I haven't managed to get as much drawing as I wanted over this summer break - things have just been too busy. I have got back into the 3D, however, and have revisited some old unfinished models recently. This was inspired by using my tortoise character in the comic drawing powerpoint at Wandsworth Library and wondering how many of the models on my hard drive could be, if not perfected, then at least pushed to a usable state. I've continued work on my bear character (see below) as well as fiddling around with my cat character. The cat is poser-ised, but has a few problems: the texture was done using Blacksmith, so is fragmented and patchy, the character's right eye refuses to render properly and shows up as a white sphere in renders, the head, tail and hands are very awkwardly rigged... These are all problems I've attempted to address without going back and doing the whole model again.
I've resolved the eye issue by importing the left eye again and replacing the right eye with that one. (Two left eyes - I wonder what that sight impairment would look like to the sufferer!) I've changed the render settings so the patchiness of the texture is less visible, and I've done what I can with the rigging. The tail just doesn't have enough polygons in it so bends in a very angular way. I'm contemplating creating a completely new tail figure with more polygons and attaching it to both my cat and monkey characters - the other option would be to use someone else's tail smart prop, but I prefer to avoid using other people's models if possible - it means you have to credit another artist every time you use the character, which is needlessly complicated.
