Good Some Day

Forest

2011-09-07T06:35:00.000-07:00

Moon

2011-05-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

Cul du Sac

2011-04-28T21:13:00.000-07:00

I probably spelled that wrong.

Trees

2011-04-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

2011-03-06T22:07:00.000-08:00

Time

2011-02-08T09:39:00.001-08:00

It has been a long time. I have no idea how long it will be til the next post. Sorry. I've been very busy.

This is a card I made for my wife's birthday. Enjoy.

I took out all of the unknown facts about Rebecca. They'll have to remain unknown to you. Sorry.

Roach 7

2010-11-22T21:30:00.000-08:00

This was where I originally intended to end the comic.

Roach 6

2010-11-21T21:10:00.000-08:00

Roach 5

2010-11-16T21:03:00.000-08:00

Roach 4

2010-11-13T18:09:00.001-08:00

Roach 3

2010-11-11T21:36:00.001-08:00

I've finished 5 pages so far and no 2 are the same height. Oh well.

Is the roach fully visible in this first frame? I'm afraid that all of this black is going to obscure the roach and basically ruin the focus of the story. In the instant frame I'm somewhat concerned that the collar of the shirt is confusing the line of the the roach. Agree? Disagree?

Your opinion matters.

Roach 2

2010-11-04T22:00:00.001-07:00

To those people who ink professionally I salute you. This crap is hard. It is not 100% intuitive. You color some shadows black, and then you color some things that are supposed to be black, black, and then you color some more stuff black, and suddenly the whole daggum picture is black! You have to plan this stuff out. And planning is a weak point with me.

This page took two tries. I'm semi satisfied. I really don't like the fourth frame very much. In frame 3 to 4 I was going for a movie style change of focus. In frame 3 the guy is bleary eyed and the fore-ground is out of focus. Then in frame 4 as his eyes focus the roach comes into view. Unfortunately I'm not so sure that I was successful in this attempt. His five o'clock shadow competes with the unfocused foot and roach. And then in frame 4 I think I'm showing too much background. I don't know.

Who knows, maybe I'll try a more shaded version just to see how it turns out.

Any suggestions or comments?

Pumpkins

2010-11-01T09:49:00.001-07:00

Here are my pumpkins from this year. The witch hat was my daughter's design. We went with wacky faces instead of scary this year because my son really doesn't like scary things. All around we've had to emphasize the fun and diminish the scary.

I was really disappointed in the Publix pumpkins. I've never gotten pumpkins from Publix before. Normally I get them from my father-in-law's farm, but he only brought me those tiny decorative ones this year. Anyway, the Publix pumpkins were extremely seedy and were sloughing off layers on the inside. I used an ice cream scoop to shovel out the guts and I was really afraid the spoon was going to poke right through the pumpkin wall. You can see the gutsy bits handing down in the day-time photos.

Roach

2010-10-31T21:15:00.000-07:00

The first page of several. I already have them all drawn. I only need to ink them. Enjoy.

Ugh! Over a month!

2010-10-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

Sorry, it's been over a month.

I'm way over loaded on projects, but many are almost done. The pic above represents a short comic book I drew and is done in the rough stages. Now I just need to clean it up. BTW, inking is a heckuva lot more difficult that I ever imagined. I did this in Pixia.

My wife used spousal privilege to assign me some coloring book designs and speed them ahead of my other projects. Those are due Friday. So hopefully I'll have some new posts this weekend.

The painting has not progressed much because of the other projects, but as they are nearing completion I'm hoping to get back on that. That's another wife initiated. I won't be able to cast it aside or she'll kill me.

Stay tuned.

More project

2010-09-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

Another update. As you can see I have made the ship way too big. I kind of wanted it to be the same distance from the hero as the observatory, but the preliminary sketch was this size and it turned out so well that I no longer wanted some teeny weeny ship in the background. So now I have to figure out a way to make the ground around the ship appear closer than that under the observatory. I have an idea. We'll see how it works.

Here is a close up. BTW, I will be taking final pics of this with a much better camera than my 1.3 mp phone camera.

Project Update

2010-09-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

Just a quick project update. I added some sky. I'm learning from all of this painting. The biggest thing I've learned is to throw down the sky and ground and "background" incidental colors before you put the character pieces in. You can see the sloppy green around the robot and the sloppy purple around the building. I'll clean them up a little as I progress, but mostly they are how they will be.

Problems

2010-09-01T06:34:00.001-07:00

I think I may have messed up my project. Anyone who wants to weigh in please feel free.

For better or for worse I painted the main character first. He was one third up and slightly off center, so he has good positioning for a standard composition. It wouldn't have hurt if he was just a little more to the left of the painting.

Then I painted the building in the background. My reason was that I was going to have 4 main points of focus, the character, bottom left, the building top right, his crashed ship, top left and something undetermined bottom right; perhaps a crossroads.

I had always intended for there to be a fallen robot behind him, but I wanted him to be an afterthought, something defeated.

I gave very little thought to the terrain.

Well, there sits my dilemma. The robot is clearly too big and eye catching. I like how he turned out, but he completely throws off the balance of the picture. Further, when roughing out the terrain it has now become clear that the observatory in the background is way to close to the middle of the painting. If I paint the crash site symmetrically they will be to close (see below).

Sigh. I could put some kind of sign or object there next to the main character, but I doubt it will balance the robot. Further, the position of the robot has really upset the path that the character is walking on. It pretty much has to start off picture and continue off picture.

I'm afraid the only fix is to paint over the robot and maybe repaint him on the opposite side of the main character. Any thoughts?

Quick pic

2010-08-25T14:46:00.001-07:00

Except for the blackness of space, which took forever to fill in, this was a quick lunch sketch.

I liked it so I decided to try my hand at painting it on a small piece of canvas.

I'm still up in the air about whether I should make the space darker in the color pic, or whether I should add in the earth satellites. Any suggestions?

Projects

2010-08-13T14:13:00.000-07:00

Here is the big project I'm working on.
I know these canvases come "pre-primed" but for some reason it never seems like it to me. I "re-primed" this one in brown. I can't stand priming in white because those white places you miss peak out at you and scream, "You missed me!" Black is just as bad because it makes all of the colors so muted. I went with brown on this one. We'll see how it works for me.

Kinda slow going right now. I hope to finish the foreground this weekend.

I'm actually already done with that building the the background, but I don't have a pic of it.

And here is another character. This one is based on my daughter (the one in the project is my son).

Discovery channel.

2010-08-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

Ok, the most terrifying thing I have learned watching Shark Week is not that Great Whites can actually jump out of the water like this, but that biologists refer to 9 to 12 foot sharks as adolescents!

A new season of Man vs Wild is coming. I'm totally stoked.

While waiting for Man vs Wild to kick in again Discovery has added some rather lame knock offs. Dual Survival puts two odd personalities together against nature. It's ok, I guess. The other one is Man Woman Wild. This is a married couple put into extreme conditions. So far I'm undecided on both.

Have you seen this commercial? It's some car commercial where the guy loses his sunglasses and they go searching around for them. Finally the guy emerges from a cave and realizes the glasses have been in his hoodie the whole time. I thought the girl here was really close.

