The Longest Day Of The Year

Here's the avatar moving about with the environment -

This time round, I tried to make each of the heads have their own individual time to move in, so it gives the viewer space to see what each one is doing, rather than just a flurry of fluctuating faces. The Super Ego reacts in time with the Sun setting, keeping a watchful eye over it's environment. Once the Sun sets, this sends the Id wild, before the Ego calms them both down and readies the Vessel for another voyage. Meanwhile, the Soul keeps surveying it's surroundings with childlike wonder...
I'm also happy with using Stonehenge as the environment for the Avatar, because it holds multiple meanings for me. On a more scientific, universal level, having the Sun and Moon rotate around it shows the passing of time, and the Avatar remaining constant and whole through this process. It also represents a sacred site, one that is shrouded in mystery and obscurity, yet also a place of worship, and a mutual meeting ground to celebrate the longest day of the year. I really like the connotations of community, humanity, passion and achievement that Stonehenge brings, and, on a personal level this time, it has many fond memories attached to it. I used to live very near to Stonehenge, and as such it represents a part of the Earth that I spent many of my formulative years in, which is something I'm very pleased to be able to pay tribute to with my Avatar. Plus, many a good time has been had at the various Summer Solstices, watching the stars and dancing amongst the stones with all manner of glowing, positive people. The Sun and Moon and general blackness in the background suggest space, the galaxy, universe and infinity, which puts my Avatar and it's various aspects of self in perspective quite nicely.


The Ego -


The Id -


The Super Ego -


The Vessel And The Soul -


My Avatar -


Finally, here's a tiny tribute to the beautiful sounds that have guided me through tonight's work -

Fluid Druids

I had a go at applying textures to my avatar, and even though I quite like the results, I think they actually detract a little from my initial design.

I personally think I've mutilated poor Super Ego's beard again here, but the Vessel looks quite interesting, almost like it really is just a big floating patch of nothingness, but I dunno, something just doesn't look right about it. The Soul looks suitably shiny, but it's gleeful grin is lost amidst the glare.

Here's a vague idea at how the environment will interact with the avatar too. The avatar hasn't been animated yet, but I've tried to make the planets surrounding it follow some kind of orbit. For the little red one (the Sun!), this looks fine, but I'm not sure if the larger blue one (the Moon!) is moving too fast and/or irregularly...


Plus, I revisited good ol' Box Monkey, and added some pleasing wooden textures to his little home -

"Are We Gonna Do 'Stonehenge' Tomorrow? "

I'm just about getting the hang of textures, so I thought I'd start making an environment for my avatar.

At the moment the colours are a little full-on, and are more in line with an acid trip rather than a realistic scene, but I quite like that. I'll play about with it some more and then post the results!

Stinky Sphynx

Today I finally got a copy of 3D Studio Max for my laptop, so now I can work on the avatar from home in my underpants with the soothing sounds of King Crimson surrounding me, rather than being bathed in classroom light with nothing more than repeated clicking sounds to caress my ears. What a result!
To celebrate, I decided to take my avatar to Egypt, as a reward for having me tug it's various faces around for the past month or so.

I'm starting to notice the main problem with a lot of my designs is that without textures applied to them, they look a little drab (as evidenced by the sand on the floor in here). I still need to get my head round texture mapping, everytime I have a look at it it seems initially really simple, and then a few minutes later it hasn't done what I was expecting and seems impossibly difficult. I'll have a look through some tutorials and see if I can improve this.

Monkey Boxing

Today I had another go at designing the box for the second part of my avatar project. This box looks a little sturdier than the last, and almost looks nice and wooden too (I couldn't figure out how to apply the wood texture to the box, so it can still look better! I think some of the corners need chiseling down a bit as well). Instead of putting a poorly drawn version of myself in it, this time I opted to try and recreate that happy chimp on my mood board.


I also had a go at making a fairly basic environment, although not necessarily for my avatar as I'm still not sure where exactly a giant blob with 3 heads on stalks would call home... But here's my attempt at recreating a sunny afternoon on the planet Mars -

I also figured out how to merge two scenes together in 3D Studio Max, which is extremely useful! So, I stuck the avatar in Mars just to try this out and see what it looked like. The result isn't exactly what I'm looking for, but it''s not terrible either.

My attempt at making the avatar move about in this environment, on the other hand, is actually pretty terrible, heh! I quite like the idea of having the environment move with the avatar, but unfortunately I couldn't quite pull this off here -

Unfortunately, it's the older model of the avatar too, complete with the chunkier Ego and Super Ego's more exuberant beard, as I woke up late and in the frantic scramble to grab clothes, coffee and Weetos, I forgot my memory stick and could only access this older version.

More Avatar Madness

I tweaked my 3D avatar a little earlier today to make it look a little better.

Not much has changed, but the Ego's face is now mildly pointier (although his eyes look even more retarded, I'm not sure what went wrong there...) and I tried to put some fiery bits on top of his head, but you can't see them too well from this angle, the Super Ego's beard is fuller and not as lengthy, and he now has a mouth! I made it by inverting parts of his beard, so it looks a little crusty, but I kinda like it like that. His head is a little more withered too, and in general he looks a little more old and weary, which is cool!
The Soul looks a lot better as well, as this time his mouth actually resembles part of his face rather than just several bigs holes in a row...


