Burning 'bridge' behind me.

It's been awhile since I posted, but I didn't feel like presenting work today. Instead I thought I would use a low-poly base model as a visual aid for my gripes with Maya's Bridge tool.

Fortunatly most people either don't know about bridge, or simply never bothered with it. In theory it's a quick easy way to make a quad-plane between two edges... in theory.

This first image shows the basic geometry, all verts are welded properly and there's nothing wrong with it. Save that the bridge tool was used in it's making.




After pressing '2' to smooth, you can see how the geometry has been pinched.

I know for sake of the Game Making elements of the course we're in that smoothing like this is a bit of a moot point. And I agree, but this was a handy way of visualising the issue for you to better see.

Clearing the history doesn't kill this pinching, and tools such as selection of edge loops, cut face, split poly to name a few are greatly affected. When using something like the smooth, which does add geometry the bridge-glitche causes the verts not to be welded. Even though the verts prior were fine.

As you can see in this image, all aspects of the smoothing are fixed and nice. How? Well by doing what people generally have been doing already. By extruding the edge, snapping each of the verts and welding the damn thing yourself.
It's pesky, and seems a silly thing to make a habbit out of your workflow. However given the alternative 'bridge' which is intended to be a quick easy way of going about this has such a stupid glitch ... the tedious way is by far the better in the long run.

Anyways thought it worth visualising for people, so they can avoid it in the future and know why their avoiding it. oh and I have found the glitch to be very arbitrary.

Colour's in for SteamPunk Pirate

*hrm* dunno how I feel about this one.
I like the red hair, and the gold leg, and all the grey's and browns. Gives the feel I was looking for. But I think the leg, throws the eye off a bit, and I wish I could have introduced red in lower... but when I tried it just looked worse for it.

Further SteamPunk Pirate Design

Okies, someways into my 4th design I realised I was doing something I have a bad tendancy todo when working on Female Characters. I kinda over femanised it and I started to loose some of the appeal I had already achieved.

So I reverted to the 3rd concepts stance, I really like that stance, and it was raised in passing conversation with Adam about an Eye Patch and Parrot and it reminded me that I had a distinct steampunk pegleg alteration I had completely forgotten about.

So here is what I hope will be the final design. You can see I have setup a mechanical leg instead of a pegleg, and also I did want something a little more famanine but not obvious. So I have worked the collar of the coat in a well ... I'm not sure if it's overly femanine ... but it's not-not feamanine. *boggle* It's large and styled and I likes it! *beams*

Oh yeah, and I did allow the fringe to show with the hair. *dies* Americans for some strange reason call them bangs (LONG story) ... so if your american you'll know what I mean by the fringe.

Concepts of a Steampunk Pirate

A number of people have been wanting to see my concepts, and I remembered I really haven't been paying much attention to my own blog. And no, checking other peoples blog/deviants once a week doesn't constitute as stalking! *ahem* anyways...

I have done other concepts for other things, but haven't uploaded them. I have one I'm keeping back in particular (no idea why, I just am)... but I have blight concepts and such which I may upload after this project. *hrm* okies, enough dancing about...

Currently at school we're doing a character project to be incorporated directly into GameBryo and interestingly enough the character-types we had to choose from were all things that have been done to death. So a big aspect of this project challenge is do develop fresh/unique ideas while still maintaining what the character is about.

I went with the Pirate theme, and opted to incorporate Steampunk into the designs. This first design I really wasn't happy with. I stopped working on it despite it having the traits that gave it the look I sought. I think mostly what bothered me was even if she looks like a pirate, and her attire is modest enough ... she has this, "I belong on a street corner" feel that just didn't sit well with me.

Come to think of it, it just dawned on me that I could have gone with any run-of-the-mill pirate but my thinking thus far has been specifically Pirate Captain... *hrm* anyways I won't deviate, just interesting that I hadn't twigged sooner.


This next concept I was a lot more pleased with, but sadly the only thing to attribute pirate was the sword. And even that I overall plan on weeding out (I'll explain that in the next piccie *smile*).

Ladies can look very sexy in male-ish attire, and that is what I tried blending here. Not male-specifically but a blended mix. I do like this piccie but sadly it's not what I could easily pull off as Pirate while still keeping the general look.

Oh yeah, I always hated Black Beard or Blue-Whatsit. Pansies really, the really ruthless, viscious, feared pirates were girls and it is irksome they get so little attention in the history books. I do know an example, but ... umm well it will come as no-surprise to many that I just can't for the life of me remember her name. *dies*

This picture I am quite pleased with as you can get a strong pirate vibe from her. As before I said I wanted to avoid the stereo-typical cutlass and as you can see I have favoured for dual-machete.
You can't see it in this concept, but the knives will be tucked under the coat around her waist at the back.

