Saturday, April 20, 2013

Rigging

So I'd consider this my first real rigging project. The model of the "skywhale" was created by my classmate, Kevin Baker, who has some serious modeling skills. But the motion system and controls were created by me. Which means, I totally made that thing fly. 
I know it doesn't seem very artistic to just make joint chains and controls and put them in hierarchies, but it's strangely addicting... especially once you see them moving. I love it.


Sunday, April 14, 2013

my latest obsession

So I don't know if it's just because it's another nice distraction from working on my senior project, or if it's because it's something I can do when my hand (and/or brain) hurts from too much CG rigging, but I have completely fallen in love with screenprinting. The whole process is mesmerizing. Similar to rigging, I can be in the print studio for hours at a time working on a print and not realize how much time has gone by until my back starts hurting or my stomach tells me I better find some sustenance soon or perish.
On the last project, my teacher showed me how to print a gradient (or degrade, as they called it at her school in Canada). Here are some of my results.

The first is a print from a photograph of my great grandpa Lee on his farm. I scanned it into Photoshop and applied a halftone filter to it so I could create a stencil from it. The quote is from an e.e. cummings poem called dive for dreams.


Here's an example of another gradient before I applied the second layer.


And here's the rest of the print. It's a photo of Lee's brother, my great great uncle Burt after he crashed his car.

And here's the last print I just finished which used the most layers so far. Four different straight colors and a two color gradient. It was a challenge to get all five layers registered, but I did pretty well. Not perfect. Meh.