Because like I ever do anything quickly.

So after making some good headway on the tail feathers from last progblog, I eventually realised (again why could I not do this earlier) that they weren't flowing with the arm direction and when the arm bent the feathers around the elbow were doing to kink horribly.  Not only that the flow of the tail feathers didn't make much sense given the overall shape of the phoenix.

Suppose that's what I get for trying for a cute fancy spray when the whole thing is a much more boring but much better flowing elongated S.

Perhaps it's a good thing that JJ walks around with headphones on whenever he's home and that the kids are just used to my weirdness as pretty much everyone else would probably have gone slightly insane at the sheer number of times I've been listening to True Colours by Artists Against Bullying (linked to a sign language one because it was adorable, this is the official clip and here's the original Cyndi Lauper one that they covered) and Here I Am by Bryan Adams (again linked to a Spirit one because I'm still not sure what to make of the original XD).

An unbelievable amount of crazy has been happening.

Comp season starting was just part of it (aka there went one weekend, spoiler alert 12yo did well).

We're now onto the last few tail feathers with the pink and purple.

Close up of the middle feathers (which shows I need to cover more grey in the purple section!)

Didn't take too long to get my hand in, so once I figured out what I was doing it happened reasonably quick (but not as quick as I would have liked partly because it's been a week and mostly because I have unrealistic and  generally unachievable expectations of myself).

Decided to do the tail feathers by colour instead of individually and the barby bits are kind of painstaking because the brush is tinier than 3dC wants to deal with, but we're glacially getting there.

So problem shoulder is acting up again.  It all started when I decided to have a shower with the extractor fan on (I'm aware it needs to be on but my need to be warm is infinitely more important than the need to avoid mould growth).  There was problems with the hot water system (we replaced the old one which finally died after possibly 40+ years with a cheap crappy new one instead of a good one because we thought we were going to be moving) or maybe it's a problem with plumbing, I don't know.  Anyway, I got too cold, I felt something twang while shivering (I'm aware it doesn't actually get that cold where I am but I have no cold tolerance.  None.), woke up the next day feeling sick (which I got over pretty quick) and getting dizzy spells when looking right regardless of what orientation I'm in (standing, sitting, lying, doesn't make a difference) which eventually fades but can recur randomly during the day which is tonnes of fun when I'm driving.  It's done

Sprat is up for a couple of weeks, so I've been a bit distracted.

On Friday when I was supposed to have been writing this, we played Minecraft for most of the day.  I used to play survival mode with the kids, but these days I just mindlessly build things in random locations (usually with plenty of supplies inside) for Sprat and the kids to find (they're all in survival mode), and laugh at the hilarious sound effects that happen when they encounter the hostile mobs.

And at Sprat who while trying to go to some mine 12yo had found, pretty much ended up everywhere including where I was building (I thought I'd flown far enough that it would take them a while to find me) but where she wanted to be.  Apparently she's amazing at finding everything except what she's looking for.

Finally finished the gloss map for the scales! The belly scales were fairly boring and straightforwrd but I was still glad to be done with  them XD Currently lighting the froof and am much happier as I like doing hair.  Quite pleased with how it's turning out so far too.

Finally finished the tiny tail scales! My hands!

As I mentioned in the shenanigans comic (where this image first appeared), the pink was so glossy that I had to switch to the gloss map to finish up the tail as it was in a bit of an awkward spot in the light and using the uniform lighting made it too glossy and the pbr lighting couldn't pick up the glossiness because the mesh was in the way.

White is no gloss, not-white will have some degree of gloss depending on how black it is.

It's coming up looking pretty nice.

See what I have to put up with?

See what my poor family have to put up with? XD

I'm having scale issues in both senses of the word. For whatever reason, when importing a model from Blender, it's microscopic in 3dC.  What I did with Red was to just enlarge the model til it was big enough to work on, then send it back, where it was (strangely) way, way, way too big in Blender (I think he was close to 1km high before I resized him).  Then it didn't help that the vertices were apparently somehow too close together for the auto weight mapping so I had to enlarge it again just enough for that to work (because manually weight mapping rigs from the outset is the definition of tedious) and then shrink it agan. 

It's actually an upward spiral (dragon is pointing upwards) but I'm working from the head down therefore it's a downward spiral :D

Scales here are shown with the pbr lighting that I switched to as I'm now in the pink section (last section yay!) and the uniform lighting made the glossiness blinding.  I've had to switch depending on the colour or where I was, needed the uniform lighting for under the arm for example.