An Hour and a Half Wasted...

Last night during our weekly "get together and watch TV n' Movies night" we actually sat through the newest movie from the Asylum Titanic 2.  Now our reasoning was not that we thought the movie may actually be redeeming in any way shape or form, but the fact that in their last movie Airplane Disaster our names were still in the credits from when we worked a few weeks in April/May on The 7 Adventures of Sinbad.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) our names were not in the credits this time around.  Airplane Disaster was bad enough, but it was at least amusing that the company forgot (most likely) and did not change the VFX artist card in the credits, but I guess even though there was a helicopter from 7 Adventures that I animated and Ben textured featured slightly in the film they still dropped our names from the credits.  Though I would have a feeling if anyone I knew watched that movie and saw my name in there would give me some crap for my name being in the credits.  Whatever, it's not like I was actually concentrating on the movie, I was half paying attention, half surfing the internet so I guess I only truly wasted the half amount of my consciousness on this awful movie.  It is amusing to me though that I have never seen the first Titanic movie (kind of made it a point not to after all these years) even though it is considered a classic, but I did sit through Titanic 2 which even watching the trailer looks pretty bad.
-eD

WOOOOO!

I haven't mentioned it here I don't think, but a few months ago, my roommate Ben's xbox 360 internal fan had died, and therefore I was unable to play any sort of guitar/sing game that we had.  I still had my wii so I could use zombie killing as a stress reliever, but nothing comes close to rocking out with rock band (or whatever) until everyone else is sick and tired of playing, forcing me to stop and do what the majority of what the rest of the people in the household wants to do.  Recently Les (my other roommate) bought an new xbox to play some games he wanted to play, and therefore opened the opportunity for possible rocking out.  For a while Ben and I waited thinking that we wouldn't be able to access the songs that we had purchased in the past, but I took a leap today and started it up and thankfully the only things we lost was our band (which I forget the name of - but it was awesome!) and the characters that we customized.  We started a new band and new characters (including our first female band member that was not added by a female) though we haven't earned enough money on our tour yet to customize them to where they were before.  But I believe soon we will be back to where we were (as long as I can get my purple and green suit that I had before).  I was quite rusty I have to admit and I started to lose my voice a bit because I went full throttle back to rocking bass and belting out vocals like I use to do all the time.  Glad to get back into it, now just to wait a few months to use my online survey points to get another $25 Gamestop giftcard so I can buy more songs!  I can only get the same rewards once a quarter and I used my points for a gift card early august so I could get some random puzzle games to play on my birthday and the Scott Pilgrim Vs the World game for my PS3, which I will admit was totally worth it.  I can't really complain though considering it is all free giftcards earned by completed online surveys.  I also had a few beers and finished a bottle of wine that has been calling to me for a while (since last time I rocked out most likely), which may explain the lengthy rant about how gratifying it is to be able to rock out again, as well as, giving me the no care attitude to sing loud enough to annoy myself and not give a poop.

Hopefully any readers can find something funny in the tale I just told, otherwise it was just unnecessary auto-biography garbage that only makes me smile, and this is a place for ha ha's not inter chuckle for me...
-eD

Just heard the kinderdome mother say to one of her friends "you can't kill them, you can't live with them." great parenting lady.
-eD

Star Guy!

Star Guy Revealed...
-eD

A few Adjustments

Rigged the corners of the star and added a small light inside of his mouth to give it a little more light in there.  These are fairly large images to show more of them than the comps I have been posting, so click them and enjoy...

-eD  

Star Guy Update

He is about where I wanted him to be.  Not too happy with some of the morphs (not shown for a reason) but I don't think he will be talking (at least not yet... he he he) so I probably shouldn't sweat those for now.  Still have to find a way to successfully rig the sections of the star so I can have them animated as well, tried a few methods but nothing is working the way I had hoped.  But this guy still makes me smile, and I'm glad that I was able to get him out of my head, onto paper, and now into 3D (turned out way better than my sketch heh).  A few more finishing touches then I will be ready to do final poses (rework the lighting for the scene) and a possible short animation with him flying around.  Haven't thought too much about an animated short yet, so far it will just be him flying around maybe bumping into things with a sparkly trail behind him, even that could be cool though.

well there's your update.  ZBrush has been frustrating me, so I haven't worked on the Salmon much this week, but I will be getting back into that tomorrow...
-eD

Back from Camping

Made it back from camping last night around midnight.  It was a pretty successful trip and I had a lot of fun.  Luckily I only got mildly sunburned from the trip on  my shoulders and L arm but I only started to feel it after my shower when I got back home.  I forgot my camera which was sitting on my night stand so I wouldn't forget it, but I still had my phone to take a few quick picture.  Other people had cameras so once I snag some of their pictures I will post any noteworthy ones on here.  A bit of hiking, a few cooked hotdogs over a fire with a wittled down pointed stick, visiting lake isabella (which smells more like lake cow poo), then after packing everything back into the cars we took a long drive to a rock slide area, which was fun but I didn't have my camera on me to take pictures.  So I may have some later but nothing now.  Here are a few pictures that I took with my phone.

