Winter Village

I just recently finished helping my roommate with her level design project. I got to do some low-poly modeling of a bunch of decorative assets, along with some brainstorming help on the quest details.

Because the objects I modeled, uved, and textured were decorative pieces, I feel the best way to display them is by showing them doing their purpose.



In this scene I did the anvils, spears, axes, bows on the table, and the red oil lamp. I did a few other things but either they weren't used in the final turn-in or you can't see them in any screenshots. I'll post a few single shots of assets later.

You can find more screenshots of Katelyn's project at her site, http://www.katelyn-mp.com, which I'll be adding to the sidebar of links also.

FINALLY!

I got Maya yesterday. Couldn't get it to work though, and it made me an angry panda. Today I got Sims 3, and the disc was scratched. Two softwares not working and frustrated with my job, I began to crumble.

Then it happened.

My dear Tim was trying to help me yesterday with Maya and to no avail. He attempted to help again tonight with Sims 3, but there were no quick solutions for me, and so he returned to the Maya issue. And resolved it. In two seconds. Done.

Freaking miracle.

And for some reason, having that fix just sent a wash of relief through me. Fine, Sims 3, be stupid, I have real work I need to do any way.


Back in action!

Waiting

I'm waiting for maya to come in so I can start working again. Ordered it, but it's on backorder. Don't know how long that's going to last, hopefully not too long.

So, until then, a character sketch I did recently



This is Fredericka. I can't tell you what she's for, but I can tell you that the image scanned a little crooked. I haven't really done concepts like this in a long while. She's... meh, ok, I wasn't trying to go for some super sexy gladiatrix, but she isn't terribly interesting to look at. It's a solid start to a process.

Seven Weeks Left

Till I go back to Savannah.

My re-doings of holiday t-shirt imprints at work have resulted in my privilege to redo the imprint design sheets we show customers at work. Not only do I get to reorganize the imprints on a sheet of paper in a fashion that I deem logical and easy to read, but I get to rework a few holiday imprints to better work for general occasions. Too bad this isn't available online, but it should give people more reason to stop by the store and take a peak at the imprints I reworked. (Sorry art department peeps, but an art student who ain't allowed to work with ya gots to do something. You guys still get to say you did the original design, I just made them more... usable. :D )

Summersnoozefest of '09

I've only been back in Michigan just shy of a week, but seriously, it's boring. I'm pretty broke so I cancelled my WoW subscription (temporarily hopefully), and the internet doesn't like to keep me online long enough to get a good game of Warcraft III finished with Tim. That's frustrating.

Back to work at the Teddy Bear Co. Not going to talk about that, it's very very boring and certain things drive me crazy. I like to keep myself occupied by finding random mundane things to do. Like going on our imprint computers and finding interesting and rarely used designs and tweaking them so they fit my needs (Like a "congratulations" design to a "bff" design or a mother's day design to a little boy's... or two little boys'... personalized bear design) and discovering in-store sewing kits and fixing up the bears with holes in them. But, this is not enough... still bored...

And then my Maya (3D software) has expired on my computer, so if I want to work on my senior film (like I originally planned) over the summer, I have to be a code-cracking ninja or cough up $200 for 14 more months of Maya which will probably be updated within the next five. Or completely outsource my work to volunteers. I think I'll come up with the money so I won't have anyone to blame but myself when my models don't work right.

At least I'm beginning to hear of signs that I still have friends nearby that I might be able to occupy some interesting time with. That would be nice.

I need a hair cut, i have a strange mullet O_o

Summer 2008

So I haven't had anytime till just now to really just sit down and breathe. Honestly, it feels like it's been from one thing to another. I worked all summer long at the Chelsea Teddy Bear Co. store here in Chelsea, Michigan, and when I wasn't there, I was thinking about being there. I didn't help myself either when I became addicted to World of Warcraft... heh, oops. I've been a terrible friend this summer, not keeping in touch with my friends from school or from home! They're all at most twenty minutes away and I've only seen them a couple times this summer. Also, I've gotten nothing creative done this summer.

Now I just have two weeks before I head back down to Savannah and stay at my boyfriend's house for a week, then move back in and start up classes again! I'm surprisingly not very stressed about the idea. I'm trying to have a more Hakuna Matata outlook on life, seeing as I can get so pent up over next to nothing.

I have managed to see a couple movies this summer. I got to see WALL·E earlier this summer.



Absolutely adorable movie! Disney/Pixar score again in my book. However, I am not a fan of the use of life action filmed people in these animated movies. Happy Feet was an enjoyable move for the most part, but not one of my favorites. I was especially turned off when I saw the filmed people towards the end of the film. It felt cheap to me for them to use real people like that. There's something about an animated film that just has its own feel and character to it that is interrupted by the use of mish-meshing medias like that. So when I saw the clips of Fred Willard being used in WALL·E, I was afraid. But, I was pleasantly surprised with how they used it this time. The progression of how people became what they were in WALL·E's time was very smart. Showing the captains' portraits, up to how they become, fat and baby like, was ingenious and reassured my confidence in the film. So, just having those few filmed clips didn't bother me as the film progressed. The minimal use of dialogue was amazing. In our beginning animation classes, we're stressed to on how to animate things without having to use verbal cues, and still being able to portray action and emotion. Now, in WALL·E, we still got sound effects and little blips of language, but for the most part they had to rely on expressions and movements to get the emotions across. This, in my book, puts WALL·E up there as one of the best pieces of animation I have seen to date that has utilized non-verbal cues like that.

I didn't get to see Kung Fu Panda, so I don't have much to say about that. I did get to see Dark Knight, and was very impressed with it. It's a shame we had to lose Heath Ledger, he had quite the future ahead of him. But, on an animation note, I've been told that part of Harvey Dent's burned half was actually animated. If this is true, then that was some damn good visual effects right there. If not, then that was some damn good prosthetics job.

However, as a side note to all this animation talk, whoever made the rigs for the cat forms in World of Warcraft needs to be slapped. Cats can't sit without a disgusting pinch at the hips. Yes, I understand it's just a video game and it doesn't have to be a neat as a feature film, but a good rig can't be so hard to ask for! Even with a certain polygon count. The texture people can't cover all the imperfections of a polygon model!

Oh, yea, and PS-

I've given up on DeviantArt. It's gotten too fancy for me.