So yeah, my crate got a 97. Yeah. I'm kind of awesome sometimes.
My homework this past weekend was to play video games, so I played TOR. Yeah, I'm still playing that. 'Cause I love it. It's awesome. Finished the Imperial Agent and Bounty Hunter storylines a few months back, and am slowly plodding through the Sith Inquisitor and Jedi Consular. I've got a few bones to pick with the companion writers, but I'll make it. Also watched a butt-ton of Doctor Who, trying to catch up on all the MANY seasons I missed. Adore Martha, can't wait for Donna. Would trade Rose for Madame de Pompadour any day. And I made pumpkin spice pancakes and pumpkin spice bread over the last week.
Last week, we did hand-painted tiling textures. We had two days. It was horrifying and fun. Enjoyed it. Brick and wood were required. The other two were optional. I went with cloth and patent leather.
Dunno what I got on it, but I'll find out sometime this week. The final week is painting some kind of barrel-y, cylindrical thing. I find out later today. If I can get out of the apartment on time.
Extra super special bonus thank yous to Mad Bee, who critiqued my work as I was working. <3 br="br" nbsp="nbsp">
Other than that, I wanted to start working on this one painting of Park Slope. I won't be able to do anything until later this week, after I finish my TPS work, but:
Also started reading Saga. And considering what terrible pain I went through to get to it, it's paying off quite well. The first volume is AWESOME and I will be buying it every month when it starts getting published again.
(I tripped and twisted my foot, which had me walking incorrectly for a few days, which created other problems. I still can't walk properly or stand too long with my weight on that foot.)
Welp, I am trying to submit my project for week 2 of texture painting, annnnd Concept Share has been "processing" my upload for twenty, thirty minutes now. I'm gonna try again tomorrow. But OAIJfewoijf CONCEPT SHARE. It crashes the browsers on my desktop and makes my laptop run at half speed. Seriously, I can hear the fans going right now. I'm several feet away. It's turned into a heater. I'll probably quit it and try again tomorrow and talk to Jeff if I can't get it.
My project is something of a Mass Effect tribute. For all the long, lovely years it gave me, and then the final ten minutes that made me have feelings I did not think I would ever have when it came to Mass Effect. I'll just leave it at that.
CHEERS, MASS EFFECT. I still love you.
And other than that, I had a productive 2D art weekend, with lots of sketching and a self portrait. Took about an hour, and the eyes are a little derpy but whaaaatever. Painting's painting.
And another speedpaint during lunch today... This one was about 15, 20 minutes.
Okay, yeah, I'm gonna try uploading my project tomorrow because this is just ridiculous. I'm worried my laptop will catch fire if I keep trying to upload. XD
I'm also considering doing NaNoWriMo next month, but for 25k instead of 50 because I wanna be awesome for next month's class. But I've wanted to write a particular story for like 6 years. I dunno. We'll see!
No one is more shocked than I that I'm strongly considering going into environment and level design. I've been drawing people, and I love drawing people, for yeaaaaars. People are my favorite to draw.
So now this means I have to start doing speedpaints of environments.
In the meanwhile, here's the beauty screenshots I turned in for part of my ACG final (Kelly had access to the map and pack, but also wanted us to turn in pretty things). I still want to go back and fix my normal and AO maps, since they stick out like sore thumbs, but for now, this month's classes are a priority. I got an A for ACG, though, I just checked the grades.
I had fun with it. I really enjoyed sculpting the pillars, it was awesome fun. The plant alphas made me wanna punch things sometimes, but that's okay. My favorite part was probably looking up all the different temples in south and southeast asia and getting inspired by them. I love Hindu architecture. It's really ornate and patterned and just really delicately done.
Added bonus: I felt like I was doing something for Tomb Raider. Grew up on those games. Not so excited about the newer ones after Angel of Darkness, but they're alright I guess.
Got a B+ in MoCap, (Final video here) but I'm not looking to be an animator. I did the
storyboarding and the cleanup of the mocap data, for the most part. Some
stuff in motionbuilder, but I'm meh at it. Props to the rest of my
group who did some awesome animation enhancements, one of whom did some
awesome work in the monkey suit, and another who did the Maya scene setup and imported the animations and did the video work.
