It was cold! I missed the first snow of December 2020 due to the octopus I was rigging, but it snowed a lot in Pittsburgh this new year. We had an extra long winter break and I thought of working on a lot of personal projects and I did started some of them, for example- modeling a Tiny House, but it still has a long way to reach the finish line. I was distracted on Overwatch for a few days before and after I shifted to a new apartment on a snowy day. Then, Soul movie got released by Pixar on Christmas 2020 and I had to get Disney+ for that, so I did that, watched it once and then twice and wanted to watch more but got distracted towards Marvel series and finished it in a few days and then, I deactivated that as well.
So, I went on walks somedays, cleaned my apartment, cooked lots of Indian cuisine, talked to a couple faculty and slowly started learning human anatomy and animation principles. Practiced these till the semester started. Last few days before the semester was troubling, felt like it was a too long of a break but I, indeed, take a break and needed that. Also, I researched a lot about the auto-rig I am planning to create in Spring 2021 and got a couple of solid resources out there, which made me feel better but overwhelmed because creating an auto-rig is not a semester thing. It takes years, as I have been told by a couple of industry professionals. I was reading Raf Anzovin's blog from the very beginning, but finished reading only his 1 year post till 2018.
I was also worried about my Digital art studio course since I planned to rig a character to a feature level but for that I will need a feature level 3D character with great topology and anatomy. Took a couple days of searching for this and luckily found some of the 3D characters I liked in Artstation and was lucky again to get it in a reduced price due to winter sale. I now have a couple of models I can work with. I just need to decide which one to pick. Another thing to rig a character like this is to get the animation requirements and to know what actually makes a rig, a feature level rig. I got a couple of demo reel I liked, I don't necessarily know why, but they were appealing to me. I will find out why I liked them, since my diary knows everything and always gives me some answer or direction when I ask her any question. I also started facial rigging and creating a skinning tool to speed up my weight painting process.
I also tried Renderman but couldn't finish the tutorial from pluralsight. It was interesting and it crashed Maya a lot of times. I have been watching Peter McKinnon's youtube videos, super interesting stories about photography. I even compiled a video for which I have been doing recording since 2016. I am surprised I still love it, without even editing it. I might try to edit that and make it cool to share with the world!
P.S.- Not installing Overwatch or subscribing Disney+ until I am surrounded by the people I had always imagined, animation lovers!
P.P.S.- Might download Overwatch if we have an ETC tournament! Sorry, can't miss that!
Stay warm!