Well that was refreshingly easy. I just completed my Avien model. In 4 versions (as opposed to 23 for the Dragonkin, both using the same base human which was done in about 23 versions as well, give or take). Bird wings and tail much easier than what's essentially modified bat wings and what feels like fifty bazillion polybands worth of prehensile tail.

I feel kind of lost now, and like I'm missing something, which is not an uncommon occurrence when I finish a model unexpectedly fast.

I'm sure I will take a long time doing the feathers. I'm doing base feathers as I figure I can't change the wing shapes too much as the flying humans are too big to have too much of a variation from large bird soaring wings, can have fun with tail shapes, and feather structure seems more or less the same for all birds. Should be entertaining.

I forgot to do the horn base on t he Dragonkin. Better go do that. Then I get to have fun with rigs!

This is the head of my base model.

After I've smooth shifted the bumps on the nostril bits out and done the tongue (which I have at this point after a bit of agonising decided to go with morphs), I'm going to copy it over to my Flyer models (just so they all have the same head, the Flyer models have an older version of the head).

Then I am going to freeze it at a high enough level for good detail on my major characters, though what that is I'm not sure yet, I think I used 7 last time but that might be overkill, will have to see what I need for face morphs. Then I will either do face morphs or a rig I can animate, depending on what fickles my tancy at that point in time. And quite likely switch between the two constantly depending on how annoyed I get with the other

It will save some work if all the basic morphs and the rig is done and all I need to do is tweak as necessary for individual characters. However it is going to require a shift in the way I like working.

My current base model is done with subpatches. I manipulate the base model to turn it into a character, then freeze the mesh and fix it up as necessary, then polyslaughter. I've been studiously avoiding dealing directly with complex meshes in the building stage, saving it for the refinement stage where I have to deal with them. Now I'm going to have to deal with the complex mesh from the start, possibly even in triangles as I may need to spin quads (gasp!) and other such things that will give people the illusion that I know what I'm doing.

Okay, I do know what I'm doing after a fashion, as I found out when I read an article on what makes good 3d and realised that I attempt to do a lot of the stuff they suggested, but my technical terms are rudimentary at best. I can't even remember what the keyboard shortcuts are, I just use them and they do what I want.

Part of me is looking forward to seeing how I go with the new workflow. The other part, I think, is frozen in terror as I haven't heard from it for a while since I came up with the idea this morning, and still nothing as I hashed it out periodically over the rest of the day. I'm sure it'll come round eventually.

My husband started out on the AEfter Ragnarok journey with me seven years ago. In more recent history, he has been entirely too busy with uni and afterwards work to contribute much beyond discussing ideas and offering advice when I asked, and on many occasions assisting me practically with fight scenes and modelling poses. He is also supposed to be proof reading the scripts, but has continually refused to do so on the grounds that I was changing something at least every couple of weeks, sometimes something minor but more often something major which would then elicit a major change further down the track, and he absolutely hated the way the script was laid out.

I had it laid out in a slightly annoying table layout that I had seen used somewhere (uni? Some pseudorandom Google search? I forget) and somewhere along the line I had changed the way I was writing into it. Segregating everything into dialogue, action and direction was not functioning well with my brain anyway (I am an overly holistic kind of person, I don't really segregate much of anything which is one of the reasons why we're !schooling), so earlier today I did yet another search for animation script layouts.

I tripped over one in one of the book previews on Google books. The book was called "Guerilla TV" and this was the page in question.

It worked much better with my brain.

So now I'm working on reformatting the scripts (all 19 of them), and am being forced to actually think about annoying little things like camera angles, lighting and time of day which I had been studiously avoiding in my previous edits with the last format. The better flow also helped a lot in fixing up some of the slightly stranger action and dialogue. I showed it to the hubby asking him if that was better to read and got an enthused response, so all is well.

This coupled with my last day off (from childwrangling so I can work on the paid job as well as the fun stuff) where I got to optimise a mesh and organise working with my sister to solict help with the head of my generic model has made me feel quite productive and that I may actually get this thing rolling sometime in the next decade, and despite never having much to show I am in fact doing heaps of work.

Now all I need is a whack of cash so I can buy Vue, and to see if my in laws can be conned into taking the older two for a day each week after they've moved over and settled in so I can get some decent work in.

