I’m making really great progress on Raul Domingo. As I mentioned yesterday, the fact that I’ve already used Blender before is really helping me understand what I’m doing instead of hunting down where things are. Today I not only finished putting bones into the legs and feet, but I’ve also done a wonderful walking and waving animation section of the tutorial. You get to see that probably tomorrow. It’s amazing to see what kinds of things are so easily neglected if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Take, for example, the way that I made the eyes move around as above where I had him roll his eyes. The idea of having an object for the eyes to track is just brilliant. Also I needed some specialized bones just to keep the knees aligned! I would have never even thought of that if the author of the tutorial hadn’t mentioned it. Below I made Raul Domingo look downwards with his eyes.

So by the end of tomorrow or at least hopefully before the Christmas rush this weekend, I’d love to be done with this tutorial. I’ve learned so much and I’d like to complete it so that I can combine the techniques I’ve learned here to create some animated shorts. The hardest part left, which I am saving for tomorrow (so that I can get some sleep) involves making him blink. This is important as I had a few friends of mine complain that the fact that the penguin didn’t blink was disturbing to them.

Above is my first attempt at making Raul Domingo seem as though he were walking. Fittingly, he looks as though he’s trying to balance himself on the tight-rope. Below is a badly posed tribute to the Karate Kid’s signature move. We were talking about Mr Miagi today at work, so it was in my head when I was trying to think of a pose.