In flight and on paper

So I put my blogspot up on Google Analytics and I've come to notice that my bounce rate for this site is 89.5% at 22 seconds a view... which is really bad. So I figured perhaps I should put up a new post... something that might be interesting to viewers. But then again I'm not sure that the same thing that is interesting to me is also interesting to the average web surfer. And since this blog is really dedicated to my art I guess that leaves me to post some of my art. Now whether it's interesting or not is still up in the air.

Now my problem is that I don't really have any new art to post. I have small little sketch that I drew in my sketch book last week. I wanted to ink her and color her in before I posted her, but perhaps I should do the before and after.


I want to ink the outline... then the colored pencils I'm using are water colored pencils. Which I am quite excited about using - because I really haven't had much opportunity to thus far. So once it's done I'll post the finished product.

As far as 3D goes I've been working on a 3D hummingbird. I haven't gotten as far on it as I wanted to by now, but oh well. Here are some screen grabs and the original turnaround sketch I'm going from. I want to finish modeling it, UV it then texture it realistically. The bird is being modeled in action so that it looks like it's flying. This bird will not be rigged and is specifically for demo reel purposes.




As you can see there isn't much there yet. I have barely touched his wings; right now they are simple extruded faces with a little bit of smoothing. I'm still debating if extruding the faces and modeling from there is what I want to do. Or if I want to model each feather and stick them in there for his wing instead. They are so thin I'm going to need to put a transparency map in there for the light to come through to show just how thin the wings are. I was planning to do it on the tail - so I might just go ahead and do it on the wings to match.

The particular hummingbird that I am modeling from is a Broad Billed Hummingbird and they are just beautiful little creatures.


I think I am going to have a great time working on the texture for my hummingbird. It should be a lot of fun. It's going to be a while before I am able to finish it as I seem to have a pretty full schedule of late. It's amazing how busy one can be even if they're not working.

On a completely separate note I have been helping some friends out with their haunted walk in the woods. It's like a haunted house/haunted corn maze, that type of thing but this is in the woods on their property. So I've been working on making different props and such for them. If I am able to get up there today I will take some picture of the process work and post them up here.