Mr Squirrel's Humble Abode

Mr Squirrel was fuming. He specifically told the housing agency to find him a nice little nut house. And what did they give him instead? An acorn house. Acorn! Out of all the terrible choices they could have gone for, they pick an acorn. He might be the only living squirrel allergic to acorns but that doesn't give them the right to treat him like this. He is going to complain. Right. Now.

Well... the view around here is nice. The garden hasn't seen a spade in ages but that can be easily remedied. The bridge won't last another winter, though. Maybe if I had a few planks, I could fix the hole here and... Huh, what's that? An antique water pump? Hmm, it will have to do, I guess. At least it isn't far from the fields. The lettuce will need plenty of water when the spring comes, and I'd hate to drag it across the whole farm. Now, where did I put my hammer? Ah, it must still be in the moving boxes. Well, I'll just go and-- 

AAH-CHOOO!

Some scenes are easy to write about. Others require a bit of brainstorming and preparation. And then there are scenes like these. If I were to write about every aspect of modelling, texturing and adjusting, George R. R. Martin would've written three new fantasy series by the time I'd have finished. So I need to take a different approach. As my great-grandmother used to say*: when you don't know what to write about, go meta.

I could've easily called this scene "The Invisible Work"—and, before I came up with that silly short story you just read, I was going to call it that. Why, you ask? Well, because most of what I've done over the past two weeks ended up being two pixels somewhere in the general area. Of course I knew what I was getting into when I started working on it but... no, that's not quite true. I didn't know. 

Imagination is a weird thing. A week ago, I had to come up with something for a homework submission. I happened to come across a fantasy scene that featured a house which looked a bit like an acorn. A week later, I have an acorn house, a garden, a river, a bridge, a farm area with lettuce and water pump and hay cart and beehives and feeding rack and— Where did all this come from? I have no idea.

I heard someone say that writers fall roughly into two categories: the architects and the explorers (they were probably called something different, but you'll get the general idea in a second). The first ones meticulously create rules of their fantasy worlds, figure out the whole structure, and then just go and fill in the blanks. By all rights, that should be me. Only for some reason, when it comes to creating stuff, I defect to the other camp. To those guys who start chiseling a rock one day and end up with a cathedral by accident. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." That kind of stuff.

And, don't get me wrong, I love it. It's great to come up with something that far exceeds your expectations. (Which is not that difficult when you have none.) But it can also be deeply frustrating when you find yourself staring at an empty green plain, wondering what on earth you are going to do with it. And what do you think I was doing a lot this week? Come on, take a wild guess.

Anyway, I'm going to submit it to the CG Challenge page before my computer explodes or the civilization collapses; whichever comes first. And next week? We both know that I don't know what I'm going to work on. I'd like to finish the animation bootcamp, so I'm thinking about scrapping together a simple scene from the invisible assets I created this week and focus on the course in the remaining time. We shall see. Until next time!

* She didn't, really.