A low-poly man (for now)

Do you know what's ironic? This week I worked in Blender a lot more than I usually do but I have very little to show for it. Not sure how that happened.

Since I wasn't hit by inspiration particles when I checked the new CG challenge topic ("Lost in space"), I focused instead on preparing for the character creation class in March. To say that Kent came up with with an ambitious schedule would be a severe understatement. The good news is that I've managed to find some references for the character I want to make. The bad news is that March only has 31 days. With all the courses I'll need to go through and the exercise submissions I'll need to make, there will be no time for CG challenges. So I fully expect some wonderful topics to be announced.

To chew some courses off my plate I started with the 'Introduction to Character Modeling'. It is an in-depth course covering all aspects of character creation so I figured that would be the best crash course for me. In the sense of "preparing quickly for the class" and not "smashing head first into a course that takes ages to finish". The course is great, don't get me wrong. Jonathan Williamson is one of those Blender super-stars you definitely want to learn from. But I just managed to finish chapter one! In a WEEK! Ghhhhh.... At this rate, I will finish it at some point in June. 2020.

But, lo and behold, my base mesh, ready for sculpting. (With some basic materials and a bit of lighting.)

Nothing special, huh? Yeah, yeah, I know. I can't make a portfolio piece every week. But! I've learned stuff. I can now retopologize things ever so slightly faster. I always thought that if you selected faces and pressed F, it would create a new face on top of them (which is a very bad thing). Well, it won't. It will merge them. And then you can take two opposite vertices and connect them by pressing J, which will separate the big face into smaller ones again. It may not sound very impressive, but it is a hell of a lot faster than deleting and re-creating the faces from scratch.

Another useful thing I picked up this week is detail flooding. It was mentioned in a tutorial series created by Grant Abbitt: a simple little thing, but it will save me a lot of time when I'm sculpting. I haven't tried it yet, but in theory, when you sculpt with DynTopo enabled and you press this button, it automatically unifies the detail of your mesh according to the detail size you've set. Gone are the days of lightly touching the surface in the vain effort of getting unified geometry. (If this tip works, that is.)

And lastly, I also made another bouncing ball animation. If the Blender thing doesn't work out, I should now be able to get a job as a ball handler. But I digress. What was fun about the exercise was that it was no exercise at all. I worked really hard at it—only to find out, that it was only a course material and the real submission is another, more difficult, animation. Yay me. But my creative department immediately jumped at the challenge and has since come up with a brilliant animation (we are allowed to create our own this time). The only problem—you've guessed it—is that we are booked until April, sir. I'm very sorry, sir. Sigh. I need to get more productive. Or grow a third arm. That could help.