I started thinking about my Box project today, although I haven't given too much thought as to what objects I'm going to place in there. Here's a laughably poor rough version with just my terrified head basking in emptiness -

I think I'll try making one of these mood board thingies to get some kind of idea of what I'll put in the box, and how I'll space it all out. I'll post it up on here once I've finished it off!

Realisation

Today I made out rough versions of the Ego, the Vessel and the Soul for my avatar project. As I now have rough versions of all the various characters, I had a go at putting them all together to get an idea of the finished project.
I sketched the Ego a few times, and tried moving his eyes further apart, making his main peeper massive, etc.

In terms of colour, I'd imagined the top of his head to resemble flames. In his current stage I haven't actually done this, but I can always change it in the final version. The Ego's 3D, erm, alter ego doesn't look quite as graceful as his sketchbook counterpart. I'd envisioned it to have the elegance of a swan, and instead it's taken on the chubby charms of a slightly ill goose.

Once again, for amusement's sake, I made him buckle under the weight of superior knowledge -


The Vessel and the Soul are also a mixed bag in terms of the end result.

The Vessel looks reasonable, slightly different to the sketches but kinda cool looking nonetheless. It's almost like a zombie frog. The Soul, at present, looks too much like a puppet from Play Days to me, I need to work on making it look more hopeful and optimistic, and less gormless...!


So, once they're all combined, they start to look like this -

I'm reasonably pleased with this, however I'd like to find out a way to smoothly blur the colours of the different heads with the the colour of vessel's neck, just to make it look a little more fluid. Various different bits of the faces and head shapes need shifting around, I think, and Super Ego's beard is probably a little too mighty at the moment (I must have just been carried away by the true beauty of a good beard...)!
Here's a fairly crude attempt at making them move -

I'll need to think a little more about how I want them to move, as if they're all just wiggling about, it'll look a bit lame. I'll spare it a thought and then wack it on here if I get a brainwave!

The Id Breaks Loose!

Man, what a hectic day! Lots of epic missions around town, coffee, packed trams and accidentally leaving several boxes of Weetos I'd just purchased in Tescos, then having to trek back and get them... Cities are mental, haha!
Amongst all this mayhem however, I managed to design another one of the heads for my avatar, the Id this time. I think I'm definitely starting to improve on 3D Studio Max, and I'm finding out all kinds of new ways to make objects, and make them do things, that are easier and give a smoother final result than the way I was doing things!









Once again, I sketched him out a few times before I started, and then after I'd created the 3D model, I made him freak out a little too, and wiggle his gaping jaws about.


I really like the way he moves, but I didn't actually attach his teeth to him, so when he shakes his head there are a few moments where his teeth poke out of the bottom of his head. The other problem with his teeth is that I made them all in the view you're looking at him now with, and when you tilt him about his molars are actually all over the shop. However, both these things are problems I'm sure I can fix without too much hassle.

After making the Id, I went back to our old friend the SuperEgo to see if I could sharpen up his beard. And, lo and behold, after actually constructing one and playing around with the shape rather than trying to draw it with lines and then lofting it with a circle, I made a not too shabby beard!
Before -


After -



As for the 3D Studio seminars, last week we made our own little versions of the BBC3 worm. Mine ended up looking a tad more evil than the actual worm, due to his rather charming green hue and the horns that Andy showed me how to put on him.

I had a bit of trouble with animating the worm using the Morphing technique, and unfortunately lost his eyes in the process...! Still, he manages to give off quite a mighty bellow -


Today we made little walking pairs of legs. I managed to construct the legs without any major difficulty, but when I made them take a little stroll, after the first step one of the legs went a bit weird and he looked like he was ice skating!
Unfortunately 3D Studio crashed as I was working on the legs, and even though it managed to store a back-up copy of it, it kept telling me that the file was corrupt and I couldn't do much with it. Uploading it to YouTube failed miserably, and it wouldn't seem to let me render a still image. Alas, a valuable learning experience but one I now have nothing to show for.... Brutal!

And, last but not least, I managed to grab a shot of my Second Life character -

He still needs a bit of work, as I got quite carried away with distorting his face into all kinds of crazy shapes and couldn't really return it to it's normal state too well after. He looks a bit rough around the edges too, but I'm not sure whether that's my fault or just what Second Life looks like! I haven't managed to venture to much into Second Life that much yet, but I recently installed it on the laptop I'm typing this on right now, so I'll be able to wander about on it when I'm bored, waiting for a pizza or just generally sitting about. What a plan!

Super Ego (Plus Second Life Mayhem!)

