Radical

Went on a tour of Radical entertainment today. Totally awesome. Huge kitchen with stocked fridges. Awesome work being done there on Prototype 2. Another game to add to my list to play. They gave us waterbottles and note pads. Sweetness!

Technical artist in waiting

I like being a digital artist. I enjoy the technical side of the biz. Things like fur or rigging can be a nice break from the artistic side of things. Drawing joints on my character yesterday was fun. It's great to switch gears from time to time. Today I was back in Maya fur. The plush eagle is coming along. Had some glitches when I was painting length maps, but think I solved it. Just have to finish the length map for the beak and feet so they look velvety. And paint baldness on the eyes. But he's looking good. Pics to come.
I enjoy creating cool things in Maya or zbrush but sometimes doing something technical like rigging or tweaking fur is a nice change of pace. Going to finish up the rig this weekend and work on his pose. Should really start to pop!

Taking a break to enjoy the sun

Went on a walk today to enjoy the weather. Butterflies have hatched and are out in swarms. Some beautiful sights around my favorite lake near my house, deer lake.

Working in maya today

Today I was building leg straps on my blacksmith character. Found it frustrating to extrude up and around in a criss cross pattern. So then I tried extruding along a curve up the leg. That sorta worked but a lot of verts to tweek. So then I found a great way to accomplish the shape I needed. Make a poly helix and turn its width divisions down all the way. Which is 3. The you can position it and its pretty much bang on. A few tweaks and then delete 2 of the 3 sides. Duplicate and flip it to get the criss cross pattern. So much easier.

Maya Fur WOOT!

   Today was my 3rd class of using Maya fur. It so much fun creating cool looking fur on my eagle. Finished the model on the weekend and just started throwing some fur on him. Already looking great. I've gotta paint some baldness, and teak the colors but its coming along.
  Also learned about blend shapes today. Man that must of been rough animating walk cycles back in the day before skeletons. However, must of really taught you to be careful about the vertices's you tweak. The pros and woes of advancing technologies :).