Last week was back to the day job and the regular world for me. I was a little surprised how tired I was the first couple of days. But I made it through. As I suspected, I didn’t get a lot of work done on Sticks or even much sketching. Though I did get a couple of things done.
Working on Sticks was particularly interesting. As I finished up working on the foot and leg controls I was overwhelmed with the work that it looks like it is going to take to animate Sticks. This will be my first fully animated object and while I knew intellectually that it was going to be involved, I don’t think I had really internalized the scope of the work. It should be an interesting challenge and I don’t doubt that once I’ve done it a few times it won’t feel quite so overwhelming.
With the foot and leg controls complete it’s time to start on the spine. You can see that I’ve got the bones in for the spine and the Inverse Kinetic (HI-IK) solvers created and their controllers. It looks a bit odd I suppose because if you look really close you’ll see that each bone is only connected to it’s own end point (nub). This is apparently better that just creating a full spine and then applying the solver from end to end like with the hip to ankle. This way should help with the twisting that I need in the spine. I guess, I will find out just how important that is once I get started with the animating.
As I indicated, I didn’t get much sketching in. At the moment I’m working with the idea of
them being a little more quality instead of just random, think of something and put it on paper in 10 to 15 minutes. This is a good exercise and I will likely pick it back up again but right now I’m going to try this way. With that said, here’s the sketch for last week. It’s approaching Autumn here and so also Halloween. The Halloween decor has been on sale in the stores for over a month and so it’s starting to creep into my brain. This is my scene for Halloween. It’s a little more staged that what I’ve done before. And as you can see, that non-photo blue is still showing up. I’m getting used to it.
I finished reading the book “Creating Characters with Personality” by Tom Bancroft and started on his follow up book “Character Mentor”. It’s been interesting so far and as with the other book I think some of the information will start to seep in and spread from my 
brain to my fingers and out onto the characters I’ve been working on. With that in mind I think this piece is an example of some of the information from the first book starting to seep to my fingers. I started this in Sketchbook Pro on my Kindle fire. I started out with my finger and then tried using the Bamboo stylus that I got for my iPad, when I used that. It turns out the stylus works on the Kindle and on my LG Android tablet. Woot! Drawing on glass with my finger it weird and I don’t enjoy it. But this guy was a bit of a test and as I got a few of the shapes down he really started to come together. But he was really rough. So I took him into Photoshop on my PC where I could use my Cintiq and did a bit of a draw over and then refined him. He was a lot of fun. He has a companion that I did but I haven’t got that one refined.
For some reason I don’t seem to be able to get my work space just right. At the moment it’s in need of being rearranged again due to the cable outlet changing from one wall to another and now there is a CAT-5 cable laying on the floor in front of the door. In addition to the need to rearrange, I realized I have been really trying to make the room into too many things. As I was working through what it really needs to be I also figured out that there is a lot in a name. I had been calling the room my “office”. That’s not right because I do so much art in it and that’s more what the room is dedicated to. I’ve also never had an “office” it’s always been a “Studio” so I am renaming the room my “Studio” and to help with adjusting my mental processes to that I’ve decided to make a sign that says “Studio” to remind me. I just got started on it so it’s not very far along but here it is.
I have not gotten back to the head-stock of the guitar painting. I had intended to and found I didn’t have the energy when I finally got the time. Turns out we had a bit of a
weather shift around here and it ramped up the allergy season for me. I wish I could say I will get to it this week or this weekend. Sadly, I don’t really see that as happening. It’s a busy week for me with lots of appointments and getting ready for the Zbrush Summit. In case you didn’t catch it last week. I’m really excited about the Zbrush Summit that Pixologic is holding at the Gnomon School in Los Angeles. It’s not quite two weeks away. You can watch the LiveStream of it if you are interested but can’t go. I watched the LiveStream last year and my brain was so full at the end. I can only imagine what will happen for me this year.
With all the prep for the Summit, I expect that the most I will be able to get done this week is a little more work done on the rigging of Sticks and a sketch or two. When I look at my calendar for this week I don’t have a lot of big chunks of time for much more. So…
Check back to see what I do manage to get done and what else might be coming up.