I finally got all the things in place to make the turntable movie of the Dolphin I created in ZBrush look nice. It took a few tries and now I have finally uploaded it to my YouTube channel or you can see it here:
Enjoy.
There is so much that I want to work on and create that sometimes they create this massive log jam in my brain and I can barely get anything done. I try writing things down so that I can clear things a bit but that doesn’t always help. When that happens I don’t get much done in the sketchbook and I find myself fixated on some small part of a project on the computer and just have trouble getting past it. I’ve had a bit of that lately.
Telling a friend about this over coffee this week she said I needed to choose something and just work on it. And she has a point. Even though I like to have multiple things in progress at one time, trying to start too many at once does seem to be a bit of a detriment.
With that in mind, I tried working on the stick man logo project this week. And I made a lot of progress. I made enough progress to know that it is going to take a bit longer before it’s really ready to use. And since I need, and want, something to use sooner than it is likely to be ready, I created something a little different than the stick man to use. This new idea also needs a bit of refinement but I have a solution and a version of it that I will use for now while I refine it and work on the stick man. The stickman, I think, will be a lot of fun. No pictures of either yet.
I do have a picture of a sketch from Friday of last week. I was supposed to be doing my early morning stretches when this popped in and I decided it needed to live in the sketchbook.
I finally did something with Maya besides open it, look around and close it. I’m still looking 
for functions that I think are there and I just haven’t found. I managed to make something out of a basic box. I did some slicing and extruding to get this little house looking thing.
It was just as challenging to try to figure out how to render out an image of it from Maya as it was trying to figure out how to create it in Maya. I’m definitely going to need a few tutorials for this one.
When I finally got to the sketchbook this week, I had a couple of things come crawling out one day so I got a two for one that day. The first one, a little creepy crawly thing. I’m thinking it might be worth developing further in any number of formats. It’s kind of cute.
The second one, a squid, has a bit of a story behind it. And though I did not use them for reference on this sketch, I did spend time last weekend looking for reference pictures of 
squids so that I can use them for the purple squid. In a conversation with a friend, where I was explaining some of the cool software I use and all that it can do, I off-handed-ly said something about including a purple squid in something. I don’t think about these things really but apparently this squid caught my friend’s attention and now she’s wondering when she will get to see the purple squid. I have finally begun the rough, get a feel, sketches for the purple squid and this is the first one.
Now that I have a graphic that I am comfortable with using for an overlay in things like turntables and such, I think the next thing I will try to do is to get a fresh turntable of the ZBrush dolphin project using the new graphic and add a bit of text. Once that is done I’ll post it on YouTube and Instagram and here so you can see it. Something to look forward to.
And that reminds me. Yes, I am on Instagram. I am @susangasong and I will try to get a link posted on the site in case you want to follow.
I mentioned that I got the hand target modeled. Well mostly. there are a couple more details that I would like to add. But it could be used as is.
So in case you aren’t familiar with hand targets for martial arts, there are some different types, I’m used to the clapper type. Here’s what one looks like.
I had been thinking about how to create the shape and was trying to decide what basic primitive I would start with. Then I thought, what if I used the create shape choice and see what that would get me. I had seen it used in the rigging tutorials for some of the controls so I thought it might work to let me create the shape I wanted. The shape though was hollow, just an outline. I turned it into and editable poly and that filled it in. But it didn’t make it 3 dimensional. I extruded it and that got me depth so it was starting to look good. The only thing was that it was one big polygon but it was a messy n-gon which I didn’t want.
So the next step was to see if I could break it up into quads, four-sided polygons. It turned out to work better than I expected. I didn’t have to add but one or two vertices to break it 
up nicely. Then I connected the vertices with edges and things were looking good. I was able to add some edge loops at that point so I had more to work with. They even flowed really nicely, though I did some adjustment to make it look really nice.
The target is basically two of these shaped sides attached at a handle. So I made a copy of what I had to create the other side. Since I was going to connect them at the handle, I deleted the faces in between and then I connected them. I angled the heads away from each other a little before I did that. I needed some space between them so I could create the connecting geometry inside.
With the two sides created I started working on refining the look and softening the edges. Turbosmooth wasn’t much help with that at this point so work had to be done to make the transition softer. I really did a lot of fiddling with vertices to get to this point. I had the top side to a point that I felt like it was really going to work. And since I started this really late I figured it was a good stopping point, so I went to bed.
I will confess, when I went to work on it the next day my hand was still a bit sore and stiff from point manipulation so I went and saw the Avengers movie before I got started again.
I finished up the bottom to match the top and then did a bit more refining to add something of a padded look to the targets and then an extra edge loop to give a nice seam on the handle. I did have to adjust the very base at the end of the handle. It was a little to long.
And with a little turbosmooth added to make it look nice.
Here’s a side view so you can see the seperation I was trying to make sure was there. It’s very important that it look like that because then, when you kick it or hit it, it slaps together and makes a nice loud sound.
For the wrist strap I used a torus and severely deformed it to get the right shape.
I still have a little more detail that I keep thinking I will add but I haven’t gotten to it yet.
The folding chair for the lobby for the Taekwondo studio is complete. I got it finished up. Though a couple of bits took a few tries. I also got most of the hand target modeled. Complete with a strap. Yep.
So the chair. Where we left off was just after I got the seat complete. And everything in place. Sort of. The angles of the legs weren’t right so I did some testing to fine a good angle and adjusted where the seat piece fit, not too far back, not too far forward. Then it was time for the finer details, like the bolts and the hinge and the caps on the ends of the legs.
