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I do take time to reflect about myself and the work I have made in recent times; however, I rarely go through and elaborate on paper (or the internet) as to how to improve. Naturally, I’d imagine that it is I will then hold myself more reliable for my mistakes.

In general, I’d say my biggest problem is not time management but good time management without personal accountability. In this sense, I am quite good at getting things done on time, but I also find a way to put it off to the last minute as I know approximately how much time I need to complete a task. This month, I feel this was the essence of my being. I would often only work on my work during lab or a small bit in lecture, but only rarely outside of class. I knew that I had the capacity to complete my work during these allotted times and then didn’t feel the need to do more. I only recently came to this conclusion as talking with some friends about things professors had said to us in the past.

I’d also like to look at the work of done and assess what I did well and what I could do better.

I feel mostly very proud of this little girl character I have been internally referring to as lilgirl.$version. I’m very happy with how she progressed and turned out.

My biggest issue is with how flat her face is. Not to say that no one’s face is as flat as hers as one of my good family friends acted as a facial stand in for her design. It, as a whole, looks very CGI. I am, though, quite happy with how many of her other elements turned out.

Another issue I felt was big was her hair. It feels very thick which was my intention, but also too thick like it is rolled playdough or old gum. I think, in the future, I’d use either a card based or X-Gen hair solution instead.

A character I am much less proud of had its name on the sheet as “Old Solder.” I imagined this anthropomorphic bear character to be a blacksmith, or the character artist was not keen on spelling.

From his face, I think he turned out quite well and he acted a test for me when it came to automating normal map baking issues, which I personally like to call normal burning as it leaves a black stain on the model, an issue that occurs when models overlap themselves. My solution is not finalized but I have made a good start as to how to do it. Here is a Wikipedia article on the general topic of normal mapping for those who need it.

Heading south on Old Solder, and he falls apart pretty quickly. He looks, as described for the little girl’s hair, a piece of playdough. And this was not something that went away, like as can be seen in week one for the little girl, I personally feel it gets worse each week. If granted the time, I would redo the character in a day, but I just don’t feel like that would accomplish much for me.

I did learn though, through these two characters what my preferred method of character creation is. I start with ZSpheres in ZBrush and dynamesh out the character’s general form. From there, I take them into Maya where I costume build the topology for the character. I return to ZBrush, where I will change the geometry to fit my needs. Though, to a degree, that does seem tedious, I think it produces better results.

Character sheet and busts provided by Full Sail 3D Character Development and Creation staff.
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Bonus imagery: