If you're looking for a lesson or a long rant, forget it. Not tonight. Not the night before my Electromagnetism 2 Final. This picture will be found in one form or another in JF Scene 5 Page 3. He is running. There are two things to notice. The first is how well the pose looks. It looks just as good in motion. Running is a pretty easy animation to do if you remember two things: primary, secondary, and tertiary rotations and a body's movement is based on required by the movement. Primary rotations are what is actually happening. It's what you think of when you think punch. Secondary is the stuff that you see happening on the sidelines and is required by physics and anatomy. Tertiary rotations are the things that you don't see but people do just because they are not machines. Animations that lack useless but necessary tertiary animations are easy to spot because they look robotic. The second this is that you must remember why your character is moving at all. Is he trying to get somewhere? Then his legs ought to put their weight down on the front foot and bring the rear foot forward. The character swings his/her weight around the front foot and put the rear foot in front and repeats. It may seem simple, but animation editors without physics engines or inverse kinematics lose it often. What is the solution? Start with primary rotations, add physics and anatomy corrections, and then put fluid tertiary motions in. The second thing to notice is that the arms look thin. This is not a comment on the fact that the author has lost twenty pounds in eight months (although it is true that I am looking more and more like Kate Moss everyday). It is an error with the skeleton and mesh. You might have notice recently my war against this bad thing. But for now, Jav is going to keep his bad model. Page 3 doesn't need to be postponed much more. But who knows what we'll see for Scene 6, eh?
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This picture is different from a lot of the recent stuff. First off, it's made in Corel Draw. Secondly, it took about thirty minutes. Thirdly, it was rushed. Four is that it is a derivative of a work that I have on my walls. Five is that is possible that it either could or could not show up in Scene 5. So, why haven't I been using Corel Draw lately? Hmmm, well, it's usually good for making character skins. I really haven't been doing character skins lately. So I decided to get back into the rhythm. Not that it takes much time, but we all know what happens when you don't practice your mad skillz. Why did I rush it and only take thirty minutes? Well, I have two good reasons. The first is that I have four finals in the next three days. If I flunk any of them, I won't graduate college in June. Then I'll be fuxx0ring around this summer and next year trying to pass these easy classes (Physics Electromagnetics, Mathematical Methods of Physics, Modern Physics, and Applied Modern Physics). So the more I rush this shit, the less I'll rush my studying and the more work that I'll be able to do on JF this summer. Duh, the answer is clear. So why did I derive this from a picture that I have on my wall (specifically FFX's Titus)? Well, I was thinking that my Dojo Ambush people as well as Jav are all dressed far too warm for LA in the autumn. They are "businesspeople", but not Jav. Jav at least should wear t-shirts and shorts. So the picture on my wall of FFX's Titus looked like a good start. I took the concept of the long shorts with a symbol on it, hands on hips. I also emulated his hairstyle. *shrug* It's not technically a fan art, but it's a derivative. f(x) = d/dx( g(x) ). Yes, that is calculus. No, it is not even slightly related to art. Will this show up in Scene 5? I don't think so, but you never know. Sometimes I say "This is impossible," just to invigorate myself to try harder to make it possible.
Tonight is a continuation of last night's work. Jav is not bald (yet) so I gave him a decent head of hair. You can't see it, but the back is tapered to the conservative style. That's what I'm probably going to do soon. You may remember me saying something about hair length being proportional to freedom. Well, hair length is also directly proportional to my ability to find a job and to be respected for a human being instead of just being a bum. I use the word bum to explain the terminology of those who dislike me for my hair length. You see? I can't get a job with long hair. What about women? Women with long hair can get a job, why can't I? Perhaps because I look like a drug user? I'm not. I have bags under my eyes, but that's because I've had them since sixth grade. What happened in sixth grade? FoxPro for DOS, DARE, my bike stolen and recovered via vigilante justice, Holmes Elementary, the threat of Middle School, and sleep deprivation that I have only increased over the years. So should I wear makeup? f* no. Should I shave, get a haircut and a real job? A "real" job is subjective, but the job part is true. I indeed need around $650 net income per month to survive. So that is why Jav has a tapered haircut. If you've seen a recent image of me*, I have bangs down to my chin and a beard a week old.
Today's lesson will be brief (relatively) because I am not to happy with spending time on JF right now. The rant is another story. It is immensely long. Que sera sera. The lesson today is to make those bad models better. You know the Beatles song, "Hey Jude" right? It goes, "Hey Jude, don't make it bad, take a sad song and make it better..." Well, that's what I think of when I look back at some of my earlier works. I think "Shoot, this certainly is too good to give up on. I'm going to subdivide and delete, turn edge, scale, scale, move." So that's what I did. Part of making a bad model better is correcting the number of triangles. If you have too many, try deleting them. Usually my older models either have too few triangles or are no good. So it is with this model. You might remember this being the face of Jav from Scene 3 to Scene 5. It's been eighty some days. It's nice because it can animate the mouth and it looks decent. It's semi anime and semi realistic, which is right where I want to be. What did I exactly do? I messed with the jaw a bunch. I messed with the forehead. I really couldn't seem to get it to look like a head. But bald anime people don't look human. Just check out Dragonball Z! Hehehe. I need to add hair tonight. What can I say about my lesson of making it better? Well, after my first five hours on a model, I'm pretty much dead for ideas. I need to give it a rest for at least five more hours to get a new approach. If you don't have the will, just start a new model, your will ought to come back with a lightning flash. If all else fails, draw in your notepad. You can either copy your notepad idea directly or your brain will do it automatically. Remember: minute differences in length, angle, and curvature make a huge difference in the look of a character. Be sure to push and pull those vertices in real time.
