This week has been more of the same. Rigging, fixing things up, such and such. Weight painting is very tedious, but it's something I have to do anyway. In terms of things that are more fun, I've started hooking up expressions to the model to use in animation!

The way that the expressions made are very simple. I create a Blendshape target which has a slider which can determine how much influence it has. I can then edit where the vertices on the model to make the expression on the eyes. There's surprisingly a lot of flexibility that you can get away with with only a few expressions! The eyes above are actually a > < expression that I've rotated to make a happy face! I've decided that I'm going to give myself until the end of this week to try and finish up the rig for the model. Even though I've had a lot of fun making it, I feel as though I need to get my animation stuff sorted before I go to my grad course. I think I've found a good set of tutorials that I can follow along with to get a better grasp of the principles. I'll more than likely get back to the model once I get sick of animation again, I'll work on this again. But for the time being, if I don't finish this by the end of the week, it'll be another project on the shelf.

In order to get more done in a single day, I'm going to try and update my schedule a bit more. On top of doing 2 hours of modelling/animation/whatever I'm doing at the time, I'm also planning on doing 2 hours of sculpting practice. I've found a really good set of courses by YanSculpts which should help me pretty well. Granted, it's in Blender, but I'll take what I can get. I might see if I can follow along in ZBrush. It's not that big of a problem, but it's just that I have a really large library of brushes and such specifically for Zbrush, and I would to actually use them.

Again, this is another short update! With the rig making crawling to a snail's pace, it's unsurprising. However, I think it'll be really fun showing the progress with sculpting! I'll have to make sure that I keep my expectations for it reigned in. With sculpting in particular, I tend to overestimate my abilities with it. This in turn means that when I do something that isn't up to what I thought in my head, it's really annoying. I'm sure there's people who can relate to that. Biting off more than I can chew and such.

Thank you and good-bye for today!

This week, I've decided to forgo making my own rig and simply using a tool to do all of the heavy lifting for me instead! This way, I'll actually be able to get the rig done in the foreseeable future!

To make the rig, I've decided to use a Maya plugin called the Arise Rigging System. This is node-based system that lets you connect guides to bones in order to make a functioning rig. After watching a few tutorial videos on how the plugin works and what everything connects up to each other, it becomes very easy to understand how it all works. While I didn't make this from scratch, the plugin's biped preset helped very much in the making of the rig so far. It automatically makes different shapes for the controls, sets up IK and FK chains, and has helped so much in the making of the rig! I absolutely was not able to get the rig done just from using Maya's tools. I did not get far making it from scratch. I'm sure there's people out there that enjoy the rigging process, but I very much am not a technical artist. I'm very glad that I found this plugin in particular. From looking at other auto rigging plugins, a lot of them didn't seem to be as simple and intuitive to work with. However, the next part of the rigging process I hate even more than the rigging. Weight Painting is what is required in order to move the mesh with the controls. Depending on how the vertices are painted determines how the mesh bends in relation to the bones. Arise has a decent video skimming the basics of weight painting, but it's still a daunting process. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to actually pose and animate this character in about 2 weeks time. It might be optimistic, but it would have taken much longer without this plugin! I'm hopping to get it done in 2 weeks because I want to get back to practicing my animation for my graduate course. I still have about 6 months before I start, but I want to get as much as I possibly done so I can actually take advantage of the course. I think I've a decent tutorial series online, but that's still to be seen as of yet. I'll be sure to take notes so I can retain the info better.

This is a bit of a shorter post, but that's just how it is at this point in the rig creation process. Hopefully once it's done I can show more cooler stuff!

Thank you and good-bye for today!

First post of the year! Exciting! I totally meant to delay the post a day so it can be posted in the new year! I wasn't completely blasted last night or anything!

This week's post is going to be different to what I usually write. I didn't really do any 3D stuff this week (I need like, four skeletons that move each other just to make a rig the way I want....), but I have something that I think would be interesting.

Some time during the start of the week, my dad unearthed his old record playing setup from the shed! As well as a turntable and amplifier, there was also an equaliser, tape deck, and radio tuner. It was quite the find! And I'm quite happy to use the turntable for music. However, I did know that I wouldn't have been able to use all of the bits that were found. Considering that I only have one more power point available, I chose not to use the equaliser, tape deck and radio. The equaliser would have been fun to use, but since it wasn't essential and I have very limited space in terms of power I had to forgo it. They were also in a nice little shelf with a door that I'll be using to hold everything! It was incredibly wobbly when we pulled it out, but my dad drilled in some extra screws and now it stands like new.

