I finally finished rigging up Nick’s body. His face is yet to be done, but at least I finished up this milestone. At this point I’m not sure if I’m going to start work on the facial rigs right away. I’m leaning more towards beginning modeling on my next character, Wallace. This is because at the NY Blender Conference (which was awesome!) I spoke with Bassam about how he handles facial animation and he told me he used latices in combination with shape keys. Every other book I’ve read uses shape keys exclusively or armature-driven shape keys. I figured that while I’m thinking about the type I’m going to use that I can hold off on that and make an armature that will allow me to achieve good results as well as not being a real pain in the butt to use. Also, I’ve done a lot of work on this armature and added a lot of constraints, which I’ve never done before. I think I’m going to make this my general purpose rig for human characters for a while, so I’d like to take the time to get it right - or as right as possible. Then, after a few shorts I’ll either refine the armature or create a fresh one.
We keep losing power around here. I’m not sure who’s to blame. This time even the server lost power. That means that the power outage lasted longer than the UPS could handle. That’s quite a few minutes, so it wasn’t just a blip in the electricity.
Sorry if the outage kept you from getting somewhere on the server you needed to get to.
No lame jungle puns from me. Just go here it here. Or, if you already run it (as I do on my laptop), then just use the upgrade tool. I’m upgrading now. If anything major breaks, I’ll let you know.
When I first began to study about Salvador Dali, I looked up surrealism in Wikipedia. The article mentioned that surrealism was not limited to the art of painting. It also extended to video work. I always wondered what a surreal movie might be like. Well, I have found one that, for some reason, has really stuck to me. It’s called Incongruitastic. This project originated with the animator wanting to combine all of his ideas into one short film. The result is episode 0, which is extremely surreal.
This annoyingly catchy rap song with crazy dance moves (there’s even a video online by the rapper to show you how to do the dance) is being put into all kinds of mashups. For some reason, these all seem to involve kiddie movies and Tv shows. Anyway, this gave me a pretty good laugh for a while. So, even though I hate linking to youtube videos (since they have an annoying tendency to be taken off), check these out while they last. First, check out the original, so you know what they’re parodying.
Visited this National Park last Sunday. It is pretty beautiful scenery. I’d probably rank it a 7 out of 10. It’s a very nice walking trail. Here are some of the pictures I took last week.
Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as “piracy.” In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them.
If you don’t believe that illegal copying is just like kidnapping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word “piracy” to describe it. Neutral terms such as “prohibited copying” or “unauthorized copying” are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as “sharing information with your neighbor.” - rms on Piracy in Some Confusing or Loaded Words and Phrases that are Worth AvoidingPhoto by redjar on flickr, used under a Creative Commons License
