SEVERAL MONTHS LATERRR

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.

Rigging

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.

Yeah, this month is gonna suck, but I'll make it.

hey guiz how do i art??

Taken at a weird, angle, sorry.

It's acrylic, and not colorful, and really just me lashing out against modernism and postmodernism. So only a true hipster would like this. XD

Irritating Tradeoffs

Apparently I can't sketch anymore. But I can paint. HUH??? Thanks, brain. You suck.

Rigging and Production Modeling

So a month or more has gone by. I spent it in Compositing Fundamentals (CFM) and Fundamentals of Animation (FOA).

I was alright at animation, but I found the class to be... less than exciting. We spent a lot of time talking about animation and not enough time doing it. The lab instructors were... friendly, but very unprofessional. The night classes said they kept falling asleep during their labs, and for us in the day classes, they got very frustrated very quickly and one went as far as to start physically doing the work for me - which is completely against everything this school is supposed to be for. I eventually told her I got it and that I could take it from there, and it still took some talking to convince her to let go of my stylus and let me do my work. Critique is one thing. Physically taking over work I should be doing in order to learn is something else. If you must do a demo, undo the work you did and let me try it myself. I won't learn just by watching you.

I was unimpressed, overall. I found 2DA to be more of a learning experience than FOA. I was much more engaged by compositing. The instructors were very relaxed, very straight-forward, and very capable and would explain rather than seize control of your projects. The podcasts were thorough. And the material was generally much more fun and interesting. Even rotoscoping was fun, though I know in an actual production setting, it's a boring, frustrating pain. But I grasped it pretty quickly and Nuke was an amazing program to work with. It had the ease of Photoshop with the logic of Maya. I would display my work, but it's all copyrighted material from movies, so I can't. :( I will say, however, that the color lecture we got was probably one of the most amazing ones we had. Pedro Flores is, simply put, one of the best to teach it. It was hard to translate physical traditional color theory into digital color theory. I was very sad to learn they used to do speedpaintings in compositing... that would have been an amazing, educational addition. I sketched a lot in class as it was, but it would have been nice to get professional guidance. And it would have worked in tandem with color theory. Either way, soon after we did the color theory lecture, I ended up painting this:

Easily one of my most coordinated colored pieces. I have a very, very, very hard time with color. I am not sure why. But this is a significant improvement, even as it is now.

Now I'm just waiting for grades for that month, and we've started Rigging Basics and Production Modeling. More below.

2D Animation + Mass Effect

To start with, I got the Mass Effect art book - the big one with 180 pages - and it's glorious. Second, I've got annoying neighbors. Third, I'm in 2D Animation. Fourth... I drew something I was actually not appalled by.

"Purpose dictates Process"

Marcus always tell us this.

And he's right. He's articulate what I've always thought about any type of work in a very simple way. "Purpose dictates Process." If you can't get something to work, make sure you're making it for what it's going to be used for.

I finished my CDC project, which is building a character model from scratch. Final results:

I'm pretty pleased.  I didn't add nipples or a belly button (since they weren't required, per se), but I did add decent feet, which aren't required either.

We also had to UV it, and I daresay I finally understand how to make UVs. FINALLY. Sheesh.

We also had to do a clothing design with details - drawn or sculpted or what have you, but not modeled - but I... did not like what I did. It's embarrassingly bad and I think I need to start drawing again because I'm starting to forget.

After the cut are wireframe details. And rambling. But you can stop reading when the pictures stop.