Tons of drawing work and such over the weekend anyways, but it's come along well so far.
Only have one totally finished on cleanup so far from photoshop, but going to put that here anyway for the time being. Should have several more done by tomorrow.
Shall likely need a little more time tomorrow, and the trip to class is a waste on mondays since it's about 2.5 hours of travel time for a mere 3 hour lab... not to mention once home again it takes a bit of time to settle back in and get things set up again to continue work, so think I'll just spend the time home as it'd be more efficient overall.
Anyways, picture time! This's a quick sample of some design schematics for the robot being made for character design 300. Going with a steampunk stylized dragon concept, so it's a pain to draw... on the plus side, from tests already done in maya, all it really requires for most of the fancy stuff like gears and such is just a few basic models to be done, and the rest duplicated off the primaries. Things like piping and such are highly modular and easy to make/place, and in fact many of these modular pieces have already been modeled, despite technically not supposed to've done so until next quarter I believe.
Honestly, I liked the sketched version of this better than the finalized cleanup version, but that's probably just because I was working on the cleanup so far zoomed in on minor details I could see the tiny imperfections with far greater ease, and zoomed out I notice them since I know where they are now.
Either way, though it has minor flaws I was not able to correct, in terms of providing basic concepts of how particular features work and go together, it's serving the purpose it was designed for just right.
The side orthographic will take up most of the rest of the night; it's pretty much done, but needs some serious cleanup work. Tomorrow should be able to see the final versions of the top and front done, since they'll be based directly off these design concepts and the side orthographic for overlaying, all the dimensions will be properly worked out in final form, which should make those two go faster than todays' work did.
Have to admit, either way, that I'm still much better at the modeling than the sketching of designs... despite having worked on this for weeks and multiple attempts at each, and design sketches ranging back since christmas, still having alot of problems, and I'm starting to think that the 3/4 view is doomed to be hideous no matter how much I attempt to correct it or redo it. Have something like 5 versions of it now or something, and each one comes out bad. Was supposed to do that first and the orthographics after, but this seriously flat out isn't working. Hopefully getting the orthos done will somehow make it possible to get a version which doesn't suck horribly, but I'm not about to hold my breath. Simon may just have to accept the fact that I know exactly how to build it, how the parts fit together, how they operate mechanically, but that the 3/4 view he may get may end up just looking not that good since it's such a complex model.
I could've done something simple, but then again, everyone else is already. I want something that I can be proud of for having taken the hard road and done it well, instead of something on par with a stickfa, which even the top students from years before essentially are. Even Andre, who is constantly mentioned as being one of the top students of the school to graduate, his own robot couldn't even do a proper walk cycle because it was flawed from basic concept, and honestly, I wasn't impressed by the design, which resembled far too much to me as looking like the stickfa with curved legs and an old camcorder for a head, made to look more futuristic.
I suppose that's to be expected though, the majority of the class, and as far as I can tell, modelers in general, do not have much innate imagination of their own, but simply convert anothers' dreams into something closer to reality. Not an artist, despite it being artwork. A strange concept really.
I'm willing to bite off perhaps a tiny bit more than I can chew at the moment, if it means something I can proudly display on the final reel and learn a great deal from. I'll make mistakes, as I've learned in several past projects, but those mistakes teach one how to do it better the next time by understanding where the flaws are now. I'd rather come across these problems while in college than when getting paid, as many as possible anyway. If it looks like something other than a stickfa with some armour glued on the sides, then all the better.
This of course seems to clash with Simon's school of thought being to do something simple well. While this can be effective at times, it also doesn't really show much else either, and severely cripples the number of learning opportunities. I have admittedly done so a few times now, when on deadlines or with a large course load to bare, but on special projects, the ones that mean the most, such as this robot design, it needs to have that extra touch of care put into it.
Practically any other design I've seen done before that they've put on the wall posters in the school, I could do without even trying. They're simple, and though they look nice, they are ultimately so simple that I don't think they're honestly going to impress anyone when it matters.
I just hope I'm not signing my own epitaph down the line somewheres right now is all. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, I suppose there's no way to tell, only thing I can do is my best, and strive to go beyond even that. Hopefully this will eventually showcase such in the manner I imagine it shall when completed.
Anyway, shall toss the other stuff up tomorrow, still have alot of work to do. Some parts may need to be finalized in photoshop a bit later if I keep having as much trouble as I expect to have with the 3/4 view.
Time to grab a quick meal and get back to work I suppose.
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