{"id":241,"date":"2011-03-09T09:58:12","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T09:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/faulknermano.com\/blog\/?p=241"},"modified":"2011-03-09T10:04:38","modified_gmt":"2011-03-09T10:04:38","slug":"mardonier-wip-9-march-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/faulknermano.com\/blog\/mardonier-wip-9-march-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Mardonier (WIP) 9 March 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, what the hell have I been doing all this time?<\/p>\n

For starters, I finally quit my teaching job<\/a> – a risky move, which might be construed to be a bold decision, or if time convicts, a dumb play. There it is, I suppose.<\/p>\n

Of course, the reason<\/em> why I quit was simple: want to get back to working in CG. Whether I’m working for a company, or working on my own, I want to be working on it, not about<\/em> it, if my drift is catching you.\u00a0 I did enjoy teaching, for sure, but there comes a time, for a person with a disposition like myself, after looking at so many students advancing in their craft, and producing excellent work, that the inevitable envy questions me: “What about you?”<\/p>\n

Indeed, what about me? What have I produced recently? What new things have I learned about my passion? I couldn’t write off teaching as a useless endeavour – far from it: I’ve learned what teaching was all about, and I was getting good at it, too; I learned that I could test logical workflow techniques, albeit untested, on students and they could be the guinea pigs that provide insight on how to revise such techniques or methods; I’ve met great students, who were also great and big-hearted people, who excelled and inspired me in the way that I hoped to have inspired them.<\/p>\n

But still: I was getting really hungry for cutting it deep with my craft, and I knew that the longer I spent in teaching, the worst it’s going to get; the less time I’ll have, more frustration, and an ever-deepening situation between what I desire as an artist and what I’ll have at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

This week is my first week off the job. The first order was a modelling reel (because it is the easiest to do), and I decided to do “Mardonier”, a character that has been in my chest for over a decade now. This character is full: I’m currently writing a small novel around him but, obviously, I can’t talk about that now.<\/p>\n

Shown below is the final base mesh which was derived from another project I shelved for now. Face mesh was an old one I did; needed lots of topology reworking, and revised it to match Rainer Maria Rilke, which was the rough basis for the character. I’ll put this over to Mudbox to focus on Rilke’s likeness there.<\/p>\n

Everything except the shoe was also a topology rework. The shoe was based off the Merrell World Rambler<\/a>, World Compass (Traveller)<\/a>, and Downshift<\/a>. Great-looking shoes; it wanted me to buy a pair (or two).<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>
Head final<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Head final (wireframe)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Base mesh final<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Base mesh final (wireframe)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Beethoven, Mozart, Atticus Ross (Book of Eli), and Wallflowers have been my fickle friends, but Wallflowers the less fickle of them all.<\/p>\n

\n

So, what the hell have I been doing all this time?<\/p>\n

For starters, I finally quit my teaching job<\/a> – a risky move, which might be construed to be a bold decision, or if time convicts, a dumb play. There it is, I suppose.<\/p>\n

Of course, the reason<\/em> why I quit was simple: want to get back to working in CG. Whether I’m working for a company, or working on my own, I want to be working on it, not about<\/em> it, if my drift is catching you.\u00a0 I did enjoy teaching, for sure, but there comes a time, for a person with a disposition like myself, after looking at so many students advancing in their craft, and producing excellent work, that the inevitable envy questions me: “What about you?”<\/p>\n

Indeed, what about me? What have I produced recently? What new things have I learned about my passion? I couldn’t write off teaching as a useless endeavour – far from it: I’ve learned what teaching was all about, and I was getting good at it, too; I learned that I could test logical workflow techniques, albeit untested, on students and they could be the guinea pigs that provide insight on how to revise such techniques or methods; I’ve met great students, who were also great and big-hearted people, who excelled and inspired me in the way that I hoped to have inspired them.<\/p>\n

But still: I was getting really hungry for cutting it deep with my craft, and I knew that the longer I spent in teaching, the worst it’s going to get; the less time I’ll have, more frustration, and an ever-deepening situation between what I desire as an artist and what I’ll have at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

This week is my first week off the job. The first order was a modelling reel (because it is the easiest to do), and I decided to do “Mardonier”, a character that has been in my chest for over a decade now. Outwardly he is nothing special<\/em>. But that’s how it is for most of us, isn’t it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, what the hell have I been doing all this time? For starters, I finally quit my teaching job – a risky move, which might be construed to be a bold decision, or if time convicts, a dumb play. There it is, I suppose. Of course, the reason why I quit was simple: want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-graphics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gtd2-3T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/faulknermano.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/faulknermano.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/faulknermano.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/faulknermano.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/faulknermano.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/faulknermano.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249,"href":"http:\/\/faulknermano.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/faulknermano.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/faulknermano.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/faulknermano.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}