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.