classes coming to a close, Halloween pumpkins, and hurricanes

Welp it's week 9 of RIT and the weather outside is poopy and I am still blogging heh.  Halloween is on Wednesday so I guess it's gonna be a wet one since hurricane Sandy is in town.  I heard it was a lot worse in my home town area of NJ but I'm sure everyone will be fine without a little power or internet for a little.  I do wonder who decides to name these natural disasters though; I think they just pick random girl names and make them sound less threatening to be honest.  This year Halloween was pretty fun even though it hasn't come yet I went to a few costume parties dressed like a ninja since I make a pretty good one.  Being in charge of brotherhood events in my fraternity, I suggested to have us all carve pumpkins, it ended up as just me doing one myself.  We do have one member who is an unbelievably skilled pumpkin carver, his other random hidden skill is sand castle building, we got him to carve 4 pumpkins for sororities on our campus, one didn't have a place so we didn't make one for them.  The one I make though was a pumpkin throwing up his own guts which I thought came out really well mentioning that I haven't tried doing this for about 15 years.

thanks to 3D coat and a class i didn't miss I learned how to UV layout a head under 7 mins 

So I guess I'll finish up with my 3 part series of self improvement that I made up concluding with heart or soul.  I believe that it take more than being smart or athletic to be the best you can be.  I practice doing selfless deeds whenever the opportunity arrives, where it might be me helping someone out with 3D homework in the labs, cooking food for my housemates, or just plain being nice, I'm usually modest but I might just think that I am the nicest guy I know.  Sometimes I just take a few minutes during the day to just sit back and think, almost meditate in fact.  I try to reflect on life and think about what I am doing and why, and other philosophical things I guess.  I came to the conclusion that really all I want in life is to score that dream job doing what I like, I don't care much for money either I guess, I'd be perfectly content if my college loans where paid off;  this might sound cheesy but the other thing is finding my soul mate I guess, to be honest I am awful when it comes to talking with the opposite sex and I've only been with 2 girls so far, that's the life of a nice guy I guess, but an awesome girlfriend would be ideal heh.  Sometimes people will doubt my intellect for being an art student but the truth is I think I am pretty smart sometimes, a lot of the times smarter than the ones who assume that I am not. I could have decided to go into engineering, computer science or many other things since I took college level physics and calculus back in high school but the thing was that I knew that I would be happier doing the things I am now and will get a career that I will enjoy someday and I feel smarter for that.

 I retopologized my future  alien robot dude in 3D coat which took about 4 hours

I know how to get along with everyone, it would be pretty difficult to find someone who would think otherwise I am passive but for good reasons.  Its very rare to see me angry, to deal with things like that you really just calmly take a step back and think about the things that made you upset.  An example would be a time when my friend was driving and got cut off by someone else and got flipped off, my friend got extremely angry and started tailgating the car.  Thinking to myself I would have just ignored the situation since doing such things would not help at all and I will never meet again with this person, wishing misfortune for someone else is also not a good thing.  So yea to sum it up, just try your best to be a genuinely good person and take time to meditate on your thoughts.  Well I hope that my little bits of tips of self improvement will help someone out there someday whoever is reading this.

working hard in school and more project updates

wuz gud? welp its almost been a month since I started blogging again and so far so good; I think the doing this thing once a week thing works pretty well and who knows maybe one day I'll look back and read this stuff and think about how I would look back and read this stuff when I was younger.  Maybe by the time I think like that I will have hundreds of these posts.  Anyway, back on topic with... part 2! of the 3 part series on self improvement which is... mind.  Being strong, athletic, or fit is one thing but when priorities come around for me as a college student, I have to hit the books (even though I haven't been required to by one since fall quarter last year and the since book I bought during last winter) before anything else; without jeopardize my health of course.

As an art student it's not a matter of memorizing (besides scripting) but more about building skills and understanding concepts.  Luckily for me I got a job as a lab assistant which has gotten me to spend at least 15 hours on homework during the weekend.  So I found that to really succeed in this major is to go ahead and also to look for other things to learn and expand on and just keep getting better than everyone else and take that extra mile above and beyond.  I try my best to look for tutorials and advanced things as well as practice modeling and other 3D things.  I usually only have a few 3D classes since RIT makes me have many other required classes for me to take, I feel like I should spend a lot more time on those classes but I don't want to have any low grades so I have to balance it out sometimes and not be able to do that extra and work on an art history paper instead or something.  So far this year I had to really cut out all my free time playing video games, watching anime, or going out with friends and do work instead.  I'm lucky sometimes when I 2 hours or so to play something I like but that's the sacrifice I have to make to take 6 classes (and write this blog :3 )  So for building skills and understanding things I've been trying to dedicate about an hour to sketch concept drawing since a wise guy once told me about the differences between someone who is naturally good at drawing and someone who draws everyday; it also helps me be more creative and imaginative.  Another thing I want to do is try new programs.  So far last year I learned a ton of Adobe products including Photoshop (knew it before but wasn't as good), After Effects, the new Premiere, the new Flash, and bridge. For this year I gave myself a crash course in Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Muse.  For 3D products I learned Mudbox this year as well as 3D coat.  The products I want to learn include zBrush, and maybe 3DS Max and Python for a scripting language.  I am debating on 3DS Max because I heard Maya can do everything the same or better but it might make me better with Maya somehow kind of like playing one video game to be good at another, as for Python my programming friends tell me its a dying language but it could be really good for Maya scripting.  Well I'm hoping that I get straight A's this quarter and hope that next quarter won't be as busy so I can do some more independent studying.  So yeah the point of all this is do well in school cause that's why your in college and so you can make lots of cash someday doing something you like and just work hard on everything and then take the next step and do extra.

