sometimes I get in a rut with how I work and I don’t always think of a better way to do things.

BDayCard2016_03202016d_c_sm_wmI had some trouble getting the shape of the bumps just right. I had to get a little drastic with the bottom portion of the bottom bump. And then had to be almost as harsh with the top bump. That’s been a bit frustrating. And they may still need more refinement. It reminds me a little of my frustration when trying to draw a bottle or a guitar. The sides never match. It’s what I love about the mirror tool in 3D art programs. Or even the lathe (I think that’s what it’s called) tool. Where you can draw a line shape and then rotate it around a center point and make it a 3D object. I know at some point that is going to make me so very happy when I get to use it.

But back to the ‘B’. As you can see it is coming along. I’ve got the front side cleaned up pretty good. I’ve started on the back. Here’s a picture so you can see how much more work it needs. And I need to make it more puffy all over. So, that is to come as well.

BDayCard2016_03202016c_c_sm_wmIn addition to maybe working on the letters for the card out of order, I’ve been thinking I may start on another card. I’ve also come up with an idea for the Sticks animation that I think is going to work out a better than my original idea, so I may start working on that. I have a feeling that it will take a while. I’ve got to get his walk cycle worked out for starters. And then there’s the physics of interacting with objects and… Yeah. More bits and pieces to consider. I think I would have more fun if I had a little more to work on besides just these balloon letters. And I think you all might enjoy a little more variety in the pictures, as well as, the variety of topics that come up with trying different things. Like animating.

One of the first things I think I will be trying with the Sticks project is to move the pivot point of each of the letters in the scene so that it’s at the bottom of each letter to make it a little easier to make sure things are at matching elevations. I think I did this without intending to, to one of the letters in the Birthday Card that I’m working on. And it seems to me it was covered in one of the tutorials I was watching so I should be able to figure this one out.

I’m a bit short on pictures this week but I’m planning on having a few more for the next update. Remember to check back to see how much progress I make on the things I’ve mentioned. Oh, and I’m considering coming up with some new names for the Alien and
posting a poll. Opinions? Ideas for names?

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My Daylight Was Not Saved – Weekly Update March 15, 2016

Posted on March 15, 2016 by SusanG

Yes, daylight saving time as begun in the U.S. I have a few issues with the whole concept, and I could go on and on about them. However, you’re not here to read my complaints and arguments against daylight saving time. Suffice to say I have no idea how one saves
daylight.

BDayCard2016_03102016h_c_sm_wmSince I left off last week realizing the ‘P’ and the ‘Y’ weren’t quite up to snuff and didn’t yet fit with the ‘H’ and ‘A’, that’s where I started. In general working on the ‘P’ wasn’t too bad. Not that it was a quick finish up. It took time. I did remember the trick of viewing the thumbnails of a render of the letter to determine if it was balloony enough and if it fit well with the other letters. This helped quite a bit. It made it easier to identify the areas that had problems and even what needed to be adjusted. Once again, a lot of time was spent moving edges and vertices.

BDayCard2016_03102016i_c_sm_wm

The ‘Y’, though deceptively simple looking, was not as co-operative. It seems like I spent much more time and effort to get the ‘Y’ to be more balloony than with the ‘P’. It was a little tricky where the top v-shape meets the bottom post. I added some edge loops to get better control of the shape and to keep it from losing definition. I also added edge loops to the upper arms and to the post. This allowed me a bit more to work with to get a fuller, rounder look in those areas. I was pretty close to having the ‘Y’ ready so I moved it back in line with the other ballooned letters. That’s when I could see that it wasn’t quite there. It needed more poof. I decided to try a minor scale up in the x and y axes. I scaled up the ‘P’ in the y axis and it was that little extra that finished that off so I hoped it would be the same for the ‘Y’. When I tried to scale the ‘Y’ it only sort of worked. It looked like it was going to scale nicely except it was also getting squished. Some how my scale settings got changed from uniform scale to scale and squash. I switched it back and all is good. And the ‘Y’ now fits in with the other letters.

BDayCard2016_03122016g_c_sm_wm  BDayCard2016_03122016f_c_sm_wmBDayCard2016_03122016e_c_sm_wm

I started on the ‘B’. The ‘B’ requires a little extra work, like the ‘R’ will. The way I createdBDayCard2016_03132016e_c_sm_wm the ‘B’, the bar between the top bump and the bottom bump is not one bar, it is two. They are two separate bumps not a double bump. The first thing I did was to make that a single bar and thus a double bump. To do this I deleted the inside faces, the ones facing each other between the bumps. I also deleted the band of faces that ran around the spine and between the bumps. I then adjusted the vertices so they matched up and welded the corresponding top and bottom vertices to each other. I once again have a single object. Next up, time to start poofing things out. Except the proportions were off. The bar was too thick and the top and bottom bumps were too similar in size. Adjusting that was fairly easy. I just selected a group of edge loops and raised them a bit. Not so bad. As you can see the bar is still not right and there is more work to do to get the ‘B’ looking nice and balloony and fitting in with the other letters. It’s slow going, but it’s progress.

I still have reservations and concerns about this Birthday card design. Not so much the work involved anymore. I think I’m past that. I’m more concerned that it won’t turn out to be of the quality I want. Don’t get me wrong, I will do my best in the modeling and choosing materials and setting up the render. I’m just a little concerned that the idea is too plain and that it won’t be as cool as the Christmas card and won’t have a similar enough feel. But I haven’t been able to come up with a different design that I  would like to do instead.

While I fretted over the state of this Birthday card project I finished up the initial background layer for the Studio Sign project. I decided that since I mentioned it last week, it would be a good idea to at least get that much done. Here’s a picture of it. It is coming along but I really want the background a little darker and denser, less white paper showing through. I think the next layer will be a straight Payne’s Grey instead of a mixed color. It should add some depth as well as darkening the background.

