Quick 5 minute break...

It's no exaggeration when I say that i've worked none stop all day today and for the past few days and my back is really starting to feel the strain... Makes me feel old...

Today I've been "power-modelling" as I like to call it, I call it this because I HAVE to get this model finished today so I can start the rig tomorrow and hopefully get it sorted relatively quickly. Thankfully, the only animation needed is from Magnus, the robot, is going for sitting down to standing up. It took an hour (if that) to make the original mesh, then I got told, "make each part separately, it'll become more robot-like" so that's what i've been doing today and my god it's been a chore...

Each slab is made from an individual cube, so far there's 50 slabs, I wasn't stupid enough to do each one individually and did copy and paste a few slabs, mainly to cover the back since that's really a part you don't see. Either way it's close to being somewhat finished... Hopefully...

As for 2D animation progress... It's... Been interesting. I've redrawn the cycles quite allot and achieving a distinct look has been challenging. I can't remember if I covered it in my last blog entry, but I'm sticking to 1 tone colours, it speeds up production time, I hate it as much as the next guy since I want to produce the best I can but I've really had to nip the bud and go, "right, draw the line here". So using Piper as a demonstration, this has been the progression of work...

The first tests used the original scan-in line work as the basis, when this proved inefficient due to drops in quality I traced over the pre-existing line work, this time digitally which made Piper look cleaner. That said, feedback brought up the issue that the original outline ink work for Piper made him more rat-like whereas the digital retrace kept the inner detail, so I did the obvious, merged them and the outcome was satisfactory... I could knit-pick but I'm at a stage where I really just need to get a move on, if issues arise further down the line, i'll address them, for the time being however, I'll stick with this...

Snorre's frames were the cause of this whole change in the first place, using the original line work was meant to be a quick way of whacking out animation... Yeah right! They turned out hideous!

The next weeks plans are simple, get everything sorted. Paper work is nearly all finished, the weekend will be a bit strenuous, need to add the finishing tweaks to a character sheet or two, script and then, hopefully, do a few more animations. I keep worrying but really, I've basically finished... Not that I'm happy with my work, the quality is pretty shoddy and I don't know if I'm fully satisfied with it, the animations need tightening and perfected but I can't see that being a tedious over haul but we'll see how it goes!

Also the Yeti! It's been a while since I've blogged so here's the final stages as well as the final outcome!

I think that's everything, don't expect a post tomorrow... I quite simply have to much to do to worry about ANOTHER post. I don't know when the next update will be but expect a nice new look to this drab blog in the near future. Take care, love you all... Except you... Yeah... YOU!