After One Intense, Hopless and Unfruitful Struggle...

THE AVATAR IS COMPLETE!!!! :DDDD

Sorry, but I just feel incredibly fantastic after completing the avatar that I've been trying to make for over 2 months now I think! 0_0 I wasted so much time on it solely and I paid the price for it with falling behind with the project itself and having to sacrifice Japanese revision and life drawing as a result. Last week Monday or maybe slightly earlier, I had a sudden revelation of sorts, I suddenly figured out how to build the head for the avatar. On Tuesday when I went in for a seminar instead of going to the one on Thursday (I went to another groups seminar due to complications on Thursday), and I ran into a good friend of mine who knew how to build the avatar which was a brilliant stroke of luck.

I showed him the head I had built seperately and the body as well, and asked him how to join them together. After some tinkering around, he managed to join the two parts together and form the avatar's whole body :). Trouble is though, I still had no idea had to do clothes and hair, so I went home after the seminar to attempt it anyways. I struggled like hell to figure out to make the clothes, I tried some methods but it always went wronf and I barely could find tutorials on adding clothes on the Internet, hence it was very frustrating for me. But I had another relevation later in the week and I realised, what would happen if I tried to model the clothes on the body seperately using the same method I used for the head?

Basically, I built a plane in Front view for the coat in front of the chest, and I applied the Symmetry modifier to it and then used the Extrude Face option combined with the Shift key to create new polygons from that single plane-cum-polygon now. I created a box around the chest, basically imagien people who wear cardboard boxes with their arms, head and legs sticking out thats what literally recreated. I then made the box transparent and edited the vertices of it with MeshSmooth active on it to help me mold the box into the shape of a coat on the body, and it worked out really well! :D

After that recent success, I immediately applied the same method to build face mask, eyepatch, trousers and shoes and what you will see soon is a result of my discovery :). It took me freaking ages to mold the vertices of the coat alone just right, but it paid off in the end. After modelling all the clothes on, the next step would be to texture them. Handily, since I made them as seperate components to the body, they will end up using their own invidual materials and hence each component can hsve a different material assigned to it. I used the UVW Unrwap modifier to create texture maps of each component one at a time, then I exported them as image files, where I thus edited them with The GIMP (yes that is its actual name). I went a little crazy with the coat, and I changed the look of it by adding red dragons to the front, some blue lines and butterflies (I brush I downloaded for the butterflies) on the back of the coat and I also used a Japanese character brush to put my name in Hiragana on the coat, but it ended up on the inside (dont ask how -_-').

Finally, the hair was left and this turned out to be the biggest demon to conquer. As it stands, Im not really as happy with the hair, but 3DS MAX does create some truly awesome and realistic hair. I had no idea how to do the hair, and I tried following the tutorials but only the official ones were of any help to me. I was meant to model the hair using splines so I could create my ideal hairstyle, but it was very fiddly, difficult, time consuming and frustrating to work with, hence why I didnt use it in the end. Instead, I used preset hair and I tweaked the hairstyle of it using the Styling options as well as recolouring it too. It still looks pretty damn good, but it's not the hairstyle I wanted ideally. Hair in 3DS Max is probably the most difficult thing in bar human and animal animation possibly, and the hair you will see is what I managed to get after hundreds of failed attempts and retries due to limitations and how unforgiving the Hair system is.

Anyways, no moee further delays, here is the avatar! I'm still trying to figure out how to get it from 3ds max into flash, but Ive just asked a friend on it anyways:

The avatar has turned pretty awesome in my opinion, I created a hybrid of my two imvu characters, but it's nowhere near as detailed and refined as my ideal avatar, although for my first attempt its not too damn bad! ;D. I am going to create my ideal avatar one day definitely, its going to be one of my ultimate challenges, I was too ambitious witht the concepts for the box, elements and avatar, but Ive always been better at concept than technical skills anyways :P. if you could leave me any comments on here, Facebook or in person or w/e, Id be very pleased :). Ciao!

