Categories
Journals

For this Sunday weekly report, you can listen to me rabbit away at high speed about modelling Gronky.

This week – 28 July to 3 August – instead of getting stuck into modelling Gronky straight away I started a figure drawing course. I feel like I’m being held back by my lack of confidence and skill with gestures, rhythm, anatomy, construction and perspective, so I got myself a drawing board & a charcoal pencil on Monday evening and I’m going through the figure drawing fundamentals course from Proko. It is a damn good course. Already I’m feeling much less anxious about drawing poses and perspectives that I used to avoid, and my previously stiff drawing style is tentatively showing more swing and groove than before.

In addition to Proko’s supplied models, I’ve been using the same techniques to gesture draw naked people on Pixelovely. Today I tried gesture drawing some animals and I had varying levels of success. Thick fur is problematic for some animals in figuring out anatomy. I know I should try to master one species at a time but I like drawing beasts too much. 🙂

On Tuesday evening, I wrote a synopsis for a fantasy story in the hope I can trick it into going away and leaving me alone until I’m ready to deal with it. I already have too much stuff to work on. 🙂

On Thursday evening I got stuck in and started modelling Gronky – the video above should tell you everything I have to say about that. Basically, it’s coming along but the process is not without its bumps.

Here and there this week I’ve also been drawing some “Grumpy Squirrel” for fun, trying to get a better handle on his character.

Movies I watched this week include the infamous revenge-of-nature flick “Sharknado” and Duncan Jones’s sci-fi thriller “Source Code”. I don’t know if I can honestly recommend “Sharknado” but “Source Code” was pretty good. 🙂

Categories
Journals

A timelapse for the modelling process and part of the rigging process for Pointy from my forthcoming cartoon “A moment in the sun”. The video is unedited, complete with questionable decisions and short pauses when I get stuck – but there’s a text box to show you what’s up to an extent.

This character’s only ever meant to be seen side-on, hence the weird geometry.

In this video you can see:

  • skinning/binding the rig to a mesh (lots of skinning)
  • driven shape corrections
  • testing rigging and skinning/binding using simple animation
  • how to rig a hacky set of “cup” eyelids
  • skinning/binding a rig to curves using hooks and bone parenting
  • building a (crappy) FK/IK switched arm rig
  • skinning a hand and fingers

Blender 2.71 test version in the hizzouse. Release candidate should be out later this week. 🙂

Categories
Journals

Spent some more time building Pointy today. Timelapse video to follow.