DSCN0550_c_sm_wm

And now we are at the end of another post. I get to participate in this year’s disaster recovery testing at the day job this week. I’m expecting that to mean that I will have very little work time between the day job and the exercise events so I have a feeling I won’t make much progress until the weekend. Then again, who knows, my part could go much smoother than I’m expecting and I will have lots of time to work on the card and maybe something else. Check back next week to see what happens.

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Still Questioning My Sanity – Weekly Update March 8, 2016

Posted on March 8, 2016 by SusanG

Yes, I am still working on balloon letters. And I am still wondering if this was the best idea. I am probably repeating myself when I say “who knew”. Who knew making letters all balloon looking was going to be so tedious and time consuming. Normally I’m ok with
tedious. And mostly I’m ok with the tedious part of this. However, some things are already getting old.

Again, as I was preparing the pictures for this post I realized that the two additional letters I thought I had finished this week will need more work. It’s the same thing that happened last week with the ‘H’ and the ‘A’. With those letters, I thought I was done until I saw the pictures of them as their thumbnail image. It turns out that the thumbnail can function a bit like the old trick of stepping way back from a painting, or turning it upside down, or squinching your eyes, so you can see if your layout, design, and actual work, is holding up as you expect. I hope to remember that this next week.

I did go back and fix the issue I was seeing in the ‘H’. The inside of the right hand leg was too flat. I went in and pushed and pulled the vertices around to get a nice full, on all sides, right leg for the ‘H’ and I think it came out pretty good. Here is a shot without turbosmooth and a shot with it. Now we’re really looking balloony.

BDayCard2016_02292016a_c_sm_wm  BDayCard2016_02292016b_c_sm_wm

With a nice balloon looking ‘H’, I have a true gauge for the rest of the letters. I also noticed that he ‘A’ needed some work. Especially after getting the ‘H’ right. You can really tell it here.

BDayCard2016_02292016c_sm_wm

So I worked on the ‘A’. There isn’t a lot of cool things to learn or do with this process. Well there might be but I haven’t found them yet. It has all been a lot of transforming vertices and edges. Mostly in the form of moving them as opposed to rotating or scaling. I did finally get the ‘A’ looking better. Here it is without and then with the turbosmooth modifier. I like to use it because it smooths out the faceting and makes it easier to see if I’ve got the shape balloony enough.

BDayCard2016_03052016c_c_sm_wm    BDayCard2016_03052016d_c_sm_wm

BDayCard2016_03062016c_c_sm_wm

 

Next up the ‘P’. Again, I thought it was done but I now see that it needs a little more work. It shows up particularly with the turbosmooth on don’t you think?

With the ‘P’ I didn’t have enough edge loops originally to make the bump look very rounded. Especially on the inside. It was sadly angular and ugly. So once I had the bulk of the shaping done, or so I thought, I added more edge loops so I could get better control of the shapes and a more refined look. Since I thought I was done I moved on to the ‘Y’. This one has been surprisingly uncooperative. It has not been particularly easy to get really balloony looking. I got one of the upper arms too skinny and had to fix that and then I foundBDayCard2016_03062016e_c_sm_wm that I had it’s leg too fat. It was really out of proportion with the arms. I so wanted to call it done but as you can see, it really isn’t. I will be working on that one again this week.

I did get a little tired of moving vertices around and decided to spend a bit of time one evening working on that studio sign that I started so many months ago. It’s coming along. I’ve almost got the entire background, first layer, done. When I get that far I’ll try to remember to get a pic of it so I can post it here. I’m hoping that with that piece, the only thing that I will need to go in and make denser will be the background and not the additional illustrations.

Remember the swing arm I was telling you I had ordered to mount my Cintiq to my desk? Sure enough, it was delivered just as I was finishing up last week’s post. I was really curious to see if it was going to work out so as soon as I had everything uploaded I shutdown the computer and started figuring out how to attach the arm to my Cintiq and then how to attach it all to my desk. Or, wait. I had to attach it to the desk first and then to the Cintiq. Not any easy thing to do as one person. But I managed. And, it works great. I like the flexability it gives. I can even get it high enough so I can stand if I want. Though so far I have only used it while sitting. And that has been so much better. I can get it nice and close for drawing or moving vertices. I took a couple of pictures of it for you. I may end up moving it back along the side of the desk where it is mounted. I’m not sure yet. Ideally I would mount it on the back of the desk so it cantilevered out over the desk surface, however, my desk is too deep for that to work. It would give me the same problem as before, maybe worse.

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And in case you are wondering, my eyeballs are not completely pixelated yet. I took a little time away from the computer to see Disney’s Zootopia this weekend. Yes, with all the kids. It was a good movie. I really enjoyed it. I can’t wait to get it on Blu-Ray so I can watch it a thousand times. There is so much in that movie. It’s really involved. Lots of models, and characters, and animation, and fur, and wow. I’m looking forward to getting to read about it in one or another of the magazines I get. As intricate as it is I kind of wonder if they used the Hyperion renderer for it like with Big Hero 6 or if they used something else. I couldn’t tell from the credits.

That’s the update. For now, it’s a lot more of pushing around vertices until I get things right. With a little luck, and patience, the additional adjustments to the ‘P’ and the ‘Y’ won’t take too long and I’ll be moving on to the rest of the letters very soon. I have a feeling that ‘B’ is going to be a challenge and the ‘R’ is looking a little cagey too. So check back next week to see how it’s going. You never know, I might have more doodles from another day job meeting or maybe I’ll get that last bit of background filled in on the sign. Or who knows…

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