December ProgBlog #1: kerbstomped by silly season

I shall do my utmost to keep up but this year silly season is seriously kerbstomping me x_x

And I don’t think staying up late is helping that much but it feels like it is.

We seem to be rigging all right, I did some big motions with limbs and turned her into a pretzel and here I was playing around with small expressions.

Split the panels just so I could show the non-animators among us the puppet controls and the result.

November ProgBlog #5: and we're back

What is this 5 weeks shenanigans.

So pretty much trying to pick up where I was before I jumped back to do more retopo. That texture baking tool in 3dC is a lifesaver when you’re inept like me x_x The skin texture is now reasonable enough for in your face shots:

And an in your face Eevee render as close as the clipping distance would let me get (I’m not even sure I have many if any extreme closeups like this):

November ProgBlog #4: bugger that density

After getting increasingly annoyed about how dense the mesh was becoming as well as general annoyance about having to do yet more rework and the fact that some things simply didn’t want to stay square, I threw that idea through a brick wall and decided to just extrude the nails like I was originally planning and hope it wouldn’t make a mess.

Which meant first trying to get used to the extrude tool (press enter first, then move it, then switch tools because pressing enter again doesn’t drop it, I don’t even remember which program that habit came from).

November ProgBlog #2: little touchups

Did I mention there was a lot of transitioning going on?

12yo is back homeschooling (kind of forced the issue and pulled her out as while she kept insisting til she was blue in the face that she adored school and absolutely under no circumstances wanted to quit, she refused to go due to being constantly “sick”) so I’ve readjusted all my schedules again, and because I keep staying up late (I just work better at night!) I’ve stuffed up a lot of my own timing.

November ProgBlog #1: Unstuck and into Blender

Alternate title: PROGRESS. I AM MAKING IT.

I still have no idea what the original problem was, but I did manage to work around.

And I managed to work around because painting the normal map in the paint room was hell and I also really, really wanted to solve the other problem.

Because I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, even though I realised the 3d Coat menus were contextual, I didn’t really realise they were contextual. So for a long time it didn’t occur to me that I could export the sculpt mesh. I got there eventually though, and sent it over to Blender to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it.

November ProgBlog #1

I missed two aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Anyway. I’m currently stuck with the dance animation because the characters didn’t end up where I wanted them to be due to a severely truncated tumble run.

I originally planned for Zara to do a proper diagonal with at least a slight run-up and 4-5 tricks. Then I had a problem of Rei’s tumble run being not nearly as long because she’s just learning and doesn’t know nearly as many tricks as Zara, plus she does a slower and more graceful one that doesn’t utilise a run up.

October ProgBlog #2: nearly forgot!

And if I don’t do it tonight it will be late again as busy weekend is busy!

The process video wasn’t done in time so it may make the next week’s progblog or alternately it may never see the light of day, depending entirely on whether or not I finish Embers over the next week. I did finish frame 3:

and started on the last…er…frame I guess even though there’s no border. It feels a lot harder I guess because I can’t remember ever doing a coloured piece with more than two characters (hell I think last year was the first time I ever did a piece with more than two characters and this one beats that one by one). I also realised I forgot Zara and Dak’s tattoos so will have to remedy that before proceeding too much further.

August ProgBlog #4: Rollin rollin rollin

I needed a break from technical stuff, so I started sculpting Zara. I don’t know why I always start with eyebrows, I just do, so I did the eyebrows, but then deviated from my usual of going down the nose and doing the face and bounced over to doing the ears. Probably because hers are a bit pointy.

The point is tricky as the Avians have an obvious point but their ears aren’t nearly as big as the Dragonkin ears. She doesn’t look like anyone yet but we’ll get there, hopefully in less time than it took to do Red as she’s got the standard amount of limbs and I don’t completely suck at retopo and uv unwrapping anymore (even though I still don’t like either of them XD).

August ProgBlog #3: Weakling!

Today was the last day of regionals at our gym, there were three rounds of level 3s, then 11yo and I stayed to help reset the gym back to normal for training for states in ~4 weeks.

I’m feeling kind of pathetic as after guarding doors for two weekends and helping move heavy equipment everything from the back down are pretty sore (okay in hindsight it was probably stupid to lift the big p-bars by myself but I have good stances, maybe not as good as Zip’s but all I had to do was lift each end in turn so the floor protectors could be put under the feet) and…apparently while I can still use my hands for typing and poking at touch screens, I can’t draw. Well I can but working on @f3nix’s piece is taking way more concentration than it should.

August ProgBlog #2: One step forward

And hopefully I’m not going to have any more backwards steps as I’m thoroughly over them!

Our club is hosting regionals so weekend just gone has been extremely busy (hence why progblog is late) and there is another one is coming up next weekend which will hopefully be not quite as busy. With luck I’ll have this week’s progblog done on time, but it depends on whether we need to help set up on Friday night (as I tend to make progblogs on Friday nights, I do try to post them then as well but it can end up being sometime on the weekend if I don’t finish on time.