Goodbye from uni this year.

Last post from university this year, I think.  Unless I have to come back on Friday for some reason.

Doodled this up:

A little scrawl for a two-week series at church next year.

That's about it.

Now that I have a day off on the horizon, I'm rather ill.  I'm going to go home and get into bed to either play Borderlands 2 or sleep.  I'm not sure yet.  Probably sleep.

Have a wonderful Christmas if I don't speak again before.

Peace.

One more before Christmas.



One more before Christmas from uni, anyway.  I'll most likely be posting from home when we get back there later this month.

Here's a little more finished image of the alien:

Not posed as dynamically as possible, but I just need the hard model for before Christmas.  Skeletons can be put in later.

I'm also working on a few quick projects for different folks.  Here are a couple:

One of the homeless gentlemen that my wifey and I see and chat to.

 





And a doll for a "Team Bass" T-shirt that is hopefully going to get printed.  I'm pretty happy with it.  I've not worked with the Lichtenstein-type dots before, so it was nice to give it a go.  And yea.  That's a hashtag.

 

That's about it for today.  I'm off to play Borderlands 2, read a bit of Arthur Conan Doyle's finest writings and eat something.  Maybe not in that order.

 

Peace.

 

Happy Tuesday!

Just a quick post before I go to my first ever Lacrosse practice.  There's something.

Finished off the alien I'd wanted to get done - hopefully I'll be printing it out in 3D on Friday.  If the guy who runs the shop is in.  Which I hope he is.

Here it is:

I'm pretty pleased with it, even though I need to tidy if up a whole lot and then figure out some sort of texture...

Lacrosse.

Peace.

Essay day.

My Literature and Contextual essay has been handed in.  Hurrah!

I'd've normally said that it was a huge weight off my shoulders but, to be honest, since I handed in the bulk of the writing last week and only really had to make amendments this week, once I'd handed it in today, it didn't feel too different.  I guess procrastinating and doing things last minute feels better in the end.

Now to go home and play Borderlands 2.

The Strategy Guide for which I bought this morning.

I can't wait to read it again and again.

Although I found something that made me a little sad...

I played for a while as Zer0 - an assassin that is great at sniping and ranged attacks, but also good at getting out of a close-combat situation by throwing out a hologram of himself that the enemies attack; letting you, the player, run away and flank or recover somewhat.

One of the lovely bits I found in the game was ClapTrap's storage unit - it's basically a safe that you can put items in so that they can share those items with other characters.

I thought - like with the first game - one could run concurrent games with every available character.  If you're at level 25 with one class and want to try something different, then you could go to the home screen, start again and once you've saved your second class at, let's say, level 7; you could then go back to the home screen and pick up the game with your level 25 character.  All good.

When I saw this little storage unit and made that connection, I thought it'd be great to find something as an assassin and store it for use by my commando.

I obviously didn't think about the loophole that such a perk would enable - finding a great weapon further in the game only to go back and share it with a character that would otherwise have to work for it.

So there went me signing out of a good game with a teen-level Zer0, to sign in with this guy:

Axton.  The commando.  He's like Roland in the first game, but his perk is a little better and - as with the rest of the characters - much more customisable.  I could go down one path and trick out my turret with two guns, I could add rocket launchers to it, magnetise it or even have two.  It's great.

But after I saved my second game and tried to nip back on to my first, it was gone.

Buh.

I guess I'm set to play as Axton now.

But no matter.  At least it wasn't my third or fourth choice of character to play...

I'm going home.

Peace.

More model work.

Thought I'd throw up another post before I go home.

Broady the Patient has been talking me through his way of modeling again - I was doing some Josh's way and it was going really well, but then my ortho didn't load, so I couldn't see what I was meant to be modeling...  Not that good if you can't really model confidently yet.