I started with the caps for the bottom of the legs since that would be fairly easy. It was. 
Mostly it’s just a copy of the bottom section of the legs and then scaled out. Of course and edge loop or two or three had to be added to keep the form when I applied turbosmooth. But it worked out.
I figured the next easy part would be the bolts. So I started with the bolts at the seat. By getting these roughly in place it gave me a better idea of where and how to place the hinge bracket piece.
I didn’t get right to that hinge. I was on a roll with the bolts so I got those all placed and figured out before dealing with the hinge.
Then the hinge. I was really just delaying the part that I had already figured out was going to be my bigger challenge. So I tried to get everything done before I started on the caps for the top of the back legs.
If you notice in these pictures the tops of the back legs look a little weird. That’s because the cylinder doesn’t have the top face. In the real world you would see the inside of the tube but I don’t have it set to display both faces so you can basically see through the tube. It looks strange. So I needed to make the caps that go on top of those ends. That would look better and take care of the see-through faces.
It took me three tries to get those caps to work the way I wanted. One of the problems I 
had was that I had no sections on the end of the cylinder that I created the cap from. So no geometry to deform. I tried a few things to get me some geometry to work with and finally settled on a solution. Then there was the deformation part. The cap isn’t really angled at the center, it is sort of a 3/4 angle type thing and it’s a bit concave to accept the other leg that is resting on it. So yeah. It was a challenge. But as you can see, I was finally triumphant.
I did go back in and do some refining on the seat back and gave it a little more of a contour. Once that was done, the only thing left of the modeling at that point was to make everything the same color. So now it looks prettier.
I know I mentioned the hand target is done. I’ll fill you all in about that in another post. I am a bit excited about it since I tried something new to create it, and it worked. So that will be something to look for soon.
Last week was nice. I was on vacation and was able to work on stuff and get in some time to laze around. This week, it’s back to work at my day job and it’s been busy there. I have a big project with a deadline and work needs to get done. That means that in addition to be tired from trying to adjust back to a normal schedule. I’ve also been a little wiped out mentally. So not as much has gotten done this week. Though I did finish out last weekend pretty good.
Remember the dolphin sculpt I was working on in ZBrush? Yep that one. Well, I finished it. Or at least to what I’m calling finished. I had a horrible time with the eye. It’s funny, in most other creatures, including humans, I find eyes the easiest, though come to think of it, this is the second project this year to challenge that. Anyway. The eyes for the dolphin gave me a lot of trouble. I think I tried it 5 times, maybe 6. I had to change the size, I had to change it’s location, and it’s shape and I forget what else. I had to go back to some books and I had to get out pencil and paper and draw it to get the feel for it so I could sculpt it. It was quite frustrating.
Even with all the trouble, I persevered and got it finished. I even figured out how to get poly paint to work on it. Though I have a feeling I missed a step or two because at one point I clicked on something and was back to the base material. Then I clicked again and got the color back. After that, I had a poke around in some of the menus and found where I could create a turntable of it. Which I did. But there were a couple of things with it that I want to adjust and then make a new one before I post it. Here’s a picture of it painted instead.
By default, when you don’t poke around far enough, when you create the turntable you get a nice ZBrush logo. Which is all fine and everything, I like their logo. However, I want mine on my turntable. The challenge there is that I haven’t got it created yet. It lives in my head and on some sketches on a piece of paper but nothing ready to be published yet. So. When I get the logo part fixed, I will post the turntable to YouTube and then post it here.
The fact that I need to get my logo done so I can use it changed a few of my priorities this week. The thing is, I was having trouble coming up with a way to create it digitally that would give me the freedom and versatility that I like about the idea, and keep a bit of the sketch look to it. Well, wouldn’t you know it, one night, just after I shut down the computer to go to bed, the probably solution to how to create the art came to me. I have to say that was something of a mental rattling. Unfortunately, I had shut down the computer, and I had to go to the day job the next day so turning it back on and getting into trying out the idea wasn’t really going to be a good choice because I could just feel that I would be up
way way to late and it would make for a painful day. I didn’t turn the computer back on.
When I finally got to where I was able to test the solution, I was able to confirm that it will indeed do what I want it to do, it’s just going to take a little work. What doesn’t though. I did leave out a key part, I want to be able to animate this. Yeah. So it is going to take a bit of work. For now though, I’m just trying to get a good image created with a nice material applied and then be able to render out a static image of it to use for say a business card, the overlay on the ZBrush turntable, an avatar, things like that. And then I can work on the fancier stuff. It should be fun though.
I have started that idea for the logo. I’ve got some refining to do and adjusting and all. I had hoped to have it done by this weekend but it’s looking like it will be a little longer than that.
I did get some work done on the TKD project last weekend as well. That will be fun coming up. I might have mentioned that I used a different method for creating the piece. It’s worked out quite nicely. I’m really happy with it. I do keep forgetting that I have at least one more part to add to it, if not two.
Oh. And I got my new Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite all downloaded and registered. I’ve opened Maya twice thinking I will start to learn it. I’ve closed it twice without putting a thing on the canvas. There’s just so much to use and learn and get to know that at times it’s just a little too much to tackle at that moment. That’s how Maya has been this past week or so. I am a little excited about the new sculpting tools in 2016 though. That could be really cool even with out the subdivision levels.
Nothing from the sketchbook this week. Probably something next week though. There’s some gremlin beating on the inside of my skull and I’m hoping to pull it out and stuff it in the sketchbook so it leaves me alone. I’ve just got to find it.
