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!
