More Seahorse. ft. Rigging

I rigged the seahorse last night and this morning. Here's the bone chain.

And then here it is with the controllers. It pretty simple. There is a head bob, back and forth movement for each fin, and the tail curls, uncurls and wiggles slightly side to side. The head and fins use expressions to link the joints and controllers. The tail uses set driven keys.

It feels like it went a lot smoother than the fish. Next up is animating.

Texturing an Origami Seahorse

Still working on the Origami Seahorse. I put in some more information to help the edges and help for better motion for rigging. The tail and the fins of course being the emphasis. The rest of him will be pretty static.

 And then I tried out the texture, projecting it on like the photo to see how it fits and what bits need to be added to the texture to make it better.

 

Here you can see the inside of the fins and the tail definitely need some work, but I think it looks pretty good for a start.

Besides the Seahorse here, I've recently redone the illustration section of my website. 

Also I'm halfway done with the illustrations for La Jolla's Mermaid and I've started some work on a new commission that is set to be shown at a convention next month. I can't show any work now, but the product will be out soon enough, and I can tell you it has to do with animating a comic book. Other than that I've started scripting some things but that is far if never going to see the light of day....  well 30 more pages and I might let someone look at it, but I know effects are my strong suit so I don't know. Hah.

Maybe I'll smack down some Valentine's Day cards, but if not, Happy Valentine's day!

Types of Timber

More work being done for the puppet project named Timber! Here are a variety of type examples I tried out for the logo.

And a tiny bit more work on the Seahorse. I've got the form done, now have to add more info information into the model to smooth it out and make it good for rigging.

More Seahorse

 Got a little further with my origami seahorse model. Still, super don't have time for it.

The puppet project I was working on is back on track! The client disappeared for a couple months but has now returned. YAY! I expect to be working on it again within the next week.

Seahorses are so much more fun than Seals

I've managed to put a really small amount of time into modeling in Maya tonight. The seahorse will be rigged, animated and integrated like the previous fish I've done. I really miss Maya.

I really wish I could do more, but I'm super tired and I'm just now only almost halfway done with the La  Jolla Mermaid book illustrations. I'm currently working on pages 20 and 21, that's a whole ten pages ahead of the last illustration image I've posted. The process for the illustrations is really the same so there isn't a whole lot to say about them, and I'm sort of looking at those seals by now.

Fang and Talon and my other possible projects are kind of up the air right now. F&T, I'm told is making slow progress, but I don't hear a lot and I haven't been given any news about the next episode I'm suppose to get. There are a couple of things I still  have to do with the one I'm currently working on, but without any pressure or urgency, I have to concentrate my efforts on the La Jolla illustrations.

In other news, here's a doodle I did while concepting some other stuff. I was watching LOTR on blue ray at a friend's house at the time.