I’ve spent the last several weeks playing with 3D and here is one of the results. I get so absorbed in 3D that I don’t realize the time passing. I suppose that’s a good thing.

This is an image of a Blood Elf character I play in WoW. It was just for fun. I think it’s pretty decent, but the hair is a little, meh. Hair is really hard to do in 3D. I tried several ideas, but this was the easiest to deal with. Texturing hair it is a whole battle in itself.

This was modeled in Lightwave and textured/rendered in Softimage XSI. I really love the Mental Ray renderer, especially with SSS.

I added this image to the gallery page.

I have also been working on the character I posted last year. She has clothes now! ;P

~gp~

Well I had my amazing Mac Pro for a year now and it seemed it was time to go back to the PC world. Okay, well there were several reasons for this. I didn’t just wake up and decide to blow tons of money on a new machine. That said, though, I wanted to build a great gaming computer and still be able to do all the graphic work that I do.

For the geeks out there this is what my new machine contains (pictures below).

- 3.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- 2 Gigs DDR3 1333 MHz Corsair Ram
- XFX 790i Ultra Nvidia Motherboard
- 2x XFX 8800 GTS Alpha Dog Edition XXX (G92) w/ 512 MB DDR3 Ram (SLI)
- Samsung 24 inch Widescreen (16:10) LCD (1920×1200)
- Windows Vista Ultimate (32-Bit)
- 750Watt PC Power & Cooling PSU
- Zalman 9500 CPU Cooler
- Microsoft Wireless (Bluetooth) Entertainment Desktop 7000 Keyboard / Mouse

GEEKGASM!

This should keep me going for a while.

~gp~

2007 is over already? Where was I? Talk about going by fast. I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything. I’ve mostly jumped around from project idea to project idea, 3d program to 3d program, MMO to MMO and quietly managed WirePop. I haven’t really done anything new.

I think I’m in a creative slump and don’t even know it yet. It used to be that I had ideas for stories and projects that I couldn’t wait to get out there. Now every idea I come up with feels like it’s been done before. I go from one day thinking of something cute and fun to the next day thinking about something dark and gritty. I have a folder on my computer full of random story ideas and yet none seem to really do it for me.

Right now I’m still on my 3d animation kick, but the truth is all I’ve done so far is jump around playing with many 3d apps trying to pick one I like to move forward with. I think the fact is that I’ve falling so out of the loop that even Lightwave, my old go-to 3d app, feels foreign to me. I’m almost starting from scratch. On top of that when I was at the top of my 3d game I was mostly good at modeling. I have little experience in the actual animation department.

Not to long ago I bought a digital training kit on character animation in Softimage. I think I should start the year by sitting down and actually going through the lessons.

As for a story… I don’t know when that will come to me.

I’d like to actually get somewhere this year. Especially somewhere towards 3d animation. When January 09 hits I hope to look back at this and not wonder where the year went again.

~gp~

So I’m still toying with the idea of getting back into 3D animation. While going through my old files and moving them to the new hard drive I found some really old 3D work of mine from back in 1998. Wow, was is horrible. I wonder if I kept at it instead of stopping to pursue my web career where would I be now?

Right now I’m trying to figure out what exactly I want to do. Just stating that I want to do character animation is not enough. I’m still not even sure what 3D program I want to use. Chances are, right now, that it will be Lightwave. Mostly because I know how to model in it fairly well. They also just recently released the Universal Binary version. So that should run nice on my Intel Mac. Of course I need $400 to get the upgrade, but that’s better then $1000s for, say, Maya.

I’ve been looking around the net for some inspiration. Something that I like and I feel that I could potentially actually do. So far all I found was this animation. It was done in Japan on Animation Master. I’m not sure how I feel about the cel-shaded look. But it does lend itself to the style. The point, though, is that the animation isn’t really hard. No running, jumping or battle scenes. Just a lot of talking. That begs the question, though, what kind of story could you do like that? Would anyone really care to watch it?

Of course beyond that there is also the whole thing of music, sound effects and voice overs. It’s a lot of work and I sometimes wonder “do I really want to do this?”. Thing is, I can’t stop thinking about it. So I guess I’ll just see where it goes.

Well I finally got a replacement to my hard drive that died on me a while ago. I only later started to remember all the files that I lost. Stories I was working on, comic files etc. There is nothing that can be done about it now, though. Next month (Oct) the new update to Mac OS X will be coming out and it includes a nice backup program. If I can manage to squeeze out some money for that and another HD I can rest a little easier with a backup in place.

Now I just need to start moving my old files to the replacement drive and try to get back to some normalcy with that.

