jklind

Face Rigging Week, Day 1

With a big contract coming up, this week I'd like to focus on rigging Daisy's face.  Or at the very least, figuring out HOW I'm going to rig her face, and whether my ideas even work.  Today I started simple, focusing only on her eyelids.

Daisy's eyelids presented two potential problems - do they have enough detail to close around her eyeballs, and does the rigging script I wrote back in December still work?  (I added other functions to the script file since then, and couldn't re...

Dark Corner 11

Can you guess what Mercy's favorite word is?

Ticking Clock

Good News - the next comic page is assembled and ready for inks!

Bad News - with the end of the month - and a potential contract - approaching, I'm feeling like I'm up against a ticking clock.

The comic page and the Teddi & Monique image - which is already inked and partially colored - can be finished this weekend.  The question then is do I spend next week on the Lizzie comic, or attempting to get Daisy's face rig built?  Because once this contract starts, my personal 3D w...

Bad Touch

Cheating

I almost feel like I'm cheating with this one, but on the bright side all that's needed now is a pair of hands working their way south in each panel, and the first part of the Monique & Lizzie comic is done!

Three!

Chocolate-covered bananas for Valentine's Day are a thing, right?

Two down!

One down

She made a heart!

Draw Week+

Lately I'd been stuck in a technical mindset.  Even when I drew the last comic page, the whole time I was thinking about all the Maya problems I was now putting off.  Thursday, I think the switch finally flipped.  That morning my brain kicked into overdrive to solve yet another challenge, and once it was solved I felt exhausted.  My mind was numb for the rest of the day, and I haven't thought about anything Maya-related since.

With Valentine's Day coming up, this sounds lik...

Source Files

My last poll was about 3D tutorials, but another idea I've been floating are source files for $10 patrons or higher.  Many artists offer PSD files of their images...  but I use Illustrator.  I'm not sure if AI files are as universal as PSD, but maybe someone will find them useful.

What do you think?

Dark Corner 10

Fresh from the stream!

Dark Corner pg 10 rough

I was hoping to have this page finished yesterday, but things have been getting in the way all week.  Now I have to decide whether to start inking and coloring it this weekend, or draw the next page first.   In the meantime, here's the rough version!

Should I offer 3D tutorials?

I'm always thinking of new rewards to offer, and whether I can keep up with them...  that was a problem with monthly commissions last year - great reward, but I couldn't keep up.  With all the time I'm spending on 3D rigging and scripting, I'm wondering if I should be sharing my findings.  Something I learned just today might make a useful tutorial...

But another question is how useful these tutorials would actually be.  I use Maya, which can be expensive.  Maya LT is ...

Draw week?

Man, I didn't realize how much I missed waking up to sunshine, versus what I call the "Michigan murk"...  almost every day over the past month, Michigan's skys have been dull, grey, and depressing.  Now that I'm back in Florida, there's not a cloud in the sky...  except for the thunderstorm that kept my flight circling Orlando for almost 2 hours...

Anyway, according to my schedule, this is my draw-week.  Last week I was focused on code, and one script in particular was a ch...

Words being had

I'm eyeballs-deep in Maya scripting this week, but at least the next comic page is laid out!  Daisy and Mercy have some words, a thing or two get cleared up...  but it's the page after this where we really start to get some answers!

On the 3D front, things got a little more complicated than I thought they'd be, and perhaps more than they need to be right now.  See, in a couple of months it will have been two years since I last worked on Violet's model.  The reason I never f...

Bacon Fixes Everything

Tough-love time!  Aunt Mercy is getting an intervention, whether she wants it or not!

Scowling contest

Shall we place bets on who can out-scowl the other?

New Year suggestions

So far I'm off to a good start - as of yesterday, my new eyelid script is working, so that's one less technical thing for me to have to worry about!

