Psychedelic Fossa

So yesterday I finally got back into the computer lab and worked more on the fossa skull I've had on the back-burner.  The modeling is completely done, save for the addition of some smoothing.

Rawr!

Also, for your enjoyment, I hunted around YouTube and found a video of a fossa.  It's kind of cute with it's big eyes and round ears.  But holy cow, that tail just goes on forever!  It's half the body-length or something.

Also finally got around to getting a UV mapping grid to work with.  Besides the pretty colors, the extra lines help flaws in the mapping to stand out better and the numbers show if the normals and/or UV's are facing the right direction.  The website I got it from has a whole bunch of these in various color schemes.  It's very nifty.

It's hard to look at, I'll admit.

This is my 3rd try on mapping that part of the skull.  I think I'm finally getting the hang of mapping organic forms.  The shapes are never going to be nice and simple, but as long as they look good.

Earworm of the Day: Mess of Me by Switchfoot.

Pipe-Cleaner Mouse

When I'm bored, weird stuff starts to happen.  Like pipe-cleaner mice:

What website he could possibly be interested in, God only knows.

In other news, I've found a solution to my concerns about my laptop overheating.  And it didn't cost me a dime.  It did cost 9 pencils and some tape though...

Yes, I decorate things with stickers.

Amazing what you can do with random office supplies.

And finally, an update on the Tiger Swallowtail butterfly model:

Revised upper-wing coloration.

Lower-wing coloration.

You may be able to see that the blue spots now have dots instead of a smooth-shading gradient, which more accurately mimics the real butterfly's markings (at least I hope so).  This was achieved first by panting the areas to be speckled completely black, then going to Filter > Pixelate > Pointillize.  This gave me a layer of black dots on a white background, which I then set to "Multiply" mode and did some light erasing to create some variations and gradations.  I was very pleased with how it turned out.

And I apologize to any lepidopterists out there who might be puzzling over the gender of this butterfly based on the markings.  I started off with a male reference, but once it got to the underside of the wings, I was just looking for any photo with a good angle to draw from.

Earworm of the Day: Escalates by Falling Up

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a Sphere

So currently I've been teaching myself how to use fur in Maya.  And by "teaching myself" I mean using a mixture of Google searches and the "What does this button do?" technique.  Maya fur is easy to add and easy to mess with, but I couldn't figure out how to map on a multi-colored texture.  It was driving me nuts.  So I looked it up...

... one button.  That's the only step I was missing.  One.  Button.  The label reads "Bake".

So in celebration, I made Ferdinand Fur!

Cartoon fur taken to it's ludicrous extreme.

Then I backed up to a more realistic pattern and tried a proof-in-concept for a future project.  Thus the Fuzzy Hamster Fun Ball:

Half burry it in pine chips and no one can tell the difference!

Earworm of the Day: Transcendence by Lindsey Stirling.  It appears I've become a fan.

The Hunt is On!

Finals are over, summer is here, and I'm job-hunting.  Huzzah!

Don't have room for all 3 of the videos I need to share, but I'll give you the links (Vimeo is better through their site anyway).

• Carpe Noctem.  Yes, it is now at a reasonably state of done-ness!
• Title sequence for Cosmicomics, a book by Italo Calvino
• My shiny new Demo Reel!  Yay!

In other news, I've returned to my personal modeling/rigging/fur simulation project: a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.

Preliminary upper wing coloring on butterfly.  Those little veins were tough!

I started this project back at Parkland.  The nice thing about arthropods is that they're naturally made out of stiff bits and pieces.  I wanted to make something that was easy to rig, and with an insect you don't have to worry so much about painting weights.

Of course, I do have to worry about painting color, but once the uv map is in place (as you can see, it already is) it's super easy to do a pallet-swap.

Hence THE BUTTERFLY OF DOOM!!!!

Mwuahaha!

In retrospect, I should go back and make the eye spots bigger.  Maybe add some more embellishments on the edges?  And frankly, it's a butterfly.  Even when evil it still looks pretty-ish.  It can't help it.

Earworm of the Day: Afterlife by Switchfoot