(Click picture to see full-size image)
I keep saying over and over that I need to sketch and draw more. Lately, it's hard to remember to keep my skills up and just DRAW when I focus most of my time on work and school. So this weekend's trip to the La Brea Tar Pits and LA Natural History Museum seemed like the perfect opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. I tried to keep everything to around 10-15 seconds worth of sketching, mainly because the rest of my group gets bored easily, and there were a LOT of people around trying to see the exhibits. But I did manage to get some decent sketches in! I think the rhino turned out especially well. I also took pictures of some of the better poses, so hopefully I can do some more detailed sketches based off of those later.

I also hope to be able to fill up my portfolio with more life sketches at the zoo or something. It's quite hard to sketch animals in motion, so I'm happy to get some practice with non-moving (read: stuffed) animals first! :)

Lip synch with Acheri

Hey cool, check it out, my character Acheri now talks, thanks to a class lip synch assignment!
Click here:
s92.photobucket.com/albums/l28/tangofilly/?action=view¤t=morgan_laci_wk4_as3_lipsync2.flv

It's still got some work needed, like animating the facial expressions; her eyes, eyebrows, and hair. I got frustrated with creating the hair and it was taking too much time, so she's bald for now, haha! But I learned a lot about the 3DS Max morpher tool through my trial and error, so I'm glad I stuck it out. Hopefully I can revisit her later and really tweak it to look great. Enjoy!

* The sound clip is from an awesome animated movie called "The Secret of Kells." It's an amazing film; I highly recommend it!

More 3D modeling...it's getting there!

Here's the latest update on my 3D character, Acheri, I've been modeling for a class assignment. I was able to fix some of the problem areas around the mouth area and add more details like teeth, eyelashes, and a little bit of hair. Eventually the hair will become long and shaggy, but right now it just looks like an afro, haha! I'll have to work on that when I get some more free time. :)