I took a while this weekend to revisit some low poly body parts. I recorded a bunch of this modelling and then watched it back, it helped me figure out where I was making some topology errors.
I never build hands these days, I’ve got a bunch of hand models with different polygon counts and I just pull one into whatever model I’ve working on. I was happy with this hand:
Untitled from Rick Stirling on Vimeo.
Eric Chadwick was posted a guide on his site detailing what would be expected of Technical Artists at Blue Fang. It’s a great read.
I saw this book recommended on an art forum, so picked it up the other day. It’s a cross between a Zbrush manual and a series of tutorials.
I have to recommend it, it’s kinda like the missing printed manual but it embeds the functionality of the tools in lots of real work examples.
The phenomenon can be explained by the notion that, if an entity is sufficiently non-humanlike, then the humanlike characteristics will tend to stand out and be noticed easily, generating empathy. On the other hand, if the entity is “almost human”, then the non-human characteristics will be the ones that stand out, leading to a feeling of “strangeness” in the human viewer.
Surprise Attack! (focus)
Originally uploaded by Rick Stirling.
I built a lightbox today. I don’t have proper lights, but I spent ages playing with mirrors, bouncing my flash with foil, diffusing the flash with tissue paper and generally mucking about. A great learning experience.
Tramlines
Originally uploaded by Rick Stirling.
Tramlines next to the Charles Bridge/Karlov Most, Prague, Czech Republic.
Leith B&W Series-4
Originally uploaded by Rick Stirling.
Whilst off, I took the camera to Leith docks again, even though I felt that I had totally exhausted that area. I used a neutral density filter to add some darkness into the scene and shot in black and white all afternoon.
I wish that Adobe Lightroom had a good facility to add film grain to images, at the moment I have to export them to Photoshop to add that.