Since I also want to resume the comic this month, I could use a warm-up...  time to open the suggestion box!  Is there an outfit Daisy needs to wear or have troubel with?  Perhaps Monique could make things extra awkward?  Or maybe it's time I brought aunt Alice back, or did something with Candice?

New Year, Same Goals

Now that my laptop is back from the dead, I need to get back to work.  The past week or so without a computer has at least given me time to think, particularly about what might be in store for my campaign over the next year...

I think I say this every year, but over the next year I want to focus more on my 3D work.  I've made a lot of progress over the past several months - at least in terms of developing time-saving tools - and if I keep it up I might just get one of my characters a...

Merciful Xmas

...silly Daisy, don't ask questions you already know the answer to!

On a different note, this past week turned out to be more of a break than I expected - my laptop's cpu fan broke a few days ago, so I've had to avoid using it as much as possible.  Fortunately the replacement fan should arrive in Florida a few days after I do.

Catch-up

So apparently my approach to taking a break is to get some work done.  Good thing, too, because I've put these commissions off for too long as it is!  Once these two are finished - preferrably during a stream this afternoon - there's only one left!

Barring any sudden must-draw ideas, the other thing I'm working on this month is more Maya R&D.  Apart from some scripts to help with rigging faces, I'm also experimenting with Daisy's breast rig!  

5 days remaining

Heya folks, figured I'd give you all a status update.

In a few days I'll be heading up to Michigan, and it's unlikely that I'll be able to get anything done until I get back.  And even then my nieces will be here for a week, so really the last half of this month could be a wash...   and the first half isn't looking much better.  Over the past week, the most I accomplished was learning how Python dictionaries work, and how they could benefit my Maya scripts.  Unfortunat...

The Dark Corner pg 8

It's been exhausting, but this chapter is finally over!   At least until I come back to do the follow-up in January...   Or should I skip the Christmas idea, and just dive right in?  Honestly my brain is a bit fried right now.

Dark Corner 8 rough

"Bad shadow-thing!  Naughty!  No dessert for you!!"

...one more panel to go!

Moisturize

Better late than never - the thumbnail sketch for this one had been sitting on my tablet for months, since I got a nasty sunburn.  But considering now is the time of dry, flakey skin, it still works!

Weighing In

The awesome thing about my Maya rigging tool being more or less finished?  I can finally focus on non-technical things!

The downside?  After more than a week of coding, it's a struggle to focus on drawing again.

Daisy's weight was something I got thinking about recently.  At 3'8" or so, she's around 60% the height of an average woman, so would she also weigh 60% as much?  I had to account for her boob-weight, though.  By my math, Daisy is somewhere around 100 lbs...

More Daisy scribbles

  As of yesterday, my gnome rig is finished!  Or at least, as finished as it needs to be, for now.   With that out of the way, I should focus on getting my next comic page draw...  but first, I think a warm-up with Daisy is in order!

Like the previous batch, these are just random ideas that popped into my head.  I like the idea of Daisy weighing her breasts the most, though I haven't decided if the other character will be Rose or Mary.  The one in the lo...

Daisy & Mary scribbles

 So far it's looking like my Maya scripting won't take all week.  I could even be done today or tomorrow, if I play my cards right!  That means I can get started on the next comic page sooner...  but perhaps I should draw Daisy as a warm-up?

Ideas for Daisy images have been in short supply, lately.  I work best when I'm having fun, but the last few months have more or less drained that from me.  I need to draw her, though, because of my fear that I might forget ho...

The Week Ahead

Just a heads-up, this week my plan is to focus primarily on 3D stuff.  There's a very short list of scripts for me to work on, and then my rigging tool can finally be put to use!  But while it will be animation-ready, it only partially does faces at the moment.  Fortunately I have two older models with functioning face rigs, that I could also test this tool on - Mary-Anne and Rose.

Of the two, Mary needs the most work.  Sooner or later I plan on completely remodeling her to...

Dark Corner 7

Just one more page, and I won't have to struggle with drawing this shadow-creature again!!