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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 23, 2016 23:10:26 GMT -9
...that's what the ad banner at the top is trying to sell me, and I couldn't think of a good title, so I'm gonna roll with that. Thanks, Jimmy Dean! So, I've been bitten by the paper craft bug again. A bunch of things sorta just happened and I ended up in a position where designing stuff again wouldn't be a huge gong show like it used to be. - I had to replace my work PC recently, and I opted to buy a new PC myself rather than get a new one from the company I work with.
- I can actually afford the software I used to fantasize about in the mid 2000s now.
- I replaced my company-provided monitor with a pretty awesome 21.5" pen display.
- I picked up a new wireless printer.
- I've replaced my tools and consumables.
- I've got a cute little portable papercraft corner and a Sterilite rolling cabinet to hold paper and supplies.
I had the printer sitting on the cabinet, but it does this alarmingly hilarious hula dance/shimmy thing when the printer is running, so I'm gonna need to grab another little folding table instead. Silhouette America seems to have lost its mind and turned into a wannabe mid-2000s Provo Craft with the whole .studio file format thing, plus I'm still a bit miffed at them about the Cameo registration mark debacle, so I'm probably just going to settle for a cheap Portrait cutter for test builds and just distribute DXF cut files and image frames for the sake of future proofing. Of course, I've got a little bit of rust to shake off before doing anything ambitious, but I'm excited to see where the new workflow will take me. I'd also like to expand my horizons a little bit with stuff like paper figures, especially now that I can draw them right on the screen instead of inking/scanning/painting them the old fashioned way. Another thing I had a lot of fun with before was live-streaming some of my model development and workbench sessions, so I'm also working on a cute little mini-studio setup with switchable screen and workbench camera feeds. I'm looking forward to seeing where things go. |
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Post by lightning on Jun 23, 2016 23:12:40 GMT -9
subscribed  |
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Post by Vermin King on Jun 24, 2016 3:35:15 GMT -9
I'm very excited to hear this. It was your models and Topo's that really got me going.
I remember the 'hula' dance when I helped my son set up his first computer system. We also had to get a different printer table.
Hopefully, real life will cooperate.
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Post by uptrainfan89 on Jun 24, 2016 4:08:11 GMT -9
Yaaaaaaaaaaay!!!! Welcome back Mel, definitely exciting news! I'm with Vermin King on this one, your models are what got me into the paper model hobby, I remember being on the Ebbles Miniatures site and forums almost everyday hahaha! I still play GunCrawl religiously, it's by far my favorite game still since its release!  |
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Jun 24, 2016 4:43:19 GMT -9
It's great to hear you still have the bug for it, and are able to find the time to play. And, thanks for pointing out the sausage ad. Never noticed the ads before, and now I've noticed that I have to "shake up my dinnertime routine"!
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Post by squirmydad on Jun 24, 2016 8:51:33 GMT -9
I'll be expecting a prototype of your "Sausage Stuffed Zucchini Boats" model next Monday.  It's like old home week with you and Jim popping in.  |
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 25, 2016 12:43:15 GMT -9
Thanks for welcoming me back, everyone! Squirmydad: Behold this magnificent artistic masterpiece-in-progress, which I have unimaginatively titled "Sausage Vikings In Zucchini Boat" 
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Post by uptrainfan89 on Jun 25, 2016 12:48:13 GMT -9
Hahaha that is awesome! Also is that a tablet running Photoshop? |
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 25, 2016 13:03:16 GMT -9
uptrainfan89: It's a Monoprice MP22 pen display attached to my PC. I spent years lusting after Wacom's Cintiq pen displays but I wasn't about to part with $2500 for one of these babies. The cheaper ones were using crappy digitizers/pens for years, so I didn't bother with them either. I waited until the cheaper brands started using electromagnetic resonance digitizers (Wacom's patent on EMR digitizer tech apparently expired), and held out for a sale. I got the MP22 for $470, which is a way more palatable price than $2500, I'll tell you that much right now. *grin* I've got a Creative Cloud Photography subscription that lets me use Photoshop CC for about ten bucks a month. I thought about going for the full meal deal plan that gives you access to the whole CC suite initially, but considering the fact that Photoshop is basically the only CC program that I need to use regularly, with Bridge being a semi-distant second, the photography plan is more than sufficient for my needs.
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Post by uptrainfan89 on Jun 25, 2016 13:16:51 GMT -9
That's definitely some pretty sweet tech, seems like I read something just the other day on EMR tech too, and I definitely wouldn't blame you there $470 vs $2500 is a heck of a better deal. I ended up getting CS5.5 through college a couple years back for my microcomputer specialist classes, only draw back is its the student version but was definitely a nice discount from the regular edition. Now if only I had any artistic talent hahaha! |
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 25, 2016 16:45:01 GMT -9
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Post by uptrainfan89 on Jun 25, 2016 17:14:01 GMT -9
"And thus the 100 year food fight begun!" |
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Post by squirmydad on Jun 25, 2016 21:24:31 GMT -9
"The sausage vikings closed in on the rapidly sinking ship of Captain Gingerbeard..."  I also made cut-files; link |
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 26, 2016 12:36:51 GMT -9
Squirmydad: I love that little vignette! I got my other table last night and set up the printer on it so the cabinet stops doing the cabbage patch every time I print something. Chairman Cuddles is apparently doing a QA inspection.  There seems to be room for a hobby cutter on it too, but the Portrait doesn't have a wireless connection or take a SD card, so I'll have to figure something else out. In the meantime, I'll just have to use my Olfa SVR-2 and make the appropriate mechanical sound effects while I hog stuff out by hand. |
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Post by uptrainfan89 on Jun 26, 2016 12:46:10 GMT -9
Nice, I have a similar Canon printer that I got refillable cartridges for, had to do the same thing and get a less wobbly stand, but it is by far probably the best printer I've ever had! Also good luck with the QA inspection, I hope Chairman Cuddles gives you the green light! |
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Post by greypilgrim on Jun 27, 2016 15:37:09 GMT -9
Good to see you climbing back into the saddle again. amigo!
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Post by willohio on Jun 28, 2016 17:46:06 GMT -9
Welcome back Chris! Looking forward to seeing what new things you'll develop.
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 30, 2016 20:33:23 GMT -9
I spent most of this evening digging through the whole backend of the Genet Models website in yet another attempt to find out why some of the downloads were STILL causing SSL-related errors. I think I fixed it for good, since I was able to download previously troublesome files without a hitch afterwards. If you run into download problems, let me know. I had to live stream some video tutorials for work earlier in the week, and after a bunch of false starts, we discovered that Comcast was entirely too happy to bill us for their Extreme 150 internet service for several months while simultaneously renting us a crapsack cable modem/router combo that couldn't handle the plan. A trip to Best Buy and $282 later, I'm finally getting the rated upload/download speeds for a change, and I was able to live stream video just fine. Workbench video streaming is gonna be fun once it's up and running. I also spent a couple hours experimenting with pen line widths and levels of detail for 300dpi figures to see how much detail I can capture in the printed result before it becomes a muddy, cluttered mess. Working at 200% of the final printed size with an 8px brush and sticking to the same level of detail you'd see in a sculpted figure seems to be the sweet spot for me. I need to build a reference library for poses, proportions, and stuff like that, and then just spend some time this weekend drawing people and getting back into practice.
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Post by Vermin King on Jul 1, 2016 4:27:06 GMT -9
Comcast was announcing upgrades in our area the other night, since Google Plus is coming in a few weeks. I told them to feel free to upgrade me for free or get off my porch. 'But aren't you a current customer?'. 'Yes, and you should know that only a customer would have the collection of bad experiences that would get them this mad. Get off my Porch or do I have to call the police.'
