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Sep
12
2021

September ProgBlog #2: accidental hyperfocus

I accidentally spent the entire week on UASG (or to be extremely specific, on those freaking dreadlocks >_<).

I'm currently on my...6th or 7th iteration.

particle hair dreadlocks in Blender 2.93

I thought I'd be a smartarse and lay out the curve guides first (which I think I mentioned last progblog), and then followed up with experiments on whether I use the particle hair controls or the similar looking controls on the curve guides themselves to do the dreadlocks.

The curve guide controls couldn't get values as high as the actual particle hair settings so I used those instead.

Sep
05
2021

September ProgBlog #1: getting hairy again

The slow and painful days are starting to become a habit I really need to snap out of.  Both projects are plodding along and I'm kind of bumbling my way through everything else around them with varying degrees of success.

AER

After switching back to the colour map, I attacked the shape of the dragon tattoo, adding in these little belly scale segmentation things.

zara-tattoo-scale-segmentation-cu

Trust me it's one of those tiny little things that you don't notice when it's done but that you would definitely notice if it hadn't been done x_x

Aug
29
2021

August ProgBlog #3: where did that week go?

It was starting and I had plans and then other stuff happened and I just kind of tried to deal with things (generally failing) so kind of just buried into music (generally looping my project playlists) and did stuff (not nearly as much as I wanted, yeh I know that's the usual story, but it's even less done than usual as brain is not functioning correctly at the moment, I borked) and then suddenly it was the weekend.

To be honest a similar thing has happened over the last couple of weeks except this time I'm actually aware of what day it is beyond knowing where which child needed to be so I guess it's an improvement?

I'm going to try switching up the schedule again to:

Aug
23
2021

August ProgBlog #2: stalls and tools

It's been a few weeks.

And then I finally got around to writing this thing, and was making some half-decent progress (while chatting to sibling dearest in our inaugural hopefully weekly project chat and progressing some other stuff as well) and then had one of those infuriating semi-frequent crashes that refuses under any circumstances to be diagnosed (it's probably hardware because there is literally nothing that I am doing that can reproduce them reliably).

Some good things happened too.  I got a new graphics card, which I of course had to test out on the top of Acaedia where there's a fair bit of glass.

Aug
08
2021

August ProgBlog #1: branching out

The scales are still going.  The only thing that's changed is that I'm now in the yellow PURPLE section! XD

neverending scales   in the purple (second last!) section of the dragon)

Jul
23
2021

July ProgBlog #4: eternal scales

I feel like I've been doing this forever.

still drawing scales

Have I mentioned how much I didn't want to be doing this again?

On the bright side it is at least organised a lot better this time even if it's probably overkill as far as textures are concerned, and I hope it looks better, and I'm about two thirds of the way through the yellow so I'm approaching halfway?

Jul
16
2021

July ProgBlog #3: why does it have to be scales

Once again, doing a bit more work on character portraits than 3d, because my brain just doesn't want to deal with the scales.  I eventually decided to keep my character consistent with the other ones (Captain Gundry and Bricky Steve) rather than doing the different headshots (partly because I'm kind of designing the outfit and the "weapon" which isn't an actual weapon, just something she uses to beat people up with when she isn't riding around on it, on the fly and mostly because it is going to take the better part of forever if I do it that way, now at least I have some idea of when I might finish).

I'm halfway through 2/5.

Jul
15
2021

May/June Homeschool Miscellany

During May, 12yo decided to  get into fruit sculpture, and made a ridiculous amount of stuff out of bananas.  Because I was really preoccupied with I can't remember what at the time, the only thing I caught a photo of was this "sword".

banana sword

I did have time to make a trip to Spotlight to pick up some elastic and some fabric for 14yo to make a blanket thing that apparently only needs tying together.

Jul
09
2021

July ProgBlog #2: tedium

There has not been a lot of progress this week, partly because I felt quite inspired by Sunday's roleplaying game and ended up working on character portraits instead,

Jul
07
2021

Bricky Steve

Bricky Steve - World of Darkness player character

Bricky Steve is 16yo's friend's (aka "the other 16yo") player character, a mage who accidentally created a "perfect brick" (known as "The Ubrick" as they portmanteaud uber brick) and is now on a mission to try and recreate it, and thus developed an obsession with bricks.  It's only us players that seem to call him Bricky Steve, he's just "Steve" to the other characters.

He lives and works on Captain Gundry's airship and seeems to be maintenance personnel more than anything (he's spec'd mental/social/physical) as in the last session he stayed on board with Gundry and Yue while everyone else (including 16yo's character) raided another ship, and did a lot of magic repairs to the balloon when their ship came under Umbral attack.

He's also an apprentice to some obscenely high level mage