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Oct
24
2017

AER ProgBlog: retopo and storyboarding

Haven't really had a chance to work much on this lately, always other things demanding attention (and apparently I'm not supposed to take time out of sleep to make up for it but that's pretty much all I got left).

Tail retopo is driving me up the wall a little bit, I had quite a few goes before I got a mesh I'm vaguely happy with.  What I wanted was to just draw the mesh and smoothe it later but apparently my lines were so terribly wonkered that I need to fix everything before I can proceed.

Spectacle.w12941

Sep
13
2017

Stars Glow

Zara and Megan chilling looking at the stars

Switch on the sky and the stars glow for you
Go see the world coz it's all so brand new
Don't close your eyes coz your future is ready to shine
It's just a matter of time before we learn how to fly
Welcome to the rhythm of the night
There's something in the air you can't deny...

- Owl City: When Can I See You Again

Saving as a png ate my colours again.  I really need a 16bit image format that browsers can understand.

 

Jul
29
2017

Very late Thursday streaming!

This one is from last Thursday! A lot of stuff happened that prevented solid work on it so it ended up getting dragged out for the entire week! And then I didn't stream this Thursday because other stuff had to happen.  But we got there eventually! In this one I finish off High and continue working on Red.  Digits are my nemesis (yes I have several of them).

Track list

Jul
20
2017

Happy engagement!

Two people in love

Engagement present for @jedau and @randomli.

I was going to do my usual little ficlet to go with this one but Jed has something in mind so I don't want to clash, and also I don't actually know Aurelius' wife's name XD (actually up til Jed got attached to him I didn't know a whole lot about him). They have some cute babies though XP

I was thinking about throwing some text in there but I couldn't think of anything poignant or even intelligent to write, and also realised that I'd have to change the composition if I included text as it would unbalance otherwise.

ahhahahahahaaa listen to me sound like I know what I'm talking about

So then I thought about putting some clouds in there as they're fun to paint, but had the same problem as with the text and besides which I want them to have cloudless skies together (metaphorically ie a long and happy life).

Jul
15
2017

Thursday stream - more High artbombed by Surf's Upgoat

Last Thursday stream as I'm switching to Fridays next week or so (whether I'll manage next Friday is another thing as Sprat is up on holiday so we've been hanging).  Decided to stream despite not having backup as I was going to be busy doing other things on the Friday when I did have backup so decided to continue working on @jedau and @randomli's engagement present.

Jul
01
2017

Thursday stream - High

I started on an engagement present for @jedau on Wednesday, and decided to continue it on Thursday so of course it got streamed.

Did something slightly different, instead of just cutting a piece out of each track as usual, I axed anything that wasn't sappy, upbeat, uplifting or didn't have lyrics I could use and used slightly longer samples than otherwise.  The first and last tracks are still the first and last tracks (and in fact the first track was the inspiration for the piece as well as what I thought of when I read Jed's dramatised recount of the proposal to his girlfriend).  The ending is rather abrupt because I was pretty tired by that point and my computer was playing silly buggers.

Track list:

Jun
25
2017

Aurelius quick concept

Aurelius

@jedau over on Steemit took a bit of a shine to Aurelius in the Black Fingernails Red Wine piece due to name similarities, and these gems came up in the course of our conversation:

Haha! Definitely make him look like a Quokka :D

And

Oh right!! They're native to Australia haha! Man, I wish I had those things as pets haha! Maybe add in a scar across Aurelius left eye to give him that sort of intimidating presence. When people ask how he got it, he'll think of some awesome story, when really it was because he slipped while getting a midnight snack and hit his face on the corner wall.

Do you have any idea whatsoever how impossible it is to make a quokka look intimidating? Even when they're a therio? It's that nose.  I can't work under these conditions! XD

Jun
24
2017

Thursday streaming

Who would have thought that editing a 6 hour video would take longer than a 3 hour one? Additionally I had some fun and drama with KDEnlive, apparently its annoying settings are per project; I had to specifically tell it to use most of my cores for rendering as it kept trying to use one and overheating my computer which caused it to hang and made me mad.  And even after telling it to use 7 threads (so I could have one to do stuff with) as it turned out I had to just sit and let it do its thing all by itself as if I attempted to use my computer while it was rendering something would violently overheat and then the computer would hang.

If it keeps that up I'm not sure how I'm ever going to render out episodes.  Good thing I'm not planning any feature films!

Jun
16
2017

Thursday streaming - now with a process video

This one's especially for @jedau on Steemit who has made numerous requests for a process video.  So here's me retopologising Za'haran/Red like I know what I'm doing, 3hrs timelapsed into ~8.5mins (bonus: learned KDEnlive).  I apologise if the flinging around in and outside the head I was doing gives anyone motion sickness.  And who knew trying to credit everything I was listening to would take all day, might never do that one again XD

Jun
11
2017

Forgot I was supposed to be streaming update

My headache has finally cleared but my shoulder is still hurting like hell so I managed to completely forget about streaming this weekend, not that I would have been able to stream for more than an hour anyway at the rate I was going, had to take very frequent breaks!

Retopo is another thing that really isn't my friend so even if I did know a way to reuse retopo models I would likely just keep doing retopo per character just for practice.

I usually start with eyes and go out from there but this time I started on the nose because there's a million loops in the nose (okay three).  Then laughed when I started the eye loops (the ones in the pic didn't stay as I ended up doing them differently) as I thought it looked like one of those comical scenes where the character is doing those facial things involving green stuff on the face and cucumbers or some other fruit on the eyes and have to come rushing out for whatever reason.