SIAN used FLASH! SIAN is confused about MAYA! SIAN hurt itself in its confusion!

Continuing towards the steady count down towards deadlines, I'm still having problems with the essay, but may have finally made a decision on the question. A week too late I suspect.


As is in the title, I think Maya and After Effects are tying a close first with which is making me worry more (program wise, the essay is definitely CRITICAL HIT when it comes to my stress level)so I'll complain about those. As ever, Maya is like some great insurmountable barrier of commands the I need some kind of technical Rosetta Stone to translate. But I may have hit on the problem! Recently I had trouble trying to use the Vector interface, and it turned out the menu I'd dragged out was not the one for simple polygons but rather NURB's, explaining my fruitless days work.
The other time, I couldn't get the wireframe/solid short cut to work.
Turns out, I was pressing F5 instead of 5! (If thats a joke to you, theres no hope).

Aftereffects is sort of mingled with the worry of live at five, the hand in of which seems to change everytime I listen. My nails are going to get shorter very rapidly.


Something I am feeling relatively confident on is Flash, which I feel I'm actually understanding. I may be doing the beginners lessons, which I'm sure aren't taxing in the slightest, but I feel happier after coming out of the lesson. I have very short tests done in Flash but I saved them as swf, so they won't load on to this. So SUPER EFFECTIVE!

...Why the pokemon theme?

New Program Jam

The After Effects workshop went better than expected for me, as I thought my computer would crash horrendously before I had any chance to get the work done, but I found changing the file locations helped with loading the files on to the program. Although it's not very interesting, this is the banner I made for the surfing video.

Maya is still giving me problems by rewarding my noobishness with disdain. I spent hours trying to make stuff without being to access object mode, before I found out a day later that I was using NURBs instead of simple polygons, which ruined everything. Stupid NURB's, and stupid me. I did make a Doom/first Duke Nukem quality laptop though, and a Bomberman bomb which I am strangely proud of.

I have actual ideas for the background project! I'm quite surprised, but I have thought at least two of them through quite well down to which will be which in the colour category. I tend to do certain things I particularly like as practice, which isn't always the best for improving beyond my skill level if I draw the same old things again but I think I've chosen subjects I can stay enthusiastic about but which will be a challenge to draw and colour.

The pencil work I realised would be about strong contrasts in tone, so a picture with strong light and shadows. I'm hoping to do something rather like this

-which is an Inari Shrine. I'd like a closer view of the shrine though, and more foliage but I'd like to do stairs of some variety.

The coloured one (I'm thinking photoshop) is this kind of perspective, but warped towards the end. I want something slightly off-centre, kind of odd in the lighting, and I might have a lack of gravity to make it stranger.

For the specific colour pallette, despite not studying the other colour techniques we have to use I'm inclined towards a monochromatic colouring scheme using the very dark, dull blues of underwater scenery.

New Year greetings, two weeks later

Hows everyone doing? Good? I hope so.

Christmas was as it always is, a period of slovenliness and inactivity punctuated by consuming my own body weight in pistachio (no small feat!), but I did get round to eventually creating some images to update.


During the presentation I was extremly nervous (rightly so) and I started sketching this image. It was meant to be more Chinese than Japanese but I decided to turn it into a Shisa than a Fu Dog (ph33r my wiki research). It was a good practice of watercolours and I'm quite pleased with the dress gradient.


Although comic pages are at something of a stand still, I've been slowly changing the html of the Fox fire page to personalise it beyond the standard layout, even though the best I can do is change the images but not the layout's layout, so I'm doing more of a skin I guess. This is the background I'm using, although I did make a lil' logo to stick in the corners but I'm leaving it off as it tiles down the page.



The caramal dansen is still in work, I need to reverse the frames I have to see if the movement loos right for what is essentially a half-cycle or if I have to draw the other 4 frames, much to my annoyance.

I also finished inking Kushi, but still no colour. I'm hoping the background tutorials help me with understanding colour theory a little better, I tend to be fairly unimaginative when it comes to colour designs.

That's it I think, but I did find this -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w11xyqPtlUw

a favourite Tom and Jerry of mine! It's called Concerto Cat, and has some lovely visual gags (I particularly like the flattened hands and the extendable pinkie finger).

and this, which I saw when I was looking for The Cat With Hands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW1AOzLp3CU

I think the animation for Death's wings and decaying fabric is amazing.