Pretty Fair Maid: behind the scenes

I finally got this up on YouTube last night, so at long last you guys can see how much we didn't know what we were doing! We had a lot of fun, and I hope Wade and Jocelyn didn't mind all the standing around while we figured out what to do...

Anyway, enjoy!

Alien Mothership, Pt. 2

Not much of an update. More hull plating, and the new tubing and related detailing in the back. I also did some work on the engine area (which isn't visible). When I get the engine assemblies built, I'll post some images of that, too.
There are going to be some weapons bays in here, too, at some point...

The Blender Zone, Ep. III: Alien Mothership

So this is the latest Blender project I've been kicking around recently. It took me a few weeks just to settle on the general shape, and detailing it is a learning experience in itself. I finally found Blender's snap function, and it's absolutely saving my life. The new version, 2.63, with it's fully integrated support of n-sided polygons (FINALLY!) is also extremely nice, although it sometimes causes smoothing errors. I could not have done this in the previous versions of Blender, but with the new features it's actually fun. (imagine that...a hobby that you enjoy)
Anyway, here's the latest. You can see the point on the hull where I haven't started detailing it yet. Quite the difference. I've already probably put in 15+ hours on this model...I finally understand why the CG post production on films takes around six months...

(click to see larger)

Owl City new EP

Yesterday Owl City released a preview of his coming album! His four-song EP "Shooting Star" seems to be about preparing people for the more electronic and european dance-y sounds his new album will provide.
Frankly, the repetitive synths and far-away sounding vocals or Shooting Star were not to my liking, and the edgy tone of Dementia didn't strike my fancy either. Take It All Away, while having nice, if slightly uninteresting music, doesn't seem to say much except something or other about rejected love; not terribly interesting. Gold has to be my favorite, apart from the impossibly-modified chorus vocals. It seems to mix the new sound and the old elements we love in a very successful way.
While I must admit that I'm not thrilled with the change in style, I am certainly willing to let it grow on me. I hope that "Shooting Star" contains only the less-amazing songs from the new album, and that this summer we will be treated to some more of Adam's incredible work while enjoying his foray into new musical territory.

Pretty Fair Maid music video

We finally have an award-winning video!

This video won 1st place in the 15-18 age category at the Central Oregon Film Festival.

Now, the backstory. (since I can see those puzzled faces from here)
So...about a month ago I went over to Redmond to film a video with my friend Sara-Anne. I probably should have posted about that as it was happening, but I forgot. *apologetic face*
Yeah...so we spent three days filming a music video for a film contest. It was a total blast, and everything went really well. A couple from Sara-Anne's homegroup volunteered to act, and they were phenomenal. And such good sports about standing around in 40-degree weather while we figured out what to do next. (anyone who's every directed something will understand that)
I didn't post the video before because the film contest just had the showing and judging about five days ago. So, now that the contest is over I've posted it to the internet and I'll be whipping up some behind the scenes at some point here.
So, enjoy the product of our work, and be looking for the BTS video here at some point!

~Pe†er

A Grand Strategy, Sir!

"One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine."
     –from a Russian document

"The reason that the American army does so well in wartime is that war is chaos, and the American army practices chaos on a daily basis."
     –a German general officer

"If we don't know what we're doing, the enemy certainly can't anticipate our future actions!"
     –1st Canadian Division officer (World War II)



Sounds like a wonderful plan, sir!

More Maya Tutorials

This is the result of the second tutorial. By the time I got done building this I was thoroughly sick of the project. It might just be my preference for the Blender interface, but Maya is beginning to really bug me. If Blender I had some of Maya's advanced modeling tools, I would just stick with what I know, but Maya's better tools might make it worth the headache of the clunky interface.
Anyway, behold the monochromatic steam engine:

I still haven't figured out Maya's rendering settings, so this was done with it's default setup.