Click for a larger view! Happy holidays!

Miss me?

Yeah, I know I haven't posted much in a while. I'm going thru finals, so give me a few days and I'll post some stuff. Promise!

Random pic a clasmate drew of me....

Yes...it's me as Jesus...go figure....

Value Studies...

These are some value studies I did for class tonite...I'm supposed to start my painting of these panels tonite too, but it's 2:45 and I'm exhausted...They're kinda outta order too, but I just wanted to get them up there, u know? I'll just try to get some of it done in class....

Heres my desk on a typical sunday evening...damn I'm messy...

Ive been trying to skin the rig for about a week now. Skinning is the process of binding the mesh to the rig that I made. It's pretty rough going and very time consuming. On top of that, I'm still having trouble trying to figure out a way to make the eyeball work!

Oh, Fujitsu finally sent me a new computer too. Much nicer than the one I had...let's hope this one stays health for the next few years! They're even going to let me buy an extended warranty! Gotta buy it by Janurary though. Anyone wanna give me a xmas/chanukka present? ;)

Here's some more progress. I'm building the rig to drive the model now, after which I will skn the rig so the mesh all deforms the right way. First time I've ever done a rig...a lot of work but very rewarding...

Textured a bit...and the toast looks like toast! Or bread at least...ready to be toasted...I think th ecolors are plain but I think thay'ss do the job. I have a texture for the bottle in the corner...and the alien's eyeballs need some work...I might add some labels to the spice jars in the back...but I don't want to distract form the main action between the alien and the toaster....

Progress on the background

Here's some progress on the background. I think that's as much as I'm going to put on there right now. I don't want to overcrowd the scene, since the main action is going to happen between the alien and the toaster. The "toast" still looks like crap, but I'm going to fix that tomorrow. I'll also have to start texturing tomorrow as well.

Update of my alien

Created some of the background. I think It's still too empty. If you have any suggestions fo kitched stuff, let me know....

Yeah...I know the toast is faceted...It's a placeholder...so thhhhbpt!

Another Update...

Some more updates of my alien. I need to start working on the scenery now and the hand needs some re-doing...where the head attaches to the body it goving me some trouble too as far as seams, but I think I can clean that up.

Some Sketches

Just some sketches for your viewing pleasure...

Progress on alien....

Some more modeling on the alien. Hey! It's starting to look like something! Yay!

My laptop...my god...

Well, my laptop finally decided to start sying again. I actually managed to get a pic of it this time. I have no idea why it does this. Basically it freezes up whenever I use the wifi card in my house. Sent it back about three times to fujitsu too. Changed out the motherboard, processor, HD....still no idea wtf is going on....

Oh...I love technologeeeeeeee......now and forever....now and forever.....

My progess so far....

Here's my progress so far. Having a bit of trouble with the legs...but the body shape looks pretty good I think....

Note to self...when drawing an image for reference, don't draw legs with a curve at the bottom of the foot. Makes for hell when modeling...also, line up images better in ps before importing and modeling in scene....

It's been too damn long....

Yikes! Has it really been a month since I made a post? Been very busy with school...staying up till 1 or two almost every night ta get my work done. Coffee...my new best friend....Anyways, I have some pics from when I visited LA and some images of a 3d character I'm working on...I'll post some now and some later....

Oh yeah...part of the reason why I didn't post was cause my computer was back at Fujitsu again. I hope that they'll fix the screen for god now...I'm getting sick of being without it....

Here's my desktop right now....

Oh my god...my brain feels like pudding.....

Sketchcrawl...

I had the opportunity to participate in the San Francisco sketch crawl this weekend and had a blast! Almost sizty artists came together to trek through the city, sketching the whole way.If you live in the San Fran area and you like to draw, I highly reccomend it!

Some animations I'm working on...

Been working on some cycles and walk cycles. Having a great time spinning poi...drawing...animating...Think I'm finally starting to feel I'm improving in some way. That's a good thing, right? Resisting the urge to buy comics this week. It's been hard, but if I save my money I know it'll be easier to get completely moved out here...right Tess?




This is the web site where I got a lot of my rigs from An all-round nice guy with some pretty unusual models and rigs! Hightly reccomended!!!!!!!
http://www.3dfiggins.com/gallery.php?id=38&item=69#69

A scorpion animation I did really quick I've posted up here:
http://grosscartoons.org/T&GPics/scorp1.avi

My favorite error message of all time....