Drawings Update 18/04/09

In the first drawing for today's list, I wanted to do some more sketches of human faces hence I picked out a random picture I had, and Mr Bean was the one I got. I found the picture ideal to draw from and the result of it is above. I kept it greyscale rather than colour because I prefer it this way for this drawing, and I also used the premade tones in Manga Studio again for the clothes in this sketch. It's a pretty pleasing result anyways and its slowly helping my confidence with drawing humans now.
This next drawing is actually a sketch my friend Tebby did for me. He wanted to test out my inking and digital colouring skills, so he drew me a sketch of a character he made up on the spot and handed it for me to turn into what you see now. All I did was ink the drawing after scanning it in and added colour to it using a colour scheme I felt was perfect fort his character after lots of experimentation.
He's going to be one of the main characters in the manga me and Tebby are going to be working on and we haven't decided on any other specifics like his name, but I think I have a good idea of how I'd like him to be in personality.

This next drawing is of Shigure Sohma from the anime and manga series Fruits Basket. I'm a big fan of his character because he is always very goofy and outgoing but he does have his serious side as well which seldom appears in contrast to his outer personality. I couldn't quite find the pattern I chose for the background with dogs in it, but I loved the style of it so I used it anyways. The style of the background is very similar to the artist's drawing style hence I felt it suited this character to a T.

This next drawing is of Ranma Saotome from the much loved and highly inspirational manga and anime series Ranma 1/2. The manga artist is considered a living legend partly because of this series and many anime have been inspired by it in many ways. Here's a twist for you though, Ranma is actually a boy but he a curse put on him and now he transforms into a girl when splashed with cold water, and back into his boy self when it's hot water. I love the colour scheme and the design of the female Ranma hence I wanted to draw "her" and I gave her a background to suit her beauty as well. Since I love the colour scheme so much, colouring this drawing was an absolute must and you can see the awesome results above :D.

This next drawing is of Roy Mustang from the Full Metal Alchemist anime and manga series. I'm quite a big fan of his personality as well as him being the Flame Alchemist in the show wo produces flames from just clicking his fingers, which is so simple but very effective and impressive. Again I chose greyscale as I favoured it for this drawing too, and I used a premade tone for the background. I'm not exactly sure why I choose colour for some drawings but greyscale for some others, I'm just weird like that XD.


Finally, this next drawing is from the same series FMA, but there's a twist. The series just got remade to match the storyline of the original manga series instead of following it's own storyline and it currently has aired it's second episode now. The author has changed his drawing style slightly in the remake making one of the 2 main antonganists Edward (pictured above) look more mature and hardended but the series still does have plenty of goofy moments with exaggerated, comedic expressions and poses. Due to the altered drawing style, I thought I'd do a sketch of the 2 main antoganists Edward and Alphonse Elric as you can see above. I did the drawing in 3 sessions over 3 days and as you can see, I accidentally did Alphonse with a thicker, darker brush setting but I think it works well in some ways now xD. I'm still currently debating whether to colour it or keept it greyscale, or just to leave it as is even.

2 Absolutely Brilliant Stop Motion Videos Using Action Figures

Just watch them please :D. They are both seriously amazing in their own ways, and deserve a lot of recognition. I would love to be able to make videos like this, they definitely have inspired me and Id love to make something similar with my own unique twist on it xD. I love the music in the Iron man vs Bruce Lee one and the implentation of well known sound effects in the Godzilla one helps to immerse you into the setting very well actually, I forgot I was watching a stop motion video xD.

Krazy Kakashi: An Official Fundamental In Making Other's Lives Better

I just logged into to my main Youtube account today as usual, and checked the new comments on my videos, only to discover the most shocking, enlightening and motivational comment I have ever received in my life for anything, and I quote:

Riaxaria

I just have to tell you my man, I have a good friend dying from cancer; If it not for the utter magnificence of your unique and brilliant Phoenix Wrong videos all this time I don't know where I would be right now in life. Thanks a great deal Kakashi, dont ever stop doing what you were meant to do. Continue inspiring others with your outrageous talent and five star sense of humor. A smile a day can change a life. A thousand laughs per minute can change the attitude of the world. HpyB!!!

