Blender Fun: Final Project Work in Progress:

So, I now have this guy, our should I say ghoul) almost completed. He still needs his eyes and a bit o'tweaking to his body and clothes, but for the most part, he's ready to go.

Not a very scary ghoul, is he?

Digital Collage

Another challenging project for digital drawing: come up with a digital collage. (I hate making collages. Mine always end up reminding me of my angst-filled teenage years.)

At first I had a very hard time trying to figure out how to organize and express all the ideas that flooded my mind while brainstorming. I wrote in my sketchbook and took time to narrate the feelings and images that came to mind. I did this for hours. After I was done I looked at my notes, felt just as lost as ever and just said "fuck it" and started gathering images that interested me and evoked feelings similar to those that I brainstormed with. I messed around for a few days with images, composition and narrative. I slowly found my way to this.

This is one of those creations that honestly found me. I searched for the images and played with combinations, but the pieces fell into place themselves and the narrative I had subconsciously been creating was revealed to me as I went. By the time I was 2/3 of the way done I understood what I was -trying to say- and spend the last 1/3 of the image tweaking and wondering if the message would be evident to anyone other than me.

For me personally this speaks strongest about my relationship with stereotypes, particularly connected to race and culture. I was thinking about blackface when I started this and so that image prevailed, so this has a strong connection to images and ideas of blackness. It speaks to me however, about the characterized elements of race in general. I wanted to touch on the perpetuation of these ideas in their different forms and the restrictive patterns I perceive in all of it, but I also think it shows the strange rejection and acceptance of these ideas.

I thought a cartoon character was perfect. There is no better form of character then a cartoon. It represents no one in particular and yet everyone all together, just as stereotypes do. There is also something about a cartoon that reflects elements of social ideals of race. We can feel free to express through cartoons elements that we wouldn't dare to do otherwise just as we can express through stereotypes things we'd fear attributing to a specific individual. Stereotypes and bias are openly accepted here and usually cheerfully and humorously.

Blender Basics: Compositing: Battlefield Revised

So this is the progress I've made after some good feedback in class. Lighting still remains to be a thorn in my side but I feel there are some serious improvements, while other elements that were working in the original might have been lost in the revision. I admit compositing is not my strong suite right now.

Original

Revision

Celebrity Portrait

Our assignment in digital drawing was open-ended: Create a celebrity portrait. I went back to my childhood, but decided to comment on how I perceived my little green TV pal. It's not easy being green... in fact, it's downright maddening.

Blender Basics: And The Soldier Marches on (along with all his rendering issues!!!)

So, I got farther on rendering my soldier. I got him and his clothing rigged and mostly into place, when all of a sudden I went to render to find out my textures are ALL. GONE.

Just GONE. I don't get it. The files are still there. The settings under all the modifiers are still there... but the UV's and the images to be mapped seem to be missing. It's 9:37 and I'm about this close to imploding from frustration, lack of sleep, stress and hunger (for tacos).


Well, at least I have my Sponge Bob hat on today. That's one little island of joy in this evening's river of suck.

The Sword!

Blender Basics: Project 1: Work In Progress Shots

This particular project seems to be going a bit slower then I would have hoped but it's trudging along anyway. I've got all the modeling done. I've got the basics for the textures figured out and I've got all my models textured. After a Blender crash at about 10:40pm last night while trying to get my cloth modifiers to work I decided to call it a night. So, at this point I have to get the cloth modifier issues figured out, get my basemesh male model, pants and shirt rigged for the correct pose, get the cloth modifier applied to the shirt and pants meshes, get the renders from the models and hike them over to Photoshop and then get my epic battle scene created, which shouldn't be too hard. Perhaps I can use a local grassy knoll as the battlegrounds image. The Photoshop work should go quickly and then I'll be done!

Behold, a soldier and his flag (and clothing... and accessories)...

I did have one issue with the UV Image mapping that I'll have to get figured out (below). For some reason the image on the boots seems to have the actual grid/mesh of the exported UV unwrap image. I'm not sure how this happened but hopefully it's an easy fix that I can deal with today or tomorrow.

 

 I've got my fingers crossed that my first project will come together as good my original vision, or as good as can be expected.