Creatures@ANW

The "Everything" app that i use finds anything on the whole pc within the blink of an eye, literally. And just having it installed makes all the other search functions near inatantanious too

along with this, now having spent more than the 4 hours working on it, is a sense of really rough defeat. treating this whole project like a learning experience has delayed it to now reaching 5 and a half months. the mental struggle is happening a fair bit rn. hoping to overcome it

in yet another moment of Aww shit... i realized i borked the topology and rigging on the wingarms so bad that im going to have to start over again from scratch on them.... =w=;;; luckily its just the one part of the model, but thats likely somewhere around another 4-5 hours of work if i go fast

Wait youre a certified Dork now? Woah. Who is the proctor???

3D friends: what's the thing on the right called? Never seen mouth shapes animated like this and was wondering if this was like something that uses blend shapes to animate the mouth or what

here is a moment of #postyourfailurestoo ... i put the bones in the other day. starting actually weight painting feels like im dragging my hands through a thousand pounds of terror. ive been super procrastinating all day... and yet i made the rig even MORE complex.. at least its color coded now

got the rest of the base bones in, and spent the rest of the night learning a way to blend Normals together between objects!! its making the model start to really come together in ways i didnt even think about when i started this project!!!

CURRENTLY UP TO 190 BONES, AND IM NOT DONE YET BABY... actually.. well... i am for tonight... BUT TOMORROW

I wanted to move on from the textures for a bit, cause i know i'll need to make fixes anyways. Mondays are usually my break days, but i couldnt stop myself from working on it for at least an hour before i pass out. LET THE BONIFICATION BEGIN

AAAAA NO WAIT I FORGOT A GRADIENT ON THE BACK OF THE WINGS LKSJDFHG T~T i'll have to do it tomorrow

also! this is an important note :D this is a wholly new way to model eyes to me. this was one of the things that i was stressing over most while working on this model so far. yesterday(saturday 1/25) i spent about 4 hours studying this method on other models before i finally got it working for mine!

and theyre done!!!! Textures complete baybeee!!!!

Youre actually wrong about that! I think its incredibly important for people, especially artists, to post their struggles as well as their successes. There is nothing more validating and inspiring than seeing successful artists struggle in their craft and life too! Nobody has *only* good days!

im getting pretty deep into the Textures now! I'm super proud of the Gradients that i've managed to get onto the body and wings, and am working on getting all the blue onto the hair and tailfluff :D hopefully i can finish that all either tomorrow or the day after. !! getting there!!

*fight noises*
#animation #art #cat

still working on it, but ive gotten a lot of textures done so far! this is a blast! may or may not have lost about 3 hours of work in the beginning because i forgot a part of the head UV but quickly recovered!

Thank you! All art is a learned skill and ive been practicing this one for about 5 years....now.... ohmygods its been 5 years now...

Well haha its been a lot of time to hone the craft!

OH GODS I EXPLODED!! MY BODY AAAAAAAA *dies and goes to UV heaven. (plot twist its substance painter)

MUCH BETTER! went back and redid it as a box subdivision sculpt. this is SO much better

Hitting another point of failure here. the whole retopo is done, but the last part that needs to be made is the wing membrane. ive got the shape how i want, but im mentally struggling with thinking how to get the topology to work and be riggable... i may have to restart this one

Do you texture each piece as you retopo? Like, head retopo->headuv->headtexture, body retopo->bodyuv etc?

It is mandatory that every artist should look at their art and say "Man, I am so good at this" everytime they finished any drawing. Morale and Self-esteem are very important

We definitely loathe retopo more than any other stage of model making. Even weight painting is more enjoyable than retopo

Gotten a lot more work done!!! now there are only 3 parts left to Retopo (i still need to make the wingarm membrane here in blender but dont worry that was planned) then i get to decide which step i wanna do next! options are
-UV mapping
-Rigging/Weight painting
-Textures(after uv mapping)
-Visemes

Thats got it! this time i laid down the verts i wanted and pinned them in place before placing the others and smoothing them. from there i was able to mark the verts as sharp and now i get the clear shape that i was after!

ive gotten even more of the fluff and other parts done, and now im getting to the small details and the tail. i looked it over again after trying to manually place a lot of the verts.... and i kinda hate it. to the bin! tomorrow i have a much better plan on how to pull it off in a way i like >:D

Genuinely so happy to hear that! I feel aimolarly tpward my own projects and good gods what a feeling.

Absolutely! But because social media has us making a brand out of ourself unconciously, most only post their BEST work. It creates an unrealistic belief that these people only ever make good work. And it can be insanely disheartening to those who are starting out.

But I'll get there! just because something takes a long time doesnt make it a failure. just because something doesnt turn out perfect doesnt make it a failure. remember that even the best artist you know still struggles and makes mistakes; and i hope that i get to see them #postyourfailurestoo

i was waiting for a perfect time to do it. waiting for the confidence to not make a mistake. but thatll never happen. if youre scared to do it. then do it scared. but DO it. even if it takes multiple attempts. 2 months after i was ready to move to blender ive only made it this far retopoing.