Comcast may not be the worst, but they sure try to be
EDIT: This was after having to spend 44 minutes earlier in the day fighting over a billing error
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jul 1, 2016 9:45:28 GMT -9
Ugh, yeah...Mrs E ran into the same kind of issue at the local Comcast service center when she took the aforementioned crapsack modem/router back. The kid at the counter kept insisting that it had to be a defective modem and said her mom was getting 170mbps download speeds with the same modem. (Yeah, right, sure, if she was plugged into the Ethernet port maybe, that modem has about half a billion 1 star reviews specifically calling out the slow-as-molasses, drops-like-a-butterfingers, short-ranged wifi built into it.)
Then the kid claims she has blazing fast service too, so Mrs E presses her and asks "With this modem?", and the kid gets all stuttery and says "Oh, no, I have my own modem and router". No, really?
Blech. Well, on the bright side, the flaky connection and lack of speed aren't a big problem for me anymore.
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Post by ignatious on Jul 1, 2016 11:53:22 GMT -9
A few years back a tree limb fell across the street causing their cable to rip a segment of fascia off of my house. After several unhelpful attempts at calling customer service I starting recording all my calls ( as they would say "for quality assurance"). It's interesting how the conversation changes when you say "just to inform you I am also recording this conversation". A few weeks later (of very angry, yet calm, collected, and recorded calls) I ended up with the head of customer service. She was embarrassed (rightfully so) that I was able to make it up the to the top of the chain without anyone being able to help (to be completely fair a few tried, not the least of which was the guy who gave me her personal number, after realizing he couldn't help me). At the end my house was repaired, and I had her personally dvr a show that, I wasn't able to watch because of the trouble, and burn it onto a dvd and deliver it via one of their service people to my house. That was actually her idea. Funny thing is the next time I had some issues with comcast (no more than a year later) I tried to circumvent the normal BS, by calling the numbers of the higher ups who actually tried to help and they didn't work there anymore. Perhaps they were as frustrated as everyone else. My point to this story is that I have literally never met anyone with any thing good to say about comcast.
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Post by lightning on Jul 2, 2016 5:46:57 GMT -9
Hi Mel, it's so good to hear from you again. I am very interested in this MP22 thing. If money was no issue I would want to get the Cintiq but for now I have to work with a restricted budget.
Whenever I try to digitally paint with my regular tablet I seem to have a problem of not being able to reproduce the movement like when I draw with pen(cil) and paper. I am hoping that with a pen display it will be better as I don't have to look at the screen while my hand is drawing some place else. Did you experience this kind of improved working with the pen display?
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jul 2, 2016 8:33:53 GMT -9
A few years back a tree limb fell across the street causing their cable to rip a segment of fascia off of my house. After several unhelpful attempts at calling customer service I starting recording all my calls ( as they would say "for quality assurance"). It's interesting how the conversation changes when you say "just to inform you I am also recording this conversation". A few weeks later (of very angry, yet calm, collected, and recorded calls) I ended up with the head of customer service. She was embarrassed (rightfully so) that I was able to make it up the to the top of the chain without anyone being able to help (to be completely fair a few tried, not the least of which was the guy who gave me her personal number, after realizing he couldn't help me). At the end my house was repaired, and I had her personally dvr a show that, I wasn't able to watch because of the trouble, and burn it onto a dvd and deliver it via one of their service people to my house. That was actually her idea. Funny thing is the next time I had some issues with comcast (no more than a year later) I tried to circumvent the normal BS, by calling the numbers of the higher ups who actually tried to help and they didn't work there anymore. Perhaps they were as frustrated as everyone else. My point to this story is that I have literally never met anyone with any thing good to say about comcast. Wow...I'm glad your house got fixed! Mrs E is going through Comcast's efforts to "make it right" at the moment, which seems to chiefly consist on trying to give us another one of those crapsack modems. I miss the emoticons