Still a bit sore, finally caught up on sleep, getting back to reality...
-eD

Moonlit midnight stroll. Quite nice.
-eD

On the road to the great outdoors! Camping ahoy!
-eD

Sketchbook Project Sketches

Thought I would put these all in one place for easy access...

Click them and they will resize in another window for full viewing (the first one is still pretty small though but those sketches aren't as small as the others so I don't mind).  Going on a camping trip/nature excursion/please no more computers this weekend, and I will try to narrow down the list a bit more, and will post a list of which sketches will make it into the 3D realm at least this first round.  I plan to have the first round completed by the end of the year, with at least 1-3 posts per month.  Many ideas are based on one character so they would just require different actions and props (similar to Hands! but with a full character), other ideas have multiple sketches involved so that should be interesting as well...  

F.Y.I. - I didn't post some sketches because I didn't want to spoil some surprises coming up that could be very interesting...

-eD

Sketchbook Project Finally Underway...

With the start of my Star Guy the Sketchbook Project is finally underway!  Here is the Proof!

Also some of the previous post had issues with not scaling up the images when they were clicked on, that has since been fixed for most of the images, but I didn't feel like going too far back to deal with all of them.  A rundown of what I've done so far with the Star Guy has been posted on the SSPlog with the images able to be clicked to full size.  See we did that for ya,  we're so nice at the SSP (sounds liked a plugged leaky tire)!

-eD

Got a Little Carried Away...

It's 12:30 at night and I'm about to eat dinner finally. Got carried away working on my Star Guy. Here is a comped version after I created a few morphs, thinking about giving him a butt, but I'm not sure...

Here is a cropped screen capture from the modeling program showing wires...

oh this is fun. I have bit things planned for this guy... I also think it's funny how he went from cute to creepy in one post! Ha Ha Ha. Cute & creepy... That's my bag...

-eD

Fun Work Day...

The Salmon fins were being a pain so I ended up working on my Star Guy a bit more, I gave him a face, though he still needs more work.

Still have to give him eyelids, teeth & gums, a tongue and possibly a uvula (just cause I think they add to cartoon-ish characters). Then the Morphs, then time to pose and render him in scenes. Very happy to see how he is turning out thus far...

Really should get back to working on my Salmon character, but I was having so much fun working on this guy. I also have to start modeling the Salmon's nemesis, the bear. I think I was trying to secretive about it, though I'm pretty sure I already posted images of some sketches that I did of my initial idea of the bear. Who knows what it will turn out looking like once I start modeling him...

Ok too much caffeine... back to work...

-eD

Lil Something

my current ha ha's project is my "star guy" he keeps popping into my head, which is how he ended up in my sketchbook, now he seems like the best character to start with for these sketchbook realization renders... (that has a nice ring to it doesn't it, "the sketchbook realization renders")

So here is an update to where he is right now...

I got the star part finished and put enough geometry in it to hold the not so rounded edges, and to give me enough space and polygons to create the face in the middle of it...

The Salmon's fins were giving me grief, but I got more of this worked on than yesterday...

-eD

Update...

I am back in Zbrush working on my Salmon character. Tomorrow I focus on the fins, should be interesting... Once I have something to show I will post it on here, probably in a day or two. I have also started the first character of my sketchbook ha has project, my thought was work on these projects while watchin tv at night, but that didn't work so well, so I may just put aside 2 hrs or so a day to work on these side projects. I will try to post some behind the scenes work in progress images as I get the ball rolling on these. That should be interesting as well...
-eD

Find Chaffy Panel on Website

My Find Chaffy panel finally made it onto the website (click here), not sure when it happened but as of now it is the most recent addition (on the very bottom of the page). Didn't leave much of a signature on it, but it definitely adds some variance to the other art that is already posted on there...

-eD

Finished...

Finally...

