September 28, 2011 : FMA: Brotherhood – I Miss You Already
Adult Swim finished up its run of Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood this past weekend. The 64-episode series was my favorite anime on Adult Swim since Death Note, and the ending did not disappoint.
Brotherhood followed the manga more closely than the original series, and thus I think it remained more focused than its predecessor. There were few, if any, filler episodes – their storylines were crisp and fast paced (definitely something Bleach has not been able to do the past few years).
It’s worth mentioning that the original series was still pretty entertaining. In fact, here is a good article discussing the value in both versions. I think Brotherhood was just above and beyond fantastic. I don’t know what Adult Swim has planned to replace it in its lineup, but it will certainly have big shoes to fill. Here’s hoping it isn’t Casshern.
posted by Pi Visuals at 8:18 am
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September 20, 2011 : So The Dark Knight Wasn’t Perfect
Being a Batman fan, it’s no shocker that I enjoyed The Dark Knight (although I still believe Heath Ledger shouldn’t have won the Oscar). At the same time, I find Christopher Nolan a bit overrated (which is evidenced by my claim that The Betrayal is better than Memento because it didn’t require the gimic of playing backwards).
Further proof comes with the in-depth analysis of an action sequence in The Dark Knight, which highlights some shortcomings with Nolan’s direction.
The thing I like most about this video is that it isn’t malicious towards the film or Christopher Nolan. After all, Nolan might not be the best director, but his movies aren’t horrible (something that can’t be said about Michael Bay’s work). Instead, it’s an informative video that provides several tips about editing and direction.
posted by Pi Visuals at 9:04 am
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September 16, 2011 : Another Random Kick Shot
Had some more time to kill this week, so here’s another random sketch.
Not sure why I’m on such a ‘kicking’ kick with my recent sketches (no, I’m not proud of that). Anyway, I don’t have anything else worth mentioning at the moment.
posted by Pi Visuals at 8:32 pm
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September 9, 2011 : Is That Stern Lecture Plumbing?
Walking around, I stumbled on this gem.
By the way, the title of the post is a reference to my favorite Simpsons episode. Stern Lecture was the plumber at the beginning of the episode, and his slogan was, “I told you not to flush that.”
Anyway, I’ve never seen a local business (or any business) so blatantly rip off The Simpsons’. However, with the episode quality over the past ten years, I wonder if using their likeness has helped or hurt business.
posted by Pi Visuals at 7:04 pm
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September 4, 2011 : Kickin’ Back
These were originally two different sketches that I merged into a single drawing. If I spent more time on it, I would have put in a better background. Right now, it looks like a fight transpired in a guest bedroom.
posted by Pi Visuals at 12:20 pm
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August 31, 2011 : U-S-B! U-S-B! U-S-B!
Some time to kill in Maya, along with the desire to try some different modeling techniques, resulted in a USB cable. Throw in a few Mental Ray materials, and the result is below:
The model has a good amount of detail – much more than the render lets on, and I attribute the lack of definition to my light setup (although I’m sure some of this could have been better highlighted via the modeling). After spending way too much time tweaking the lighting, I finally settled on the result above.
I then decided to render without any lights, and instead just use an HDR Image. The render is below:
I definitely like the feel of this render better. Besides the better specularity on the metal and black plastic, there is a lot less uniformity in general to the image. Why such a drastic difference between the two images when the only change was with and without lights/ an HDR Image? I don’t know. But that is something I would like to get a better handle on.
posted by Pi Visuals at 9:37 pm
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August 26, 2011 : Ninjas On The Mind
I’ve been thinking about ninjas lately, at least more so then normal. With the eventual goal of creating a new ninja 3D model, some sketching has taken place to cultivate ideas.
I am going for a more cartoon-ish look for the character, but a lot of design questions remain. And we all know what that means… more ninja sketches.
posted by Pi Visuals at 10:52 am
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August 21, 2011 : Sketching Interaction
I spent some time this week sketching an image with two characters interacting. I wanted to have each one convey a different emotion. It was far from perfect, but I liked how their body language expressed the status of their relationship. So I quickly traced a cleaned up version, scanned the image, and dropped in a generic background.
I did very little work after scanning the image. The scans were not digitally retraced – nor did I touch up either character; and while there are fifty things I would have fixed with the drawing, I do like how the image tells a story. Of course that story is left to the imagination: Who started the altercation? Were the roles reversed between the two characters earlier? How many fruit stands were destroyed up to this point?
I don’t plan on taking the image any further by redrawing or coloring it, but I might refer back to this image as inspiration for story ideas.
posted by Pi Visuals at 3:26 pm
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August 18, 2011 : Dielectric Pi
I liked the dielectric surface of the screwdriver base so much I wanted put it on a Pi model. So after a little Maya modeling… bam!
I am still testing out the stability of my computer, which at this point consists of using various software packages to see if it crashes at all. So far, so good. Maya’s pretty RAM intensive – so being able to spend over 2 hours in the program without any incident is definitely a good sign.
posted by Pi Visuals at 11:08 pm
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August 17, 2011 : When Technology Goes Bad
Technology is awesome – it makes life easier and more fun. Sadly, when it craps out, you realize how dependent you can be on it. This past week, I have had computer issues. So instead of being able to work on the computer, I have spent most of my time trying to fix these problems. Therefore, I have been incredibly unproductive.
The above sketch pretty well captures these frustrations. It also is the only thing I have been able to churn out because I’ve spent most of my time trying to resolve said issues… which I still don’t think I fully have.
posted by Pi Visuals at 10:51 am
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