23 March 2024

Blender 4.0 - Am I really learning it finally?


 I certainly hope I am! With the release of 4.0 Blender has updated it's interface to a point I thought I could  finally understand it and use it. I had no real choice, my V19 of Cinema 4D stopped being supported by the MAC OS and Maxon has gone the subscription route, including not very satisfying updates since. 

I started with CG Cookie's playlist of basics which introduces you to the layout, interface and basic concepts in a sort of an entertaining but text book way. I will go over it again as I begin to start a real short animation in my Lovecraft series... soon... soon-ish. 

I then went on to Blender Guru's famous Blender donut tutorial, updated for 4.0 and teaches the software by taking you through a project using all of Blender's most used features and tools. I didn't follow it slavishly, I have a lot of 3D experience already but it really helped to see it all done step by step in Blender. So I have joined the crowd and finished the donut tutorial. 

I do feel I can work or will be able to work in Bender now, gradually getting confidence and learning the things I need to to continue making films. The interface is more user friendly but not exactly intuitive or easy yet. It also crashed much more than C4D did for me. More positively working with the EEVEE live renderer it was much easier to see what I was working on clearly and with a big update for that coming very soon, I can see rendering my finished project quickly. Cycles was more slow but also, I thought, a better render than that of the native C4D rendering options. 

So see my donut thing in all it's donut-y glory above. 


15 March 2024

Cirru book series for children


Over the last 6 months or more I have been working with authors Danny and Melissa on a series of children's books featuring Cirru the travelling cloud. The books teach young children about colours, shapes and how to count to ten. I not only designed the books but did all the illustrations.

The books are available to buy on Amazon, so buy them and leave a good review, especially for the illustrations! 

Click the title to go to the Amazon page! 

Cirru Counts to Ten







09 March 2024

Animation: New ideas for my Nauti 2D character

 



I know a little more about designing a cartoon character and decided to redesign Nauti the character I experiments with 2D and hand drawn animation with a while back. This new character sheet could be helpful if I decide to use the more mainstream style of 2D using bones, puppet tools and computer assistant like MOHO which looks pretty enticing but I will need to somehow find about 500$ CAD or more. If I could get up to speed in Blender I could mix 2 and 3D as I have been doing here and there more efficiently and at no extra cost. Right now I am playing around with the idea of making the keyframes in Affinity Designer and hand drawing the inbetweens and see how that works. 

I was hoping Procreate Dreams would be further along in features to do this but I might need to stay with Toon Squid on the iPad. Krita has improved but not enough for what I need so far. Open Toons is s till a little frustrating to work with but might have the features I need. 

Below is the original design, it's very different in style. 


05 March 2024

Cartoon: Sheep (moutons)

 


More animals from Mobius Meadows farmstead. It was a bigger challenge than expected. This is the third iteration, the other two were... not good. mostly because I was too biased towards realism and couldn't seem to get my head around the cartoon part. In the end this came out OK. 

01 March 2024

Illustration: grange - Möbius Meadows Farmstead

 


The barn at my friend's farm in Vermont. I drew it when it was much smaller. The original barn was hanging off a steep hill and in bad shape. he had it moved to a safer spot and built a much bigger barn around it. This is in the style of my last few colour drawings done in Procreate with maybe a bit more painting detail than the rest. 

27 February 2024

Illustration: Carver Street, Provincetown, MA


 The last of these Provincetown drawings for a long while I think. I pass this house a lot from  where I stay to Commercial Street. I love the look but drawing it I saw there were a lot of signs of it having some maintenance issues. I didn't draw any of the trees etc around it to see more of the structure. 

26 February 2024

Illustration: Alpacas


 I have wanted to make cartoon versions of some of the animals on the farm in Vermont. Earlier attempts went... not so well. As I have been cartooning my heart out lately for a client I gave the alpacas another try and I think they came out ok. The sheep... not so much. I will need to rethink how I want to draw them.  Made with affinity Designer. 

23 February 2024

Illustration: Unitarian Universalist Meeting House of Provincetown

 


I hard a hard time seeing this place completely as there was always work being done on it when I was in Provincetown. It's set far back from the street and now has houses on either side and trees blocking a clear view as well. On my early morning walk on my last day I passed it and the trucks were gone! So I took a few reference photos and this is the result. Even with the workers gone, the right side was not really visible so I searched from old illustrations and photos from when the church was clearly visible. 

21 February 2024

3d Mock up to Illustration


 This is a part of an illustration for the children's book I am working on. Some of the panels have been very complicated and difficult to fit what the client wants into the frame and in the same perspective. I had been using Cinema 4D to make simple mock-ups to make the items fit in the frame and to keep the perspective consistent. Sadly, my C4D version no longer works on my OS and I started to learn Blender... again? Still?  In any case above is the finished illustration made in Affinity designer and I managed to make the mock-up in Blender  over a couple hours. Still don't know enough to do much but I made progress so that is a positive! 

The children's book looks basically like a cartoon and keeping all the images looking like they belong in the same book is not easy. 



17 February 2024

Illustration: Love N Happiness, Provincetown Massachusetts


 This was a different challenge. Doing the red on red on red paint job was what drew me to the building. I took away the power lines and other extraneous stuff from around the structure and then took away the little American flags and Xmas decorations I thought would ruin the cleaner look I wanted.