A problem did occur when taking out the parts. All of it was completely filthy. Because of the general disarray of the shed (which is more of a garage to be completely honest), plenty of holes had appeared and dumped dead and dried leafs in the shed. Near the set up was a bird's nest! That's how bad it was. That meant that I had the gross job of cleaning everything up. The turntable luckily wasn't too dirty, just a little bit of dust. The other parts weren't so lucky however. For instance, the amplifier was dirty with webs and dust all over it. There's also some weird spotted rust or something on the top of it. I first thought it might have been some sort of bird poop, but poop isn't resilient enough to resist a wipedown three times over. I eventually got through everything and gave all the parts that I wasn't using a quick wipe. All of this in the night in the driveway. I could only think of what a passersby would have thought.

After the clean came the carrying inside. For anybody who doesn't know, a turntable and amp are VERY HEAVY, even when they aren't carried together. Because of how heavy it was, I didn't put it into my room (and I still haven't yet...Soon though!). I set up the turntable and amp on the couch for the time being just so I could check if everything worked. We also had a large choice of speakers in the shed. There's so many that I haven't picked what I want to use! I'm thinking of using the smaller speakers in there. After an embarrassing amount of time figuring out I was turning on the wrong sockets on the power brick, I managed to get it all turned on. I put a record on the turntable, turned on the amp...And nothing happened. There was some popping and such, but no audio was coming through the speaker. There was also the more pressing issue of a burning smell coming from the amp. I obviously turned it off as I smelled it. I did eventually get a nice amp from a second hand shop, but that's not really an interesting part of the story.

I knew that I was going to use the turntable, so on Boxing Day my dad, my brother and I went into town to have a look at some record shops. It was very lucky that all the record shops weren't at all crowded when we went. Every other shop was obviously, but it's good that records are a niche interest. To my dismay however, none of the places that we went to didn't have any of the albums that I wanted. I was looking for Quebec or The Mollusk by Ween or Rob Zombie's Hillbilly Deluxe. I'm not surprised that the shops that had mostly new records didn't have them, but the second-hand shops not having them was quite a surprise. I was hoping to find at least one of them, but nada was found!

After getting some more wire (which turned out to not be a high enough gauge for some of the speakers....) and looking around for a new amp, on Tuesday I tried having a look around at the record shop that was closed on boxing day. To my surprise, this one did have something that I wanted! It wasn't particularly high on my list, but I still wanted it anyway. It was the Blade Runner soundtrack, and while I haven't listened to all of it as I want to listen to it in my room, the small amount I listened to to check if everything worked was very good! The output was incredibly clear and loud, with a little bit of crackling, but that's just how it is. I'm happy that I was able to at least get one albums I wanted from my wish list.

Thank you for having a read of something that different than my usual posts! I did plan on doing some sculpting in Zbrush this week, but the record set up appearing was a very sudden and exciting new thing that I was hyped to get ready, so that took precedence.

Thank you, Happy New Year, and good-bye for today!

To be completely frank, I barely did anything this week. Rigging is horrendous for me. I do have a plan on what I can do, though. There is a very good tutorial series from AntCGI that I plan on following.

I did do a layout on where I wanted the bones on the model, but that's more or less what I've done. Don't even get me started on weight painting. I hate that so much. I would love some automated way of doing weight painting, but I doubt there's anything like that though.

Something of note as well, considering that this is the holiday season, I will more than likely not be doing much in terms of 3D for a little bit. I would like to have a break for a few weeks anyway.

Regardless, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Thank you and good-bye for today!

I did say that I was planning on doing some rigging last week, but I will explain myself. Don't worry. However, I do have some cool models that I want to show off!

First up is the Star Slipper!

This is what Ssam uses to sail across the stars in search of any manner of trouble to take care of. This state-of-the-art starship is able to cross multiple systems on a single tank of MadeUpIum™ brand ship fuel. It can turn on a dime, and has some discreet defense systems for in anybody tries to catch up to him. It's sleek design allows it to have a reduced imprint on scans, and can cut through any space debris with ease. But how does he find contracts and jobs to do out in the stars? You would need a pretty trusty navigator and co-pilot to make it through the work day!

Introducing, Navi!