So here's the 'start with a square and go from there' approach:

From the left; a first basic shape.  I duplicated the thing after this, so I haven't got the very beginning.  But that's just a cube, so I'd hope you can picture it.  Then there's some more arm and leg stuff going on there next to it, followed by some torso shaping, more arms and a bit of leg work.  After that, I put a tail on it and shaped it up a bit more before then duplicating it again twice more - once for the shape I've been working on all day and then again so I could flip it and join the two together to get the full body.  Not too shabby.  Friday sees hands, feet, the head and a shell getting put on there.

I can't wait.

Right now, it's time to go home to my wifey!

I have a guest spot coming up soon on a friend's blog, so I'll get writing and posting that.  Exciting stuff!

Peace.

Sketches!

Another post with a load of sketchbook pages here for you.  I've been doodling away for the past few weeks in the times between loading screens and meals.  It's been pretty nice trying to draw one character over and over again in different poses.  Something I should do more of - it's nice to get to know a character like that, I guess.

Here it is/they are:

 

 

One of the first doodles after I'd got a better idea of what I was wanting the aliens to look like.  During a lecture in which I probably should have been taking notes.  I took a few notes.

 

 



I call this 'The Tired Page'.  You know those days that don't really go right?  None of the lines you want to draw will go where you want them to.  This whole page was like that.  And I was tried which made it immesureably worse.

A bit happier with this one!  There's a little squid robot in the bottom left there, but other than that, this is an all-alien page.  I thought it'd look better for the aliens to wield more primitive weapons - guns and technology are cool and all, but I thought aliens and guns are drawn together a lot, so why not be different?

Another page of poses.  At the bottom left here is one of the royal bloodline aliens.  Their shells are much more rounded and they have a more heavier-set body type than the working classes and savages.

Another helpful note-taking session in a lecture.

Yet more poses.  There's only so many ways to introduce a page like this.  I think I've exhausted them.

 

And another not-so-hot doodle page.  There'll be something useable there, but it'll take a while to find it.

 

Thanks again for reading.  I really appreciate your time.

 

Peace.

SAVE YOUR WORK.

I don't know how many times I've told myself this.  And other people.  But I was working in Maya just now when I thought "I know.  I'm great with Maya, so I'll use this shortcut."  All of a sudden, my half-baked, half alien model seemed to wormhole in on itself and I couldn't undo it.

Just as I was shouting at myself and flailing my arms (I find this helps in any situation), the good old Broady came over and proceeded to correct the problem.

I saved it straight away and have done several times since it happened ten minutes ago.

Live and learn and all that.

Here's what I'm working on at the moment:

I'm going about it in a (theoretically) much easier way and my hope for this model is to get it printed in 3D.  Not the great 3D that I got these printed in:

No, no.  That would require texturing and all of that.  No, I'm going with a solid colour just so I can get the basic shape.  It's cheaper to use the method that gets me the same colour, too, so that's another plus.

Thinking about it; I think I may try one more way of modeling the next time I start.  It'll be slower to get going, but I think it'll save a bit more time once I've connected up all the faces and edges and verts and whatever else I decide to merge and fuse and bond.

A little more news right now; I am now the proud and excited owned of Brink and Borderlands 2.  Fun stuff.

I wanted Brink since I saw the trailer for it a long time ago.  I waited for the release and then realised that I wouldn't really have time to play it and I'd also probably want to wait until we have the internet so I can get online.  Unfortunately, a shedload of patches were released within a day of the game's release which I think hampered what could have been a huge start to the game.

Borderlands had me gripped - much to the dislike of my wifey.  Playing the main game and two of the DLCs was really fun and although I still have some achievements to get (which I so very desperately need to get), I'm about ready to start the new game and get going.

I got it pre-owned, as I do most of my games (I got Brink for £3).  I missed out on the Borderlands 2 half price week last week, which sucks.  It'd have been the first brand new game I'd have bought in a long time.  But hey.  I still got it fairly cheap.  And it's still Borderlands 2.

I may well spend a little more time on this alien model and update again in a bit.

Peace.