The following images are renders of 3d models i created inside maya. I’ve always used Blender over Maya but recently decided to give Maya a go. Like Blender, Maya also uses Python as a scripting language.
I’ve got modeling sorted, still have to learn rigging and animation. These are simple inside Blender, but i struggle with Maya.
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The place I was staying in Wellington didn’t have any internet. I spent my last night there working for several hours in GIMP – I modeled a new scene and worked with an older one. I want to take more of my sketchbook works into Blender.
I’ll start with the new scene I made. Inspration for this comes from the street drawings of powerpoles and trees. Digital paintings have been using to texture. I started with just basic color textures but found the paintings felt more complete.
Wireframe view. From left – camera, streetlight, spotlight, tree claw, and in the back the streetpole has been repeated several times. The ground and side are 2d planes with a painting projected onto the. I also used a standard area light to light the whole scene.
Solid view. The pole and tree are UV mapped with a santa digital work I did for SketchDaily. The background and floor are digital landscape painting
It was fun to create something completely new. I often recycle my models, without impoving on them. I’m very much interested in lighting and camera angles.
Wireframe of a recycled scene. The four leggef creature was created sometime ago in blender. Since then I have experimented with him in several scenes.I have also started using the model as part of the enviroments. Stone, frozen in time. The chairs and desk have been used before. They make helpful props.
Side is a recent digital painting of ChCh. These common street views have become more and more of a major project for me. I am over half way full in my landscape sketchbook. I’m certainly a huge fan of rectangle shaped paper – I would use it commonly at TLC for life drawing.
Floor is a warm up digital painting – just scribble of lines to develop my strokes.
Another view of the scene.
Video of rendered footage. Plenty of experiments with lighting and cameras. Attempts to make seamless footage.
Friday went well. Russel was the model again. I wasn’t happy with the works I drew on Monday – just wasn’t in a good space. Friday was much better!
My surface to work on was large. I turned a fold up table on its side and used it as a backing board! I had pre-cut most of the paper so the size isn’t larger that I’m working on – though I was able to fit more figures along the page. Wish I had taken photos! I’m planning on doing it again (maybe even on Monday if there is room) so will be able to upload photos of the setup. People were impressed!
Here’s the drawings from the day. All completed with 4b pencil and colored pencils:
Gestural, warm ups. I’ve been exploring turning the figure into shapes in order to capture the complete model quickly. Enjoyable. The pencil has been nice to use – I spent so much time with colored pencil, the detail and feel of pencil is different… strange really.
This was a final pose of the day. I had asked if we could do a series of poses. Each pose was two minutes – and I’d get the model to spin around on the spot – holding the same pose. This allows me to capture the front, side and back. Russel misunderstood this and choose a new ‘action’ pose each spin. I really love this one though – maybe I’ll have to ask other models to redo this pose. Bringing a gun (toy of course) to class could work well.
The word for this pose was dance. Again – I could see this working well for a spinning pose. All it really needs is better lighting so I can capture the lights and darks quickly. Flat lighting is hard. 
With this Russel held the same pose in each turn. Can totally tell that he’s turning around. I’ll take this into Blender/3d and model it out. Wish it had color! 
Gestural works. Lots of experimenting with scale. I think I spent an hour working on the same paper so build up a large amount of figures on the same page. I’d like to work with more of those two min poses – collecting a large amount of model rotation poses. All on the same page would be impressive. 
Color. Different. Using green as a line 
Longer poses. I wasn’t happy with this pose – back poses like this always give me very little to work with. I had a go with my white charcoal – something I havn’t used since the beginning of last term
Another longer pose. I’m not sure if this is working – it seems broken and incomplete.
Another turning model pose. Again I’ll take this into Blender and model it out. I had time to capture some light in the pose but would like to have a better lighting setup so I didn’t struggle so much. 
I quite like how this came out. Exploring perspective with both feet – especially the one that’s close! Dan talked about the negative spare – mentioning how some of the lines are working and some seem off. 
This is tidyer. I like tidy. Even though my bedroom is a total mess. I like clarity in my life drawing. The left foot is working well – got positive comments from Megan and Dan about this. The middle portrait is my favorite portrait of the day. Dan mentioned – It’s very Russel. The shading technique – straight lines is new for me and I’ll explore it further. An exercise Dan got some of the class to do was straight lines. I was impressed by several works in the class. Including Megans – who was using promarkers to draw. I’ve used promarkers once for life drawing and struggled. It could be good for me to give them ago again – pencil dominates so much of my work. It was good I used oil pastel for Christenas block class at the end of
An last – the final of gestural works. These are mostly done with my right hand (I’m normally left handed). These other hand works are working better then normal. So simple but creates a effective line. Maybe I’ll work like this further. COLOR. RAWR,
Still no drawing. This must be the longest time I’ve taken a break from it for years. That’s alright. I’ve been keeping busy with Blender – most of my time is spent on it (I did have play Brick Force a little today though!).
Here’s what I’ve been working with in Blender:
A simple creature model. Bones have been added and attached to the mesh. It’s animating fine! It was great to get into using bones in blender, the weight paint tool is especially handy for this.
Red material was added to the model, but a UV map would be best.
I got sick of working with that model so created this, it’s the same idea but many more limbs. This one isn’t animated so much – only small movements like legs and the spring on the top of the head moving up and down.
Modeling practice. I’m not sure what this is – it’s just been extruded, twisted and scaled. Maybe it could be a weapon of some sort?
Large poly count in this one, I was working towards a face of some sort. Looks like horns.
I’ve been enjoying Half Life.
I’ve taken a break from the blog well I’ve been in Levin. I’ve taken a break from artwork in general – the last week was a crazy time of life drawing and a break has been wonderful. What have I been doing? Playing Brick-Force lots – very impressed by it. It still has a long way to go but still – Minecraft meets call of duty.I enjoy the map editing mode. It got me interesting in looking into using the Source/
Blender. I got into Blender again several weeks ago and it was fun to fire it up again. This time instead of working on a character model I choose an environment.
I worked on a building and the area around it. The H was a start of a character model – but I quite like it as it is. I’ll keep working on this scene this week.
Here’s a closeup of the building. I’ll like to learn how to apply real textures to these – I downloaded this program from Wood Workshop to generate textures.
I’m going to buy a new pen for my tablet tomorrow (wont receive it till next week), must photograph and upload the life drawings from the Friday class last week.