Again keeping with the style mentioned earlier, I went with a simpler coat, shirt and vest.

Oh and also it was in my previous concept and was intended from the beginning but her hair has volumous curls, which I understand these days is called drills.
I've been dying todo a concept with these for AGES now and I tried it with another design for something outside of school. But the character was meant to look more tortured than anything but the cute drills just made her look adorable.
However I think I managed to get them in and not achieve ultimate cute-ness with this.

I am still in the process of working on it, but my next concept will be similar to this with the vest and such. Though unlike this one it won't show half-half changes. I do this so I can see what's working and what's not. I will be tucking the head-cloth up a bit and allowing a slight fringe to show. Oh, and I'm taking off the coat, keeping the vest and trying for a little something femanine for the sleeves. *smile*

Hope ya like it so far!

Concepts of a Squid-Chick ... thingie!

I am holding off on some of the ideas though I will list what I have planned it's just that their concept art isn't quite as along as this one. *hrm* no, they are I just want todo more and I was pleased enough with this one to show it.

I know, I need to be more open to showing my stuff.
Anywho, this is a concept idea for a Telekenetic Squid-Chick! *beams* I really am lousy at naming things. As my characters are generally designed in a potential game-usage light (hence the course, of course, *beams*) my thoughts as I was creating her were for a dual FPS/RTS theme. (something I spoke of in class)
Her species are matriarchal and I had this whole males are a sub-cast thing I forget the details now. Luckily I did write down all the particulars ... somewhere.

I know that she looks rather humanoid, the idea was her species evolved to be able to walk on land. I wasn't content with this alone and thought it would be neat if though they had legs they had passively adapted their telekenetic abilities to glide just above the ground. *hrm* it's a food for thought thing, I'll munch on it more later.

I have further ideas regarding the clothing, but that is all apart of my desire to develop my concept art further, as mentioned in my previous post.

I had a number of designs that were not all entirly humanoid; I did however like the humanoid aspects and thus focused more on that theme.

I did this one as an early idea for the female but on reflection I liked ladies to have legs and though it isn't illustrated here I was thinking males could go with this look more.

*hrm* a few ideas where thrown into this one, I tend todo that and will design one half of the body differently to the other to compare and later finialise on a look.
On the left I did a fleshy overlay thing (*puzzle*) I wanted to say tenticle but really it's not. it's too flat and hugs against the lower body where the legs would be. Anyway on the right side just opposite this I worked in a little fin.
Again this principal was playing on the passive telekenetic glide deal.

Oh, I love jesters but I don't recall this having anything to do with it but the shoulder region isn't garment but rather apart of the body that appears to be clothing. I think I was looking at images of coral when I did it.

*smile* and I also tried a little posing of the hair/tendrils but didn't worry about detail for them. I have that planned out for the final concept.

This is her facial design. I've always wanted todo something like this, and no, I don't mean the tenticles! ... though they do look cool. *smile*
What I refer to is the mouth, it is better illustrated in the image below this one but the idea is that they had normal mouths with which to speak (having not always lived in the sea). But due to their progressive evolution in Telepathy (offset of the Telekenesis) the mouth has subsequently evolved partially closed.

I think it looks great, you can see the lips underneith with fleshy links trying to bind them shut. *smile* I was thinking if they do talk it would sound in this trippy un-earthly voice.


This is essentially the Front/Side for use in the
modelling phase. it's a little offset but not enough to be a bother.

You can better see here on the front view the closing mouth concept.

And not alot of detail was placed in. I wanted to avoid cluttering the shape for modelling. When I need to put in the cranium detailing (tenticles'n stuff!) I will revert to the above detailed side-view.

My First Post!

What for the love of squoodly woodly to write.
Well, bloggy-intent would be a good place I think. This little bloggy (didn't go to market, however) is for providing I guess a place for collegues of my school to squizz and poke at my work.
I am looking forward to this for no other reason than it being nice for my work to be poked at instead of myself. *beams*

After school was done I was having a little trouble unwinding. I had this gniggling feeling that kept me busy, and I managed to get a number of works for concept art well under-way. I would normally say finished, but I have opted to challenge myself in this regard to endevour to do something extra special for my Concept Art and develop them further.
My intention was to have all the concept art ready with front/side templates set for modelling by new years. Well sadly I came down ill and am presently playing that age-ol' game of catch-up!

All that said, you are likely wondering where the artwork is. *blush* well, I kinda-sorta made this blog without any regard to scanning the piccies in first. And a blog with nothing written is a sorry thing to see, so here we are with a blog textually illustrating illustrations without showing a damn thing. Sorry, you shall just have to wait a bit.