4dpencil.net

Heh, it’s been awhile. I’ve had a really awesome Christmas break.. sorely needed after the first 3 intensive months of school.

Besides the usual festivities, I played through Crysis (Normal mode, I’m no hardcore gamer) and the graphics really are amazing, definitely worth your while if your pc can support it. Immersive environments and cool nano suit powers make you a one man army. The game felt kinda short to me tho, and ended kind of abruptly but it most definately leaves it open for Crysis 2 to emerge in a few years (and force everyone who wants to play it to get a new computer).

Anyway, now I’ve been going through the software foundations. Animation, Modeling and Matte Painting are the main ones so far. Still soldiering on with the drawing, tho I must admit the 7 or so days I didn’t draw during the Christmas and New Year break really put a dent in my skills.. but that’s what more practice is for! Which brings me back to the work I need to finish…

Will be updating more regularly from now on, mostly to track my progress .. cause if I’m not updating that probably means I’m slacking off.. So I’ll leave you with my first 3d animation exercise. Keyframed animation in 3dsmax with lots of mucking around with the curve editor. Yeah, more bouncing balls. Deal with it. =P

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Whew.. it’s been a crazy 2 months since I started school at 3dsense. I’ve been drawing like I’ve never drawn before, as well as going through familiar concepts from IMD days but with a newer understanding and more intense purpose. Having like minded and equally crazy classmates (crazygood that is) makes it even better.

I updated the gallery with all of the portraits (save 2 that were really quite bad, haha) till now. This portrait’s saving grace is the hair.. everything else… well I should have worked on the proportions longer and rendered the contrast better.

I also have my classical animation exercises there. Really quite a big difference between my current 2d animation and what I did in TP.. foundation drawing skills really help in so many areas..

We just started on marker rendering, which has been even more fun than pencil somehow. I like how quickly you can block in tone, maybe because I’m a bit of a perfectionist and with pencil rendering I could go at it forever.. Love the painterly look that comes from it too once white paint has been applied for the highlights.

I think what has been most valuable is the raising of my self expectations.. I used to be limited by what I perceived to be the inability to draw well.. which has now been disproven, replaced with the fact that with enough effort anything’s possible. Well, it’s a gift and a curse cause it’s a neverending cycle of “This isn’t good enough / Improve / This isn’t good enough”, but that’s life I guess.. a constant struggle.. and I’m glad my own constant struggle is something I enjoy doing..