Yes, this is a day or two late. I always intend to have my update posted on Saturday and it usually doesn’t get done until Sunday. This week it’s Monday. The only real excuse I have is that I spent the weekend sick with some upper respiratory viral thing. It made thinking rather difficult, as well as breathing and sleeping. And it meant that all the best intentions I had of getting started on things early in the day and getting chores done and projects worked on, they all went out the door as if being sucked out by a vacuum. It’s very frustrating. I managed only that which really needed to be done over the weekend and everything else has been deferred.
That isn’t to day that I didn’t make some real progress on things this week. I did spend a more time working on the guitar stippling project. That is coming along and I think I have decided what to do about the background. So I’m looking forward to getting that much farther along. No picture of it this week though.
I also worked on my mascot for SusanG Productions. I came up with the idea for him a few monthes ago and have been working on just how I wanted to create him for use since I
want to be able to animate him. Well, in a moment between projects at the day job, I figured out what I could do. It was a pretty obvious answer but I wanted to make sure it
retained the personality of my original stick sketches. I used 3DS Max to build him and put him together. I still need to rig him so I can animated him. For now though, I would like to introduce you to Sticks, the mascot for SusanG Productions.
It really was my big accomplishment for the week. Now I’m excited to get him rigged and then to start animating him. It might even get me spurred on to work on some of his
friends. This could be a lot of fun.
So to the sketchbook now. I will admit that I started a little slow with ideas this week and when I couldn’t think of anything else on Monday morning I decided to draw my hand. Not very original but still a good exercise.
This guy reminds me of an animal that when I saw a picture of it it made me think of an either a wrinkly baby or a really old wrinkly person. It had great personality to it. This isn’t that animal as that animal had much bigger eyes and ears but it is inspired by it. I think it’s kind of cute in an odd sort of way.
It’s a fish. It’s just a fish with big fish eyes and fish lips. And as simple as it looks it was fun to do and amazingly satisfying.
So I wanted to do a freaked out deranged sort of bird of a cockatiel or parakeet. This didn’t really turn out the way I had hoped. It did turn out a bit Frankenstein-like. I think I got the head too tall and not sure the eye is quite right. Oh well, it does serve as a slightly disturbing picture of a budgie though.
This started out all about the hat. That was what I was drawing, though not from reference, just from imagination. At some point it needed more so it got someone wearing the hat. I’m actually kind of pleased with the way this turned out. Not my best portrait work but certainly a likeness of someone I don’t doubt. I really like the way the nose came out. Those are always a challenge for me. And the mouth as just a thin line really worked out as well.
There was one other thing accomplished this week. Well, actually this weekend. I finally got my other website working. Or rather the developers at GoDaddy were finally able
to clear an A record that had the site being intermittently available. It was quite frustrating. But things look stable now so I guess I had better post an update over there.
Here’s hoping this week pans out better and things get back on track. I have a few projects that I really want to work on and even a couple with some deadlines so it would be really good if I could kick this virus thing and get back on track. I’d especially like to make some good progress rigging Sticks as well as some really good progress on the guitar piece. Everything else I will consider bonus.