Like everyone else on the planet (or at least the people that don't use Corel or something else :)) I use Photoshop. More specifically, I use Photoshop for digital painting and for making textures and image maps for 3d stuff. Every once in a blue moon I might use it for actual photoshopping or graphic design, although I have my sister for the latter two. Recently after checking out Photoshop CS4's $1203 price tag from Advance Software Group where I buy most of my software from, I did what I had done when I first encountered Lightwave3D's price tag, I went on the prowl for some freeware, or at least something cheaper which would do what I needed. First stop was unsurprisingly, The GIMP. The last time I checked out The GIMP, it didn't recognise tablet pressure sensitivity. At all. This time, it claimed pressure sensitivity out of the hypothetical box. So I gave it another shot. X11 is a lot easier to install on MacOSX 10.4 than previous versions, involves stuffing in a cd and selecting a package. Then installed The GIMP. It was slightly prettier than I remember it and I (re?)discovered a few nifty little features that I really liked, but no pressure sensitivity. And I really didn't feel like naffing around to set it up despite assurances from my linux geek husband that it would be sweet once it was set up. It wasn't a huge scout about before I very accidentally stumbled across Pixelmator. Mac only eh. And for US$59 (a bit over AU$80). Downloaded demo, tried it out, fell in love within the first hour. It vaguely resembles Photoshop in layout, tool palette wise and menu wise. In my humble opinion, it looks a lot better. Also it very conveniently uses the same keyboard shortcuts, so I didn't have to make any modifications to my tablet setup (inadvertantly made what was meant to be the Photoshop profile global, not necessarily a bad thing in this case). The first thing I fell in love with was the fact the brush size wasn't attached to the tools. This made it quicker in the painting department, as I could flip the pen over to get the eraser as per usual and still use the touch strip to adjust the size of the eraser without having to actually select the eraser tool, ditto with selecting the brush shape. I think the pressure sensitivity is better than Photoshop's too. It also loads a hell of a lot quicker, and loaded my huge files pretty quick too. The only downside I discovered while naffing with the brushes was currently there is no pressure sensitive opacity control. There's probably workarounds, I have one theory which I have yet to test regarding making my unused touch strip change the flow of the brush but it's less intuitive. It seems to be a much requested feature so hopefully next version (the current version is 1.4.2). It also doesn't have layer groups but for what I use it for, layer groups are more useful than essential. Hell I've coped for three versions of Photoshop without them :) I wasn't going to buy it yet, not til the opacity pressure sensitivity was fixed and not til I could be bothered upgrading to 10.5 seeing as they're focusing on that these days. I ended up spending the money anyway and being glad of it. Photoshop for what I use it for is way overkill for me anyway so it's nice to find something that I'll use a lot of at a price that's not going to kill me.

What is it with the 500 poly models? I'm currently helping my sister with a uni assignment (help me bek I hate 3d I can't do 3d...makes for a rather labourious process) and it involves making a low poly model of less than or equal to 500 polygons.

There's a guy on my watchlist at dA that had produced a blocky model and explained to me when I asked about it that it had been for a uni assignment where they had to model a low poly character to the tune of 500 polygons or less. Seeing as he was not in the same country I figure it's some generic thing they get everyone who is doing a 3d unit to do (although I missed out, being in the guinea pig batch of Multimedia students a hundred million years ago).

So I decided to give it a shot.

I produced a humanesque model with 126 polygons, with the head being most intensive as per usual for me so proceeded to add more detail. It was a bit of a stretch for me to trade in "mesh integrity" for minimal polygons (and hey I'm not going to do anything beyond model it.

The first thing I was reminded of was that it's a pain in the arse trying to 3d with one and a bit hands (I should probably put my baby in his sling, but at least I can balance him unlike my toddler who takes an entire arm )

Second thing I learned, I can do an okay human model with under 300 quads before losing interest and motivation. Might have done a reasonable job with 500 if I could be bothered. Don't know how well I'd go in games, I like my nicely detailed 20k poly characters a little too much.

Then of course there's the question of whether poys are 3 or 4 sided. I prefer quads, they look nicer and I can control them better. Other people and programs are insistant on triangles. So I guess I need to rougly double the polygon count in my modfels seeing as I like modelling with quads.

Nutshell

bek/fyn, 28, born in Singapore, grew up on Christmas Island, currently living in Perth, Western Australia with 30yo husband, 3 kids aged 4, 2 and under warranty, 4 cats and 1 dog. Likes parkour, inline skating (of the kind that involves ripping things up and potentially doing serious injury to self which happens often, not sedately cruising along the river), kung fu, conspiracy theories, sustainable living and development, and a host of other Stuff. Doesn't dislike much.

Art Stuff

Tools

Digital: iMac | Intuos3 | powerbook | digital camera
Traditional:| sketchbook | pacer

Programs

2D/3D: Lightwave3D | Photoshop
Webmonkeying: Aptana Studio | Firefox | Safari
Misc: NeoOffice (word processing stuff) | Studiometry (invoicing and keeping track of clients)

AEfter Ragnarok

Conceived 7 years ago, initially as a comic series poking fun at superheroes, to be done manga style, with my disused Biker Mice fan characters being adopted and adapted for some of the roles. As character and story development progressed, the satire fell apart to be replaced with something more dramatic but still very manga. Fast forward a bit more and it's now more gritty realistic and less manga. Enter very recent history and because I have all the time in the universe (haha) it's evolved into an animation.

There's less plot than stories about characters whose motivations cross them with other characters and what happens as a result. I figure if I'm hving fun doing it I may luck out and there will be someone else on the planet who enjoys watching it. Assuming I can ever get it done.

The initial comic was always going to be in 3d, after a brief toss up between cel shaded and bek shaded I went with the latter, partly because I have never been good at cel shading and partly because a dear friend was concerned that my "style" would get lost in the 3d. Considering I make all my own models there wasn't a lot of style to lose, they still don't look remotely realistic. My sister kept complaining of fish lips, pin lips, weak chins and bizarre noses so between her and my anatomy book (which I didn't acquisition til some time after I'd redone the generic models) I've redone the head on the generic models and am slowly hammering out fine details for a better looking head. I finally started paying attention to what happens to my nurbs models when they get subdivided (think I have the subD level set to about 7 for major characters) and have been spending some time freezing and optimising meshes (getting them down from ~30k polys to a lot less). And finally, in light of it turning into an animation, I'm having to rejig my rig. It poses great but does not animate. At all.

Still have a metric buttload of characters and sets to build. Rhythm with the baby is starting to work itself out so once I finish the random piece I'm currently working on I'll be back into it whenever I have both hands free.