And this month's first Texture Painting and Sculpting project, which is like the intermediate version of ACG, and then next month is the advanced version. I'm also taking Game Animation, making walking/idle/combat/death cycles, and while they're quick and fun, like I said, I don't have the eye of an animator.
I got a B on this first week's project. I'm hoping to pull it up to an A by the end. We're using Marmoset to present them. Toolbag Marmoset saves its scene files as... .tbag. I had a good laugh at that.
Other than that, I took some sketch commissions, and did pretty well I think, and did some of my own painting and a speedpaint yesterday at lunch.
Obviously not the speedpaint. I read an article about how assassins and thieves are given this loud leather armor and stuff when they would be wearing things that don't float and move too much or cause much friction. The'd have as indistinct a silhouette as possible because, unlike warriors or mages, their job is to NOT be seen. Any armor they do have would be mostly wooden so it's light and doesn't clang around. I tried to keep to that, but also wanted to keep some of the more typical fantasy elements - so the leather harness type thing at her chest and shoulders. Considering I was working with an unfamiliar tablet, I like how this turned out. The anatomy... is made of lies and no-nos, but practice practice practice.
Wow, this is why I suck at blogs... I forget to update CONSTANTLY.
I had a month to play around, sort of, and so I wound up focusing on my 2D digital art and I took a few commissions. I may take another few during the winter break. They're crazy fun and I really learned some new techniques. In order from my earliest two months ago to the latest:
The fandoms/genres include Star Trek, Star Wars, steampunk noir, and original characters I received commissions for.
I learned to paint hair and metal and wrinkles and scars and PATTERNS... that patterning down the front of the dress was FUN. I learned glass. My proportions are improving. My color theory's getting better. I TOTALLY USED REFERENCES AND I'M NOT AFRAID TO SAY IT. Those are important and key to learning.
I've also done lots of small sketches to keep my hand from getting stiff.
And more text stuff under the cut, just keeping a record of where I am right now. I'M IN A GOOD HEADSPACE, IT'S AWESOME.
And for the record, I'm awesome. I know these programs now:
Autodesk Maya UDK Motionbuilder Cortex The Foundry's Nuke Zbrush Photoshop
And I can do basic Python scripting to make my own toolsets in Maya.
Maya, Zbrush, and Photoshop are my best, since I've worked with them the longest. The others are a work in progress. But considering I have less than a month to learn most of these... I'm awesome. I know their basics and what I don't know, I can pick up on pretty quick.
AND I'm considering going to GDC in 2013. I'll have some work to show if anyone asks because I'll be starting finals around that time. ANd mostly it'd be awesome to meet people in the industry.
I've been writing, too, but that's more fanfictiony so I'm not exactly going to post that here. XD Still, practice is practice.
I'm in Character Rigging (CRI). The saying goes that CRI makes you CRY. The first two weeks seem more horrible, so far, than the last two weeks. I can rig, but I do not have an affinity for it.
But God knows I'll never forget how to rig a hand. I managed to get sick at the beginning of the second week, right before the rig was due as a turn-in, and I missed two days of work, and it led to me screwing up the hand rigs. Jacob Garbani is incredible, probably meant to be a setup/technical artist/ RIG MASTERRRRR... he helped me out so much. Thank you. :3
But... to my credit... after he helped me, I caught up very fast.
I respect setup/technical artists a lot. I admire their work. It's incredible how much goes into this, and I am happy to say I can communicate coherently with them and can produce a model fit for rigging (with competent geometry and mesh)...
but I acknowledge that this is not my best subject.
This may have gone better had I not had a 102 degree fever every night for three nights straight... but, again, to my credit, I missed a full day of class due to absence, and I was mentally absent from most of the rest of the week because I had a constant fever, but I still had a fully functional rig. It could have been better, but an animator could have worked it well enough. I was worried I couldn't even make it to the halfway point... but I made it. The rest of it is dynamics, which I grasp well enough. Dynamics and posing.