I’m happy to finally announce my latest project. It’s a how to DVD called “How To Color Anime Style with Photoshop”. It’s over 100 minutes long and goes from start to finish coloring an image of a Japanese school girl. The DVD is professional quality complete with menus and files to work along with the lessons.

This is something I’ve had on my todo list for a while and I’m glad I finally was able to finish it. Check it out and watch some samples. howtocoloranime.razorstudio.com

Well another hard drive eats it. This will be the second one in less then 12 months. Last time it was my main (programs) HD on my PC. This time it was my projects drive on my Mac.

I usually have two hard drive on my computer. One with all my programs. The main drive and one with all my personal and project files.

Luckily, I’ve only lost about 5 months of work. So that’s not too bad. It’s still a blow to my daily routine. It will take a while to get things back to normal.

You’d think by now I’d have a backup setup, but alas I am too poor.

~gp~

I spent the last several weeks working in 3D. It’s almost scary how absorbed I can get in a 3D program. Time seems to fly like nothing else, but I do have something to show for it.

As you can see in the image above I’ve been working on a character. She was modeled in Lightwave and edited and rendered in Modo. I’m far from done with it, but I’m actually fairly please with the results so far.

I’m not sure “exactly” what I will do with her just yet. I would love to do some kind of animation. Something I’ve wanted to do for over 10 years now. I’ve been toying around with story ideas, but nothing concrete yet. Once I’m somewhat settled on the model I hope to sit down and rough out some story ideas and character sketches.

Like I stated a few posts back I’ve been playing around with various 3D applications. Lightwave has been my staple 3D program for most of my 3D life. I spent thousands to eventually learn Maya. I even toyed around with the open source 3D program Blender. Most of them have not stayed up to date with the times, are just to darn expensive or I just can’t wrap my head around how they think. So why am I talking about all this? Have I finally found a 3D program to settle on? Yes and no. I decided to give Modo a real good try. I’ve been playing with the evaluation version and I have to stay I really love this program. It’s clean, modern and very powerful. As you can see from the renders of my character they look beautiful. They have both SSS and GI and render in a minute or less. Only problem is Modo can’t do character animation. It is coming, though. Maybe next year. I’m at a crossroad here. Should I just get Modo, build up all my assets for an animation then hope and wait for them to add character animation? Or bite the bullet and get another application instead? I can’t afford two applications. Modo and something for animation.

Anyway, these are thoughts that are currently going through my head these days.

To give a little update on my last few posts. Not long after I posted about my little MMO addiction did I stop playing them almost completely. As you can see my obsession with 3D is stronger. I’ve since cancelled most of them and have only kept a couple. The only game I’ve actually been playing is Test Drive Unlimited. It’s an open world racing game and great to just jump in and drive around. Also a great way to get ideas while I cruise around the Hawaii coast.

I did buy Anime Studio Pro and it seems like a really powerful program for 2D animation. Though, after I got all re-obsessed with 3D I kinda have forgotten about it. I do think it’s a great program for my arsenal. I certainly could use it for some unique animations like logos etc.

Besides all that I am also working on two other projects. I won’t go into details just yet. One is a product I hope to sell that I think many of my fellow Manga artist will like. The other is a site, which also has something to do with Manga. So I haven’t forgotten about my Manga endeavors either.

Till next time.

~gp~

After receiving a package today that I had actually forgotten about I came to the realization I might actually have an addiction problem. Inside the package was a game box. The game, Lord of the Rings Online. Why do I say I’m addicted? Because when I looked at one of my bookcase shelves I notice that I have a growing collection of these games.

I laid them all out on the floor and took this picture. That’s a few games if you ask me. This is also not counting the many digital downloaded games I have. They are all MMO’s. Online worlds to which people like me escape to spending countless hours.

This “addiction” started way back when a friend introduced me to Anarchy Online. That was the first MMO I played and the beginning of the long journey… into this, um, hobby.

There is little point to this post, I guess, but it’s a little glimpse into what I do when I’m not drawing something. Now I have to go and… play that new game I got.

~gp~

During my recent research into 3d animation programs, I bumped into this little gem. Anime Studio by E-Frontier. Well actually it used to be called Moho and was bought by E-Frontier. In any event this program utilizes vector and imported graphics that can then be animated using a system of bones and virtual cameras. It’s quite ingenious. Granted it won’t have the animation flow of a true cel animated cartoon, but I’ve seen some pretty impressive animations done with this app.

Here are a few:
La Reine Soleil
Gone in 60 Seconds
Drowtales 6th Anniversary Animation

Fairly impressive if you ask me. If projects like D7Peacemaker can become fairly successful with even less animation then those above then this seems like a great application to tell a story. In my case it also seems like a natural transition from 2D comics.

The price tag is also not scary at all. I may just be picking this up…

~gp~