That was posted on my Ultimate Wrongs Part 2 video and it can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2HEEXWVLBw

Well, I think you can see why I was so shocked and amazed by that comment now. I actually managed to help someone out greatly in that sort of situation by just being myself essentially, not a lot of people can say that! All I ever cared about with these videos is also my life long passion, to be able to make others laugh as much as possible mainly with just being myself! This comment has been an unbelievable motivational boost for me, if ever required any motivation to keep myself goign with these videos, this is it. Im a veyr keen supporter of fighting cancer as my grandma very nearly lost her life to it a year ago and also recently a best friend of mine came down with a cancerous lump but is doing fine now with the treatments and all that. I also support several charities and I work for Cancer Reserarch so this is just an amazing discovery for me really, this is definitely going to keep me going with these videos, knowing once and for all just what kind of impact they really do have.

There you go anyways, thought I'd let you all know about it :).

Identities Box Project Update: Final Concept and Construction

With my Identities Box project so far, I havent got as much done as I would have liked to ideally. My concept for it is finally solidified now though, and Ive chosen how the box will be and the 5 elements that will form it.

With the core of the box, I have decided to go for the idea of the manga books on a table as I've learned how to build everything I need for that with 3DS Max now, and I can use Manga Studio to greatly assist me with it too. I'm not making the conents of the books interactive anymore, I believe that I definitely don't have enough time left to do that, but each book will still contain one of the 5 elemements.

My logo has already been built, and I'm currently building the 3D avatar now. I've endured weeks of frustration on how to use 3DS Max and modelling my character, but the penny has finally dropped and I know now what Im doing hence Im trying to make up for lost time now. The avatar will be a merge of the two outfits I showed for my character from IMVU, and if I do get time somehow, I'll try to model the secondary avatars as well, who are going to acts as pets for my main avatar.

The audio-visual element is going to be based on the tributes I do to the fan created parody series of the Phoenix Wright games, Phoenix Wrongs. I'm currently developing a video of my greatest sketches out of all 12 of the videos I've made so far and I may make it longer than the (just under) 10 mins that I usually do depending on how it goes.

My 4th element has finally been sorted on what it is going to be. It's going to be two seperate videos, included as one video, as I would like to have both videos in the project to be honest. The first video wil be a stop motion animation of a wooden mannequin I have dancing to different songs, or maybe just one depending on how long it takes to do all the photo shooting. The other video I will be submitting will be a whiteboard animation, but I'm throwing in a little twist on it. I own several whiteboards due to buying a bundle off them instead of 1 by accident on a website, and hence I thought Id make the most of them. Im going to have them arranged in a horizontal row and basically, imagine an animation starting on the leftmost board like someone kicking a ball. After he kicks it, I can use the whiteboards to show the ball traversing from one whiteboard to another as it flies to the right, getting larger on each board until it hits something or someone. I believe if I manage to execute this well enough, it will be a highly impressive video to watch :P.

And finally, the 5th element is going to be a slideshow of my drawings I have done, since I started using my graphics tablet to the last one I did, just before I made the slidehow.I've got an insane to impossible amount to get done in the time I have left, so Im currently trying to get as much done as possible whilst actually staying calm for the most part. One of my biggest weakenesses is how much I panic over things like unfamiliar new situations with high risks like exams and also nearing deadlines for projects, but I'm slowly learning to be calmer and more composed and focused now with them. Im not letting myself go into a panic frenzy like I usually do, I will get as much I physically can get done with this project and I for once, will be happy with what I managed to achieve regardless.

Drawings Update 7/4/09

Sorry I havent updated in a while again, have been so caught up with doing my Identities project work as well as my upcoming Japanese oral exam, so Im very stressed out right now, but I have done a lot of new drawings which I will show now:


This first drawing is of Rangiku Matsumoto from the anime and manga series Bleach by Tite Kubo. I'm a big fan of the series and this character so she was was on my list of characters to draw, and I chose this picture especially because it was done in the Chibi art style. I am extremely keen on this art style as I love how cute and adorable the characters look (xD), but I love how colourful and joyful they appear too, as well as the oversized head proportionality to them lol. I'm trying to learn how to draw Chibi style properly at the moment using some Manga drawing books, and I hope to be able to draw my own characters in it.

