If you're stuck in Windows, you'll never guess where this screenshot came from. If you've dabbled with Linux or Unix, you'll recognize the icon in the upper left hand corner. If you like the Quartz window theme as much as me, the upper right should tell you how I made this screenshot. I spent this entire weekend working on Linux. When I say entire, I mean day, night, sleep, eat, and think. I spent a few hours in Windows using MilkShape3D working on a new model which I delighted you with yesterday. That is one program that Linux does not have. However, I am expecting Mete to make the port or something. He probably doesn't want to go GPL. I gotta hand it to him for business tactics, though. His shareware is very secure. No leeches there. The price of MS3D is very low (Can you afford $20). Tools and upgrades are always free. The support is amazing via forums and e-mail with the creator himself. The new tutorials make it easy for hapless newbies to get going. But MS3D is very user-friendly. It is practically the antithesis of Blender (which recently went GPL, I might add, when the authors became sick of it). The user base is medium sized. I wouldn't call it small because it's not just me and two of my friends. It's huge. In fact, the entire indy game development community (even Linux) is supporting MS3D. I mean, are we going to support 3D Studio Max for $100 for students? What about Maya for $100 for students? Lightwave, bla bla bla, they cost an arm and a leg. What indy game developers need is cheap, easy, and powerful. And they get it with MilkShape3D. So you shouldn't be surprised when I bust out my very first Linux program that loads a model and it's in ms3d format. Of course, I gotta give proper props to the original writers of the program I used:
When I get in my groove, I can tell you one thing: you best not be in my way, 'cause I'm one crazy sucka. This is part of my plan for the perfect model. It is body 2 version 0.1. About the name, I've decided to start naming my models so that I can identify them easier. All my models are named stuff like jav40gs1p5.ms3d and stuff like that. Of course, that tells me that it is Javantea using body number 40 and it is the g style and then animation is used for scene 1 page 5. But that's kinda confusing. What about jav33es.ms3d? What is it for? I have no idea. I have to open up MS3D to see wtf it is. And when one is in pursuit of the perfect model, one accumulates over 400 models and model revisions in one year. That's right, there are two dozen EGv1s, one dozen EGv2s, at least 100 Javs, and about 200 seperate body parts. Getting things as good as they are takes a lot of work. Enough about my agony, what about this model? Well, I was looking at the EG model (aka the DA model) and the Jav 40 model and I was absolutely amazed at how good they are. I could easily use them for the rest of JF models and not have to worry much about people dissing my artistic talent. But then I thought: the fruits of one year of modeling is hardly a finished product. So I thought about all the small problems I have with the two models. The first is pinching. If you aren't familiar with pinching, it's when a model uses a skeleton and you rotate the skeleton, the faces turn inside-out. You might be able to see it on some of the JF comic pages. I try to get rid of this as much as possible. So I decided to use diverse tactics on this model. Instead of the cross pose, I decided to put the arms at 45 degrees downward. That will help fight pinching when the arms are down at the sides, which is the more likely pose. I also bent things so that they would work right under the circumstances that are usually in my animations: punching, kicking, running, talking using body language. This model specifically targets pinching. I think that it is my best model in the view of working with the skeleton. You've probably noticed that the body is not in correct proportions to reality; I noticed that also. When I have time I'll stretch them to the correct measurements. I have them for myself. Of course, I am not exactly a correctly measured person, but who is. I'm 6'2" and very lanky. My arms are long, my legs are long, and I'm fairly thin. What can I do about it? It doesn't show it enough in JF, but my reach is good enough to punch a short person without fear of a counterpunch (perhaps you'll see in Scene 1, Page 6-8).
Hello and good evening. No Scene 1, Page 6. I haven't even started it. If you haven't seen Scene 1, Pages 1-5, go take a look. I wanted to do this Making Of JF because I want to end my fear of doing JF. That's right. If you look in the past and read carefully or do a full text search, you'll find that I have a complex phobia of doing JF. For eleven days, I've been to afraid to even start work on JF. Instead of doing it, I've been finding everything and anything that I can do besides JF, even physics problem sets which I am morally obligated to do. I've gone to sleep early many nights and woken up late a few nights. It's intolerable and I wish to stop it. So tonight, I thought something up and here it is. It isn't totally original. In fact, I copied it nearly directly from the front of the Henry Art Gallery brochure cover. But inspiration doesn't deny the fact that I created something of my own that I've been thinking about seperately from the inspiration for a while.. What have I been thinking about? Paneling and Martian tubes.
You know the drill, Scene 1, Pages 1-5 are up. I haven't even started Page 6, so don't ask. Ask me about this picture, but if you do that, I'll tell you what I'm writing now.
