Discovering My "Technical Process"

THE IMPORTANCE OF ORGANIZING LIKE A MOFO...

SETTING UP--
The MAJOR ONES FOR ME:

1. Preparing My Resources for Impending Problems
Spending more time preparing for HOW to go about the work than actually working will hopefully help save more time in the long haul (HOPEFULLY).

I've gone through my all the resources that I had in my office and scanned in pages from hard copies of areas in 3D that I know I'm going to have to confront at some point during the duration of this side project, but as of right now chew my nails thinking about. Those, for me include Rendering, Lighting, and Color. Everyone has there own technical soft spots.

I wanted easy access in times of need... so I rummaged through over two dozen issues of 3D world magazine (one of my favorite resources) table of contents in search of anything and everything covering those subjects and scanned away for my own handy archive. I've also started bookmarking sites into folders for quick reference. And searching for video tutorials. I've decided my major focus for this project is going to be to try to take on learning and incorporating Vray. I also feel a need for a very straight-arrow purpose with projects that are outside of my own. It gives me a driving point and helps me get through the long hours. The mental and physcial stress warrants the construction of as many purposes as possible.

2. Disciplining Myself
I'm trying my best to be my own teacher. I trust that if there was absolutely NO ONE out there to help-- that I could rely on myself and only have "go-to" when there is absolutely no solution in troubleshooting to very specific questions. (Which can happen more often than not when one has specific goals). But HEED: You do not want too be needy (You lose friends that way).

Really, though, the only way you'll truly learn is the hard way. The easy way only offers solutions that are sourced from others and everyone's approach is different, but in the end sometimes the best way to remember is through recycling your own studying and memorization skills. In any event, whichever works. You know the way you learn best and how your brain filters information, as do I for myself... But remember that you should be the one to discipline yourself above all.

3. Warm up Days.
When it comes to computers and software, I find that negligence from one program versus another seems to occur more often than not as I try to expand my intersts. When it comes to a job, I now find my frazzled and frustarting trying to navigate the interface once again. Fumbling with hotkeys and hestitate with mouseclicks, trying to fire up the fibers of tips and tricks learned but now settled into the back corners of my squareheaded brain... It's frustrating. Maddening, really. I wanted to scream tonight, but instead I left the computer to exercise out the pummeling agression that was brewing-- than sat back down and decided its best to take it easy first-- I stretched! Always stretch they say, no? :)

I was taught in Maya and am very comfortable in the interface, but have also learned some heavy fundentals of 3DSMax as well over the last two years. Now, I still love Maya with all my heart, especially for character modeling and I will return, but went with 3DSMax on this project for these reasons:

1). The product files that I was given for the shower drains are dwg extensions, which stores 2D and 3D dimensional design data from AutoCad, I believe, and is unrecognized in Maya.

2. The Measuring Tools and Unit Set-up in 3DSMax are excellent for building to scale in order to attain proper lighting.

3). Arch and Design Materials. So much less of a headache than building my own shading networks in the hypershade from scratch, which I enjoy, but outside of budgets and time constraints.

A note for both: ALWAYS delete the preferences extension! Trying to select more than one object, wasn't possible without doing this. And for both programs tends to make your workflow super buggy.

So, it starts. THE SET-UP in 3DSMax.

I've officially dove back in the wonderful world of 3D and have now started the process of 3D layout for more some more intensive previsualization. When it's all said and done, I will post pictures of the progress.

For now, the website has to go on hold. With a snapshot the last page in the works, now in dreamweaver with working rollovers and spans that will take the you onto a page for dedicated to individual characters and/or styles:



What I will try to do, is sketch more... These long excerpts need some drawings attached. Until next time!

Elementary School Hustler...

(ICE MAN)
As I continue to trudge through the website which I'm now onto laying out in "2D Characters" page in Photoshop, stressing through the process of weeding through my most dominating collection of work by far... I dug through piles of my oldest preserves, some dating back to pieces as early on as 1994. Some, I'm SURE, were from even before then, but were left without a specific date (I've always had a very bad habit of intentionally not dating my work). This is one of them:


(MY OLD SCHOOL LEMON/LIME GAME CONCEPT)

I could swear two years afterward they made a video game featuring lemons and limes, but I probably just dreamt it. I'm still googling to see if I crafted this in my head. Someone please let me know if you can recall a lemon/lime video game --serious! (By the way, if they didn't produce a game of this theme, I do consider this entire blog, both ideas and artwork, an unofficial proof of copyright ... I consider this blog a foster parent to some of my temporary orphaned works). Copyright is expensive, but I will be making it happen! What's up with this 'orphan law' anyway? It feels wrong, but what can you do? I hate to think of some of my work as orphaned anyway... Feels like bad parenting.

So, yeah, no defined date on that one... Definitely before '94, Definitely very young, but still had my mini game designer cap none the less. ;)

Young work? I was an honest fair but non-certfied art hustler. Each day when I was in 5th grade, I used to take requests from the other kids in my class, go home, draw, and then return the following morning with a stack full of custom cartoons. I used to sell them for a quarter each. And I used to sometimes go home with about $7.00 a day. My friend, Vicky, then joined me, and then it was both she and I leaving with arms empty of drawings and pockets full of change.

We followed a system of style that my friend was able to pick up fast-- but mostly my usual distinctions-- big interesting eyes mostly and wild-looking smiles. The designs were simple enough to hash out in under two minutes--- or atleast it felt that way... and I guess they were entertaining enough for a kid to shell out a quarter.

I forgot about that up until now. It's funny the stories that begin to surface sorting through everything. I wonder if any of my classmates still have any of them. One of them I remember in particular for some reason-- It was a Frog named Goober. It seems the harder I try to visualize the curves of the character to remember how to draw it, the farther away from me the memory feels, but when I don't try so hard to rememeber, the experience of seeing the image as a whole is so vivid still. Wild. I wonder if other artists go through that. A teacher once taught my to study the lines, then close your eyes and continue to try to see those exactly lines in your head, working down the image piece by piece: studying, then shutting off your eyes and turning on your brain. Great piece of advice. Another one that stuck. And a lot harder to do than one would think.

(CLOSELY RESEMBLEMED TO THIS CHARACTER: BENBEEZER)

So, to close up this here is another valuable lesson for me... In bringing in my old traditional work for this never ending website capsule of mine, I became familiar with how to mimic some of my traditional design techiniques digitally. Coming from a traditional background and confessing to not touching a computer for graphics until I was 22, I still find it very diffcult to get comfortable "free" drawing on the computer and I yearn to draw again-- painting digitally would be pristine if I could just encompass the same components in my strokes and shadows that made my designs unique. And tonight I felt I found some resemblances.

My Test: To Match up areas where strokes were lacking, parts of the bodies were blurry, the page was discolored, the leg or arm was distorted or needed to be moved... All of those replacement areas in photoshop had to be the same as my drawings. Making one match to the other was the key component to matching my traditional paper style. Corel Painter I heard was easiest to embody the realism of traditional work-- One day, I hope to play in it. I heard it's great!

But back to where the challenges that come in for ALL the elementary shcool hustlers out there... The moral of my story or the drive behind it?

The sense of learning, comfort, and confidence that one wants to feel as an artist determined to be an true artist, digital or the latter, and the amateur determined to be a success climbing on and UP the ladder.