The Navigational Avatar and Virtual Interaction module (or Navi for short) is the one-stop solution for both co-piloting duties and much needed social encounters out in the cold depths of the cosmos. While a Navi comes standard with a variety of base personality presets, they eventually form a personality of their own as they work with and talk to their companions. Outfitted with a variety of support modules, a Navi can: Talk to their co-pilots over radio, interface with computer systems, provide logistical statistics and many more! Built to last and durable as all hell, a Navi can be the much sought after shoulder to cry on for far less than an the cost of an organic co-pilot.

I should have done some extra work this past week, but this is the week that I started playing Cyberpunk 2077. It's completely sucked me in and it's been pretty much the only game that I've been playing. I had tried to play through the game before about a year ago, but I never got far in it. I think one of the reasons as to why was because I was doing so much of the side content that I got bored with the game. I've gone through much more of the main storyline this time instead of focusing on the side objectives. I really am enjoying the story! And I'm excited to see how it ends.

Again, apologies for not having more to show this week, as per the current Cyberpunk addiction. In all honesty, the coming week might be a bit uneventful as well because of the rigging. I've thought about using some extra modules in Maya for making rigs, but I really don't feel like learning what is essentially another program. On top of me not like rigging, I don't think its particularly worth learning something for it. I'm just going to use what I know and rig with Maya's built in rigging tools.

Thank you and good-bye for today!

After the horror that was UVing, I finally got to get started on texturing the model! It had been a while since I'd done any texturing, so i had to relearn a little bit of it.

For the base colours, I did try to use Substance Painter, but I wanted to try something that I hadn't used before. I downloaded the 3DCoat trial and found it to be quite fun to use! I think that I might use it in the future for some other projects. For now though, it worked out well for what I needed it for. While i could have used Painter for the base colours as well, but this simply felt better to use a brush with.

I think he's looking quite snazzy in his clothes! There's still some extra details that I need to add in Painter, but I've more or less finished up the texturing for the model. Up next is rigging the model so I can animate it. I'm going to try use Mansur Rig to make it, since it seems to be a really powerful tool that will make creating a rig much less of a headache. If need be, I wouldn't be opposed to using Maya's in-built quick rig. Weight painting is such a chore for me. Having to make sure that the it's all properly weight is really annoying. Wanting to input extra features like Inverse Kinematics is annoying as well. I'm hoping that Mansur Rig will have something that will at least make it tolerable to put IK onto the rig. I'm not particularly a big fan of the technical parts of making a model, but it's something that I have to endure since I'm making it on my own. I've also got a few plans on making some other models, so I think that I will have a lot more to show in the next blog post.

That's all for this week! I hope that I make a bunch of progress in the coming week! I'm optimistic that it'll be the case!

Thank you and good-bye for today!

This week was mostly just getting the UVs got sorted. If you couldn't tell, I do not enjoy doing UVs for models. Considering that this is the only thing that I did this week, this post isn't going to be as long as the others. I'll try and make up for it by sprinkling a little bit of lore and stuff for the character.

This is more of less how the UVs look. I still think that there are some improvements that I can do, but this is basically the main layout. For this, I used a new program called RizomUV. It is a vast improvement to Maya's UV editor. Being able to actually make straightened UVs instead of making a jumbled mess is very cathartic. This program is very strong. There is one peeve with this program that I have, however. Some parts of the UV that I tried to stack together would flip around, and I had no idea what was happening. I had to zoom in so far just to clarify that was happening with the UV islands and I wasn't going insane. Again, I REALLY don't like doing UVs. I did try to use the programs auto fit script, and that certainly helped, but that didn't really shift my opinion. Now that I'm done with UVing, I'm on my way to going the texturing for the model. I've tried using Substance Painter, but with a little bit of experimenting I think I might try 3DCoat for it. It seems pretty powerful for making hand-painted textures, which is what I want to try out for this one.

For this section, I would like to expand a little bit on the lore for the model I'm making. Please note that some of this might be made completely up on the spot and some of it won't make it through the character creation process.

After a really long time of meandering around the fact that couldn't think of a name for the character. I've finally thought of one!

His name will be Ssam.

Yes, it's just my name with an extra S, but hear me out. Ssam backwards is masS. And to me, it makes sense, because he's a living black hole. Which consist of a lot of mass. I am very smart.

A space faring protector of the stars, Ssam flies about in his Star Slipper ship to fight ne'er-do-wells amongst the cosmos. On account of the fact that his limbs are disconnected, it allows him to perform moves that others could not do.

