Getting closer to a final model. Well, final-ish. At the moment it’s a question of how close i stick to the original sketches on paper. It’s rapidy getting to the point where I’m ready to call the geo done so I can get onto something else.
During today’s modelling session, I made the eyes bigger (much better!), fixed the eyelids, tried to add a snout loop in topology then gave up, sculpted some more roundness around the jowels, pulled the stomach in a bit and generally tried to smooth any lumps out using Sculpt Mode (it works for low-poly models too!).
After all that, I modelled the mouth then tried modelling some teeth. I did a realistic set based off an actual dasyurid skull and then went for something more cartoony after the realistic didn’t impress me. The cartoony set is winning at the moment but it doesn’t have that much competition from the more realistic set. It deserves another crack later, I think.
There’s a problem with the topology pinching around the brow due to a pole (a vertex connected to five edges, not the usual four) which I’ll want to attack soon as well. Poles aren’t evil – without them, edge flow gets really evil; they’re just something of an annoyance where animation is involved because they don’t deform nicely. Anyway. Leaving that job for later.
That’s it for now. It’s great to get stuck into modelling again. 🙂
This Ktish model is from last week. There’s more refinement around the face, the nose and materials are still placeholders. The overall shape is coming along pretty well but it still wants refining. I’ve got some oil-based clay I could break out to get an even better sense of the shape under my own fingers. The eyes and eye sockets aren’t right.
Meanwhile I’m doing some more writing as well. I feel like I’ve got a much better handle on how this whole process works after five months of accumulating different ideas. I’ve built this whole multi-planet political linguistic anthropological universe, now I just need somewhere good to drop the needle to tell an interesting – and funny – story. Current ideas being considered include a drunken elderly Ktish trying to pull off a headstand and tumbling off a cliff, multiple snarkfests centred on ancestral totems, and unforeseen uses for death zones. The goal is to tell four small stories within a huge universe without having characters perfunctorily recap more than is needed to set the scene.
Anyway. The concept seems to be on-budget, there’s lots of scope to convey the story with audio (it’s a way less expensive medium for storytelling than video)… it’s promising!
But there’s a hold-up: I kind of bought the Breaking Bad box set two weekends ago and I’m enjoying the hell out of it. It’s so superbly put together – the writing, the acting, the cinematography, the production design, the sound design… wow. And it has the courtesy to come to an actual conclusion instead of dragging on forever. It’s not without its flaws but it’s really, really good. That said, I’m trying to bingewatch it as rapidly as possible so I can get back to The Quiet One.
It would help this project immensely if I started back into generally drawing and sketching. I’m still ploughing through the mythical bad 10,000 drawings, even though I’ve been doodling since the 1990s. That’s kind of a confidence-killer – other folks have been making art for so long, they’re so effortlessly imaginative and interesting, so I feel like an unworthy interloper into their medium. But then there’s good advice about why not to think that way.
Someone pointed me towards a nifty little book about drawing for animation planning – coming to Blender’s Grease Pencil layer sooner or later, no doubt, but not for a while yet. Still have to write, board and record this story first.
I tried modelling Ktish’s apartment from a quick sketch last night. It sucked. The scale of it all was just.. wrong. As soon as I put a little stand-in for Ktish within the environment, a previously OK design just started to look.. well.. we have a saying down here: “yeah.. nah..”
The scale was just wrong. Individual stairs were gigantic. The TV screen? Huge. Silly huge. Basically.. yeah, poor on many levels. But it’s a start. 🙂
I’ll swot up a bit on architecture and give it another shot.
I modelled a coffee mug. One of the folks on #blender (the IRC channel) insisted i’d taken a photo and demanded a clay render.
It only looked real because black ceramic glaze is apparently dead easy to fake as a material and i’d done a crappy light probe of my kitchen to light it with. I also had that exact mug sitting on my desk as reference.
Model from 27 March 2011.