This drawing is of Link from the Zelda series, but this is a new art style invented for the series starting with the game Zelda: The Wind Waker. It was an all new cel shaded art style that caused both a lot of controversy as well as appreciation and divided a lot of the long dedicated fans. Up to this day, the style has grown on people more now though and has been used in other games, some of them starring the same Link from that timeline, which are: Zelda: The Minish Cap, Zelda: The Four Swords, Zelda: Phanthom Hourglass and Zelda: Spirit Tracks (W.I.P.). I added a black border around this drawing too after seeing how well it worked with the previous one, and I have to say, it's worked pretty well with both the coloured and original black and white versions of this one. I absolutely love black and white graphic style effects, but not in insane amounts as offered in that new Wii game Madworld -_-'.



This 3rd drawing is of Konata from the anime and manga series Lucky Star. I'm a big fan of this character as I find her personality pretty similar to mine and I love the colour of her particularly (xD). Hence I had to draw her too, and this picture I used seems to depict her in some sort of a Phantom Of The Opera outfit, which I haven't seen before, but I never watched the series through though. It could be a fan art for all I know, as poeple these days can actually replicate manga artist's work perfectly from scratch which is actually very intimidating for people like me now lol.





These next 2 drawings are of characters I created by "accident" when working from some step by step guides in my Manga books. What happened is as I was following the instructions, I drew the characters to close to the paper's edge and hence I couldn't fit on the whole of their hairstyles so I had to improvise and change their hairstyles to make them fit on the page. On the second drawing with the character at the top, that si a pretty accurate recreation of the original character as that one I managed to do fine. The first drawing was ironically a boy to begin with, but as I continued to draw him, he started to look more feminine due to how I drew him, hence I decided to make him a "her", and there's the final result of what happened lol. The bottom part of the second drawing went through a pretty drastic change too, he had huge spikey hair in a semi circle fashion, but as you can see, I changed his hair quite a lot lol. Also, I changed the colours of this drawing and that boy (who's now a girl), and I added face markings to this character to make them more like my own creations in essence.


This next drawing is one of my favourite characters, Rukia Kuchiki from the anime and manga series Bleach by Tite Kubo. I really loved the original picture for this, hence I decided to sketch it out and this is what I got eventually. It was a pretty demanding drawing especially compared to some of my more modern ones, and I decided to start using different shades of gray and highlights for the black and white pictures to add more depth to the composition anyways.



This drawing is of my closest friend for quite a long time now, Leila Fox. She is a serious art fanatic and is one of the best artists I've seen especially non professional of course, and she is extremely popular with my old school's Art department for obvious reasons. I've been trying for ages to sketch a decent drawing of her, but I always struggled due to my lack of skills and experience with drawing human anatomy, hence I never managed to do one successfully. I finally managed to do this drawing though recently after a random, unexplainable surge of determination I got to fulfil this wish of mine and I used the same style I did with my self portrait to to draw this. I started using the Tones feature in Manga Studio, to help with the shading of this drawing as well as make it more eye appealing, particularly the background as you can see. Completing this drawing was a serious achievement for me and it gave me a fairly strong confidence boost as a a result too, and it was all thanks to getting a graphics tablet in the first place :D.



Finally, we get to another drawing of Phoenix Wright I've done, but this time in his original form as drawn by the artist. I loved how this one turned out after it was coloured, it really does resemble the original artwork for him very well, hence it did my confidence a good boost. Embrassingly, I was lazy with shading and colouring the bench he's on actually, as I was too tired to finish the sketch and I wanted to get it out the way at the time, so I cloned the bench from the original picture to save a lot of time and effort. It looks good of course being the original bench used, but it's also a pretty cheap result because I didn't draw and shade in the bench myself >_< bleh. Im still pretty pleased with the whole picture though regardless.

A Truly Amazing 3D Animation Video I Found

This video is a fan of the Naruto anime and manga series' attempt to animate scenes from the manga which haven't been animated yet. The person who made this used a combination of Maya, After Effects and Photoshop to produce his own animated versions of the manga scenes, and I was seriously blown away by it. This is something I'd love to be able to do, and it's the sort of thing I was hoping to work towards as Im aspiring to be a manga artist or a character artist/animator preferably. I thought it would be better to combine these two careers as much as possible into one, hence Ill be a character artist focusing on the manga style really. I'm going to try and work to this guy's level as much as possible, obviously it won't be an overnight process, but with enough time and determination put in, I could do it.