It is what it says. I hear Jon Cussack drives one.

Here are some experiments on buildings for the project for my son. I started off thinking "ramshackle," but then I thought, no, a scientific observatory would be clean and precise. The fully detailed one top right is the direction I'm leaning.

And here are some expression tests for my character.

PS. It was noted to me the other day that I should stop saying that I am "not an artist," which is exactly what I said. Thank you, Brian, you are correct, I am an artist.

What I meant was that I feel a void of technique that I am working to fill. Every now and then I get down on myself and I whine. I apologize. As with everything (of which I am aware) the best way to improve is through practice and study.

Post Its

2010-07-27T06:15:00.000-07:00

I've seen a whole lot of people posting doodles on Post-It Notes. I thought this might be a cool way to post something when I have nothing else to show.

Above is another doodle in preparation for the project I'm working on. I should have an update post on that this week, as I am making some progress.

This is obvious a life drawing. How many times have we all seen this?

Blast off!

For some really awesome Post It drawings check out John Kenn by clicking anywhere in this paragraph. The blog is called don kenn, but his profile says John Kenn. I don't know.

Project for my son

2010-07-20T21:39:00.001-07:00

Here is some more prep work for one of my projects. This is a painting I'm doing for my son. He's a huge Star Wars fan, like all well adjusted people.

This first attempt at drawing him turned out pretty good. However, I want it to be a bit more cartoony. Mostly because I want to be able to draw it over and over again.

Here are some figure attempts. Mostly these fellas look too old.

More doodlings above.

Above I am making attempts at planning my composition. As I've said before, this is a weak point with me. I've done some reading and I think I have a strong layout.

These are some color experiments. Done with pencil of course.

Here are my first attempts with painting the characters:

I really like how the dead robot came out. The octopus is not so bad either. This first attempt at painting Cole was a complete bust. I gave up that night and went to bed.

And here are my more recent attempts. I'm getting used to the character; giving him more style. At least, I hope I am. I'm really enjoying drawing the hair.

I've discovered I really am not a great artist. I'm mostly self taught and I don't have the first clue the proper way to use these mediums. I learned to paint by painting Warhammer figures. Completely different from painting on a flat surface. I've no idea what to do with water colors and this attempt at oil pastels shows that I'm clueless with those as well. I'm getting better with acrylics, but pencils is my preferred medium. I only wish they looked 1/4 as good as well done anything-else.

Work

2010-07-07T06:20:00.001-07:00

So my kids have asked me to teach them how to draw. That means I have to learn myself. Seriously, I have no technique or style. I pretty much start drawing and if it's good I keep drawing.

I'm ok at drawing people and things, but I'm terrible with color and I'm worse with composition. Several books have been suggested and I'm going to start studying.

The following two pics of Ray Guns came from one page in my sketch book.

The pages are too big to fit on my scanner and so I have to cut it up. I tried to combine them in a photo program, but my computer was moving too slowly this morning.

These guns are just design attempts for a project. This project will actually get done, however, because my wife is cracking the whip. I wish I had a task master for all of my projects. I'm not lazy, I'm just not motivated and I'm easily distracted, and I'm super-lazy.

The Troll Flower is just a random doodle I did a while back. I liked how it turned out so here it is.

This next pic is for another project. I don't have the wife bearing down on me for this one, so there is no guarantee of whether it will go anywhere.

2010-06-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a very stressful vacation. Here is the only artistic thing I did while there.

something

2010-06-08T21:36:00.000-07:00

I did not give up on the animation project. My computer did. I can't run that program anymore for more than ten minutes or so before it shuts down.

I will probably be getting a new computer around my anniversary in August. Until then the animation program is kaput. Maybe it will be done in time for Christmas 2010.

Mostly back to drawing. Here is a picture. I hope you enjoy.

Something in this pic is missing to me. I obviously used color pencils. But it really feels like it needs more. I may throw some water color on it. But being that I have zero experience in water color I'll probably ruin the pic.

Coming along

2010-02-11T21:03:00.000-08:00

He's coming along.

His shoes are very low detail. But I don't think they will be seen very much, so it doesn't really matter.

I lost his eyes when I imported him to the Christmas scene. I'll fix those this weekend.

Step by step

2010-02-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

I spent about 30 minutes fixing the head. It's still a little large at the top, but that's the way it will stay.

The legs took me about 10 minutes.

I'm reticent to add colors or textures because all of that is lost when you import it to another file.

Tomorrow I'll add the stocking cap and the shoes. Over the weekend I'll give him an armature.

Weekend Goal: Have the boy wave and do a simple walk cycle.

News! I have received a scanner for my birthday. I'm so excited. Hopefully that means I'll be posting some of my sketches again soon.

Save frequently

2010-02-08T21:01:00.000-08:00

Sorry guys. I did a lot, but when I opened the program tonight to tweak it and put it up - somehow - the file was corrupted and I had to take a step back to the next most recent save. Sadly, that was a while back.

I threw his torso together in about 30 minutes.

Tomorrow I'll do his legs and then fix his face... again. By Thursday I hope to have him in the winter world with the houses and such. If I am seriously disciplined I hope to give him armature this weekend!

Yay.

2010-02-04T21:18:00.000-08:00

Yes, I implied that there would be much more than this today. But that was before I remembered that tomorrow is my wife's birthday. So I spent most of today trying to prepare for that.

But the good news is that I finally have made a head that looks child like:

The downside is that he doesn't look like the drawing I was going for. But... it's close enough. I'm not going to delay my animation any longer. That is the head he gets. I will hope that through further study and projects down the road I will get better at translating my drawings to 3d models. (some day I'll get a new scanner and actually show you the drawings)

In case you are wondering, this kid has a hair-lip because it's really only half a model. The second half is just a mirror. When the sides are joined the split lip will close. I'm also not fond of the chin, but that is a pretty easy fix... just takes time.

Over the weekend I plan on making this kid a body and giving him bones. Look for that this weekend.

Hands

2010-02-01T20:58:00.000-08:00

Not much of an improvement. But he has hands. Two hands to strangle me.

The hands are more function over form. I'll tweak them here and there to add some character. Right now they are just four fingers, a thumb and a palm.

As far as the kid head is concerned I'm frustrated. I'm tempted to spend $10 to join a blender group that has a bunch of tutorials on it. It's $10 a month! Can you believe it? But every other face or head tutorial I've found is missing something. I don't know exactly what is missing, but I know it translates into me not "getting it."

When I get it I'll post a step by step in case there is anyone out there who also doesn't get it.

The hands, btw, took about an hour.

I don't know about tomorrow. I'm going to work on the kid head, so I might not have anything to post. But look for something Friday as I have Thursday off.

Mostly done.

2010-01-26T21:08:00.000-08:00

I didn't finish much tonight. I got a good ways and accidentally erased it. You'd think I'd learn. But I don't.

Well, I gave the poor man pants and a buttons for his shirt. Tomorrow, maybe I'll work on his hands. The only thing that will keep me from doing that will be if I feel brave enough to do that kid head. You know, the one I'm actually supposed to be working on. The one that is for the project I'm in the middle of. Yeah, that one.

