Happy May Day! Did we all remember to set up our May Poles? Me neither.
I got a few things worked on, started, and even figured out this week. Which all in all makes for a pretty successful week. I have been on vacation from my regular job this week. Originally I thought that meant I would spend a lot of time working on projects. What it has really meant is that I slept late, a lot, and didn’t worry about waiting on the FedEx delivery on Monday, or the A/C service guy yesterday. It also made it easier to not stress too much about the water being out all day one day last weekend.
As I said, I did get some stuff worked on. I finally finished that pumpkin piece I have been working on since last fall. When I got the background completed, I became unsatisfied with the pumpkin itself. That was a little disheartening since that is where the bulk of the work is. What happened is that with the background fully saturated with color suddenly the pumpkin was washed out. It had a particle density issue, or more accurately, and color density issue. But solving that was going to require a significant commitment of time since I wanted one color for the whole thing and I didn’t want to have to remix colors over a
period of days. One day this week, I looked at it tacked to my wall and decided it was time to finish it. It was an 8 to 9 hour process. Really. And I did have to take a break in the middle because my hand was cramping. And now it is done.
Yes, I did sign it twice. Once where I wanted the signature. Only to discover that the wax from the pencil was interfering with the ink in the pen I was using. And then again at the
bottom, where it will probably be covered by a matte but at least it’s a little more readable.
I didn’t get a lot of sketchbook time in this week. I didn’t have as much stuff plaguing me to escape my brain. So I don’t have a lot of that to show. I do have this character though. I kept trying to fill in his face until I figured out he was looking through a hole.
I did a little goofing around in 3ds Max this week. Many years ago at some fair or festival, we came across a round wooden coin like item and written on it was TUIT. The item in question is called a ‘Round Tuit’ for those people who keep saying the never get ‘around to it’. So I decided it would be fun to make a digital one. I even tried something I hadn’t done before. I of course created a very short cylinder and then I created text and 
extruded it to give it some depth. But I wanted to make it look like it had be pressed into or engraved into the coin. So I played around with the boolean functions to try to get it to properly extract itself from the surface of my coin. I finally got it to work using the Advanced Boolean tools. I couldn’t turbosmooth it though it makes quite a mess so I had to do a bit more manual manipulation to get the edges to look pretty.
I also worked on the sleigh project this week. I have the major part of it complete. Now it needs trim and packages and an environment to sit in. There was a lot of adjusting to this one and a bit of figuring out how to do parts. And now the base vehicle is created and it can be accessorized.
I got started on rigging the mannequin for animating for the TKD Guy project. That will be something to read about coming up. It looks like that is going to be fun. But maybe a little slow. Oh! And I got started on the hand target for the same project. That will also be something to read about soon, especially since I used a new process for it.
In addition to the artistic activities, as I mentioned, I had a FedEx delivery this week that was some books, mostly reference stuff on Animation and art. A really cool note, one of the books references a plate that is in one of the other books I got. And yes, when I read that that was where the picture came from, I had to open the other book and find it.
The other big deal for this week was finally subscribing to the Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite Ultimate. More TOYS! Oh, sorry, more fabulous tools to work with. The only problem is that I am not yet able to fully register it as my contract hasn’t shown up in my Autodesk account. It has only been two days, still, I may try to get that resolved today so I don’t have to worry about it. I did get the 2016 version of 3ds Max, well and everything else. Oh my. All the changes. I tried using the workspace with the enhanced menus and was so lost. So much fun stuff!
And I apparently spent a little too much time manipulating vertices last night and my hand is a bit sore today so it looks like, I will be taking a bit longer break today and going to see the new Avengers movie.
Cheers!