smudgedragon

You know, I use to find this easy. But as the technology has advanced it has acutally become more and more obtruse to the point of unworkable.

Case in point. Maya LT on Steam did another major update, breaking my model as I was just getting it finalized. Because it's subscription, I have noway to tell it not to update, and no way to revert. At least Adobe got that right with thier cloud model.

I've cleaned up the corrupted data as best as I could, and exported it out to Unreal only to find that the FBX exporter is dropping REALLY IMPORTANT sections of my model.

Yeah - I think I'm gonna take some time off and open my commission docket this week. I ment to do it last week, but I was so close to getting to stick a fork in this thing that I just plowwed though instead. But this... I don't know if I can recover from this.

So, I'm having a nasty round of medical hit money wise. Nothing life threatening but stuff that adds up quickly. New glassess after my old ones broke at a really inconvenit time, me hurting my back over the weekend, and dental coming up fast after loosing peices of fillings on two teeth, means lots of outta poket.

To help offest costs, I'm opening up 4 commission slots to start with.

$40.00 gets you a single character sketch either Traditional or Digital,
$60.00 for inks Traditional or Digital,
$100.00 color Digital Only,
$150.00+ for Traditional Watercolor.

All work will be 8 1/2" x 11" in size. PG 13 max subject matter. I reserve the rights to refuse any subject for any reason.

Drop me a note on FA or DA or use this contact form here, and we'll see what we can do.

Most folks who know me, know that I love animating. Something I do very rarely now. A combination of not being able to afford the programs I *really* want, and a hand that has gone from "okay" to bad to worse in pain. It's no longer just my fingers; the pain, though mild, has spread to my wrist, and up my arm to the elbow and shoulder joint. But bitching about the hand pain is for another post at another time.

Now, with much effort and penny pinching I have a computer that can, for the most part, run anything I want. I have to say, I've been really happy with the jump to Windows 7. Most I need right now is either some new ram, or to upgrade my processor/motherboard. But what I have now will most certainly do the job.

So that leaves the programs.

I have Hash atm. While a good program for learning and messing around, the version I have is sorely out of date. I'm also feeling uneasy with the companies slow, steady decline. Also, I keep bumping into issues that drive me nutz, mostly involving importing and exporting to other formats. Hash very much follows the "Don't play well with others" model that programs held 20+ years ago. That and I keep running into technical issues. So much so I've pretty much stopped working in it.

I love Vue. It does one thing and one thing really well: environments. I cannot sing this program's praises enough. However, it only does one thing. And I'm a character animator. Even using Vue, I'll need something else to do the characters in. But considering most other programs fall to pieces trying to do what Vue does without blinking, having two separate programs is not bad way of going. Oh, and Vue very much likes playing with others. ^.^

What I really want - Maya. There is a reason why Maya is on the top of the heep. I've worked with Maya in the past when it first came out. It's an environment I know and like. It's modeling tools that work well, and gives me options on how things will be built. And some of the available rigging plugins from 3rd parties are to die for (looking at you, The Setup Machine).

But what I am being forced into - Blender. The Gimp of the 3D world. Le sigh.

^this is what I have had to choose and wrestle with for some time. So far, my choice is to not work in any of them and help Radio get back a web presence. But this stalling action is not going to last forever.

However, there's a new one on the block for a limited time, Messiah. For a limited time - they are offering a mass deal of $10.00 basic and $40.00 pro versions of their animation package. In fact- according to their site- I have 7 hours to make up my mind, as of this posting. Problem is, this is an animation only program. feh. I dislike making split second decisions on funds I have so few of. Frack it! *hits the buy now button*

Also... got an email today. AutoDesk, the makers of Max, Maya & Softimage are offering 0% financing until April. It's really temping. really really tempting. But I know that I have no income, per say and we're not out of debt consolidation yet.

Why? why do you mock me so?

In other tech news - Watson (IMB's AI) is playing Jeopardy this week. So far the match is off to a good start.

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