Decently happy with the end result. The exact composition I was looking for, but it is lacking something for me to be truly happy with it. Had text that looked more like it was brushed onto the scroll but it was too hard to read so I went simple and readable. Chaffy looks like he is glowing but he shouldn't have been. I liked my eDMcD3D logo on the upper edge but I think I need to rework it some more still, before I get something nice that I may try to actually make a stamp out of at some point. The more I look at it the more I want to keep plugging away until I get what I envisioned, but I think I already spent too much time on it, and I need to move on. Spent way too llong trying to figure out the grass, not to mention the days that my computer spent doing test renders and tweaking the heck out of it, thought I now have some experience with Lightwave's Fiber Fx. Gonna chalk this one up to learning new things, and what not to do on other projects in the future... Tryin not to be too "Bah Humbug" about it.

-eD

:(

Just sent my first emoticon or whatever they are called via text on accident...

I accidentally typed "." twice which my phone turned into ":)", I was going to delete it and just go with the period but i figured eh why not, and sent it anyway. I still don't expect to ever do this consciously, but I thought it was funny so I posted it on here.

-eD

Have all aspects of the shot rendered but the grass which is what I have been working on for the past few days. I think it is based on the amount of grass I am producing, or that my computer maybe just doesn't want to do the work quickly to ease my frustration. Considering the full scale render of the grass looks like it will take 24 hours, 22 of which have passed, I had some time to goof around on the internet and found this to help promote the new Scott Pilgrim Movie coming out tomorrow there is an avatar creator to make an avatar of yourself like you were from the comics. You can choose different genders, head types, mouth/eye/ear/eyebrow shapes, and clothes and accessories from a pre-determined few. Mine looks pretty good. It was a fun waste of a few minutes.

Johnny B strikes again!! May make a few and doctor em up in photoshop to make them a bit more manageable and maybe set up some mock fights. That is if I'm still waiting for the grass to render tonight. It is like watching grass grow, except I don't see any grass until the render is done and the computer has finished it's computing.

Eh I do have tons to do still on other stuff...

-eD

Render Waiting Game...

While I have been waiting for test renders recently I haven't been able to much else on my home PC, luckily I have my laptop, but I still have used it as an excuse to play some video games. I think my brain really needed that mindless tom foolery. Anyhoosers the renders are almost completed, I am doing final renders now, as I write this. But I figured it was time for some kind of picture post, so here are a few pictures I have taken of one the gifts my sister sent me for my birthday.
I've wanted one of these for over a year, but have never been able to rationalize buying one for myself.
It even has an interchangeable mustache! I already swapped the regular one for the Fu Manchu piece she got for me as well. My sister rocks at getting gifts!

Should have final render for the Find Chaffy panel tomorrow at some time...
May rock some late night hours on it to make sure...
-eD

Learning New Things...

I've been working on learning a hair plug-in for my 3D works. I'm already working on something that would be better with fuzz than what I was trying to do before, and I thought I would post a lil' peek before I have the whole thing finished.

Yes, it is a new Find Chaffy piece. I am contributing a piece to the ongoing tales of Chaffy. Unfortunately, the background is being more difficult to tackle than I initially thought it would be. I am hoping that all of the aspects will be rendered today (finger's crossed) so I should have the finalized version up here soon. I also wants to try to use this to possibly add fur to my monkey and sloth swordsmen soon to see if that is the route that I want to take the samurai animals idea. We shall see...

-eD

About Darn Time, Still Nothing Learned...

It's about damned time!

I finally got my Ca Driver's License in the mail, so I am very glad I didn't try to go to the DMV to get a new temporary ID like I thought I would have to considering my Temp ID expires this Sunday. Another doofy face picture, should have went with a full beard and lack of sun exposure but whatever. It seemed like they finally got my name correct, though I was extremely worried at first because the envelope was sent to "VII Edward F. McDonough" so I guess they still don't understand.
Maybe they still don't understand what a suffix (or a roman numeral) is, or that someone can actually make it into the higher numbers like 7, but at least I have a real-deal California license two months after I passed the test... Not sure if I would wish this much annoyance on anyone so I may not continue the name onto my son, though I may just name him "Ocho" instead.

-eD

B-Day BS

I am use to getting random emails for my birthday considering how many websites and companies that I am a member of for whatever reason. A few 3D websites including job search sites have sent me emails telling my happy birthday, even ones from Pepsi and Coke. Though the email from Denny's gets me a free Grand Slam Breakfast, the email from Jack in the Box gave me a coupon for a free desert, and even the GoToTrafficSchool.com (website for reducing points on your drivers license for tickets) told me if I happen to get another ticket this year I can use the code "HAPPYBIRTHDAY" for $5 off the normal price of the online course. Wonder how many more BS emails I will get today...
-eD

Tough Choices...