The pants took about 20 minutes, and the buttons about ten.

Face It.

2010-01-24T22:16:00.000-08:00

Let's face it, that last face I was working on was crap. Well, it isn't that bad, it just really doesn't look like I want it too. It is depressing me. Face modeling is really super hard.

So this weekend I doodled a little face that I thought was decent. More importantly, it was made of some very basic shapes. So I thought to myself, "I bet I can model that really quickly." And I did. Here it is:

I was shocked at how well it turned out.

Anyway, it all came together so quickly that I don't really have any process shots. I can tell you, however, that it was very different.

With clothes:

Anyway, it took slightly longer than 30 minutes, but much less time than a flippin' week. I'll probably throw some pants on him tomorrow. But it did get me thinking very seriously about shapes. I think I may have been going about this face modeling (for cartoon faces only) all wrong. I'm going to take a step back and try the kid head again.

Thanks for your patience.

Put a Lid on It

2010-01-20T21:00:00.001-08:00

And so I did put a lid on it.

In case you are wondering why this guy only has one eye... Eventually I'm going to have to copy the eye and move it over. I could do that every single time I tweak the eye until I get it right, but that would get super frustrating. Once I have the eye to a place where I think it's finally finished I'll duplicate it and fill that void in the other side of this poor guy's face.

Incidentally, the eyelids only took about 20-25 minutes. So they qualify as a 30 minutes model. (:

Heavenly Host of Colors

2010-01-20T20:11:00.000-08:00

Here is the profile of the face. It is not "fully tweaked," but it is close to what will be the final sculpt. It looks weird now because the eyes do not have eyelids and there is no hair and no ears and no lips. On top of that, there are only two colors in this pic. A face - as the title would suggest - is a heavenly host of colors. It will take some time for me to get all of those down. There is not a distinct line of pink to flesh where the lips meet. There is a blur of pink on the cheeks. And eye lids are always full of purples, blues and pinks. Sigh. I will work diligently to get this as close to real as a cartoon should be.

Here is the front of the face with the eyeball. They eye appears gray here because there is an outer layer that "seems" to have no color. That outer layer is basically intended to reflect light and make the eye look glassy, but that layer is invisible to the camera. Underneath that layer is the real color of the eye.

Irises are an example of the host of colors I was talking about. This one has about 9 in it so far, and I really want to add more.

I know it is slow coming, but this guy will be a star in many projects to come, so it is important that I get him right. Thanks.

Process

2010-01-19T08:23:00.000-08:00

As far as processes go, the one I am about to show you is probably the absolute worst. I have used it on occasion, when I simply don't think following the book directions will net the results I want.

The standard Blender process is probably the best way to model a head, but so far I have been unable to us the Blender tutorial to get the head I wanted. I've always gotten a head (reference previous posts) but not always the head I wanted.

Sadly, the process I am about to show you didn't do much better:

Step 1: A profile with top of the head created.

Step 2: Basic sides of the head pulled down from the top.

Step 3: Eye sockets.

Step 4: Filling out and smoothing out the eye sockets.

Step 5: Nose.

Step 6: Upper lip and wrap around. (I almost called this skin, but that really sounded gross)

Step 7: Chin

Step 8: Whole mouth.

Step 9: Cheeks.

Step 10: Face.

Step 11: Finish "fleshing" out the model.

The result is a bumpy and jagged model. Sadly I have many more vertices than the Blender tutorial. That is sad because their model is smoother with fewer vertices and more vertices SHOULD mean a smooth surface.

The reason my model looks so out of wack is because mine is not a realistic face (obviously). The eyes are very big and close to the sides. The shape is triangular instead of oblong. It's more cartoony. And to make this smooth -I am thinking- I will need a lot more vertices.

Soooooo, I'll be smoothing this out over the next couple of days and I'll show you the results.

Fastest Smoke in the West

2010-01-13T03:00:00.000-08:00

When I was in high school I had a friend named Josh who prided himself on being a "fast" smoker. He could tug down a cigarette in under 50 seconds. I'm not a smoker so I don't know if that is difficult. But I always wondered if that was sort of like cheering on the cancer.

Anyway, he's got nothing on these houses.

I'll go back and touch this video up later. Enjoy.

2010-01-10T19:54:00.000-08:00

This is a lighting test. It isn't so bad. I have about 9 lights here, which is probably way too many. I've got them all set at around .1 brightness or less. Which means I could probably do with few lights set at higher numbers.

I know you dedicated viewers (of which I think there are about 4 - including me) are ready for other pics besides these same old house ones. But frankly I'm hitting a lot of snares. First my armature for my characters didn't work, which is why I scrapped the Christmas deadline. Then my lights didn't work. Now my cartoon head is sucking horribly and tonight my attempts at cute little puffs of smoke coming from the chimneys failed.

I'm getting really frustrated.

But what I won't do is quit.

More of the face

2010-01-09T20:36:00.000-08:00

Here is the face. It really doesn't look like a kid, but I am trying to console myself with the notion that it will look more like a kid with big huge kid eyes and a small fat body underneath that big kid head. And hair.

Here's the side. It took me a good little bit to smooth out the back of the head. I was busting my hump, thinking I had hours of vertices pushing, when I looked up and it was pretty smooth. I mean, I'll have hair back there eventually, so it doesn't need to be perfect.

Anyway, here's something to look at.

In your face!

2010-01-06T21:06:00.000-08:00

This, sadly, is supposed to be a kid. It's starting to look a little like a mobster.

Definitely needs tweaking. Here is the face, pretty much done. All I need to do is wrap the model around to the back.

THEN, I'll have a lot of sculpting to do to get it anywhere close to the drawing.

I might take tomorrow off. I spent most of the evening sitting at the computer and I think it kind of bothered the Mrs. So...

3/4

2010-01-05T22:09:00.000-08:00

Ok, I accomplished 3/4 of what I said I would do tonight. And the fourth thing - putting eyes in the new face model - I simply didn't have time for.

Those little blemishes in the model bothered me all day at work. So I resolved to go home and delete them and start back at the profile shot. So here is the new face model. The band that looks like head-gear will eventually turn into the back and sides of his head. That should give you some idea of this size.

Here is what I did accomplish.

I added trees.
I added door knobs.
And I expanded the snow to cover the whole scene.

Basically this scene is done. It is ready for animation. It does, however, need some characters to animate in it. That's is what I'm working on. Oh, and of course it needs better lighting. I know that I can light it with regular lights. That'll be easy and it'll work. But it would look so much better if I could figure out how to make the daggum lights shine.

Tonight I will focus on the face model.
I may try and make some puffs of smoke.
I may try and make a scarf. I'm somewhat reticent to work on character clothing until I have characters.

Mouth

2010-01-04T21:21:00.000-08:00

So here is the mouth. This took a surprising amount of time. I'm very upset with myself. And even with this you can see some huge flaws in the area right around the edge of the nose. Ugh. I have two faces (a face is the square of model surrounded by four vertices or dots) by the nose that are so twisted they might as well be four triangles. The result of that is that the surface of the model is not smooth. It looks wrinkled. I'm going to scream.

