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FanArt The Artist's Lounge - Fan Art Social Thread

Discussion in 'Fan Activities' started by Corellian Outrider, Mar 21, 2012.

  1. TrakNar Jedi Grand Master

    My latest miniature is one of Bossk in a loincloth. I used an air-dry medium for it, as opposed to my usual Sculpey. It was a bit more papery and fibery than what I'm used to using. But, I'm gonna keep using it, because I got it for free and baking my Sculpey stinks up the apartment. :p
  2. Corellian Outrider Outrider of the 'Corellian Order' and Art Curator

    Bossk is great, I'm glad to see him getting more of a screen presence with Boba in TCW.

    I think I have only seen that tauntaun of yours that you had done which I love. How many characters have you made?
  3. TrakNar Jedi Grand Master

    Several fan characters, so that would be six, plus the tauntaun and that's seven, and now Bossk in a loincloth to go with Zuckuss in alchemist garb, so that's eight. Up next on my list is Dengar in his ranger costume, then Greedo the thief, IG-88 the fighter, and 4-LOM the bard.
  4. Corellian Outrider Outrider of the 'Corellian Order' and Art Curator

    Sounds like you are building up a guild of bounty hunters ;) Is that air-dry medium easier to manipulate than Sculpey?
  5. TrakNar Jedi Grand Master

    I use Das, as there was a pack of it at my mom's house. I haven't tried other air-dry mediums, but next time I get to the store, I plan to look into it. I'd rather a medium that has the same texture as Sculpey, as Das is very fibrous and papery. It's also extra messy and smells weird.
  6. earlybird Jedi Master

    I used old paper and wall-paper glue and wire to make my sculptures
  7. Corellian Outrider Outrider of the 'Corellian Order' and Art Curator

    I am interested in trying the air-dry medium.

    I used to build those plastic resin kits... those were fun. I've also done wireframing, clay and paper sculptures too. Lately my sculptures have been 3D modelled in Maya which can be rewarding but delivers a whole new set of headaches when things don't go right.
  8. TrakNar Jedi Grand Master

    I've done some rendering in Lightwave and 3D Studio Max. Played around with Blender for a bit, too. It was okay, I wasn't too terrible at it. But, I prefer 2D, and if I wanna make anything three-dimensional, I'd much rather get my hands dirty in clay. Or papier mache. Something messy and fun to play with. Something that will produce tangible results.

    Some day, though, when I get a better computer, I'd like to try Zbrush. It uses voxels and can make some very nice models. However, rigging those models for animation is a whole other story and not something that's recommended.
  9. Corellian Outrider Outrider of the 'Corellian Order' and Art Curator

    I love to try Zbrush, I haven't had a proper go at Blender... Lightwave isn't too bad but I find Maya to be more intuitive. There are cases when the program crashes just when you are saving and things not going right but I guess that is the nature of these 3D programs. There's the texturing, UV mapping, rigging, lighting... it's a different process for each one. I think I would enjoy it more if I had more freedom to experiment than be constrained to small deadline while several other projects are happening.
  10. TrakNar Jedi Grand Master

    Ooh, how about when you're rotating your model and your view gets gimbal lock? Or, while animating, the model's limb suffers gimbal lock? Really annoying when that happens. And when the wrong points weld or when you have weight maps that are interfering with another part of the model, or that no matter how you fine-tune it, the IK chains still won't work right, or that the drag tool keeps dragging the wrong poly because its point is connected to another point and it's somewhere in some giant mess and you can't be arsed to go back and look for it just to correct it? And the endomorphs simply won't follow the key frames that you have set, no matter how much you mess with the timeline, and the animation is moving too fast for the dub, or the character's arm is doing really weird stuff because the rigging is all messed up and needs to be redone again for the umpteenth time...