Today I finally signed up for Second Life, and created my own personal avatar. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the snapshot feature to get a decent photo of it, but I'll try and get one soon! I tried to make it look more or less like myself, and it sort of almost does, heh! After getting to grips with the controls, figuring out where you had to wander to to change your appearance, etc., I started walking around the initial area talking to people. The first person I spoke to didn't speak any English at all, and the second approached me totally naked and said they were new, and wanted to know where they could get some clothes to conceal their virtual modesty, so I directed them to the place I got mine. The final person I interacted with was an unfortunate fellow who I accidentally smacked with a car, pushing him into the ocean. I apologised, but he remained silent. Funnily enough, hit-and-run in the virtual realm comes with none of the feelings of guilt I imagine it'd be accompanied by in reality... Still, I'd probably better not make a habit of it, just for etiquette's sake.
After this, I started flying about for a bit and was then kicked out of the room as a lesson was about to start there. Second Life seems quite entertaining in a slightly surreal way, I'll venture into the actual main hub next time!


I started work on my other 3D avatar today, and made a (very!) rough model of the Super Ego's head. I don't know why I started with the Super Ego (or SE from now on), maybe I was subconsciously drawn to it's sense of discipline as I sat down, readying myself for some serious work, and maybe I was just attracted by it's delightful beard. Who knows?
I sketched SE out from a few more different perspectives, just to get an idea of how it would look in the third dimension, and then constructed him out of a few basic shapes.

I had a little trouble making the nose, and a lot of trouble making the aforementioned delightful beard. I tried quite a few different shapes, and eventually settled on this one for the time being, even though I'm still not happy with it. I couldn't figure out how to fill in the centre of it, as I'd originally hoped to have a nice, satisfyingly full beard and then draw the mouth over the top, but every time there was a big gaping hole in the middle. With the beard I eventually went for, it does kind of look like the hole in it is actually his mouth, but it's not perfect. I think SE also needs smoothing over, as there are some parts of him where I joined two shapes together and they haven't quite stuck together as smoothly as I would have hoped, but it's totally cool to see SE starting to take shape in 3D. Just for my own personal glee, I made SE get himself flustered over some deep moral dilemma -

Southbound Pachyderm

I think I'm beginning to grasp 3D Studio Max a little more now. I can make up little characters now without having to constantly refer to worksheets or tutorials, and don't feel quite as intimidated when faced with some of menu screens. However, I'm still struggling a little with the actual animation itself, as quite often the characters don't quite do what I want them to and I find myself unable to rectify it. It's definitely getting there though, here's the latest creation -

I wanted to try and give the elephant a little bit more of a personality than the previous attempts, so I made this little rat run past him. The rat looks a little shoddy, one of his legs looks like it's going into spasm, and I wasn't quite feeling adventurous enough to flesh out the elephant with a body, but I still kinda like it!


After talking to Roma about the Identities module today, I feel a little clearer as to what I have to do. Not having a copy of 3D Studio Max at home is definitely a hinderance, but I'm still gonna be able to draw some sketches or whatever so I can squeeze some ideas out of my head and onto a nice solid slice of paper. I'm still unsure as to what I could put in my 3D box, but there are a few vague ideas floating about right at the back of the ol' grey matter. Hopefully spending some quality time with a pencil will help sort things out!

3D Tree!

Today we created a model of a tree on 3D Studio Max, and here's my finished foliage -

I managed to craft the tree without too much difficulty, but struggled a bit with mapping textures onto it. Eventually (and with Andy's help!) I finished the tree off, but there are still a few things about it I'm not too happy with. I drew the leaves out myself, and here they look way too small, making the tree look a little...odd!
I've gotta admit, the more I learn about 3D modelling, the more confusing it seems...

The Confused Octopus

The process of getting my head around 3D animation is slowly but surely making progress. In uni the other day we had to design little octopuses, and then make them float up down in a relaxing manner... Here's mine -

I was very satisfied with the way the octopus looked, as from all angles he did indeed resemble a happy-go-lucky cartoon squid, but unfortunately his movement didn't go quite as smoothly. Rather than bobbing up and down, he kinda shoots into the air and then falls back down again. Just to add insult to injury, then all his legs fly out in the wrong direction and he, erm, gets himself into a bit of a mess.
However, by confusing this poor octopus I think I've learnt a little more about 3D Studio Max. Hopefully within a few days/weeks/months/years (let's hope it's not years, eh?) I'll have cracked it!

Entering The Third Dimension

Yesterday we started using the programme 3D Studio Max to, erm, make giant bulbous letters jump up and down, which was pretty cool! At the moment, I have to admit I'm pretty bewildered by the interface. After a bit of fiddling about and experimenting with it I managed to make a little pig, and then make his face glide about like a swine in a lava lamp. I've literally just downloaded Blender, the free 3D animation programme, and it looks even more complex, but I'll have a read through the tutorials and see what kind of creatures I can concoct...In the mean time, enjoy these!

SketchUp and FrameForge 3D

I had a go on FrameForge 3D and SketchUp today, which both seem like pretty cool programs. On FrameForge, I made a little green dog attack a guy in a suit, but didn't actually save it. It looked a little odd in places, but I guess that's because I was just clicking about and not really investing any time in it, I reckon I could do some cool stuff on that program.
SketchUp is also pretty cool, although I didn't find it quite as interesting as FrameForge. I made this happy little chap with it, and then came home to eat some sausages :