(This is a VERY rough sketch of his abilities, please don't laugh.)

I really don't know how to explain these abilities in a decent way. But basically it can be summed up as: He can spin and he can portal his hand to make it big. Also, he can point his two fingers into a gun shape and fire some celestial energy as an projectile.

"To the stars above!"

Apologies for how short this post is, but there wasn't really much of interest to talk about here. Hopefully once I start properly texturing, I'll be able to talk more about it!

Thank you and good-bye for today!

This week was for a bunch of modelling and for improving on what I'd already made in prior weeks! Let's have a look!

The upper clothes are more or less all done! I added a big ol' oversized zipper on the side of the jacket, and shifted around the zipper bits to actually make sense in terms of how a zipper works. The work on the upper clothes was mostly just refinement with what I already had. A little bit of moving vertices around, a few extra bits, that sort of thing.

We've finally got pants and a belt now! I quite liked modelling the belt. It involved getting a curve to follow around the pants, then extruding a mesh along that curve. After that, I added some holes and a buckle and it was ready! Thank goodness that I wear a belt almost everyday. It really helped getting the buckle correct in a way that I wouldn't be able to otherwise from just using an image online. A belt buckle is surprisingly complex! There's a bunch of little bits that you don't see when you normally look at a belt. The loops around the pants were simple to model, but the positioning of them was something that I had to double check. In a previous attempt at making a character, I simply just made a belt loop with an equal amount of them going around the pants. This was a good attempt, but it just made the overall shape boring to look at. Basically, the lesson of this was that I should use reference for even the most mundane things lol! This is pretty evident by the pockets. I definitely think I can improve on them, since they don't really look all that much like proper pant pockets. The problem comes from the geometry of the pants, however. I could probably rearrange the faces in a way that would get me a more convincing pant pocket, but I would have to experiment with what I can get away with. I would much rather just alter what I have already than having to go back and redo something.

Next, the bottom half! This is where the pants in particular shine! I said in my previous post that I might try using Zbrush to create the shoes, but I instead used it to make the folds in the pants more believable. Zbrush has a very useful tool called TransposeCloth. This allowed me to easily deform the mesh for the pants in a way that could mimic how clothes fold and bend when they move around and settle. I focused on the knees and ankles in particular because that's realistically where the body moves around the most when walking. You will also notice that there's some snazzy looking shoes! These were quite a challenge to make. My first attempt to make them were based off of my Dad's work boots. However, Maya crashing thwarted my attempts at making those. I figured that a more stylish option for shoes would be better instead of work boots. I based them off of a classic Converse Hi-top sneaker, since that's close to what someone would see when they think Shoe. I modelling the main parts of the shoe on top of a duplicate of the model's foot, and making it a live object. In Maya, this allows for new meshes made to stick to the live object. This made the task of conforming the shoe to the foot very easy. A modeled each part separately and eventually combined them together and extruded outwards whenever I needed to. The sole was as simple as extruding the bottom edge outwards. I originally planned on making the shoes have laces, but those seemed really finicky to model, so I opted for a velcro strap instead. I've been wearing a pair of velcro shoes for a while and I figured it would help me connect it me personally.

The last big piece of modelling I did this week was...

Wow, a gun! Hell's Horses!

This model actually turned out really well, to my surprise! I fully expected this to look like complete doo-doo, but it turned out pretty good. I think there's some more that I can do with it, but as for the whole shape, iI'd say it's done. I tried out a new method of modelling when I was making this. I started out with an 8-sided cylinder, and extruded the edges and followed along the contours of my reference image. When I couldn't go in any one direction, I would split the extrusion and go a different direction. It was a very spur of the moment idea, and I hope that I can replicate it again If I need to. This is based off of the MP-412 Rex revolver. It looks a little familiar, but I can't put my finger on it. I think there was something about a 60 million double dollar bounty? I set out in particular for a modern looking break action revolver, and luckily, this one fit the bill quite well. As well as making this gun look particularly unique, I also wanted to add a little personal flair for the model. My character's trusty hand cannon, Stardust (name pending), technically has infinite ammo. The only stipulation is that the gun can only fire shots in quick succession a couple of times before it overheats. When overheating, the gun can't fire and needs to be vented by the break action mechanism. This version of the gun fires Cosmic Rounds (fancy!) which would be evident when venting heat, with a colourful looking nebula seen on the back of the cylinder. The overheating can be circumvented by firing slower, but that isn't fun in an intense firefight. When firing, you can see a burst of cosmic energy erupt from the barrel and speed towards an enemy, slowly accumulating more and more smoke until it cools off itself or until vented.