Looking through these sketches of the past month it is pretty tough to narrow this down, or even which to start first. If you have any thoughts or suggestions on the matter let me know. I have worked out a few aspects of each, and some of which are much funnier in my head than in the clumsy sketches I threw down on the page.

But like I said before some of these I think are gonna be awesome, so I don't mind stretching this out for a while. I plan on mocking up the renders and the characters a bit more before getting down to it, so I will try to post those up on these here Funny Ha Ha's to keep you updated.

I'm motivated but I didn't want to do any work on my birthday... Eh it's fun too, so we shall see...
-eD

Final July Sketchbook Post...

I know it's already august, but I've been busy. Finally scanned, mildly touched up, and comped the last few pages (a total of 50 in my mini July sketchbook). Pretty interesting experiment, though I did end up playing more catch up than I expected, and many times where I forced myself to doodle things. So here are the last two comped images of sketches.

I will take time tomorrow or later tonight to look through them all and figure out exactly what crazyness will come from them 3D-wise. I imagine that this will not just be an august thing, it seems like there is bound to be spillover to the next few months considering I kept on getting more and more ideas that seemed like they would be fun. I will keep y'all posted...

-eD

The Price is Wrong...

Found out that there is a 4 hour wait before the actual taping of the Price is Right, as well as, the seats being first come first served, so we don't have definite seats (at least the way that we ordered the free tickets). The guys decided to pass on the show, I am only a little disappointed. I have a decent amount of stuff to do today so I can take off tomorrow and not feel bad about it, so it's all good. Not to mention the fact that the little amount we waited outside yesterday for Last Comic Standing, my head got sunburned enough to "feel the burn" but not enough to smell burnt flesh, which would most likely happen no matter how much sunscreen I would wear if I was outside for 4 hours straight. So thinking it over, I don't mind not going. Hopefully another time, I will get a chance to win some money or even a "BRAND NEW CAR"...
-eD

Ghetto Birds...

Ghetto birds (police helicopters) flying in the sky make it hard to fall asleep. At least their lights aren't shining near my house.
-eD

Last Comic Standing Taping...

Waking up seemed difficult for Ben and his friend Jonnie, but I convinced them to go the taping, considering it was under Ben's name, meaning if he didn't go, I didn't go. We piled into my car and made surprisingly good timing to get to the show. About 20 minutes before we arrived I asked Ben if he had printed out the ticket. He had forgotten but since we were so close we continued on the journey. Luckily we got there early enough to have Ben run across the street to a Staples copy/print store to print out the ticket, while he did that I ran phones back to the car because they were not allowed inside. Stood in a line outside the theater for a while, but not too long, then we were corralled into a second area where we were split into lines. While waiting in line I did get some sun on my head and face but not enough to give off the burning flesh smell that normally happens when I get too much sun. When we finally were allowed in even though there was a decent amount of open seating in the middle and on the sides next the isle we were guided to the back right of the lower audience. We were all dressed fairly well, so I have no idea how to get good seating at these kinds of events, because it definitely was not first come/first served, or even reserved seating.
Most of the audience were given glow stick to wave around at the beginning of the show, but as I was goofing around with mine I dropped it and it rolled under the seat in front of me. I didn't really care much about it so I just left it under there. The host Craig Robinson was funny though most of his jokes that were not recorded were difficult to hear, and if there was clapping involved at any point in time it was hard to hear what anyone was saying. We were glad that the one guy we didn't like at all was cut at the very beginning of the show. Everyone was funny but Roy Wood Jr, Tommy Johnagin, & Myq Kaplan were my favorites. Ron White ended the show with his typical humor which while funny was recycled from material of his that I have heard earlier. I don't like it when comedians recycle jokes too often.
The taping went well, a lot faster than I expected once it got started. Unfortunately the cameras never came close to our area which we believe was full of disgusting people (at least the annoying people who were talking, loudly agreeing with the comedians jokes, and even bitching about not being able to get up and walk to the bathroom while they were taping). Though one of the roaming cameras did linger on one blondish girl about 5-10 rows ahead of us for almost the entire show.
If I am able to be seen I am wearing a red silk-like shirt with a black tie in the rear right of the seats, there may or may not be a glare from my freshly shaven head and cheeks, but I doubt it. Tomorrow I go to the taping of The Price is Right! Hopefully I win something! Keep your finger's crossed for me.
-eD