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She looks like a fat Pippi!

She looks like a fat Pippi! published on No Comments on She looks like a fat Pippi!

I just bought Nursoda’s original Poser figure Vila this morning. Designed to be a small winged fairy, she comes with textures, hair, dress, wings, facial expressions and poses. I wasn’t in the market for her, but I picked her up because of her adorably stylized features, her lovingly sculpted fats and her similarity to Pippi Longstocking.

Upon getting Vila, I scaled her up, reduced the size of her head and gave her a full outfit, naming her Penni. Cuteness ensued. ^_^
Continue reading She looks like a fat Pippi!

Am I learning anything from my latest foray into digital?

Am I learning anything from my latest foray into digital? published on No Comments on Am I learning anything from my latest foray into digital?

I’ve been pondering this question since I started making little photostories with the characters in my head. Specifically, I have been wondering if the skills I develop in my digital photostories can transfer to my doll photostories.

At first, I thought my digital skills nontransferrable because digital and doll photostory formats differ significantly. My digital photostories feature landscape photos with speech bubbles applied, so there’s no multipanel page layout to consider. By contrast, my doll photostories feature photos of various shapes and sizes, several to a page, with speech bubbles applied.

As I have quickly learned, much, much, much less happens in a single digital landscape photo than happens in a single doll photostory page. This makes sense, as a digital landscape photo is not really equivalent to a doll photostory page. A digital landscape photo is more properly comparable to a single panel on a doll photostory page.

Even comparing a digital landscape photo to a single doll photostory panel, I still find that much less happens in the photo than in the panel. I have always tended to cram one person’s entire set of lines in a single panel, but digital photos don’t conduce that. I’m much more likely to separate a single person’s lines into multiple photos at natural speech breaks.

For example, here’s some dialogue from the latest digital drama between me and Jareth:

Me: Hi, Jareth!

Jareth: Is it merry-go-round time? I have the best outfit —

Me: Pas encore. J’ai une question. Why do you always… [etc., etc., etc.]

In a doll photostory, I would be very likely to stick a photo of me in the left panel and a photo of Jareth in the right panel and put this entire exchange in between the panels. In a digital photostory, my first line is a single photo, as is Jareth’s line. " Pas encore. J’ai une question"
has its own separate photo, as does the question in question [har har]. In summary, digital photostories at least double the number of pictures involved, which means that they require more time and more work for less narrative movement.

The comparatively slow pace of digital photostories drives me up the freakin’ wall! The kinky carnival [which I will do one of these days, I promise], which would be just a single, exceptionally long written scene, now stretches into multiple vignettes of God knows how many photos [because I haven’t taken them yet]. It will take me days to do. Meanwhile, my mind already skips onto the next project, waiting impatiently for my execution to catch up.

Though I find the slow pace of digital photostories exasperating, I realize that it is precisely this deliberate progress that I seek to emulate in Zombieville. I have put so much effort into backstory, characters, dolls, sets, props and everything that I want to linger in this world for a while. I want to take sharp, detailed close-ups and set panoramas so that people can appreciate my customization and construction. I want to slow down the conversation so that people can really absorb some of the detail that I worked so hard to give the characters. My impatience doesn’t want me to tell the story so slowly, but everything else about me does so that I can enjoy my creation along with my readers.

To answer the subject line’s question, why yes, I am learning from my latest digital foray. I’m learning how to tell a story slowly.

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1635531.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Making my own digital hair?

Making my own digital hair? published on No Comments on Making my own digital hair?

…With PhilC’s Hair Designer? I’m basically using my copy of Poser 10 as a really expensive clothing conversion utility [har har], so it would be nice to put it to work doing something else, like helping me create hair…because you can never have too many wigs! 

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1635261.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Vermont Rails Train Show, Essex Jct., VT, 03/01/2014

Vermont Rails Train Show, Essex Jct., VT, 03/01/2014 published on No Comments on Vermont Rails Train Show, Essex Jct., VT, 03/01/2014

Having familiarized myself with the general layouts last year, I focused this year on the details, particularly of the sets.
Continue reading Vermont Rails Train Show, Essex Jct., VT, 03/01/2014

“Sixty-nine-cent canned goods. Sixty-nine-cent canned bads!”

“Sixty-nine-cent canned goods. Sixty-nine-cent canned bads!” published on No Comments on “Sixty-nine-cent canned goods. Sixty-nine-cent canned bads!”

Jason Messina, who brought you Ugly Furniture, also did a parody commercial for Bankrupt Dollar Store. Favorite line quoted in subject. Bwah hah!

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1633669.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

I forgot about the zombies.

I forgot about the zombies. published on No Comments on I forgot about the zombies.

