erjiweorji

THAT is a reeaaaaaally (really) rough turnaround of the stripper, which I will start modeling asap. Since we broke up for easter i've sort of lost a little motivation, I guess I really need the working environment. But this can also be seen as taking a break, this is our break after all. Scary shit is afoot though. We still don't even know how to rig! We had a shot at it but we are afloat in a sea of ignorance. /drama. But yeah, we still have no rigged characters and are therefore unable to animate, and I worry that we will not have finished them til even as late as the end of next week. Or later. blerg, then we have all the other shit too. This is getting really messy and is quite worrying, but as with everything i'm sure we'll pull it together. It won't be no phoenix project either, not while i'm included. but yeah, strippers.

Stuff what's happened.

First off. I lost my bag :( bawwwww. This event meant that along with my sketchbooks, I had lost the book that I was meant to be writing my first literature review on x_x

'twas a nightmare, I'm not sure if I lost it on the bus (who don't pick up their phone btw) or in the taxi I got home from Tesco, but it was an obscure firm who I didn't check the name of :/. The ordeal is pretty much over now though, I'm not too sad I lost my sketchbook, I mean, it did have a ton of my drawings in, but i'm not a very nostalgic person so I sort of see it as a chance to start again. The main problem was the book thing (How much do they charge when you lose a book?)

I was 70 something pages through the book when it happened, and had it all nicely scheduled out so that i'd read about 60 pages a day up til sunday when i'd write my essay, but instead I had a panicked look around the shops in Truro for this obscure book that nowhere had. After that I came home and searched allllllllll night long for first of all a collection of essays which was way harder than it should have been, and finally settling on illegally downloading a different book by the same author. That was Saturday night, and the deadline was Monday... that meant that I spent just over 8 hours full-on reading this book- no breaks at all, not even for food, I had to rush it down, followed by a 1 hour break and 3 hours writing the bloody thing.

It's all over now though, and i'm fairly happy with the review, although it was a little short.

Had a lovely day today continuing the modeling of Karl. He's the guy I've assigned myself to model, I couldn't wait to get from the concepting stage to the modeling one. I've actually been too hasty, in that I've not even drawn turn-arounds of all of the characters that i'm meant to.

Here's my guy for now, Karl, the cool black guy.

Turn-arounds:





Various Screen-grabs:







I'm really getting into modeling now, I feel like i'm settling in (even on topological terms) and all that i've left to do now (on a strictly modeling stage) is continue to improve my knowledge on the tools and techniques that i've already started to grasp, this, along with speeding up significantly. That AND a literal ton of other things like rigging, blendshapes, shaders, lighting, balhaerlhalh etc etc etc etc.

I'm having fun though, and that's the main thing. I quite happily sat there for pretty much 7 hours today plodding along with work. It's also a great thing that I don't have a big distraction right now either (i'm looking at you, street fighter). Today's been a great day work-wise, also the sky when I left the studio was really something special, I wish I had a camera with me at the time.

Alright alright. More updates to come, I may possibly post the rest of the turn-arounds when they're done, all i've left to draw is the stripper and the waitress possibly. mewoemow peace out.

p.s. If you're actually reading this crap, whoever you are, leave me a comment. I keep meaning to write this but always forget. I just wonder if anyone actually reads these words :o I promise i'll reply.

p.p.s. Broken Social Scene sound promising *pirates*

Wooooooooo

So we got the voice actor's takes on the robots, and the rest of them and... eh. I don't like them. The black dude's voice is quite cool, but too 'big' sounding for the character that we'd concepted. The white guy's voice... christ, this is the worst thing about it I think. Not only does he sound NOTHING like what we'd imagined, but he's really irritating. I'm not sure whether that'll affect the humour, I don't know if you can laugh at irritating characters or what...

Regardless, we're pressing on. Luckily the guy who created the thing is allowing people to do the second sketch now, so we're doing this instead. It'll be a ton easier to do than the first sketch, but still a lot of work. Omgs we have a lot of work on nowadays. It's a bit ridiculous, we have nothing for weeks (or so it seems) and then it just falls on you. But i'm not really complaining (I am, but whatever) I did ask for more work in my head. Tbh I would rather if the work was more to do with what I'm interested in. Here's a little breakdown.

-Main Robots Project
--Alright so this is pretty interesting, aside from the fact that the voice acting kind of messed things up, we get to make interesting characters. Create them in Maya, which i've wanted to do forever, rig, texture, etc etc etc. I think this'll help us a ton in getting to know Maya and how to actually make finished articles in it. And it gives us a kick up the arse and some motivation to actually do something. I'll also get the chance to paint, too, which I always enjoy, but i'm not sure to what capacity right now. Definitely no time for finished, polished character concepts but there will be time for backgrounds and such. Still a bit up in the air right now though.

-Literature Projects
--...ergh, these are nasty. Very hard work and fairly time consuming, and apart from the fact that they're helping us work towards our dissertation, I don't think they're really teaching me anything that'll really help me in getting a job or whatever. I'm just thankful Andy's cut down on essays up until now to a minimum. It's not exactly how it seems though, I am in fact really interested in a lot of what i've read, what the authors have to say and stuff. I'd love to be able to read and write things in the way that they do, it feels really intellectual (some say pretentious) and right now I feel stupid most of the time reading these things when i'm looking up words every second and re-reading sentences time after time after time. So it's a bit of a mixed bag. I enjoy it, but it's just taking me away from what I feel I really need to do i.e. improve my art to a point where I can make a living from it. I don't feel i'm there yet. After all, I won't be writing essays for money when i've graduated.

-Editing Project
--This seems like a bit of fun, might teach us something and I dont' think it'll take me much more than a day of solid work, so I don't mind this one too much... should be interesting seeing the final results. I really appreciate the lenient deadline too. Hmm... speaking of that I think we have a week left lolzors. Maybe 2.

-Compositing Project
--To be honest I haven't looked at this one too much. I'm not sure how much work it'll be, but i'm not really interested in it.

I've been doing some more designs for the characters in the robot thing, (can't upload from home, no scanner) I think we've got them pretty much down, even with the set backs. Tomorrow we'll draw the final designs, turn arounds for modeling and get to work! I can't wait for one to be finished in maya, it's going to be so cool. Even if the voices are shit :P

I wonder what we're letting ourselves in for... how much work is this actually going to involve? Also, what am I going to be able to do myself? Will I be stuck painting the whole time? FIND OUT IN NEXT WEEKS EPISODE!

Just a quick Robots post

Here are a few designs from our new and exciting project. We (Me, Andy, Sam, Dan and Sean) are taking on 'That's because you're a robot'. HUGE undertaking but anyway, I don't have time to chat. Here are just the designs that I've done this far.

These are my first real attempts at designing the characters, in short I believe their bodies are way too detailed, and the black guy's face is a bit boring and probably too detailed also. I do like how the tough guy has a square head and the black guy has a spherical one, seems sort of iconic. Easy to distinguish blahblah. Basically all I like here is that and the white guy's face.



This is another doodle of the white guy, with a little side crud thingy, and some more doodles. (I've run out of sketchbook btw lolz). Anyway, I sort of like the body but the face isn't so great. Also, I want the tough guy to have a disproportionately large upper body.



Some black guy portraits. These one's i'm pretty happy with. He looks smooth, has personality, and is sort of quirky and I like that. Seem to be able to make a decent angry face as well. Indicative of the modeling necessary (oh noes :///)



Yeah gotta go. Will make a large post later about this and the literature balls.