August 19, 2008

Summer-y

We’ve had a rather eventful summer. I advise reading my mother’s blog about this summer‘s events, if you are curious. I don‘t have much to add to it, except that I pray that my uncle rests in peace and that his wife and daughter turn to God for comfort, hope, and strength. God will not shun anyone who seeks Him.

Wall-E did surprise me. Wall-E and Eva were more emotive than I had thought possible. They really didn’t need speech to communicate. I also liked how the human characters were willing to learn how to cope.
It was visually beautiful. The characters were quite likable too. :)

Journey to the Center of the Earth was also fun, if a bit silly. It looked like someone on that production team likes the Girl Genius comics, as well as Jules Verne and similarly themed stories. : )

Mom and I are developing another comic in between chores and other things.
I am learning a lot with this comic, too. I am getting better at making custom textures and working from references. This time, my brother is helping me a lot by telling me what will help a character's pose look more believable. He really has a keen eye for this kind of thing. :D

I learned a lot about resource management in Bryce6 and Daz Studio with first one.
Here are some of the things I learned during the last comic.

(1) Always prepare the scenery BEFORE adding your characters to the file.

(2) Use Bryce primitives to make your objects when you can because they render much faster than imported meshes do.

(3) Prepare your objects in separate scene files and save your things to your object library so you can add them to your scene later. (you don’t have to save the scene files themselves)

(4) Never import more than two characters directly from Daz Studio simultaneously. Poser characters are polygon-heavy. More polygons in a scene mean waiting longer for your picture to render.