art update: sculpting (Patreon)

Hey all, just a little update to show you some signs of life as we're working on the new and last build for the slave route of book 4 and love route stuff.

I Don't have a lot to say when it comes to FET because most of what I'm currently doing has to do with the love route and that's going to stay under wraps.  Quite frankly, starting up the love route feels more like a new book because of the extensive changes and all the extra work it involves! 

I can however talk a bit about one of the long standing annoyances I had/have with the slave route!  And that 's The republic city background!  It has been one of those "pebbles in my boot"  for a while now and  it's about time for me to correct that!  

Since I wasn't really getting the results I was aiming for I thought to myself... hey maybe I can create a 3d model of the buildings. Just create a few buildings, copy/paste the shit out of them and use that as a backdrop to work off. It wouldn't be the first time I created buildings that way. The "create your own village" buildings during book 3 were done like that. But doing one building that way is a far cry from a city.    Still, worth a try. 

I haven't been doing any 3d modelling for a long time because I couldn't get the latest version of blender to render anything and NOT instantly boot me to my desktop. I was using an older version of blender for a while (which did work) but using an older version felt bleh. The newer versions of blender have a redesigned interface etc so working with the other, older ones,  felt counter efficient and I all but forgot about doing anything involving 3d modelling ever since. 

Fast forward to this week and I finally figured out how to get the new version working and after playing around with it, trying to create a city I realized I had forgotten most of my (already very limited) skills and the desire to become more proficient at it flared up once more. 

So I've been doing some limited testing, slowly learning/remembering how to do stuff again which has already been of some use for some love route stuff. And then I started to reach for something which vastly exceeds my grasp once more. 

A character from avatar of course!   Since Ty Lee seemed to be particularly popular in comments of the "mirror mirror" update last time (no surprises there), I picked her to try and model. here's my first try at box-modelling her head.

..Ouch..   As you can see I wasn't exaggerating when I said my reach exceeds my grasp! 

Soooooo I figured I could try and sculpt a head. Sculpting is one of the two broad ways on how to approach modelling and much more reminiscent of how you'd traditionally create something with clay. Maybe that would yield better results?

(I've never actually seen "the evil dead" beyond some snippets here and there.)

Okay I'll admit I exaggerated parts of the head above intentionally for comedic purposes, but nevertheless...  let's just say I have plenty of room to grow.

I did go on and create a body which has it's own problems... But this is pretty much how I'm going to slowly try and work my way towards a 3d character which isn't godawful to look at! Right now these are included here merely for you to point and laugh at : )   I certainly did!

Since I've been trying my hand at sculpting Ty Lee... with dubious results...  I thought it'd be fitting to draw a pic of Ty Lee sculpting something instead. A sandcastle.

 It's mostly to try and wash away the taste of failure though  : )

The skyclad version can be found in the attachments, as well as two turn around movies of the 3d model. One of them is a fat version.  Fatty Lee...    *badumm tsshh*! 

I made that one by accidentally pushing the wrong button!  

And that's it for my little "we're alive and doing stuff!" update. And if you can't sleep tonight just look at the pic of the sculpted head...    to make extra sure you won't be able to sleep! 

Till next time!