So here are the updates on my projects, for my head sculpture I retopologiezed it studying and planning the edge flow and everything; I found out that I have 3 times less polygons than my one friend so maybe I am cut out to model for video games since they require less polygons to run smooth and use other things like normal maps and textures to look nice and detailed.  I have to bring it back to mudbox to bring back the details and then back to maya again, seems like a lot of work... As for my alien robot time traveler, I spent an extra 5 hours on it last friday and like 3 hours last wed and pretty much finished my part of him, it is a group project so I handed it off to my one group mate to retopologize since there's over a million polygons and also make the hands for, he already modeled a weapons and flying device for him based on the concept drawings.  Its too bad I watched a mudbox video after I did all that work since the guy showed techniques that could have saved me a ton of time.  In the end we want to script some cool things for the model such as one that will automatically make a skeleton with named joints and the hierarchy set up and everything and maybe other scripts also; hopefully we can do all this on top of finals within these last 2 weeks before finals week.

Workout Notes and 3D stuff updates

Hello again to all my friends... together we can play some rock and roll.  haha anyway so I've decided that I will share whoever this blog might concern my journey of self improvement which consists of: mind, body, and soul.  I guess I'll start with body since it seems like something interesting and easy to understand.  To improve this I spent countless hours during the summer researching while implementing the ideals that include improvement to the physical body.  Now that I am living away from home I've been shopping and cooking for myself so I've really been embracing my inner chief about 2-3 times a day.  I've managed to cook cheap, healthy, and easy to make dishes since I have kind of been a nutritional Nazi lately but the benefits of doing this have shown great results.  As for exercise I go to the gym about 3 times a week ranging between 45-90 mins a session doing the same full body workout each time.  All the research I did really paid off because my results have been phenomenal and here is the workout if you are interested:

Bench Press 5x5
barbell complex: deadlift/hang clean/ squat/ military press/ bentover row 10 reps each, 4 rounds
body weight circuit: weighted chin-ups/ weighted dips/ weighted knee raises 8 reps each, 3 sets

I calculated how much I should do my bench press with by maxing out at 260lbs and found my 7 rep max to be around 205lbs so that was the weight I used for my 5x5; this was pure strength development so I have been going up about 10lbs each week and now its week 7 and I am repping my maximum from week 1 on Friday which is over a 50lb increase.  For the barbell complex it is more of a High Intensity Interval training since after completion you feel like you have sprinted a mile; I also do it because I tore my ACL during a football practice during high school and I would rather lift lighter with my legs.  I am up to about 115lbs on the barbell with this workout.  For my last thing I wear about 50lbs hanging on a belt while I do these movements, who needs to curl anything when you weigh 185 +50lbs and do chin ups; thats the secret to huge bicepts by the way.  When you can spend less than 2 and half hours a week in the gym and get results like me, you know your doing something right.

Some advice is that an intense amount of focus is required and the diet is what I consider over 70% of the results.  I am currently head of brotherhood events in my fraternity and I have actually gotten about 12 of my brothers to come to the gym with me while I would train them.  I even started a facebook page where my friends and I share routine/nutrition/schedules information.  For me a lot of my motivation to go is the motivation I give to others.  I might post some of the things I share with my workout group page here but just contact me if you want a link and you can read all the things I know and have to say.

As for projects, my sculpting has been really improving and I think the products are coming out really great.  I've learned to abuse the pinch and flatten tool which I learned on youtube for hard edges and surfaces; I found that to get better and surpass your class mates you really have to go out and do extra things on top of what you do in class.  I started modeling my new time traveling alien robot in maya using a premade body as a proportion reference and then I brought it into mudbox to sculpt which is when I added those other tools to my arsenal.  Hopefully using scripts to rig this guy won't be too difficult.  Using those new skills the head sculpture of Ms. Johanson has gotten a lot better since you really need those tools for things like the eyes, lips, and ears.  I also fixed the proportions a lot and I believe that she is almost recognizable; right now I am using another program that I just learned called 3D coat which lets you retopologize your model since you can get really funky geometry using a sculpting program.  Oh yeah and I also made a japanese theme setting for my teapot in about 3 hours for my history of computer graphics class; I might not be the best with lighting, rendering or materials and I don't really like building scenes, but I think this came out alright and its crazy how much you can improve in a year and how fast you can do things.

so far so good

retopo plan

retoping work in progress

model coming along; possibly the coolest thing I've made so far; character design/ modeling& sculpting which is what I want a career in

here's that scene 

actually gonna keep doing this thing...

