havreberg.com

So that’s over. The finals I mean. It went pretty horribly, but architecture ended up better than I hoped, so that’s good. I’m not going to bother getting into details. Because no one reads this anyways, and I don’t need to record for posterity my anxiety about my grades, which will be resolved in four days.

So I’ve been working on a self portrait model. The idea is to make a 3d version of the self portrait I did for painting last spring. But I am also kind of wanting to make a completely realistic texture and everything. I only have until the end of August to work on this 3D stuff to resolve the incomplete from spring. I’m not sure what direction it will take. The goal was to finish the head this weekend, and I’m kind of close… it needs ear detail and some tweaks around the nose and mouth. And I want to add more eye detail like tear ducts. Maybe that amounts to one efficient night’s work. And I am supposed to spend this week making the body for the self portrait. I will probably end up just going straight to the distorted body instead of first making a realistic body as I had planned. Perhaps in the interest of time. Because I am a tweakaholic and if I’m going for realism, this self portrait is the only thing I’ll finish (if I finish it) this summer. Then it’s on to two more models I can hopefully finish each of the next two weeks.

I kind of want to do some cartoony stuff… Bring some characters to life. But at the same time I want to make cool detailed monsters. I suppose I am nowhere close to either goal. I am just very pressed for time…. I need to make a nice bunch of work before next spring so I can get an internship to get my foot in the door. Spring is a thousand years away, but I have just seen what a semester’s worth of non-3d classes can do for 3d productivity. Which is to annihilate it.

So I suppose you can see one of the most recent pictures of the self portrait . The texture is just a modified planar projection for testing purposes, which is why the hair in the back of the head is slightly nonexistent. I have been struggling a bit with perspective/orthographic issues and made some (slow) progress when I finally decided to take some physical measurements. I suppose people develop an eye for this sort of thing over time, but just starting out it’s kind of crazy to think of making a likeness from a few images when I can barely get a resemblance staring at myself in the mirror for hours. Hopefully this doesn’t mean I’m simply not cut out for this stuff, but rather that I just need practice. And hopefully I’ll have the time to practice and improve in the coming months. I’d like to maybe do portraits of some friends or family members, or maybe some interesting-looking celebrities. And caricatures. And the list goes on… because I want to do anatomy-based rigging and cartoony facial animation and general animation exercises… To some extent, the sky is the limit. But to another, February is. Because that’s probably when I need to have something to show if anyone is going to take a chance on me.

It has become apparent recently that I sort of wasted the last 4 years of my life. Hopefully this trend can be reversed.

They’re like tasty morsels of… finals.

I made a little progress with 3D stuff. But I won’t get to do much of it this week because I’ll be busy limboing under my expectations. But afterwards… man. You better watch out.

This site has degenerated into something so shoddy that it may actually be representative of the real me.

The PC is up and running. The art is not.

The summer is full of classes and work, and not a great deal of art creation. This will have to change, not least of all because otherwise I will have an F on my transcript and have to repeat Senior Thesis if I don’t make some 3D stuff by the end of July.

There are probably two weekends in July when I won’t be focusing on 3D. There are probably also a lot of days dedicated to homework and the like.

I hope I can pull this off. Meanwhile, I’m avoiding doing an assignment for my databases class.

One day I’d like to post something thought-provoking. Or at least something that takes some thought to write and isn’t just an expression of anxiety about the future and an acknowledgement that I haven’t written in a while.

I’m going home this weekend. All seven members of my immediate family will be together for the first time in something like four years. I am looking forward to it. I promise.

I guess I’ll end this before it becomes even more of a rambling and nonsensical post about nothing.

Well.

I put paintings from the spring semester in a new album in the gallery. They are all there, even though some of them aren’t worth looking at. There are detail shots of some paintings on later pages.

I realized the writing here took a bit of an informal turn when I started posting while sleep deprived during said semester. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, but it happened.

Developments: It looks like I will be finishing my C.S. degree after all. I should be graduating next spring if all goes according to plan. Authorities on the matter generally concur that this is a good thing.

I wish I had time to take more drawing and painting classes before I graduate, and it would be nice to try my hand at sculpture and printmaking. However, I will need to focus academically on C.S. this last year, and develop a strong 3d portfolio outside of classes. Currently I am trying to figure out just what my ‘strong 3d portfolio’ will entail. I intend to focus on modeling this summer, and probably move into rigging and animation in fall and spring.

I am making some kind of promise to myself to experiment with other media in the future.

Lastly, there is a diminutive human in Wellington, Florida. Her name is Kacey, and she is awesome.

I almost dove right into productivity and frog modeling this morning. I’m glad I didn’t.

I’m not sure if it’s due to the fact that I’m taking a painting class, the disillusionment and inefficacy animation, an unnurtured interest in illustration that refuses to be ignored, maturation as an artist, general curiosity, or what, but I’m getting more and more interested in two-dimensional stuff, concept art, character design, and somewhat bizarre or surreal organic forms. Which leads me to today’s sites. Which I haven’t fully explored yet, but I hope to after the frog is done.

http://www.1000tentacles.com/

And for the second one there isn’t much of a site for the work specifically. There are some CGTalk posts by a member named Blackheart Gang, with some cool stills. I should make a point to learn more about this. And also come up with better words than ‘cool’ and actually talk about why I like certain art. Maybe some day.

Oh, and somewhat surprisingly, I received the instructor approval for which I so greatly yearned for my froggish self portrait. Suggestions include making it delicate or graceful (or some other related word, I can’t remember exactly what she said) and not really cartoony or hokey, and thinking about the symbolism. I should post an image of the sketch/composition I’m planning, but that’s really not interesting and when it’s done, if it’s successful, maybe I’ll put the finished thing up. WHAT AN ADVENTURE!