on the old Ebbles forum, 'cause I'd insert a laughing one here. Hi Mel, it's so good to hear from you again. I am very interested in this MP22 thing. If money was no issue I would want to get the Cintiq but for now I have to work with a restricted budget. Whenever I try to digitally paint with my regular tablet I seem to have a problem of not being able to reproduce the movement like when I draw with pen(cil) and paper. I am hoping that with a pen display it will be better as I don't have to look at the screen while my hand is drawing some place else. Did you experience this kind of improved working with the pen display? Yep. Before this, I had one of those old-fashioned screenless Graphire drawing tablets that was like 6x8" or something, and I never could get the hang of using it properly. It wasn't so bad when I had a 4:3 display, but muscle memory seemed to go out the window if I changed the zoom level and I found myself spending more time fixing mistakes than actually drawing something. When I moved on from CRTs to 16:9, 16:10, and 21:9 displays, I gave up on it because I had a choice between having all of the tablet real estate in exchange for distortion or having dead space and a reduced working area on the tablet if I preserved the aspect ratio. This isn't normally a problem for a lot of artists, but for me it was too frustrating to deal with. I have far fewer problems with the MP22 than with the Graphire--for the first time, me being rusty is more of a problem than the hardware is. That being said, it does take a couple days to get used to the feel of drawing on a slick surface, little stuff like fast strokes are cleaner than very slow strokes, and the fact that you don't need quite as much pressure to lay ink as you would expect. I find it fun to use and I feel more productive using it for art stuff. |
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Post by lightning on Jul 2, 2016 10:53:44 GMT -9
That's great to hear. It seems like this could be a solution for me then too And I am glad to hear I am not the only one with the "muscle memory" problems. Now I just need to make some daily time available for me and keep to practice!!! |
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jul 4, 2016 21:12:49 GMT -9
Lightning: Yeah, practice is essential! I'm a bit alarmed at my current level of artistic decrepitude versus when I was a teenager. Getting in some practice sketching/painting myself. I ended up drawing a Cylon, 'cause the rough sketch I started out with kind of just went in that direction and I rolled with it for funsies. I'm not used to drawing things at exaggerated miniature-style scales, so Jim's 30mm eyeline sketch paper PDF came in really handy as reference for the proportions. The shading is kind of a half-baked mishmash of different experimental approaches. I'm still trying to find a style I like, basically.  I've still got a ways to go before I knock all the rust off and settle into a comfortable groove with this kind of artwork, but it's fun! |
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Post by migibb on Jul 5, 2016 5:43:41 GMT -9
Have fun finding your "groove" - looks good to me. Don't forget to do a back and slip him into one of the Hoards some time.......  |
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Post by uptrainfan89 on Jul 5, 2016 13:07:18 GMT -9
Looking Good! |
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jul 21, 2016 22:37:23 GMT -9
I've been having a blast getting reacquainted with 3D modeling and texturing lately. I feel like I'm going to night school!
I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that Tetraface had fixed a bunch of stuff in Metasequoia 4 that was driving me a bit crazy in Metasequoia 3. Stuff like support for faces with more than 4 points (bevels are so much cleaner when they don't have to deal with a gnarly run of faces) and the UV editor's grid settings actually scale well with very large textures. Before, the biggest I could get without losing a clean grid for snapping was 2048x2048 pixels, but I was able to get clean snapping at very small intervals all the way up to 8192x8192 pixels in Metasequoia 4. There were several other nice improvements to the modeling and unwrapping tools as well.
I've been experimenting with new texturing workflows in Photoshop CC and Quixel Suite. It's crazy how things have changed in the 3D art world since the early 2000s.
I'm pretty close to finding a flow that I like, so I'm gonna be working on new models again soon.
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Post by Vermin King on Jul 22, 2016 4:02:51 GMT -9
Outstanding!
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Post by uptrainfan89 on Jul 25, 2016 4:20:05 GMT -9
Awesome, definitely can't wait to add to the Ebbles collection (and GunCrawl of coarse lol)! |
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