Yay! There is fresh paint on the walls of the room I do my work in at home. I have two purple walls and two sky blue walls. It’s fabulous.
And interestingly, once I got the painting finished the room had it’s name. Ok. I know, for so many it’s just a room. But you know, the name matters. I have a Music Room and it’s perfectly happy to be and to be called the Music Room. This room has been different. It has never really felt right to call it the office, even the studio felt weird, so I tried play room, computer room, and even work room. All of those sounded awkward to me. Once I finished painting and got the gear put away, it was automatically the Art Room.
So now that the Art Room is painted, and I have the big bookcases in place, I have started moving some things back into the room. Not a lot. Just enough to start to get the feel of where things will go. I think it’s going to work out so much better. I expect to have a few things that I’m not sure what to do with. No doubt they will find their place in the end.
I think I will be getting back to that art stuff now. So much to do.
There is the Worm Guy to get rigged so I can pose him. And I have a fun little scene I want to do with him so there is all that to build as well. And that Penguin still needs some materials. Oh! And Sticks. I had a thought on how to go about working on animating his walking. It was pointed out to me that part of why he looks like he is doing a reverse moon walk is probably because he doesn’t pick up his foot to start. So I think I may start by setting the up and down, a bit like a very flat footed march, with the forward motion and then go back in and work on setting the roll of the foot and the heel strike. That might make it easier. Sure it means there are more iterations but since this is the first animation of a character walking, you know, I’ve not done it before, so it’s going to take a while to get it figured out. A few extra iterations? No big deal. Think of all I will get to learn.
Speaking of learning. Remember how I learned that with the Arnold renderer in Maya you 
can set the smoothing to happen at render time so you can save on your poly count? I was working on the Funky Bird and decided to test that. Normally, I will smooth the model before I do a test render to see the work as I’m going along. I had done that and saved it. Then I turned off the smooth, rendered with Arnold where I had set up my smoothing. Sure enough. I had to take a screen shot so you could see. Pretty cool stuff.
You did read that I was working on the Funky Bird. After the painting, and the doing work of the day job, and black belt prep class, I finally got time, and energy to work on some art. I had left off working on the leg. It was a start but still needed lots of shaping. I have managed to get good front to back placement. It should help to set the vibe of the character and ultimately help give it some personality. I did a lot of moving vertices to get it shaped up an then I shifted the whole leg a bit forward. I want to give it a little bit of a flattened out backside but I want to put tail feathers in, so I don’t want to go too flat. I’m still working on the side to side placement, though it’s beginning to take shape on it’s own.
I spent a little time adjusting the lights. I’m going to need to add another one when I’m ready to see both sides. Right now I have one in the front, and not quite at the right height, and one on the right side of the picture (left side of the character). They don’t provide quite enough light to see everything really well. It’s ok for the moment, just something I will want to think about soon.
With the Art Room painted and an extra day off from the day job this week, I’m planning on getting more stuff put back and more work in on the projects. I hope to be able to keep the hose from crimping up and maybe get some good solid work in on something. That would be nice. Check back to see how that goes.