Holli Rausch

I introduce you to Farley, the character I modeled from a tutorial, named by a combination of two reader suggestions: Farlie and Harley. (Thanks, Miles and Christina!) He’s not superb, but he’s not bad. I had a lot of fun making him, so I hope you all enjoy him. I don’t know if we’ll be animating Farley, or moving right on to making our own characters and animating them. (I’ve already sketched my idea out…I’m such a modeling nerd.)

One thing is for sure, we need to put skeletons in them before we can animate realistic movement. Also, adding a skeleton makes it much easier to animate than without one. I’m quite excited and hope we get started ASAP. I’d like to include it in my portfolio by the end of the month (at least the model…the animation probably isn’t realistic).

I didn’t achieve it, mostly because of time, but I wanted his hair to look like the emo character that Chris blogged about long ago. I figure I would have needed at least an extra day to really get the hair even close.

Did you know that in The Little Mermaid, Ariel’s hair was the hardest thing for them to animate? And in Ratatouille, the hair (on the rats) was probably the most impressive part.

Let’s just say, there likely are people whose job it is to model the hair of a character and other people whose job it is to animate it. At least, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were that specific.

So we’ve started to dabble with character modeling in 3D class. Right now, we’re all following a tutorial so it isn’t too challenging (technically or creatively) and they’ll all end up nearly exactly alike. But it’s quite fun. I wish we would have been doing this a long time ago. The body is all one object, made of a few hundred polygons (probably around 300 before making it smooth, far more with the smooth modifier). Obviously, he is missing a head, but we haven’t gotten that far yet. And, I fear my head might ruin the body, so I better post about it now, my audience can focus on the good!

The most difficult part was working on the hands. I had some vertexes crossed on the fingers and they looked weird and paper thin. I fixed them. (Yes, there were only supposed to be 3 fingers and a thumb.) So I’m a little proud of how they look at this point. Soon, I’ll be adding the collar to the shirt, a head, and materials to the character. Anyway, I was thinking I should name him. Any ideas?

The rumors are true. I turned 21 on April 15. On that same day, I had my first alcoholic drink. It was a glass of Riesling. Which was nasty. I stayed up until midnight (not an easy thing to do for an old timer like myself!) and had a glass (more like 6 sips) of wine. I should have gone to bed instead…! Though, I’ll try other wines and maybe find something a bit sweeter that I could enjoy on occasion.

I opened presents from Miles that morning before lunch. One being a wood figurine from the Willow Tree Angel collection, this particular figurine entitled “Birthday Girl”. I started collecting them in high school and I think Miles is trying to encourage my collection (not a bad thing!) He also got me a DVD collection of “The Animation Show”, the DVD version of an animation festival…pretty sweeeet! Lastly, I got The Animator’s Sketchbook, which is by the guy who directed Roger Rabbit and it has lots of tips for character animation pertaining to almost anything you could think of. (A guy using a pitch fork to throw hay…who would want to animate that?! SOMEONE!) So they were exciting gifts, I must say!

Then we went to Sioux Falls and watched Meet the Robinsons. It’s a 3D animation in 3D vision…sensory OVERLOAD! It was good modeling and animation; though I didn’t care to wear the 3D glasses the whole time. Hurt my head! Then we went to Johnny Carino’s…delish! I tried a Bellini (which I mistakingly made a joke; thinking it was Belushi) and Miles ordered an Italian margarita in case I didn’t like the Bellini. They were very fruity and that definitely helped with the taste. We drove back to Madison and David came over to Miles’s and they played Guitar Hero while I did homework or something. All in all, a good day. And I get to celebrate it again with dinner with my family this weekend!

Also, some interesting developments have occurred in the past week or so…how’s that for a teaser?! Check back soon.

UPDATE: I won 1st place in the 2D competition for my picture of Marissa…! Good thing I left that 2% chance!

I again submitted two pieces into Beadlemania. It’s called Beadlemania because 1) Beatlemania is the term used to describe the era where The Beatles rocked (it still hasn’t ended!) and 2) the College of Arts and Sciences is in Beadle Hall. Beadlemania is to 1) showcase student work over the past year and 2) award those pieces that are most outstanding.

Last year, one of my pieces won 1st place for the 2D category. I’m 98% positive I won’t be winning anything this year for my entries. (I left 2%; just in case it’s a Cinderella story). It’s not that the things I submitted weren’t good…I just know they aren’t as good as others’ work. They judge tonight or tomorrow, but I’m not hopeful. One award is good enough, right? I mean, it’d be selfish to win another. Anyway, I submitted that picture of Marissa and my Ping-Pong animation from last semester.

I submitted my Ping-Pong animation, as opposed to my exterior environment (see below) for many reasons. 1) For some reason, the DVD decided to stop working right when it needed to most. So, I didn’t have time or $ to try to reburn it on a new DVD. 2) Since I lost so much time from the remaking of corrupted files, I had to sacrifice many artistic endeavors I was going to try. Here are a few of them:

• Every frame would have been black and white, except the flower would be in color
• This would require bringing in over 2000 “pictures” and outlining the flower by hand — at least one more week’s work
• I would have fixed the glitch in the animation of the flower, right after it floats in the air
• I would have made the trees sway in the direction of the flower’s movement, to show it’s a windy day and the flower just isn’t a magical flying flower
• I would have done this to the yellow ribbons, too
• I would have focused more on the “back story”
• More focus on the yellow ribbons, support our troops signs, words on gravestone
• Confetti on ground — suggestion a parade the day before
• Not even done this exterior and done the island from Lost instead
• Would have needed at least another 2 weeks, just for rendering time
• There are a lot of trees on the Lost island
• Trees take for friggin’ ever to render

The thing I do like about it, is that I animated the camera as if it didn’t know where the flower was going. Kind of like if a human saw it start floating away and wanted to film it…one just can’t anticipate where the wind will blow. So I am happy with that. Anyway, watch it. If you don’t have anything nice to say about it…that’s OK. Apparently, neither do I!

Well, I went in to the 3D lab on Wednesday and basically spent about 4 hours making up 10 hours of work. But I did it. The reason why it went so much faster is because I’d been through it all and basically needed to be in a rhythm to finish, it was just going through the motions. It wasn’t so bad — it was more of the mind game of thinking “I already did this and could be getting AHEAD instead of playing catch-up”. But I’m now at the point I should have been on Monday, which isn’t so bad. The project is due a week from this Monday…which is unfortunate because there’s a lot I want to do. I really want to spend a lot of time on the animation part of the project. I’m on duty next weekend, so that’s to my advantage that I’m stuck on campus anyway, so I might as well go in to work on the project, rather than sit and watch TBS (which isn’t all bad!). The upcoming deadline is not advantageous, but it’s doable.

Also on the plus side, I won two eSIP awards, which is surprising and exciting! (Click the pictures to take you to the winning posts!)

More bad news, though…I’m in Big Stone this weekend. Just kidding! Well, I am in Big Stone. But that’s not bad news. Just thought I’d trick ya’ll! GOTCHYA!

And it’s not even April Fools’ Day! GENIUS!