I was able to make more progress on my personal project that I’m doing with my friend, Corey.  Here I’ve modeled and textured some clothes for my character as well as gave him some hair.  His eyebrow placement needs some tweeking and his hands aren’t textured yet but I think it’s a good start.  He could probably use a belt buckle too.  The clothing mostly uses just color, bump, and spec maps created in Photoshop.  The hair is using Maya’s fur system.

And here is a close up of the face after tweaked eyebrows and hair settings.  I think there is too much color variation in his hair.  He looks too much like he’s in a boy band.

Two months ago, not content with my downtime when not at work, I decided I wanted to do something useful.  I needed something to do, some goal to work towards while not at my job.  My goal a year ago and the previous 3 years before that was to learn computer animation really well so I could get a good job that I would love.  Now that I’ve accomplished that goal, a part of me has been pretty restless during my free time.  Many would probably be content with having no dire responsibilities or life struggles.  I have to admit, I consider myself pretty lucky. I’m healthy, have a great job, and have no serious worries.  However, many people are not so lucky and I feel that since I am willing and able, there really is no reason why I should not help them.

For the past 6 weeks, I’ve been training with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training to run in the Rome Marathon.  In return for the training, I am fundraising $5000 for the LLS, 75% of which will go to cancer research and aid to people suffering from cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma.  A couple weeks ago, after a run, the team listened to talks from our honorees, people who had or still have these types of cancers.  One speaker in particular made an imprint in my mind. He was diagnosed with B-cell follicular lymphoma 3 years ago.  Once he was diagnosed, he went through chemotherapy and went into remission, which is when the cancer appears to have gone away.  A couple years later the cancer came back and he went through chemotherapy again.  He battled through and his lymphoma went back into remission.  He’s undergoing a series of injections now every few months to try to ensure the cancer doesn’t come back.  However, people can only take this drug a set amount in their life time.  For him, he would reach this limit in 3 years.  If the cancer comes back after that, all that’s left is more chemotherapy, which is why he said with a smile that he’s “depending on us to help fund the research to find the cure in the next 3 years.” When he was done talking, he sort of looked towards the ground, took a breath, smiled, and sat back down.  For some reason, it was that smile that stuck in my mind.  It seemed that after all that he’s been through and whatever the future holds for him, all he can do is smile.

The Rome Marathon is in March and so far I have raised over $3000.  I still have a ways to go, so please, if you can donate any amount, visit my fundraising website: http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/rome09/cvernon

This is a test of a sticky lips deformer I wrote. The first time the character opens his mouth, there is no sticky lip effect. The second time he opens his mouth, you can see the slight stickiness taper off on his lips which you can see in people when their lips are somewhat dry.

Just testing out some eye look functionality. This uses a few blendshapes and set driven key.

After being distracted with the likes of Deep Space, Fable 2, and Fallout 3, I finally started working on personal projects again. I remodeled my previous character’s head with extra topology to let me model in more detail in the blendshapes.  I also textured his head so he looks more human now with his eyebrows and lips.  Following the advice of one of my coworkers, I’m not modeling with any symmetry which I’ve noticed gives a lot better results that look more organic.  I plan to add a few levels of combination shapes, that is, blendshape targets that make combinations of other blendshape targets look correct.  It should add a nice level of complexity to the face and prevent it from looking too mechanical.

It’s official.   I’m a professional:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3180157/

Courtesy of my coworker, Geordie:

Some mention of the film I’m working on, A Christmas Carol, here.

I’ve been finding my creativity again.  Here’s a shot of a character I’ve been working on.  He has no texture, hair, or tongue at the moment so he kind of looks like that freaky guy from Powder.

The past couple of months have been pretty crazy and exciting.  My brother decided he wanted two bachelor parties.  In the first one, we went river rafting down the American River.  Rafting was a lot of fun and it was nice to just get out into nature and away from the computer.  The second bachelor party was in Las Vegas.  Vegas was fun but I don’t think I could stay there longer than a few days.  It’s pretty draining staying up late all the time, drinking, and spending lots of money.  I came back a poorer man.  After my brother’s two bachelor parties of river rafting and Las Vegas, he got married and decided to give me a new sister-in-law.

My niece turned one year old last week.  She’s just about the cutest thing on two legs…except when she poops.  Speaking of poop, I stepped in some the other day with my bare feet. Stepping in poop isn’t exactly my ideal way of starting a day.

Work has been pretty challenging and exciting.  I get to do something new everyday and it’s really neat seeing the work that is being made.  We definitely have our work cut out for us over the next year.

After work and the gym, I usually have about 2 hours of free time before going to bed.  A lot of this time is spent trying to work on personal cg projects.  Progress is slow but at least I’m getting work done.  I also spend a good chunk of my free time trying to answer all the emails I get about about advice on school, getting a job, complements on my work, questions and feature requests for cvxporter, etc.  Speaking of feature requests, I get a few of those a month. I implemented the first few feature requests but I had to stop after that.  I made that exporter in my free time, which is not a lot these days. Looking at the download count, I see that it’s been downloaded over 9000 times.  Do you know how many donations I’ve received?  One.  That doesn’t really inspire me to spend my free time updating the exporter.  Only Jody was nice enough to click that bright orange “Donate” button.  Thanks, Jody!