SusanGaSonG

Last week was a partial week back at the day job after the vacation and Thanksgiving holiday and I really thought I’d get more done than I think I did. I think I feel that way every week when I sit down to make my update. Still the week wasn’t the total waste it came close to being.

I didn’t start to get back to things until later in the week. Over the vacation I purchased a new hobby. I decided that to go along with constantly learning guitar, I would start learning saxophone. It’s an alto saxophone for those that might wonder. Once it arrived, it proved a fairly persistent distraction. From learning how to put it together, tune it, and then finally get a proper sound out of it, it kept me going to the book and the computer to figure out some little bit. I am happy to say that in just a week I am almost consistently getting a proper sound and not constantly squeaking. Undoubtedly to the relief of my neighbors.

When I finally got back to working on art projects I returned to working on rigging Sticks in 3ds Max. I’m up to his arm and hand. The first thing I was to do was to create the shoulder and arm bones and then the hand bones. Here you can see them inside his arm and hand as well as without the body around it.

As you can see in the next picture, Sticks doesn’t really have fingers, or a thumb, just a block for his hand. I considered not using fingers or a thumb but decided I want the block to be able to deform as if pointing, even if it’s a rudimentary point. So I’m giving him two fingers and a thumb. Though without as many joints as normal. Here is the hand with the body over the bones and with just the bones showing.

After getting the bones in place the next step was to start setting up for IK and FK constraints. This consisted of two duplicates of the bones for the arm but not the shoulder or the hands. If I remember correctly the point in the constraints and the way it’s going to work is that it will keep the arm and elbow from flipping around funny. In addition to the duplicate sets of arm bones I created the helpers that will control how much with one is influencing the movement. The thing I didn’t realize about them is that they appear facing me in every view. They don’t zoom in and out like the rest of the pieces in the window. They work more like a heads up display, sitting on top of everything. They are the funny looking slider things with the square at one end and the circle at the other and the triangle as a pointer on the bottom. It took a little getting used to they way they behave in the viewports. Here you can see what they look like in the perspective view and in the front view.

I spent a little time working on Greezbly. Much more than I intended when I sat down. I thought I’d spend an hour working on the alien and when I looked up I think it had been 2 and a half hours. When last I wrote about Greezbly I wasn’t terribly excited with the look I had created. In all this time that I haven’t worked on the look I’ve had a chance to think about what was bothering me. One of the things had to do with the skin coloring and detailing. Greezbly is meant to be a bit stylized, dapper, and lite and that wasn’t the look I was getting. I was getting something more along realistic lizard or reptile like lines. So I changed the skin tone and made it lighter and brighter. The thing I noticed as I did this was that some of the detailing on the head came out better. Once I had the skin right I moved on to the clothes. The orange and dark blue were too dark and too shiny. I still wanted some shiny but not the whole outfit. So I changed the orange to a more yellow color and left it the shiny material. I think it’s a plastic. And I changed the dark blue to a lighter colored blue and the material to something more like a pearl look. This is where I was really able to see the difference the lighter color and material made in being able to see some of the subtler details. These are just basic Zbrush renders, not composites, and I still need to change out the boots but here’s what I’ve got done so far.

The other thing I did this week was pick up my art that was hanging at FuManchu Cupcakes. I would have liked to have sold one or both, because that would be cool. However, since they didn’t sell, I hung them on my walls. The guitar piece goes nicely over the television in the living room.

I’m really glad to have had the opportunity to have my art showing someplace other than my home or my phone and I would like to have more of it out there. With that in mind I have started a piece that I was thinking of doing a series around and then maybe having more pieces to hang. The interesting thing is that I haven’t been excited to work on it. It’s the Gibson head stock piece. It’s in acrylic paint, not ink. And it’s meant to be done more as a stippling painting. I love the stippling look, especially in pen and ink, and I even like the pointillism work of Georges Seurat. I find creating a stippling piece in paint to be frustrating and messy looking at best. I suppose if I got it farther a long so that I could see it come together better I might not feel that way. However, I’m not convinced. I like the really tight and clean look and the control you can get with the smaller dots. So I’m not sure how quickly I will finish the painting. I do still want to do the series, I just may go back to ink to do it.

That’s my week for the most part. The little robot I showed you last week is nagging at me and starting to want to be a 3d animated creation. So the modeling for that could start soon. It does depend a bit on how well I stay on task with things. It’s a bit of a busy week and weekend coming up with a party and a play to attend. Still, Sticks needs to get rigged and animated and Greezbly needs to get finished up. I have a request for a more robust version of the alien, apparently this one is too skinny and starved looking.

Don’t forget, if you are still needing a unique card to send to someone you can check out my Zazzle store at the link to the right. And check back here to find out what I get up to next.