First skeleton rig

Spent 45 minutes making my first skeleton using the joint tool in Maya.

After messing around with the tools and settings I also worked out what was wrong with the Cherry Dude tutorial. It had the "joint" option disabled in the View menu.

Frustrating - but at least I know what went wrong last time.

I got accepted into Animation Mentor

I just found out the incredible news that I've been accepted into Animation Mentor!

I start their "Advanced Studies in Character Animation" course in July 2008.

After the initial joy and relief comes the bowel-loosening terror which comes from knowing how much work I will need to do between now and the start of classes to get up to speed.

No turning back now.

My Cherry Dude

One of the tutorials in the current Maya course I'm doing is to rig a character for animation.

Trouble is - the Maya file was broken and I couldn't see the joints - so I quickly spent a bit over an hour to put this guy together.

Pretty basic - but enough for me to do my first rigging on him.

First look at an ant

Here is the first look at an ant that I'm modelling using NURBS.

Not too much to recommend it so far, but hopefully I'll get a chance to add some details (and more legs) later.

Texturing fruit

No animation in this one. This still life scene was just a practise to do some procedural rendering on the fruit.

It works well for organic surfaces with random spots, lumps and bumps.

I was happy with the shininess of the orange, although I would NOT eat that banana.

Unless you had plans to turn it into banana bread.