I'll work on it later. Just adding the mouth took me about an hour.

I also worked on lighting the Christmas scene tonight, but it was a failure. The scene looked no brighter than it had at any other time in the past. Tonight was not a good night for modeling. :(

Tomorrow:
1. At the very least I will add door knobs to the Christmas scene. 10 minutes.
2. I will also add more trees and expand the snow to cover the whole scene. (this should be pretty simple) 5 minutes.
3. I will attempt to light the scene in a different way. 20 - 30 minutes.
4. I will add the eye sockets to this face model. 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Lame

2010-01-03T21:42:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm laming it up again. But I have a good reason. I'm at the point in my project where I need to do the faces of the characters. And I SUCK AT FACE MODELING.

I've followed all the tutorials. I've read the book. I've gone rogue and done it on my own. And every face comes out Elephant Man Deluxe. So.... I figured I'd do a practice run on faces for yet a millionth time. Since I am fairly certain the first attempt will turn out suck I figure, why bother actually trying to make it look like one of the characters in the project. (the logic is off, but I don't care - don't argue with me)

Anyway, to annoy you to pieces I'm going to post the step by step of this dreadful process.

Step 1: The profile.

and 3/4:

Ok, I spent about ten minutes on the following nose:

I know it still doesn't look like much, but that is very close to the drawing... which none of you have seen. Deal with it. If I have to live with no scanner, so do you.

Here's 3/4s on the nose:

Ok, I'm tired. I did nothing but this very short and very lame face modeling over the weekend. Sue me. This part is very intimidating for me and it took a whole lot of procrastination overcoming just to sit down and face Mt. Intimidation.

I consider myself something of a hero.

You should too.

Sky

2009-12-30T21:26:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm a day late. Actually, it's 12:28, so I'm really only 28 minutes late. Anyway... here is my sky. I think I like it. No real tweaking needed, I hope.

Here I've added some clouds. It kind of obscures the sky, but you have to have clouds if you want snow. So...

And here is the scene so far.

Ultimately I have to parent a bunch of spot lights to the sky so the light came shine down with even distribution. I'm not looking forward to that. Every time I've done it in the past it has been a disaster. But such is life. I'll learn.

For tonight: If I have time (it's new years eve, you know) I'll try addressing this lighting problem. And who knows, maybe I'll throw some knobs on all of those doors.

Tree or Raincoat?

2009-12-30T20:08:00.000-08:00

Ok, here are my newly sculpted trees. They need some work. Currently they look like a bunch of old ladies in raincoats walking away from the camera. But they are definitely low poly. See:

"Low poly" means (in case you want to know) that there are a small number of polygons/vertices. When you have a grandma computer like mine, that means it will take less time to render a picture or scene.

Oh the weather outside is frightful!

2009-12-29T19:25:00.001-08:00

Ok, the beginning is kind of lame because it just suddenly starts snowing. But I think the effect is pretty good, no?

Update:
1. I worked on the glowing lights issue last night and had no luck. I may have to give that dream up. The only way I can think to make it work - aside from the complicated tutorial I found on line that is about as clear as mud - is to have a tiny little light inside each bulb. But that would bring the rendering time to a screeching halt. That's just too much stuff. Until I figure out the tutorial those lights are not going to glow.

2. I think I may have to give up those trees also. I really like them, but they cost a lot of rendering time. And if I make some new ones I can put snow on them and that will look a bit more realistic. And I might be able to actually have a good number of them so it looks something like a forest in the background.

Tonight: Trees that do not have particles (it's the particles that cause the slow render) and a sky with clouds.

Snow

2009-12-28T20:23:00.000-08:00

Ok, as promised, here are some pictures of snow:

This was my first rendering of the snow. It's ok, but not what I was going for. Not a bad first effort though. The flakes are too big and too fuzzy.

I like this much better. MUCH better. I tweaked the numbers and made it a bit more snow like. I hope you like it.

The main problem I will have with this is producing enough snow to cover the whole village without shutting down the computer. As you can see in the picture below, when you pan out from the scene I'm going cheap on the snow bits.

We'll work it out.

I'm going to set my computer to try and animate this thing tonight. Hopefully I'll have something for you tomorrow. But don't hate me if I don't.

No picture - apology

2009-12-28T09:41:00.000-08:00

Dear viewer...

I worked diligently on my animation last week. But day by day I fell behind and said to myself, "I'll just cut that part out" until there was very little left of what I thought was a cute little cartoon.

1. I wasn't every able to make the light bulbs glow. I'm still struggling with this one.

2. The characters' bodies were about 70% as cool as the sketches I had worked up.

3. The characters' faces were nowhere close.

4. I hadn't even attempted lip syncing.

5. I hadn't made smoke come from the chimneys.

6. I hadn't made it snow.

Much of this, however, could have been overlooked. But, the straw that broke my back was putting the armature to the characters. I have done this before, but not in the "new" version of the program. And though I followed the instructions to a T, it didn't work. I couldn't get the armature to skin.

So I decided to forget about the Christmas deadline and instead work slowly to get the animation I want.

Tonight I am going to attempt to make it snow on my houses.
Pictures to follow tomorrow. Perhaps an animation as well.

The Matrix Has You

2009-12-20T22:12:00.000-08:00

This is what you look like in the Matrix.

Not much

2009-12-18T21:44:00.000-08:00

This is not much different from what I posted a couple of night ago. Well, not in what you see. I've added the body from yesterday, with a head, hat and scarf. The colors are different because when you import an object in Blender it doesn't retain all of the color work you did. So I'll have to go back in and redo that.

What you cannot see is that this picture took about 3 minutes to render. That hugely different from the 30 minutes it took render two nights ago. I seriously adjusted the particles on the trees and I think that helped. I also toned down the color of the trees.

On a sad note, I'm not sure this project is going to be as robust as I once envisioned. I can choose to either get it done by Christmas with most of what I wanted. Or get it done who knows when with everything. I'd rather have it done by Christmas... a week away.

So I'm afraid the words are out. I had a very short script for this scene, but the task of syncing those lips is just too ominous to wrap my brain around and finish holiday shopping. As it is I still haven't put lights around my own house, and here I have 10 fake houses with lights.

Sigh.

In case you weren't sure, this animating stuff takes a lot of work.

Plugging Away

2009-12-17T22:11:00.000-08:00

I don't know. This project is really bigger than I thought. And my getting sick this week has slowed me down.

IF I don't finish this by Christmas I will still finish it.

Above is the body of one of the characters of this little short.

It is not a great example of mesh modeling. This is a throw away character - essentially. So I'm not adding a lot of the detail needed for complicated movements and realistic bending body parts.

The legs took me about 2 hours.
The torso took me about 40 minutes to an hour.

Shame

2009-12-16T21:01:00.000-08:00

This picture turned out pretty good. But it is a shame because it took 10 minutes to render and my computer is still reeling from the effort. After the picture was rendered it took another 3 minutes for my computer to save it and another 3 to close the picture. I tried to save the scene before logging off Blender and the program is still not responding. Very frustrating. It is looking increasing like the trees will have to be left out of the final render.

