So first. Confession. I didn’t spend much time working on the art this week. Not sure I can pin point the exact why. And I’m not sure it matters. I do know some of the why was studying. And that may end up being more of a factor even after I take the test for the day job. Rest assured I will try to fill you in and keep you up to date even on that stuff as it gets more interesting.
I am hoping to integrate the art and the new studying so that I can keep that up. I do still have ideas I want to share and things to make. For now. I’m still working on Funkatmyer. I got started on his boots last week and really didn’t get back to them until a day or two ago.
They need a bit of detail. So I started out adding some edge loops and then trying to create a crease marking the place between the upper part of the boot and the sole. I also tried to add some thickness to the sole. I did an extrude to get a little more geometry with the thickness. From there I wanted some sort of tread. So I selected some faces on the bottom of the sole and did an extrude of those.
The extrude for the treads worked except some how I managed to get a couple of faces on the upper part. I didn’t realize it because of the direction of the extrude. Then I did a render to see how the tread was looking and these weird lumps show up. It took me a while to figure out the best way of getting rid of them. I finally just merged vertices to flatten it out and that seems to have worked.
Of course the render showed off a different issue as well. That was that the tread were being rounded off a bit severely. The fix for that is additional edges. I suppose I could have added them manually and it would have been the same amount, maybe less, work than the way I ended up doing it. So first I added edge loops at the bottom of the tread where it meets the ground and then at the top where it meets the rest of the sole. This keeps the edge from softening too much. And that helped except the were still rounding in the other direction. That meant more edge loops, that it turns out, in most cases carried all the way up the leg of the boot or across the top of the foot part. That’s what causes the sort of reverse crease look you see.
I’ve started to space things out more evenly to smooth out the rounded leg look. I’m getting there but have a little more to go. I haven’t quite decided how I want to do the part over the foot. I could use it to add some interesting detail to that part of the boot. So there is more work to be done on the boot before moving on. Now, with some luck and a bit of time management, I’ll get a little more work done and maybe get the boots finished this next week. I’ve got some extra time off so hopefully.
So yeah, a little extra time off. The July 4th holiday is coming up here and as it is on a Tuesday, I requested Monday off from the day job so that I could make it into a four day weekend. Yay me. As always, I have about a hundred things I think I’m going to do with that time. It will be fun to see what I actually do get done.
Aside from working on Funkatmyer or even the scene for Walter the Worm, I could also study for the test for the day job. And I’m close to finishing the book so I probably will do some of this. I could also work on the online course that I’m doing. It’s a beginning Python programming course. It’s a prerequisite for some other things I want to take online so I will probably do some of that as well. Both the day job study and the Python course have end of July milestones or deadlines for me so those are a bit important. After that, I have a Raspberry Pi project I want to build. I got the issue of MagPi with the Google AIY project and I want to get that going. I also have an Arduino robot I think I want to build. Though for that one I need to decide if I want to make it walk, or follow a line. One of those will probably be next. Oh! And that same issue of MagPi had a project for Minecraft on the Pi. That could be fun as well.
Come back and find out what sort of tangle I manage to get into. If I get to the robot or the AIY project I’ll even try to remember to take a few pictures to share.