I was doing some work on MayaAPI when I got back this error message:

Error: The operation completed successfully.

.......WTF DOES THAT MEAN?!?!??!

MayaAPI is the bane of my existance.....

Pics of me doin poi...

There are some pics of me spinning poi at this guys page:

http://pages.prodigy.net/ron_lewis/templeofpoi/images/

I'll also post some of the "best of" for your viewing pleasure ;)

Think your life isn't too exciting?

http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2005/stunt-city-p1.php

Blogs are bad?

Is it in bad taste to put a link to why blogs suck on your own blog? I don't know...let's find out!

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=banish

Some sketches and stuff...

Just thoguht I'd post some stuff from my sketchbook and some things I did in class last semester...
If you'd like to see more stuff, direct your web browser here:

http://grosscartoons.org/T&GPics/

Oh...here's a pic of a friend's fat cat...with a few additions via photoshop ;)

Essay on Durer...

This is an essay I just wrote on Albrecht Durer for my Aesthetics and the Renissance class. I never had much of an appreciation of Renissance art until taking this class. Guess I saw it all as portrayals of the same religious icons over and over...but I don't know...the class kind of kindled a new respect for some for these guys that I would have never given a second thought...

Anyways, I'm posting the essay in it's entirety. Feel free to reference it if you want, but please give me credit where credit is due...

If you would like a copy of the word document, complete with pics, e-mail me and I'll send it over to ya...

EDIT: 3/18/09 --> I've noticed a lot of traffic coming to this post lately. I'm taking it down because I have a feeling some people might be looking to use it to cheat on their school work. Since my mom was an english teacher for about 30 years, the thought of this really really bugs me. Sorry :(

Here's a model a friend of mine made back in Chicago. I'm probably going to start animating it once we get some collision and software issues worked out. Biped is pretty neat for 3dsMax...but for some reason it's workin kinda funny right now on my machine....

Maya 7 came out in case y'all don't know. Totally blew my freekin mind....

Did the internship today. Learned about something called Singletons...basically it's a class that calls an instance of itself...it's used to make your program more secure from the user and...blah blah blah...freekin boring...I'm sleepy so I go bye bye....

Poi!

I went tonite to my first fire poi class in San Francisco an dfound ti to be really awesome. I guess I function a little better in a clasroom setting that practicing on my own. I can say that I feel like I am more excited about poi than I was...mainly becuase I have goals now...and it becomes more fun when you're wihtin a social setting an dnot practicing it alone. After all, it is a PERFORMANCE art...

Here's the web site of the place I take lessons:

http://www.templeofpoi.com/

And here's the group I took lessons from in Chicago:

www.spunn.org

Note that last time I checked their site was down :(

Online classes almost over! Yay!

7/31/2005

So, I've been doing this internship at a place in Berkely right now, along with my two online classes and working over at a computer store. The internship itself is pretty interesting, but a lot of info gets tossed at me and it's kinda hard to absob it all. But I try my best I'm sure learning a lot, especially about OpenGL.
OpenGL is pretty much the basis for how things get displayed on your computer screen. I'm really enjoying working through it. The main thing I've been focusing on is real-time percentage closer soft shadows.
Percentage closer soft shadows are pretty realistic, and I don't think they've been done correctly in real time just yet. So, I've been working through this demo at nvidia.developers.com. Pretty rough stuff and a good place to start...but I think it's going to end up not as a "plug and play" situation...which I think it what they want. Here's some more images of what I've been working

By the way, this all works in realtime. So you can spin the models and everything and the shadows move around pretty well. It only runs right now at around 10 to 14 frames per second...not really acceptable...btu some optimization might fix some of that.
You can see the main problem is the dittering around certain parts of the model, which is much more complex that they show in the demo. I think this has to do with the samples the shader takes or something like that...anyways, I think it's just going to have to be something I pursue on my own.
On a side note, if you're looking for great tuts on Open GL, look up NeHe on the internet. It's really THE place to learn the basics fast!

Whitepaper:

http://download.developer.nvidia.com/developer/SDK/Individual_Samples/MEDIA/docPix/docs/PCSS.pdf