Hi again! didn't think you would ever read another post by me right?  Well it is my goal to not abandon this blog for two or so years again kinda like how tv shows would end and fans would beg for another series but then coming back and ultimately failing and becoming disowned, but I assure to who ever might be reading this that, that is not the case.  Instead of burning out what ever idea I have and doing it like extra homework writing this blog, I think I might just type about something interesting at the start of the week, and yes Sunday is the end of the week to me.

So I would have to say that the highlight of my week was probably yesterday; I had absolutely no down time to just sit at home and relax... I had a friend over from the other side of town crash at my place on my futon and so me and 3 of my house mates and him decided on going out to try and eat something new for breakfast; luckily I bought a groupon for a Thai-Laotian restaurant that was not too far from my house.  I had just recently discovered this amazing thing called a groupon thanks to one of my friends; apparently you go online to their website and pay for example $20 and the coupon would get you something like $40 to spend when you go out to use it and it comes in all forms of things you can buy, I guess it is a great way for places to get their name out but it is defiantly a win-win for both parties.  I actually went to a Thai-Laotian restaurant about a month or two ago when I was in California this summer and I suppose it is pretty common since their food styles are very similar, but thanks to that, I knew exactly what we should order.  The great thing about this kind of food is that you order a bunch of different dishes and have them all in the middle of the table and all eat from them so that you get a huge variety. I highly recommend something called pad thai which is like the country's signature dish along with thai tea which is a very tasty drink, no two are the same though so if you had a bad experience with it I would try it again.  Overall it was an amazing decision to go, we each spent about $6-$7 thanks to the groupon and ate a very large amount of tasty food.

Right after we ate I had to drive straight to work; I recently got a new job as a lab assistant at my school which means that I pretty much sit at a computer and maintain the lab making sure everything is going well and helping out students with hardware or software problems, luckily I am studying computer graphics and I am very technical minded so answering questions and figuring things out is easy for me and because all of my shifts are in a 3D lab mainly used by animation students.  This job is actually helping get more of my homework done since it is kind of like a study hall for me and I don't have any distractions around; I am actually writing this blog at work also.

Right after work I had to go shopping with my house mate since he doesn't have his car yet.  We went to Walmart and bought some random groceries. Living off campus; I've learned to embrace my inner chef and usually get pretty good compliments on it.  Straight from the store I decided to take the bus and hang out down town with some friends, when I finally got back, I passed out.

Back to important things like school, I have been working on my 3D sculpture.  Don't know if anyone could guess who it was but I'm trying to model Scarlet Johanson, thanks to the inspiration I got from my recently bought movie, The Avengers, I think that I am starting to capture her characteristics better.  Another thing I did to practice making my model recognizable was a hand done sketch that I did.  My professor commented to me that if your spending hours working on something, it might as well be something you don't mind look at.  The DVD I bought actually came with the 3D blu-ray version, standard blu-ray, digital copy, and sound track; for $20 I think it was a pretty good deal.  I don't know why anyone would have picked any of the other versions since they where all priced the same.  As for my other project I decided that I was going to make it with my scripting group for our final.  Using scripts we are going to try and rig the model and maybe make a short animation, to contribute I drew up a bunch of concept sketches since planning is half of the work.

Time to start blogging again!

It's been a while since I've posted anything and a lot has happened.  Well I'm studying computer graphics now at RIT pursuing my dream of getting into the video game industry.  I found out that my passion relies in 3D Modeling, 3D sculpting, and concept drawing.  I'm also look into rigging since I found out that I am better than I thought at scripting and I'll probably take a class on it next spring.  I actually just learned a few weeks ago about the differences between 3D Modeling and sculpting.  Right now I am working on a realistic head model of said person which I won't disclose the identity of until there is enough work into it that it is recognizable.  So far I have put about 6 hours into Autodesk Mudbox getting used to the program and trying to get the bone and muscle structures accurate; by the end this should make a quality portfolio piece.

Another project I plan to work on is improving one of my old character models in which I animated last spring in a 3 minute movie that took me 3 weeks, about 4-6 hours everyday.  With my new scripting class I should be able to give it a better rig.  It's really impressive how much you can improve with the 3D soft-wares with just a year, with new concept sketches I drew over the summer the character might just look like a totally new one with enhanced textures, and tighter model.