Yesterday I said that the no-fail money maker among digital models, designed to appeal to the most subcategories for which Daz/Poser users employ the programs, would be "alien humanoid robots from outer space with kitty ears, morphing tentacles, ridiculously exaggerated secondary sex characteristics and no pants." I forgot a few features:

  • impractically spiky and skimpy armor made of leather and/or latex [?!] and/or chromium steel
  • huge honkin’ guns and/or swords
  • magic plasma balls
  • zombie texture
  • pin-up poses

I would render this all, but I’m fresh out of tentacles and plasma balls 🙁 [also a great band name].

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1633406.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

People and things to do at the carnival

People and things to do at the carnival published on No Comments on People and things to do at the carnival

I’m planning a digital carnival in the next few weeks, more a bunch of vignettes, as I don’t do panoramas, and I’m thinking about who will be there and what they will do.

People

  • me
  • Jareth
  • Sevonna
  • Bebe?
  • Allyson
  • Felicia
  • Win?
  • Ticket taker
  • Fortune teller
  • Clown
  • Acrobat/Contortionist
  • Ride operator
  • Barker
  • Food vendor
  • Janitor
  • Parking lot attendant
  • Security guard

Things to do

  • Talk to Sevonna, Bebe, Allyson, Felicia, Win, etc.
  • Merry-go-round!!!
  • Ferris wheel
  • Water slide
  • Have fortune told
  • Watch acrobats
  • Park car
  • Go to bathroom

I have parking the car and going to the bathroom on my list of carnival activities because I’ve always had an interest in the mundane corners of special events — everything that’s going on behind the scenes to support the spectacle. Besides, carnival attendees don’t necessarily have to talk to each other outside of their social groups if they don’t want, so the parking lot and the bathroom provide places where people might break out of their cliques and converse. Furthermore, it is possible that some of the carnival workers might use the same bathroom as the attendees, also giving them a chance to talk… 

Okay, after that rationale, there’s definitely some interesting conversation going on at the sinks….

I definitely want to have Sevonna, Allyson and Felicia show up, which means that I need to make Allyson. I’d also like to have some clowns/acrobats/contortionists so I have yet another excuse to use one of my favorite outfits, Just Jokin’. There will also be merry-go-round action and Ferris wheel action. I already have an idea for a chat with the ticket taker, so they’ll show up, as well as a fortune teller.
 

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1633038.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

IK Chains and the EasyPose Tentacles!

IK Chains and the EasyPose Tentacles! published on No Comments on IK Chains and the EasyPose Tentacles!

It’s the new sound, direct from the abyssal reaches of the Mariana Trench — IK Chains and the EasyPose Tentacles! It’s a bioluminescent fusion of continential shelf rock, overlaid with fast-paced trance beats that you need at least eight arms to play properly. It’s a tentacular spectacular!

Wait…that actually sounds pretty cool. I’d listen to that, especially if cephalopods were providing percussion.

But no, it’s nothing that nifty. Feel free to go read something else, unless, of course, you want to hear me get into a technical discussion of moving digital tentacles around in Daz.

I just have to say that there are a lot of digital tentacles out there in the Daz/Poser world. Seriously — they’re right up there with aliens, robots, scantily clad women and therianthropes among those perennial favorites to render. [No-fail money-making opportunity for anyone who wants to pursue it: alien humanoid robots from outer space with kitty ears, morphing tentacles, ridiculously exaggerated secondary sex characteristics and no pants. I’ll take five!] If, as I have observed, the average Daz/Poser user is rendering scantily clad women and/or cyborgs and/or aliens and/or therianthropes and/or porn, tentacles fit right in to several of those categories.

Tentacles, like cables, rope, snakes, sea serpents, dragons and long, loose hair, represent huge challenges for Daz/Poser nerds because of the nature of rigging — that is, the addition of articulation to a static model so that it can change positions realistically. Rigging of digital models works well on things like people and cars, which are rigid in most places and flexible at only certain areas — it is possible to move one portion of a digital person or car without having to rearrange everything. However, with tentacles and friends, these things are flexible at pretty much any point, resulting in a lack of clearly defined joints and a fluidity of motion. The motions of tentacles and friends are better represented by a sort of articulation that cascades down the tentacle, in which posing one segment subtly affects all other downstream segments.

Fortunately, of course, Daz/Poser nerds have invented ways in which to pose tentacles and friends more realistically. One of them, IK chains — or inverse kinematics — is basically a bunch of back-end calculations that allow one to move, say, the end segment of a tentacle and let the software figure out how the change in the position of the end segment will cascade back to its upstream fellows. Incidentally, IK chains appear frequently in digital models of people as well, allowing the user to select the model’s hand, say, and reposition it, and the rest of the arm and torso will follow realistically, according to the program’s IK calculations. Pretty cool.

