This is getting closer to the final entry. I won't post again until tomorrow afternoon, I promise! Anyway, I've adjusted some flaws.
July 2009 Archives
This is getting closer to the final entry. I won't post again until tomorrow afternoon, I promise! Anyway, I've adjusted some flaws.
This is the the last main stage of my entry this month. After this, it's just a few curve pushes here and there, maybe a lighting adjustment. With some help from the forums, I've snapped up a lot of the piece, as well as added some more continuity to the laugh. The guy on the forums also noticed a pop near the end. I fixed the pop, and worked a "gap between the drawings" or "big frame" on the final take. I think it really snaps into that pose. There's also a new addition at the end of the piece, where the first guy responds to the second guys yell. I've already worked out a really nice render. It basically contains: approximate AO, a blue hemi lamp on the right side of the camera, a red one on the left, and a white (I think it's white, could be red though.) hemi lamp brightening up the Igloo guys face.
Here's the render:
This is the clean block of the first character. Most of the work was done by eye in linear, but some was done in the graph editor, also in linear. I used the graph editor when I had a lot of poppy keys that I couldn't control. I would drag the linear vertices's up or down to create a smooth curve, and to fix pops that I couldn't see in the viewport.
Here's my July concept and blocking. I spent about a day racing through the Pencil one, so it's pretty poor quality. The blocking is a bit better. I spent another day and a half on that.
When I wrote that somewhat encouraging post oh-so long ago, I failed to mention just how this can be accomplished. With me, I need to know how to do something and that it will work before I begin. Even if I go in with the mindset of "this will not work the first time, I will try and learn something", I always end up disappointed in the outcome. Particularly in drawing.
When it comes to drawing, gesture drawing is an amazing skill to learn. To start, you create a single line, just a swoop on the page, that describes the general posture of the model. Then, you add more lines to define form. You work as lightly as you can. The most important thing to remember when gesture drawing, is that when you make a mistake, or something lacks the correct proportions, don't erase, simply make another line the describes what it should look like.
The outcome of this method is simply that, with enough time, anyone can create an amazing drawing without getting frustrated. I'm terrible at drawing, and I have come up with recognizable and realistic drawings in a matter of minutes. The reason? My hand is drawing, not my brain. My brain does not know how, nor want to know how to draw. When I gesture draw, my hand makes a guess, my brain "spots the most obvious differences", and then my hand makes another attempt. My hand is experimenting, failing, and trying something else before I even know it's really made a mistake. It's a great way to learn drawing, because you're getting better without even thinking about it.
And some updates: My blog has stopped for a while because of a linux/firefox error that prevented me from typing text into the editing fields on Movable Type! Very quickly I lost my good blogging habit to the point of not even checking the status after a securuity update. Near as I can tell, it was fixed a few months ago.
Borealis has been given up. It was getting so complex and hairy, that I didn't even understand how it worked anymore. It had huge deformation problems, which were very depressing. Also, the model was absolutely hideous. However, Ramtin Ahmadi has given me the MooM mesh, which I hope to rig sometime.
I "finished" my April 11SecondClub entry, and you can see it here.
When it comes to drawing, gesture drawing is an amazing skill to learn. To start, you create a single line, just a swoop on the page, that describes the general posture of the model. Then, you add more lines to define form. You work as lightly as you can. The most important thing to remember when gesture drawing, is that when you make a mistake, or something lacks the correct proportions, don't erase, simply make another line the describes what it should look like.
The outcome of this method is simply that, with enough time, anyone can create an amazing drawing without getting frustrated. I'm terrible at drawing, and I have come up with recognizable and realistic drawings in a matter of minutes. The reason? My hand is drawing, not my brain. My brain does not know how, nor want to know how to draw. When I gesture draw, my hand makes a guess, my brain "spots the most obvious differences", and then my hand makes another attempt. My hand is experimenting, failing, and trying something else before I even know it's really made a mistake. It's a great way to learn drawing, because you're getting better without even thinking about it.
And some updates: My blog has stopped for a while because of a linux/firefox error that prevented me from typing text into the editing fields on Movable Type! Very quickly I lost my good blogging habit to the point of not even checking the status after a securuity update. Near as I can tell, it was fixed a few months ago.
Borealis has been given up. It was getting so complex and hairy, that I didn't even understand how it worked anymore. It had huge deformation problems, which were very depressing. Also, the model was absolutely hideous. However, Ramtin Ahmadi has given me the MooM mesh, which I hope to rig sometime.
I "finished" my April 11SecondClub entry, and you can see it here.