That's all for this week! I certainly made a lot of progress this week, and I'm very proud of that! I think I might keep working on this until it's done. I actually found out that I got accepted into my graduate course! The e-mail for my acceptance should be going out within the next week, which is very exciting! The course starts in June so if I get this done by the end of the year, that would leave me with 6 months to work on my animation skills. I really hope that I will be able to learn a whole bunch more from this course!

Thank you and good-bye for today!

I messed around with Marvelous Designer a whole bunch throughout the week! It was pretty much the only thing that I was using. I'm very happy to show the progress!

At first, it was mostly just messing around and coming to grips with the majority of the tools that Marvelous Designer had to offer. Luckily, Marvelous isn't some obscure program with no body using it, so finding tutorials for stuff was very easy. Once I figured out how to actually make shapes, it simply became a matter of finding a pattern to trace over and sewing together. I would say that my experiments with the t-shirt payed off quite a bit. However, the pants are still something I'm struggling with. For the time being, I've got a simple substitute and a belt for roughly how I want the pants to look. The only problem is that I intend the pants to sag over the shoes, which have been a real pain to try and make. Shoes are much more complicated that draping some cloth over a model, and any attempt to make them in both Marvelous and Maya have gone bust. I'll try and take another crack at them once I finish up some other parts of the clothing that I'll show later in this post.

I did try out making a sleeveless turtleneck at one point. And to be completely fair, it fit the model quite well! Sadly, it just wasn't the vibe that I was attempting to make for this model. I also did originally want to give them a large coat, but I opted for something else. I wanted to make it a sort of Vash the stampede kinda thing; A huge encompassing coat with a bunch of trailing bits on the outside of it. But I simply couldn't find a pattern of coat that I liked the look of, so I scrapped that idea in the end.

I eventually got a t-shirt that I was happy with (sort of). Every other attempt to make a t-shirt was okay, but wasn't as good as it could be because of how the edges of the arms interacted with the sleeves. There would just be an annoying dip that would make him look almost bony in a way. To remedy this, I added some positive pressure to the sleeves to inflate them a bit. While it still didn't look perfect, I had an idea to fix it up.

I got far enough with the sleeveless turtleneck idea that I imported it into Maya and started cleaning it up. What I had found is that Maya's retopologise tool worked really well for the application that I was using it for. For every other piece of clothing since then, I've used the exact same method for the clean up process. This makes the mesh for the clothes very easy to work with and gives them clean geometry to work with. As an extra step of the process, I usually cut the clothing in half and mirror it to get rid of any asymmetry that might have happened in Marvelous, and extrude outwards to give some more dimension to it.

And this is where I'm at with the clothes now! After some changes to the t-shirt, and adding a coat, it's very looking very stylish if I do say so myself! The coat itself is based off of the TF2 item The Tyurtlenek for the Heavy, and was something that I wanted to add as a little tribute to one of my favourite games (and as a compromise for not finding a longer coat design that I liked). There are still a few parts that I need to touch up, but I would say that the upper half of the model is very close to being done. I'll have to tackle the shoes in the coming week to be able to work on the pants. I think that I might try to use Zbrush to make the shoes and see if I have any luck with that. I do have a little bit of experience with Zbrush from college, but it's fairly limited and I didn't really wrap my head around the more complex tools in that program.

I would say that I'm still on my animation hiatus. This is because of the fact that I am obviously on a roll with model at the moment, and also because I should get a response back on my application to my post-graduate course and I want to let that get sorted before heading back into animation. I also haven't really been looking for a decent series of videos to follow along with. It shouldn't be too hard, but I haven't had much time to do that (see model above!). I'm still very anxious about getting into the course, but I'm remaining hopeful.

Thank you and good-bye for today!

Did a gaggle of modelling, and a little bit of animation! I'm very excited with what I've done week, so enough preamble!

Up first, a little bit of a pendulum animation that I did. I want to try and post in here, but I'm not sure if it will work. I will edit the post elsewhere in case it doesn't. From what I've heard, it's a bit of a problem with other users and I'm not quite sure if it's been fixed yet. (Edit: It did not work.)