Another method by which to pose wiggly things is Easy Pose. Invented by a brilliant dude, Ajax, Easy Pose is a system whereby tentacles and friends’ positions may be changed and controlled by dials like SBendLeft, CurveRight, etc. There can even be master dials that control whole groups of tentacles and friends.

I had somewhere I was going with this, but I can’t remember. I will just close by saying that Tentacular Spectacular would be a great name for a carnival ride.

"Hey, let’s hit the Tentacular Spectacular!"

"What is it?"

"I dunno, but apparently you have to sign this release before they let you on."

"I’ll pass, thanks."

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1632772.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

“Hang this on your wall…because 1982 said so.”

“Hang this on your wall…because 1982 said so.” published on No Comments on “Hang this on your wall…because 1982 said so.”

This Ugly Furniture parody of a local resale shop’s commercial is cracking me up.

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1632531.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Update on 1:6 scale Peter Dinklage doll from Three Zero

Update on 1:6 scale Peter Dinklage doll from Three Zero published on No Comments on Update on 1:6 scale Peter Dinklage doll from Three Zero

A painted, dressed prototype has appeared on Three Zero’s Facebook page.  The likeness still isn’t fully there, but I am pleased to note that the company has accurately reproduced Peter Dinklage’s relative proportions. Thus the doll is a mostly successful representation of a person with dwarfism, as opposed to a cheat accomplished by scaling down a figure of a person without dwarfism to, say, 75%. So cool!

I love the headsculpt’s thoroughly disgruntled expression. "Really? You thought that crack about midget bowling was funny? Wow. The mind boggles at the epic shallowness of your banal bigotry."

He might need to be a Zombieville tertiary…maybe one of the co-heads of the Lakeside Community Co-op along with Sylvia Blomqvist. Or, better yet, an anti-PWS activist whose remarks about "safe neighborhoods" and "the importance of tourist income" thinly disguise revulsion toward PWS, especially those in Toxic Waste.

Lumberjack vs. this guy — hmmmm…

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1632278.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

I can FEEL my digital skills improving.

I can FEEL my digital skills improving. published on No Comments on I can FEEL my digital skills improving.

Since I got the idea that my digital peoples should go to an amusement park, I have been looking online for free models that I could use. I found a Ferris wheel [assuming it doesn’t give my computer a hernia :p ], bumper cars and a water park [also assuming that it doesn’t give my computer a hernia either]. I could not, however, find for free a model of my most favorite amusement of all time: the merry-go-round.

Just now, though, I figured out how to kitbash a simple, static digital model of a merry-go-round using a combination of models I already have, primitives and freely available stuff. I used the skills detailed in my entry about stalking the elusive 1:6 scale electric wheelchair, in which I broke down my target item into easily replicable forms. Essentially, a merry-go-round has several basic components:

  • round platform for the whole thing to sit on
  • thick central column to house motor [and, optionally, operator] and support roof
  • torus platform around motor housing to provide deck for ride-on units
  • thin columns around perimeter of deck to additionally support roof
  • shallow dome or conical bowl, inverted, as roof
  • ride-on units that go up and down
  • poles through the center of each mobile ride-on unit
  • cross-pieces near the bases of these poles to help riders mount and dismount
  • stationary ride-on units

Pretty much everything on this list can be generated by the primitives available in Daz [hey, maybe Poser has some too…]. In fact, I could simplify the construction greatly by using an existing free model of a dome, gazebo or pergola as the merry-go-round frame. The stationary ride-on units can be sleighs, of which many free models exist. So far, so good.

The most complex elements are the mobile ride-on units. I’m thinking that I’ll use horses, since I have a horse model hanging around, in two positions: prancing or running with all feet off the ground [good for mobile ride-on units]. I’ll scale and pose the horse appropriately, then export as an obj to delete all the unnecessary rigging information. Then I’ll take it into Hexagon and reduce the level of detail as much as I can get away with. When I import it back into Daz, it should be a relatively low-poly model that won’t give my computer acid reflux when I put several in a scene.

Stay tuned…

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1632119.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Hexagon reduces the poly count of detailed models!

Hexagon reduces the poly count of detailed models! published on No Comments on Hexagon reduces the poly count of detailed models!

 It says so right here! Awesome!

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1631837.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Genius discovers levels of detail [LOD] for V4 and M4!

Genius discovers levels of detail [LOD] for V4 and M4! published on No Comments on Genius discovers levels of detail [LOD] for V4 and M4!

