September ProgBlog #3: slightly modified wingies

I'm only apologising for the late progblog out of habit as I'm not sure how many people read these things XD I've really got to kick the habit of working in the time slot that's supposed to be for writing the progblog.  It's misplaced guilt from feeling bad about not having "enough" progress from the last progblog so I try to have more to show because I've taken so long obsessing over details and making sure things are perfect.  This is why I'm never going to be able to get an industry job.

Like the most recent silliness.  The wings were uneven.

I'd been trying really hard to ignore it for ages because I don't think anyone else would notice given how the tattoo wraps around  the arm.  This proved impossible, so I redid it.

@rainite had asked me previously why I didn't just paint the uv map in 2d so I could be assured of symmetry, and I replied that I struggle with the distortion that happens when the map is wrapped around something.  Despite literally just having told him that, I still managed to attempt it anyway by painting in the uv map panel, and the left wing (which was slightly shorter than the right wing) ended up way too long.

So I went back to doing it by eye and everything worked out much better.

I also only needed to remove the innermost pink feather, change the purple primary closest to the secondaries into a pink secondary, and add a purple primary to the outermost section of the wing.

And it even looks better in the uv map.

And the gaps in the feathers and the high points of the wings are now even so I'm much happier.

Not that I've posted pictures of the secondaries and tertials because I hadn't finished them til not long ago.

After the cold snap late in the week the weather was beautiful over the weekend and we've been starting to reset all of the gardening stuff we'd dismantled in preparation for our failed move.  I'll write more about that later in its own post.  It does mean I didn't get a lot done over the weekend as I banged out this thing and spent a lot of time in the garden instead of doing important things like actually working and steeming (okay I suppose growing food is kind of important XD and I'm also going to make a frog pond as I have heard frogs in the yard, why they're up this far from the river is beyond me, but it will also provide a more permanent water source for the bees as currently their bird bath keeps drying out super fast).

Anyway this is where I'm at right now.

Think I've nutted out how the coverts are going to be done and the bit at the top that I've just outlined is going to be big brush strokes.  Will find out soon if it works in real life as well as it does in my head.

 I'm also currently regretting this experiment with doing the displacement mapping by hand instead of just baking and fixing it later x_x