That said, the trees are awfully bright. I think I know what to do to fix that. We'll see. And I still need to work on the multiple shadows as well as the non light emitting light bulbs.

Sadly, nothing in this scene took 30 minutes today. I spent about 4 hours putting snow on all of the houses, surrounding the road with a sidewalk, and surrounding everything else with snow. Then the trees and we've come full circle.

I hope you enjoy.

Houses

2009-12-13T21:10:00.000-08:00

I worked a lot this weekend on the Christmas project. I made some really good progress, but I did not get everything done I wanted to.

These are three of five houses I made. Each house took on average about 20 minutes. The first took about 40, but by the fifth about 10. So I'm counting each as a 30 minute model.

I think this one above turned out to be my favorite.

This one is ok too. It really isn't easy to create a bunch of houses that all look similar but different. How are they similar? How are they different? Would this house be found in the same neighborhood as that house? Is this one too much smaller than that? Ugh.

Finally, here is the first house with lights on it. Adding lights took a surprising amount of time. The light bulb and cord itself took about 5 minutes to do. But placing every bulb in its place took about twenty minutes itself.

Trees

2009-12-12T13:39:00.000-08:00

This is a single Pine. I didn't like how straight it was so I kinda poofed it out.

I'd like to have a bunch of these, but unfortunately... render time is terrible.

Just these seven or so took about 20 seconds to render. That doesn't seem like a lot, but remember, each second of animation is about 24 pictures.

Still, with a little tweaking I think these trees are a really cool.

BTW: These trees took 20 minutes to make!

Head Model

2009-12-10T21:14:00.000-08:00

This picture is just too close.

Ok, this isn't a 30 minute model or a Christmas project model. But I got it in my head that I could do a much better head model two days ago so I started it. I started with a profile similar to the faces I usually draw. I went from there. When it was just half a face it was looking really good. But no matter how narrow I make the face it always seems wide to me.

Below is the face straight on.

And below is the 3/4 view.

The mouth is way wide, but I think that will be an easy fix. I normally draw the bridge of my nose coming much higher up on the face. I'm not sure why that didn't work out here. I might be able to fix that. The ears are kind of a wash. I'm no good at them. I will have to do "good enough" ears until I get much better.

Hope you enjoy.

Snow House

2009-12-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

Ok. Here is the house for my Christmas animation. There will be many of these.

They are very low quality construction, but I didn't want too many vertices or it will make rendering the scene difficult, or maybe impossible. So they are very low quality.

On a sad note, I may have to make the quality of the string of lights a lot less detailed as well. They look decent now, but these houses will be from a distance, and in low light, so I'm not sure anyone would even notice how detailed the stupid little lights are anyway. And I'm falling way behind.

I'm also having some trouble getting the lights to glow. Here they are with the spot light turned off:

Clearly they are shining, but you cannot see the glow of the lights on the house. You can't even see the house. I could put a small lamp in each of those tiny lights, but that will also kill the rendering time. There is a way to make the bulbs emit light, but I haven't figured it out yet.

sigh

Furry Mittens

2009-12-06T21:16:00.000-08:00

Ok, two things have changed with the mittens. The first is that they are smoother. I smoothed them. whee.

The second change is that the left mitten has fur. I wanted these mittens to look nice and cozy, so I figured they should have a furry quality to them. Well... that took me about a week to figure out.

The good news is I figured it out. It is a very important part of modeling and animating in blender.

The bad news is that just rendering this still picture nearly shut down my computer. Animating anything with this kind of fur on it would probably send my computer into therapy. And I can't afford that.

So, as cool as the fur looks, I need to consider whether it is cool enough to have it in my Christmas animation. I just don't think I can justify it for the amount of memory it needs.

Maybe for Christmas my wife and I will commit to buying a new computer. This one is about 8 years old. It might be time.

Christmas Lights on string

2009-12-03T21:34:00.000-08:00

Well, this is better. I'm happier with it anyway.

The main problem is there are a heck of a lot of vertices in it. See here:

Each of those little purple dots is a vertex.

It doesn't look like much now, but I want hundreds of these lights in the finished product. It's gonna be tough on the old compy to render it.

Christmas Light

2009-12-02T22:15:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty disappointed in this one. I want it to emit light, which it clearly does, but I also want it to look like a Christmas bulb, which it only sorta does.

In the grand scheme of my next animation, this guy will be one of hundreds of lights and they will be so small no one will notice how wonderfully designed they are (or aren't). Still, I'm picky.

MIttens

2009-11-30T21:06:00.000-08:00

Nothing particularly interesting to report here. Took me a bit longer than 30 to model these, but I was hugely distracted. And I think I'm getting sick... again.

These gloves have no texture to them. I want them to be fuzzy mittens. That means I'm going to have to dive back into my book and figure out how to make that kind of texture. I'm fairly certain it will require a Python script. I am woefully pathetic with that.

Give Thanks

2009-11-26T05:23:00.000-08:00

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Wow. That went faster than I thought it would. Oh well.

This animation represents about a week and half of 30 minute modeling. So that's why I haven't posted much.

The sign popped up about twice as fast as I calculated. The wave was perfect.

I'm a bit pleased and disappointed in the leaf. I expected it to move extremely fast and only be visible once it landed. Sadly, it moved perfectly, but was barely visible at all.

Weaknesses:

Lighting. I need to work on that.
Length. It needs to be longer. But six seconds is my longest animation to date without repeated motion, so I'm happy.

fiddley sticks

2009-11-22T20:46:00.000-08:00

These took a whole lot longer than 30 minutes. The first one took about two hours. After that I duplicated them and then tweaked them. so each one after the first was probably another five minutes.

The colors are ok, but I was really hoping for a wider array. The yellow-green ones are supposed to be plain yellow, but they seem to have a green tinge to me. I don't like that.

Also, the little flecks of light here and there are a problem. I know why they are there. It's because I've basically taken two models and merged them, but they are still separate pieces. It make the render look wrong some times. If I tweak it some more I may be able to get rid of those issues.

Sorry this is all I have today, but it is part of a bigger project I hope to be finished with by Thursday.

Frustration

2009-11-21T18:49:00.000-08:00

I fixed the belt on the hat. I should be happy about that, but I'm not. I can't explain how I did it and that frustrates me badly. All I did was taper in the top of the belt to match the hat. But that shouldn't have been enough to get rid of the crinkly quality the belt had. Of course, it should not have been crinkly in the first place, which I also couldn't explain.

So here is the hat.

2009-11-17T18:18:00.000-08:00

You might ask, "Michael, why does the belt around the hat appear crinkley? The answer is: I don't have a clue. I will address it tonight.

I made this video last night, but it took too long to render for me to stay awake. I have a very old computer and it resents when I make it scrounge for memory.

Hat

2009-11-15T22:01:00.000-08:00

This was in an effort to be festive.

It took a few minutes more than 30, but not many. I'm not altogether happy with hit. I have no idea why the buckle on the belt of the hat has turned out so terrible. You can barely see it, and it doesn't look that different in color from the belt. However, it should be.

I will be doing a little bit more on this one, as I have a goal in mind.

PS. Yes, I am aware that I screwed up the gun rotation, yet again.
PPS. I am also aware that I suck.

