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Apr
21
2018

April ProgBlog #2

Finally got all the stupid hair guides sorted and grouped, time for some expression testing!

Red expression test

Which also gives me a chance to fix weight maps.  The auto-weight mapping does a pretty decent job, but it's not perfect and touchups around the place are usually required (like for some insane reason half the innermost wing membrane was associated with the little finger why).

Mar
24
2018

March ProgBlog #3

Last week was working on pants and boots (and getting to use some fabric normals and a leather material some kind souls made available on Blendswap):

Screenshot 20180324 134447

trying to wrangle the hair into several hair ties (it was supposed to be tied with a cord but I finally got it through my thick skull that it wouldn't stay, even when I did have long hair I didn't do anything interesting with it, so I'm going to claim total stupidity ignorance and too much anime on my part there!):

Mar
13
2018

AER March ProgBlog #2

Currently all about hair and pants.

I did the pants first to procrastinate the hair.

tail-pants-01   tail-pants-02

Mar
05
2018

AER March ProgBlog #1

Lame excuse: I haven't done a progblog forever because I got well and truly stuck redoing the prehensile tail rig, but I think I've fixed it now, and made it work (to some value of work) with the pitchipoy rig (the spline and its controllers are actually on their own rig, but the spline controllers are copying the location of some controllers that are on the pitchipoy rig with additional thingies to keep them from moving too far from each other, feels a bit convoluted but it works).

Dec
17
2017

AER ProgBlog: more retopo and another character backstory piece

I was supposed to do this before Silly Season kicked all the way in and...well I'm in some downtime before it arcs up fully so here we go XD

Retopo is going slowly and painfully as per usual.  I just have to finish the wings and then I can start painting, and hope that my retopo job isn't completely crap and that he animates all right.  Then after that I have to fix the rig and give him some hair and then maybe have a little fun while I work out who I'm doing next.

Screenshot 20171217 194818

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

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
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.

Jun
08
2017

Thursday streaming

Yep I'm trying to stream again.  I'm currently looking at Thursdays again (because that's when the inlaws come down to hang with the grandkids and then somehow my house gets cleaned in the meantime, yes I have awesome relatives), Tuesday nights and one of the two weekend days (which one will depend on what is going on at the time), won't be announcing them til I can make sure the schedule works reliably though.  If you're keen as mustard you can still drop in if you like though.

May
23
2017

Wish you would step back from that ledge my friend...

Za'haran thinking about ending it

It was a long way down.

He didn't have to use his wings.

There was no point.  There was nothing in him.  He was nothing.  It didn't matter.  He didn't matter.

Za'haran shifted closer to the edge, automatically curling his feet against the wall n preparation for a takeoff.

Dive or just pin drop?

It didn't matter.  The result would be the same.  A terrible mess, just like his life.  He didn't matter.

Through the numbness, pain.  Gnawing, grating, demanding.  He bit his lip, tried to ignore it.  It wouldn't be ignored.  He fought down the reflex to raise his wings in preparation for flight, kept them firmly pinned to the ground so they could aid the push off.  If he had been taking off, it would have seriously messed it up, possibly even dangerously so.  What did it matter? He didn't want to live anyway.  What was the point?