At the beginning of 2020, I made this animation in response to celebrate the end of 2019 and to welcome 2020. The original text was 2019, 2020 text would down from above in front of the monster once he landed. After going half way through 2020, I changed the text to reflect my inner frustration about 2020 craziness. This continue to be a work in progress as this page intended to showcase. This rig was purchased from Kiel Figgins store.
The Yello Mouse experiment
The Yello Mouse is my artist signature; I then decided to create a character out of it. The first version of The Yello Mouse was created in late 2019. The plan was to release a free rig for educational purposes alongside with a Youtube channel but I quickly realized my time was better-spent learning/experimenting and creating instead of managing a channel. The first version of the character was simple box modeling. The rig was manually created from the ground up. Thinking about how to ease someone new to 3D into using a basic biped rig, I made toggle attribute for several sections of controls to have their visibility on and off with the thought that one can just focus on the basic first but have the ability to turn on more controls to work with if needed/when ready.
First version of The Yello Mouse Model/Rig
The second version of the character was created in February of 2020. It was my way of pushing myself to learn Zbrush. I created the character in Zbrush and Retopo him in Maya. That was my first time using Maya Retopogy tool. I loved it. I learned to use Substance Painter to do a basic diffuse map on the character. I then decided to use Mgear to rig up the new version of The Yello Mouse instead of manual rigging as my goal for these kinds of learning exercises were all to rapid prototype. I also modeled/ manually rigged up a small motorcyle for the mouse based on the model of my own motorcycle. The creation of the version 2 model, texturing and rig with simple animation to test the rig was done within two weeks. This achieved my goal of rapid prototype on top of learning new tools along with learning how to sculpt and retopo.
Second version of The Yello Mouse Model/Rig
WIP and experimentation
I hope to populate this blog with WIP and experimentation that I am constantly working on. Most of these things are usually being post on Tweeter but I thought I should have an area specifically dedicated to them.
For the longest time, I struggled with trying to get something perfect that I ended up bottlenecking my growth. Aside from advice and tips I heard/read and given from professionals that I followed and looked up to, I realized through my own experience that what works for me to grow at a steady, constant and hopefully, rapid speed was to experiment and try many things and being able to move on without heavy attachment to them. Though I do have the tendency to return to continue working to improve what I started. This was something I found also powerful to me because when I do come back to something I started before I gain more experience, I am able to see more ways to solve the puzzle.