Spinning Gun take 2

2009-11-13T21:25:00.000-08:00

Ok, hopefully this one will look better.

Technically this rendering didn't take 30 minutes. It took me about 5. But while I was working on it my wife decided she had to talk with me about the kids and her work and my family and hers and some other stuff... and oh yeah, she was getting her hair done tomorrow. Anyway, it took about 30 minutes after all.

Just kidding sweetheart.

Spin

2009-11-12T21:06:00.000-08:00

super - duper - lame.

As far as animations go this one is on the low end of bad. But it was just an exercise. I wanted to to accomplish two things with this animation. I wanted to be able to make something move - accomplished; and I wanted to be able to give my viewers a better look at the things I was modeling - sort of accomplished. This animation makes the model so small you can't see any detail. And I thought a 1 second rotation was the perfect speed to display a model. But apparently it's only perfect if you're ON speed.

As I was saying... as animations go this kind is one of the easiest. I'm just rotating the image before the camera. With 3D animation the real trick comes in the deformations. I'll get to that eventually, but don't expect it any time soon.

In the future I'll slow these model spins down to about a 2 second rotation. I'll also throw in a few more rotations, on the house.

Have a good weekend.

PS. Here is a picture of the gun so far:

Cauldron

2009-11-11T21:22:00.000-08:00

It's hard to get a good angle on this. I'm still not great at rendering. I smoothed out the table and the spoon a bit. I hope that looks better. These are the things I have made so far in this world. Well, they are the things I've made and shown. I have some in-progress things that won't make any sense if I show them at this point.

My 30 minute render in this one is the cauldron.

30 Minute Model

2009-11-10T20:59:00.000-08:00

Absolutely nothing special about a wooden spoon. Unless, of course, it's all you have to stir your soup with. Then it's pretty darn special. These posts get boring, I know, but building a scene takes time. Hopefully soon I'll have some pics with a bunch of stuff all thrown into one wonderful pic. Until then, enjoy the spoon.

Sorry about the break in posts. I won't say that it won't happen again.

Ray Gun 3

2009-11-01T20:48:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure how different this will look. I actually gave color to the whole gun, but it looks very similar to what I posted before. I'll keep working on it.

Ray Gun 2

2009-11-01T20:12:00.001-08:00

Here I've added some detail to the gun. I'm not done with it just yet. I haven't textured it at all, except for the scope lens. I have Tuesday off and I plan on doing something cool, if I can manage it.

This is technically Saturday night's post. I screwed up my monitor on Friday and I wasn't able to work at all. Then Saturday I got my monitor working (meaning that my wife got my monitor working), but I couldn't get on-line. If I have 30 minutes tonight I'll add some more to it and post it really quick.

Ray Gun

2009-10-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

Ok, tonight I decided that you deserved more than 5 minutes. Sadly, the 30 minutes I put into this project only netted me this. I will put about two more hours into it and you guys can watch it grow.

The gun itself is based on a drawing I did, which was obviously influenced by the "blasters" from the original Star Wars trilogy. I have made them a little more "ray gun" in this model.

Next I need to add some beveling to the sides of the body and grip. A trigger might be nice too. Finally I'll give it some texture. We'll see how it turns out.

Candle

2009-10-28T21:28:00.001-07:00

It's a candle.

Kind of boring. I wanted to do a book but I was drawing and I got carried away, so I ran out of time. I also considered doing an candle that has been melted down a little. But since those are typically asymmetrical it would be considerably more difficult.

This actually took me about 5 minutes.

Maybe this weekend I'll be able to pump out a bunch of models. Perhaps even a face.

Most disappointing to me so far are those jagged lines. No matter how I smooth the model out and make it look all clean my renderings still have those tell tale jagged edges that reveal it is a computer image. And a poor computer image at that.

I don't know if the jaggedness is caused by the rendering or the modeling. I'm assuming it is the rendering since this candle is pretty smooth and simplistic. I'll have to read up on this and figure out what I'm doing wrong. If you know feel free to share.

thanks

3D

2009-10-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

Ok, I've decided to try and do a 30 minute model each night. That way I still have time to do the other things that the voices keep telling me to do.

The model above is a bottle. It actually took me considerably longer than 30 minutes, but this isn't the model I made tonight. The primary reason it took so long was that I forgot how to give two separate textures to a single mesh. Mesh is the 3D jargon for a single model.

I could have gone with a bottle then done a separate wooden label, but I thought I remembered reading somewhere that it was better to do them as one. So it took me about an hour to find the instructions and fiddle with it until I got it right. Incidentally, during my reading I learned that No, in fact it is not necessarily better to use one mesh with different textures. But by the time I had read that I was already invested. So there.

This model is what I worked on tonight. How is it different? you ask. Well, this bottle has a cork in it.

The cork did not take me 30 minutes to model. In actuality it took me about 3 minutes to model. And you can barely see it so I'd say that's 3 minutes used wisely.

Every journey begins with a single step people.

Jeez.

Ok...

2009-10-22T19:53:00.000-07:00

Ok, it has been so long since I last posted that an apology would really be insulting the intelligence of anyone who might stop by. But I'm sorry anyway.

Lately I've been spending a bunch of time pretending I'm not depressed and looking at the clothes in my floor, thinking, "Where did my inspiration go?"

Blah, blah, blah. Boo hoo.

As per usual, I've got way too many irons in the fire and way too many projects going. But I'm not going to show you any of those. Posting my project WIPs on this site has been a death sentence for every project I've show you guys thus far. So I'm only going to show you the practice pieces I've produced to try and get other projects rolling.

This is a face. I made this face in Blender. Yes, it is bad. But it was my first fully completed head that looked anything remotely like it was supposed to. In case you are wondering, it was supposed to look like a wide eyed boy of about 10 or 11 years.

This is the first stage of a long faced man. In my drawing style (see previous posts) I tend to like oddly shaped characters. Those oddly shaped characters, it turns out, are hella hard to model in 3D. alas.

This stage is very blocky.

Here he is with some skin and a second half.

And here he is with some seriously creepy eyes.

Thanks for stopping by.

marine

2009-06-11T19:29:00.000-07:00

I think it looks like my brother-in-law. Anyway, just another practice with the layers.

A post?

2009-06-04T16:49:00.001-07:00

Here is another Wacom drawing. This one was done in Pixia. I'm trying to figure out these layers. So far I'm sucking.

I know this doesn't make up for not posting in a about 8 months. I'm sorry. Sort of. I won't promise more frequency. I just don't think I can keep that promise.

Anyway, :)

pit stop

2008-11-04T06:59:00.000-08:00

I have run into some problems with Blender that it will take me some time to fix. In my real job I work in Employment Services with the government. And with the economy being what it is my job is hell right now. So I cannot predict when I will be able to work on Blender or even draw a picture. I'll post as I can.

For now, please accept his picture of my pumpkin as my most recent piece of art. I was particularly proud of it. The gourd was approximately 7 inches in diameter.