    I like rendering stuff for still images. Animating those renders drives me nuts. I prefer to either draw it or do stop-motion. Action figures and puppets cooperate far better. :p
  11. Corellian Outrider Outrider of the 'Corellian Order' and Art Curator

    Oh, that gimble locks is a pain to sort out and creates unusual results. It's from the X,Y, and Z axis being radically different between keyframes. Even if it was a small movement, the value could have shifted dramatically in value and also from a positive to a negative value.... it's a task to set right. There is a setting in the graph editor that fixes it some of the time but I found it more reliable to reset the values to zero and redo.
  12. TrakNar Jedi Grand Master

    If the programs used quaternion rotations rather than Euler, gimbal locks wouldn't happen at all. :p The gimbal lock happens whenever the axis merge during rotation and a degree of motion is lost. This happens in robotics, too. To correct the problem, the limb (or model) will rotate 180 degrees in zero time. It looks really weird when the rotation view does it, or your biped suddenly spins their leg like Sonic at high speed, and whenever factory robots do it, the results could be quite... dramatic.

    Gimbal locks have made me wonder... would droids in the GFFA ever suffer from that problem? Or were their designers smart enough to use quaternion rotations?
  13. Corellian Outrider Outrider of the 'Corellian Order' and Art Curator

    For the pose-to-pose animation I had to the do the other month, I had that issue with the hands. It looked kinda funky but not what I needed at the time :p. I haven't experienced it with the camera but I can only imagine what that can be like. I've been watching Jurassic Park/The Lost World while I draw and you got me thinking what would happen if one of their animatronic dinosaurs had a glitch like that... it would definitely be dangerous.

    You might be onto something there about the GFFA and if they had a system that was different than what we currently know with today's standards... that would be pretty cool.
  14. Corellian Outrider Outrider of the 'Corellian Order' and Art Curator

    There's nothing like drawing the scales on a Chameleon....it's a shift from drawing hair one strand at a time.
  15. TrakNar Jedi Grand Master

    I cheat and draw a texture. :p

    But, yes, on gimbal locks... I'm just picturing some scenario happening with droids that tend to be more mobile and active. For example, 4-LOM goes to aim at a target, his shoulder suffers gimbal lock, and his arm spins 180 in zero time and flies clean off, almost taking off Zuckuss's head.

    Zuckuss: ...What the hell was that?!

    4-LOM: Gimbal lock. Could I have my arm back?
  16. Corellian Outrider Outrider of the 'Corellian Order' and Art Curator

    It's part of the portraits pieces... I'm drawing a realistic Pascal to accompany the portrait I've drawn of my friend... whom posed as Flynn Rider. I tend to do things the long way with hair and other details but the results are great.

    I can picture that scene with 4-LOM and Zuckuss clearly :p

    Imagine if Artoo had a glitch during key moments in the films. That would change the course of history forever.
  17. TrakNar Jedi Grand Master

    Heh, well, judging by his configuration, he may not have to worry too much about gimbal lock. If his entire chassis was moved in a certain way as to merge his rotation axis, he may then try to spin and correct it. Threepio, on the other hand, since he has joints that would utilize an X, Y, and Z axis, would be more prone to gimbal lock. His wrists and shoulders would be the joints that would suffer from this problem, if he were to do a series of movements that would merge his rotation points. Though, if his gimbal lock ended up taking off Artoo's dome... then yes, that would change the course of history forever. :p
  18. Corellian Outrider Outrider of the 'Corellian Order' and Art Curator

    There won't be much for Artoo except for his appendages and tools and if something goes wrong... take the droid foundary on Geonosis, if he failed to stop the funace bucket with Padme inside... that makes a considerable impact.

    I wonder if Grevious is more prone with 4 arms and components... that would be entertaining to watch from a distance. :p

    Yay, Pascal is pretty much done (needs colour)... that time on the scales paid off. Now onto the rest of the portrait.
  19. TrakNar Jedi Grand Master

    Oh dear, particularly once he starts spinning lightsabers... Far too easy for him to start losing ranges of motion and his limbs to go haywire. And since we're talking about prostheses... Woe be anyone who's artificial limb suffers gimbal lock... Vader might encounter a few problems.

    I'm going to assume, that since we hadn't seen any instance in any source of droids having this problem, that the GFFA uses quaternions.

    And Pascal looks adorable. I love chameleon eyes.
  20. earlybird Jedi Master

    I love Pascal and waiting to see him with colours

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