I didn't particularly put too much time into this animation, but I'm still proud of it. I have yet to have a search for a decent series of videos that help teach animation, but I'll get around to it sooner or later. I was more focused on finishing my post-graduation application last week. I'm very worried that I won't be accepted in. It might be the imposter syndrome, but I feel as though I don't have a good enough grasp of the basics yet. Fingers crossed that they might teach me some over at the course! I think that I might give animation a bit of a break for a few weeks, though. I got pretty stressed out from sorting out the application.

Some exciting news on my persona model that I'm working on! It finally has legs!

I am very happy with how the proportions are looking! The legs are from another base mesh in Maya that I just so happened to scale in just the right way. I quite like how the calves connect to the rest of the lower body. It really helps to add a nice silhouette and helps to make the appendages appropriately and consistently large. I reckon this part of the model is effectively done. I still need to rig it and make some expressions on the eyes, but that's for later. The next step of the process is to create an outfit for the model.

Which I have started messing around with!

This is a screencap of me figuring out the basics of a program that I'm using called Marvelous Designer. This will allow me to make a cool outfit without having to rely on poly modelling it all. I think I'm starting to get the hang of the program, so I think I will have something more substantial to show next week. Stay tuned for that!

Finally, I was able to submit my art for the Bzzt contest! If you'd like, check it out in my art section!

Working on the ZX8000 fan art was a blast! It helped me to re-accustom myself with working with a deadline and to finding solutions within a short time frame. I did not expect the amount of attention that it was going to get, though! The people commenting on the art are all amazing and had such kind words, which certainly made me feel fuzzy on the inside! The last thing I expected was to get Frontpaged! That came as a complete shock to me! I seriously did not expect it to get more than a few votes, but it was such an awesome surprise! Congratulations to everybody who submitted something and congrats to whoever wins! As of writing the winners haven't been announced, but congrats to whoever they are!

As a little thanks, I'd like to share the creation process of making the model!

First off was the head. Making it was surprisingly easy. I would attribute that to how I go about making edges. Instead of making loops around the model to make sharper edges, I would simply use the crease tool in Maya to get a curvature that I liked. This is basically the same feature as edge creases for Blender users. This allowed me to alter the curves if I wanted to with a non-destructive workflow. This meant that I didn't have to go through the hassle of retracing my steps and getting all the loops and vertices gone before making another loop. I have another model on an indefinite hold that could use some crease tool TLC....

Fast forwarding a bit, here's the model with it's original hand look. The hands we're from an alien arm base mesh that I fidgeted with and messed around with until I got a half decent result out of it. However, it was at this point during the creation process that I came to realise something: I absolutely would not have any time to rig the model at all. Upon having this revelation, I knew that I had to change how the hands looked. I would not be able to pose the hands in an efficient way if they remained the same. I then started to experiment with some different hand shapes, and started to put the toon shader onto the model. Hand experiments included: Wavy box with tube sticking out of it and box with really gross looking fold on the fingers.

(Pictured below: Aforementioned wavy box with tube sticking out of it)

This was also the point where I started to pose the model. Luckily, I don't need to rig anything to be able to move things around. A large majority of the model are separate parts, allowing for easy adjustment. I went for a simple hands on the hips with feet facing outwards pose in the final thing.

I eventually plugged in the shader for the model and started to get the arms in the correct position. The shader is relatively intuitive to work with. A feature that I quite like is the ability to assign certain instances of the shader to specific lights in the scene, allowing me to alter the direction for specific parts of the model without affecting other parts. One gripe that I have with the shader is that the outlines are annoying to properly incorporate into a render. When the model moves around, something happens to the outline and it becomes warped. I was thinking of having a turnaround for the model, but I was tired and didn't want to make my own nice looking outlines, so I stuck with a single frame. Curving the arms was also a bit of the challenge, but it became pretty easy once I found the solution. At first, I tried just moving the vertices about to bend them. That was a hassle, though, and would cause some annoying deformation in the mesh that I didn't like. But after remembering Maya's lattice deformation, it became a lot easier. It basically just envelopes the mesh in a box with movable points that can shift the verts on the mesh in a more intuitive way. After getting through that, I simply fixed up the colours on the model, added the eyes, and put a nice background on it.

I think the length of this post more than makes up for how short the one the week before was! Once again, I would like to thank all the people who commented on, voted, added to a collection, or simply viewed my artwork! It really does mean a lot to me.

Thank you and good-bye for today!