About face

After a record low month of maya and posting, I've decided to abandon the skeleton project for the time being. There comes a point in some projects where the mental block of continuing the project prevents any forward motion in learning at all. Though I hate ditching projects, I need to get started on something less ambitious and more rewarding to get the momentum back up. In any case, the stuff I did for the project is not wasted. I made some reusable assets, learned a fair bit about organic modelling, and I can always continue from where I left off (potentially with a different end goal).

So looking ahead to this month, I have a few ideas and things happening. I started weekly art lessons, so that's really fun, and I'm looking forward to improving my drawing (and painting) skills as well as producing some portfolio pieces. I'm also going to be attending a photography seminar, where I'll be learning some digital workflow, flash techniques, and travel photography tips (for my Africa trip in the winter). I borrowed a human skull (not bone, casted I think, if that's a word) for this project, but I don't want to let it go to waste, so I'm going to set up a kind of skull-based still life like they did in renaissance paintings and do some drawings off a photo I'll take.

And as for maya, I'm getting close to the end of my year-long training subscription from DT, so I'm going to bash through some more tutorials while they're available. I also got introduced to yet another monthly competition based website (11secondclub.com) based on character animation. That's something I haven't really done much of before (I guess the robot sort of counts) so I'd like to take a crack at downloading a free rig and doing some animation.
Later,
Stuart

Vanity

Well it's been quite a while, but I finally made some progress on my skeleton project. Unfortunately it wasn't actually part of the skeleton, but something is better than nothing. It's hard to get back into a project after a break. Here's the main piece of furniture for the room environment. Still have to add handles and make some refinements, but didn't take too long to throw it together. If you've been to my apartment, you might notice that this is basically my desk with a mirror on top.

I only have a bit more than a month left on this "competition" and even if I don't finish my initial plan, I want to get a finished animation out of it.

In non-CG life, I made short work of The Lost World for my August book, I read almost all of it in two or three days (yes, that's fast for me at this stage), so now I'm going to finish This is Your Brain on Music for my September book (I didn't actually read a book in August, Pilgrim's Regress took so long, so I'm sorta playing catchup).

Last weekend when I was on vacation, I got to play with my dad's pro macro lens, which was lots of fun. I'm not very good at it yet, but I kinda liked this pic I got of a little spider. Five points if you can guess what substrate it was climbing over. Click for a bigger image - this is still cropped and resized from the original.

Hopefully updates will be more frequent in the coming weeks. Thanks for reading!
Stuart

Starting some bones

I've gotten a start on my skeleton character.

Humerus, radius and ulna:

 


Lumbar vertebrae with wireframe and UVs:

These are just screen captures for now, still a fair bit of work to do on these bones yet, but I might start blocking out some more like the ribs and sternum. Having some trouble getting good references of all angles or turntables... or physical models... hmmm. Stay tuned for updates.
Stuart