Wacom practice in Paint

2008-10-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

Wave Machine

2008-10-06T21:51:00.000-07:00

It doesn't seem like much, I know. But it took me about 4 hours just to get the robot to wave. That was just from rigging the armature and skinning it to the arm of ONE SIDE. I still have the right arm to do tomorrow. Sheesh.

Some day I'd like to actually understand what I'm doing here. I'm sure it will make for a much smoother process if I comprehend the fundamentals of WHY I'm doing what I'm doing. But right now I pretty much don't have a clue. I just keep doing things and when they work I say to myself, "Alright! We'll figure it out later."

More Blender

2008-09-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

So I decided I wanted to try to use Blender to build one of my drawings. Here is the drawing I decided on:

Here is the robot thus far:

The head is a little less domed that it probably ought to be. But the more domed I made it the less smooth is seemed to get.

For anyone who cares, here is a picture of the wire mesh of the head:
The eyes were remarkably hard for me. I wanted perfectly round circles. But then I found that perfectly round from the front view can look pretty bizarre from the side view. I'm kind of embarrassed, but it took me a couple of days to get that right. There is probably a much easier way, but I don't know it.

The next picture I hope to render this week is one similar to the original drawing. In order to do that I have to give this guy bones. This is a bit more tedious than you might imagine. You have to name each one of those little things:

Still, this is proving a nice little distraction from actually accomplishing anything. I'll give $30 to anyone will mow my yard. I'll give you $50 if you'll provide your own gas.

Video

2008-09-17T21:05:00.000-07:00

Hello, everyone.

My cousin (Taylor Dorris) e-mailed me yesterday to tell me he had finished a short film. It is 5+ minutes long. Please go have a look and vote on it. You don't have to tell me what you think. I didn't make it. Plus, I know you will like it.

http://www.chillertv.com/D2D2/Videos/?uv=281574

Take a look at some of the other flicks too. Good stuff!

Let's get excited about glass!

2008-09-10T21:28:00.000-07:00

Ok! I finally did it. I finally figured out how to do glass.

So I made a fish bowl. Cuz that's what glass was invented for. And then I put an unfinished goldfish in it. There is no water... that is true. But as the fish has no eyes or mouth, I don't think it cares. Yet. As soon as I give him eyes he'll probably start freaking out.

Anyway, triumph for me. I made glass.

Side note: It's not like the Blender community won't show you exactly how to do that if you ask. I even read the instructions on how to make glass. But for some reason it didn't work the 10 times before when I tried it. It worked this time though, and that's what matters.

Well, it doesn't matter much, but it matters some.

Tomorrow I'll try to throw some texture on the fish and maybe give it a name.

3 Weeks and 3 3D renders

2008-09-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

3 Weeks? Holy crap!!! Have I been gone that long?

Short explanation: You know that Economic Relief package that Congress and the President passed recently? Well, I've been on a team for the last 3 weeks trying to get those Extended Unemployment checks out qualified Georgians. Very tedious. Very time consuming.

And, as I mentioned last post, my friend with the scanner moved, so I have no one to bum a scan off of.

Ok, so I have this program that is totally free and totally available to download on-line. It's called Blender and if you are interested in 3D modeling, but cannot afford to shell out $3000 to $4000 for a program you might never use, then Blender is your program. Did I mention that it is totally free?
http://www.blender.org/

Anyway, while I am sans picture scanner I'll be doing a lot more computer work. So that this blog won't totally shrivel up and die.

My first project was an experiment in Materials. I went for a simple box room, a lamp to test shadows, and a basic geometric dude. The error I made here is that I forgot to make each thing a separate object. So essentially the dude, the lamp and the room are all part of the same object. Thus when I tried to color one thing, I colored everything. I'm sure there is a way to separate different items from each other, but I opted to start fresh.

Take 2, same principle. This time I remember to make each thing a different object. The TV was my daughter's idea. She wanted a TV with a recliner. I told her I needed a lamp to produce light so I could make shadows and such. She suggested the TV provide the light. I really liked that idea. Not bad for an 8 year old. The error here is not the uncolored lamp. I was just being lazy there. The error is the right side of the dude (camera's perspective). His right and left leg and sleeve should be exactly the same. On top of that his chest should be a light purple.

What happened here was that his torso and right side are facing the back of the room. Why did that happen? I don't freakin' know. Why should it matter? I'm not sure about that either. If anyone can explain it in 2 paragraphs or less, please do. Or if you want to provide a link...

In the final render I've solved the problem of the reversed torso and appendages. I still don't know why it happened, but at least I figured out a fix.

My next step is to figure out Textures. I have applied some in this scene, but not many. The 3D modeling part (for me) is really the easy part. Applying textures is the hard part. Textures are the difference between an object looking smooth and fake and an object looking "realistic."

I hope you enjoy.

2008-07-21T12:23:00.000-07:00

Hey guys.

I haven't abandoned this blog, I've just had some issues of late.

Issue 1: The friend who normally scans my pics is now sans scanner. So I don't have a current way of getting any new drawing onto the specialnet.

Issue 2: My first round of animation with sound proved to be an utter disaster and failure. I can't even post the bits on-line because it would make no sense to you. I may have to start all over.

In the mean time I will try and get something up that you can look at.

Distraction

2008-06-23T06:02:00.001-07:00

These guys were a fun little distraction from the pirate project.

I don't know which color I like better. Probably the blue and pink, but I really do like the green and brown one.

The jagged style of the zombie character was inspired by the very cool works of Josh Parpan. See the links on the side of the page for his blog.

Celebrities

2008-06-17T20:12:00.001-07:00

Here is Angelina Jolie. She's really big in Japan.
Steve Buscemi is known for his puppetry. He is also a catcher's mit.
Gabrielle Anwar is a person.
Madonna was a person when I was kid.
Probably the most famous of the group is Sponge Bob Square Pants' Driving Instructor. I couldn't get Sponge Bob to model for me, but his instructor was game. She kept insisting that I draw her nude, which was way creepy. Finally I did, but I cropped it out and repressed the memory.

PS. I have not quit the Pirate project. I am still working on it, but because of the size of it there is little to show. I want to unveil it when I have something worthy of you wonderful people. No, not you guys, the other ones. Yeah, you.

Women Studies

2008-06-17T20:02:00.000-07:00

Above: Man dressed as woman, zombie woman, fish-woman in a wind tunnel, and Ronald McDonald's mother.
The above studies were to practice lips. I'm not great with lips.
The studies below were to study below. I'm not great at drawing bottoms either.
I felt compelled to edit out the nipple in the above picture. I'm not sure why, considering all of the bottoms and considering the fact that it isn't the first nipple to make an appearance on this blog.

Boat Animation

2008-06-09T22:06:00.000-07:00

NOTE: The first time this clip play it goes by way too fast. Play it a second time for the real speed.

So here is my first animation in a long time. There is more to come, but I'm showing the steps because otherwise I wouldn't have a post here for a month or so.

My effort was to make this boat look, relatively, like a normal boat would floating along on the sea. If you think it is rocking too much, or not enough, or if you have any other comments, let 'em fly.

Thanks.

Boats

2008-06-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

If you are very careful, quiet and patient, you can catch a pirate dingy in its natural environment.