To anyone who is not savvy in Daz speak, this means that I just learned how to use an option in Daz Studio to reduce the resolution of Victoria 4 and Michael 4, thus generating figures of a smaller file size appropriate for backgrounds. This is great news because I need some diner patrons and amusement park patrons that don’t hog resources. This is basically like using cheap dolls for crowd filler and saving the expensive, exquisitely detailed ones for the closeups.

In other news, I also discovered the polygon editor, which means that I can delete parts of models I don’t want. For example, I wanted to make a cyborg with partial flesh-mimicking plating [like winston1984’s Fembot]. Looks really cool, but takes a very long time to render, as the skeleton has all the same joints and rigging [= articulation] as the human model. Thus a cyborg with partial cladding ends up requiring as much power to render as two human models.

Solution: Select only certain areas of the cyborg to be open and delete all parts of the robo-skeleton that will not be seen. For simplicity’s sake, I chose to open up the abdomen of the human figure. Thus I only needed the robo-skeleton from about chest to thighs. Everything else, including the demanding and complex articulation of hands and feet, disappeared, thanks to the polygon editor. Result: A robot that is less of a resource hog.

I love the polygon editor. It allows me to perform one of my favorite tasks — hacking things up, reassembling them and taking sloppy, effective shortcuts — in digital space.

Speaking of hacking things up, Andrea recently referred to sticking on one of her dolls’ heads as "the ModernWizard ‘hot glue can fix everything’ approach." Hee hee hee! Hot glue — it holds the universe together…or at least my corner of it. ^_^

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1631593.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Happy people identifying themselves

Happy people identifying themselves published on No Comments on Happy people identifying themselves

Check out this photo series by Sarah Deragon, “The Identity Project.” She takes pictures of people and tags them according to how they identify. They all face the camera squarely, some hamming it up, dressing and posturing in ways that they feel reveals who they are. As a bonus, their proud, challenging expressions [for example, the person in portrait 1, who appears to be thinking, “It’s too early in the morning for this heteronormative bullshit!”] also serve as a critique of narrow, rigid identity categories at use in broader society. I would like 1:6 scale populations with all of those skin colors, body shapes, hairstyles and expressions, please…

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1631233.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Genius discovers the power of lights and shaders in Daz!

Genius discovers the power of lights and shaders in Daz! published on No Comments on Genius discovers the power of lights and shaders in Daz!

Yesterday I got serious about brightening up my scenes a little bit and seeing what all this shader business was about. I copied some portrait lights from a freebie I downloaded [renapd’s A3Dolls sets] and forced them to yield functional results. Woo hoo!

After that I entertained myself with shaders, installing the Daz defaults, as well as Fuseling’s Sci Fi Dark Mats and Latex and Rubber for DS, both of which I got from Renderosity. The Sci Fi mats do really cool things like apply various neon glows, crackly alien metal effects and organic slime textures. The latex and rubber mats have various patterns, glossinesses and transparencies. I spent a long time last night fiddling with the shaders. I think I could probably layer shaders and achieve something like alien, slimy, semi-transparent, super-glossy, leopard print, lime green latex, but I’m not up for creating glowing snot effects yet. :p

There are a lot of jokes to be made about my indiscriminate use of shaders, one or two of which may show up on this blog.

In other news, latex can either be a) a mark-up language [LaTex], b) a naturally occurring emulsion of micropolymer molecules in an aqueous solution exuded by plants to prevent being eaten or c) a synthetic plastic. The term can also refer to unvulcanized rubber. The overlapping Venn diagram of definitions of latex is in no way confusing. :p …Well, except for the LaTex mark-up language, which always makes me think of brightly colored, stretchy, bouncy equations. ^_^

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1630977.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Annie redux with Quvenzhane Wells as Annie!

Annie redux with Quvenzhane Wells as Annie! published on No Comments on Annie redux with Quvenzhane Wells as Annie!

Coming in Xmas 2014! Watch the preview! Hopefully it features less racism and sexism than the 1982 version with Aidan Quinn!

I’m actually really excited about this! I have fond memories of the 1982 version as one of of the few movies of my childhood focusing on a female protagonist’s experience [the other two being The Journey of Natty Gann and Labyrinth] and allowing her to fully develop as a character! Also I like the soundtrack! And my Annie doll!

Wouldn’t it be neat if there was an Annie doll from this movie that actually looked like Quvenzhane Wells? I would snap that up in a moment! Quvenzhane Wells is talented and adorable! I’m going to see this movie, possibly in the theater!

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1630916.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Tiny toy toon train model

Tiny toy toon train model published on No Comments on Tiny toy toon train model

Look at this wonderful toony toy train setup for Poser/Daz. The whole thing is a freebie by mrsparky. Adorable! 

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1630317.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

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