Day 18

I played around with this sculpting tool in Maya. It's different than what I've been doing so far. A little bit more artistic and simpler too. Just a lot of pushing and pulling. It's not that precise though and the book even said if I wanted to do more detailed work using this sculpting method, I'd need to use another program. Anyway, this was just a detour. Back to the grind.  

Day 17

So I've been spending time working on what you see above. Not exactly that impressive. Like I said before this chapter is working more with curved surfaces. It's not as straight forward as the previous chapter. There, I could see the use of whatever I was learning and how to apply that to modeling other things. Here, the book tells me to do things but doesn't explain exactly why I'm doing it. I know the general goal but it doesn't tell me why these specific steps are necessary for attaining that goal. Like the example above was a lesson in making a nice a smooth continuous object so if it were ever to be animated, you wouldn't see holes or openings pop up. However after following all the steps, there are still holes here and there that the book doesn't address. I think it may just be that it's harder for the writer to explain steps for more complicated things. I'll probably have to go over this section again after finishing the chapter.

Day 15

Now I'm on the chapter dealing with more curved things. I've been doing little exercises that don't result in anything visually interesting. Curves are a little more complicated than the cubes and whatnot I've been dealing with so far. I'm also tired from lifting heavy objects today. Probably the reason why I didn't get much accomplished. Better luck tomorrow.

Day 13

The next thing I did was model our foosball table. I could have done a little more to make it look better like adding screws and moving the players around so they don't look so organized. However it is late and I'm lazy. This is the last thing I'm going to model on my own and will be heading back to the book next.

Day 12

I didn't get much work done today. My sister and nephew came over and spent the day here so I didn't get started until late tonight. With not much time, I just modeled one of our dining room chairs. Not that difficult or interesting. Spending time with the nephew is always fun though. He's about 18 months old now and my sister teaches him a lot of stuff. He recognizes numbers and can count to ten. He can tell you what city he lives in and who the president is. He also knows a lot of animal noises. So you can ask him what a lion says or a pig and he'll respond appropriately. Today my sister asked him what a kookaburra says and he just laughed. It took me a second to realize that's what the bird actually sounds like. My only reference was old children's song. Mmm gumdrops...

Day 11

I finally finished the catapult. Like I said before, I had to do the rest on my own. For the most part, everything went ok but there was one part that didn't go as planned. I couldn't manipulate something in the way that I wanted. I ended up accomplishing what I intended but not in the most efficient way. With this catapult done, I've reached the end of Chapter 4 in my book. This chapter was mostly about modelling using polygons. The next chapter will have me using more curved things. I'll also eventually come back to this catapult to animate it in a later chapter. The book recommends that I spend some time modeling different things before I move on so I'll likely be doing that next.

Day 10

Still chugging along with this catapult. Added in wheels and a crank to pull back the arm of the catapult. I should hopefully be done by tomorrow. I have to do the rest on my own (using reference pictures) so we'll see how that goes.