I rendered this with After Effects. It's primarily for rendering animation, so I don't know if I did this still picture correctly. I probably could have compressed the heck out of it if I had known what I was doing. But I don't. So there.

Long time no post.

2008-06-03T06:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's been a while.
But I have noticed that I am not the only blogger that has seen a lull in posting. I was wondering if it had anything to do with all of this talk about the Orphaned Works Act that is floating around. Any thoughts?

I looked up the law here:
http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200804/042408e.html

But I think the most important part of the text is this:

Our legislation permits the use of an orphan work only if the potential user performs and documents a good faith search for the copyright owner. If users cannot locate and contact copyright owners, they may use the orphan work. But if copyright owners later make themselves known, and if users have performed a search that qualifies under this legislation, owners are entitled to reasonable compensation. The user will not be liable for full statutory damages in those circumstances, but if a user does not perform that good faith search, the user will face up to $150,000 in statutory damages.

True, a company can avoid the full $150,000.00 penalty for using your stuff by making even the most absurd "reasonable" effort. But if they use your stuff and you come forward you are entitled to reasonable compensation. Let's face it, isn't that what we want anyway? Reasonable compensation?

There are some problems with the law, I will grant that. For example, if I was working on a project and I posted some preliminary pictures, someone could use the pics before I got a chance to. So when I finally got my stuff out it would seem old and perhaps copied to those who didn't know I was the original creator. But I don't think this law is the monster the blogging community thinks it is.

But I've been wrong before.

Anyway... this is a picture/sketch blog so here you go.

This is a colored boat:
And I don't mean that in a 50s-60s, deep-south way.
I just mean that it is a boat that is colored.
Brown mostly. Though this particular boat is open to all colors.

More Pirates

2008-05-19T19:03:00.000-07:00

Well, here are more pirates for you motley lot. I didn't meant to save the best for last, but i messed up. So here's the best for the day:

Scroll further if you must.

I'm not even sure why he's thrown in with the pirates.

This guy is mega-ugly. No offense ugly guy.

When I drew the boobs on this picture I thought it was going to rock. Turns out my wife was right, there is more to a woman than boobs. Who knew?

5 o'clock shadow

2008-05-19T05:46:00.000-07:00

Here he is in all his 5 o'clock shadowy glory. It's kinda hard to keep a sharp point on a color pencil.

Anyway, reposting the picture was really just an excuse to tell this little anecdote. I was in the hospital's MRI waiting room for about 4 hours last Monday. Everyone had been there for a horrible amount of time. While there I was drawing; trying to flesh out some characters. Anyway, after a good little while a man said, "Are you an illustrator?"

I looked up and around the room. No one else was drawing. Then I found the guy who asked and he was looking at ME! AWESOME! For the first time in my life I said, "Yes," to that question. It felt good. I was drawing, he was watching. It was cool.

Then he asked, "Who do you work for?"

The story kinda falls apart there.

Pirate or Whaler?

2008-05-17T18:57:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of reasons why I'm not entirely happy with this picture. One of them is because I set out to draw a pirate and then realized halfway through that pirates don't exactly fight whales unless they have to. But that's ok. I can pretend that this pirate stole some booty from this whale and it pissed him off, and now it's come down to fisticuffs; or finicuffs, as it were.

The main problem I have with the picture is that the pirate isn't exactly looking at the whale. It's like perhaps there is another whale, more threatening than the deadly one shown here, just off the page that the pirate is aiming for. That one is a more imminent threat that must be dealt with first! This one on the page is the little brother.

I'm also not too happy with the waves or the fact that the whale looks pretty bad in general.

I am happy about the pirates five o'clock shadow. That is pretty bitchin' if I do say so myself.

Pirates Ideas

2008-05-08T07:43:00.001-07:00

I love pirates. I have some ideas for some pirate animation. The problem is I don't really have any characters yet. I'm torn between going with low detail pirates (easier to animate) and slightly less low detail pirates (a bit trickier to animate). I don't want to say high detail because, frankly, I don't do high detail. Character design is not easy.

Anyway, there is a tough line to walk there. High detail can look really cool, but it can also be distracting. Low detail can look hella plain, but it can also be done relatively well. I'd give examples, but the only people reading this damn blog are artists, so don't act like you don't already know. Jeez.

Here is a boat. I expected you guys to know that.

Earth Day

2008-04-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

I wanted to have this one up by Earth Day. Sorry. I also wanted to save the world from global warming when I was in middle school. I'm behind on that one too.

Some Inks

2008-04-23T19:40:00.000-07:00

These old folks were fun. I was trying to do a characature of my parents, but I missed the mark by a good bit. They were supposed to go along with the spikey haired guy I've been having some fun with lately. Oh well, they'll still go in with him, but they won't be his folks. Or maybe they will. It's not like I looked like that guy.

This lady was inspired while I was watching Cowboy Bebop. I love her, but she won't love me back.

I drew the first three in the quintet. Actually, I only drew it once, and then photo copied it. But I colored the first three. The negative I did in a photo program. No skill there.

Atlanta is Constipated

2008-04-11T06:26:00.000-07:00

The Atl is a really cool place to live.

It's just not a cool place to drive or breathe.

I've been experimenting with brush pens. They are totally awesome. If you like to paint and you like the feel of ink then you need to use a brush pen. I'm only starting to get the hang of it, but I really like it. I was devastated, however, when I went to Michaels and found that their selection of brush pens was abysmal. I don't even have the first clue of where else to go.

Take Note LePlume manufacturer: I was prepared to spend a small fortune on a rainbow array of brush pens this last week. But no, now I can't.

I'm also experimenting with black and white. Knowing exactly how much to leave white is a skill that I have discovered I do not have. I don't get it. I've seen some artists leave almost the entire picture white and still give the impression of darkness. I saw a book on Noir comic drawing last week. It basically told how to ink. At the time I thought the topic was way too rhudementary to require a whole book. Now I think I will go back and buy it.

I get up too early.

2008-04-10T13:15:00.000-07:00

This is me
every day.

Good Some Day

Forest

Moon

Cul du Sac

Trees

Time

Roach 7

Roach 6

Roach 5

Roach 4

Roach 3

Roach 2

Pumpkins

Roach

Ugh! Over a month!

More project

Project Update

Problems

Quick pic

Projects

Discovery channel.

More post its

Post Its

Project for my son

Work

something

Coming along

Step by step

Save frequently

Yay.

Hands

Mostly done.

Face It.

Put a Lid on It

Heavenly Host of Colors

Process

Fastest Smoke in the West

More of the face

In your face!

3/4

Mouth

Lame

Sky

Tree or Raincoat?

Oh the weather outside is frightful!

Snow

No picture - apology

The Matrix Has You

Not much

Plugging Away

Shame

Houses

Trees

Head Model

Snow House

Furry Mittens

Christmas Lights on string

Christmas Light

MIttens

Give Thanks

fiddley sticks

Frustration

Hat

Spinning Gun take 2

Spin

Cauldron

30 Minute Model

Ray Gun 3

Ray Gun 2

Ray Gun

Candle

3D

Ok...

marine

A post?

pit stop

Wacom practice in Paint

Wave Machine

More Blender

Video