Show's Tomorrow

Finally, the show is tomorrow. I have been working around the clock on this project. I will submit my final project this thursday at 3:00pm. It will be shown in a theatre along with other students' projects. 

CLOSER... closer ...

Saturday's adventure

I am bringing all of my characters to a finishing point. I will now do a final texture on them.  MAYA (program I'm using) has been fighting me the  whole way but, hopfully I'll win!

Late nights

This is my progress thus far on my models. I am hoping to have them each complete by Thursday. I have spent several hours revamping them and fighting a glitch in the system this week.

The Show Must Go On

This character is modeled after my mom. I am currently working on it and the rest of "The Family". I hope to have this all completed this weekend as it will be showing on the 30th! I will be presenting a slide show of my stills of "The Family". My work will be shown in a larger presentation with other students and will only be on screen for three minutes. So, the presentation will consist of pieces from other artists in my class as well as my own. I'm so excited to present this show as it is my first show and the finale of my career at The Columbus College of Art and Design.

Monday Monday...

This project is finally coming to a close, yay! I am done with my character model for aunt B, and most of the environment. I feel like this project has taken so much longer than it needed to. Just to let you know, typically this project wouldn't have taken so much time to create. In the professional realm, this would have been a three to four week project maximum. Considering that I have had several projects this semester, as I am wrapping it all up, I am happy with the direction of this one. I will post some "dry run" screen shots for you today. I hope to get lots of feed back on them regarding composition.  This will be greatly appreciated as I am showing my piece on the 30th of this month. Again, thank you all for the commentary.

Monday Morning

Oh coffee, how I love you! Today I'm working on my  character environment. As you have seen in my previous posts, I have most  of the furniture modeled already. I am now moving on to "clutter", meaning I am modeling random objects to  go in the house to give a tone to the scene for the characters. I have a few things already, such as broken up old cigarettes and Auto Trader magazines. Now I am working on a DVD collection with some VHS types mixed in for the living room shelves.  I also need to make food for the table and kitchen. I need to make pots and pans, shoes, bags, etc. The goal of making all of these things is  to have a cluttered house for my characters to interact in. So much for an exciting Monday...

An example of Mesh

This is the face of one of my character models. It is in the process of being refined and textured. This is an exampled of "bad mesh" meaning, the little green wires are crossing in a hectic manner. This is something I am working to correct.

Lastest Progress

This is my progess thus far... I have the furniture made, and a model done. I need to light this scene and add the rest of the models/clutter. Sort of looks like a garage sale doesn't it?

Cram-Jaming for finals

So, this week I'm having some frustrations with the mouth on my model. I'm trying to perfect the face and it just seems as though I've been chasing my tail honestly. It's been an endless battle between the n-gons and myself. We previously discussed n-gons as being more than four sided shapes which are terrible for the computer. I am posting some misguided polys to show you what it is I'm dealing with. I need to have this model polished today so that I can duplicate it and modify the duplicates into individual characters. Once I have them all completed I will be showing them in my thesis show at the end of the month. As for now it's modify and modify it again! and then agian...

Working...working...working...

Today I am working on lighting of my scene and also brain storming ideas for the context of the scenes. To be clear, I am working on the story line which determines the  placement of the characters in each individual scene.  I have been observing my families'  interactions and noting the comical happenings between them.  I am not going to implement the direct dialog  into my piece but, I am going to position the characters in the scene as my family was when the dialog was occurring. Once the characters are positioned, I will take screen shots of the scene and print them out on a nice, glossy photo paper.  The prints will be matted and hung up for my show at the end of the month.

Thursday is blurring into Monday

       This week has been very busy. I have been working on several projects including this one. Through the Mountain Dew and Slim Jims I have been modifying the "mesh" on aunt B, perfecting her. I have also started working on the props for the character's environment. The props consist of furniture, appliances and of course a house. The props are a 3D cartoon-esk version of actual furnishings.  My characters, aunt B and the rest of the family will be interacting in this environment. The theme of the props is that of a blue collar family's home in the mid-west culture. To put it simply, the house (environment) consists of beaten -up  old wooden tables, over flowing ash trays, rabbit ear antennas, a lumpy couch, chairs and piled up Auto Traders; this place is your typical red neck paradise. I hope to get dad's character model finished soon so that I can complete the rest of the family and have this project well underway.  Thanks for reading. I will post more soon.

Art by Brittany Drake: Beginning Thesis Project

Art by Brittany Drake: Beginning Thesis Project

It's a Monday thing

Today I have finished my character model for aunt B and have started on my dad's character model. I spent most of my spring break tweaking and revamping the mesh on aunt B. I am still contemplating rigging my characters. It would be much easier to pose them if they were rigged but, rigging is not a small task and I have to finish the project by May. I will be posting more screen shots soon for you to see the modifications I have made to the models. Thanks for reading!

Character Modeling Through The Snow

Today I am working on my aunt's character. I am using a computer program called Maya. It is a computer animation program  used by many professionals in the film industry. Throughout this blog you will see that I use some weird terminology to describe my process. When I use the word "polys", this is short for polygons. Yes, polygons, as in a four sided shape. Imagine if you will, a wire sculpture of my character. She is a short robust woman made of numerous thin tiny wires. Each of the wires cross each other to form her entire body; this is called a mesh. Each of the wire crossing must form a negative space that is four sided.  There are no triangles, only squares or rectangles. The reason for this is so that the model is smooth and animates well in the final version. Computers read the figure mathematically, not as a piece of art as we do. Mathematically, "polys" are more comprehensible to this program.   ANYWAY, now that you understand the term mesh, I am working on the mesh for aunt B. I have most of her body blocked out and am starting the details of her face and appendages. I hope to get the mesh completed today and start texturing (painting) her soon. Although this is a virtual process, it takes the same amount of time to sculpt as if it were a physical object. Contrary to popular belief, the computer is only a tool and does NOT do the work for you. Also, since there is no sun to light the object, I must create my own lighting in Maya. The lighting process is also tricky. Some folks in the industry specialize in only lighting characters. Others are modelers, texturers, animators, riggers etc. I'll tell you more about that in later posts. As I said, for tonight I will be finishing up aunt B and hopefully getting my other four characters modeled. It's off to the grind stone. Ta ta!

This week on the ole blog

I am starting my senior thesis project for my last semester of college. My plan is to have a comic strip composed of pictures of three dimensional characters inspired by my family. The comic will contain a few pages of jokes accompanied by photos of my characters rather than traditional drawings.

Beginning Thesis Project

These are my character turn arounds for my 3D models.