3d Models, dining chairs, and Paper Houses

yes, yes. It has been too long. I know. I'm bad. I should post more often. I have been so busy lately, and that is not a good excuse, but it is true. Work schedule changes almost daily. And even when it is supposed to settle down, I get the email from the boss that says, 'Hey, I need to change your schedule next week. Instead of working...'.

I have been doing a lot of 3d modeling. I found that i love it. At first when I downloaded Blender i didnt know what to do with it. I had been playing with that skaven last year or the year before, and i had been playing with the tutorials and stuff, but nothing serious. Then I found DAZ3D. It took a little bit to get used to it, but it has been really fun. I've made a short 1 second vid fight scene (cuz that's what boys do) and made some pretty cool poses and stuff. It isn't much more than a virtual dress-up (barbie for geeks?) if you just do the simple stuff, but it spurred me to learn more. It gave me something to use Blender for. I started with a pair of pants for the male character, Michael, but never finished them. I have half of one pant leg done. But it told me how i should go about starting, and that was what i really needed.

The pants were enh. Something just to dress the model. And I found some free downloads that took care of that problem for me, so it was no longer an issue. But I still wanted to do my own. I used to have a game called Spellforce, and the box art has this sweet pic of a chick in armor. Well, she has a pauldron on her left shoulder, bracers with blades on the elbows, and a hip plate on her right side. Not full armor, but still very cool. So I thought I'd give that a go. Here's how it turned out:





Here's the link to the Spellforce redux pic. there hasn't been any finishwork, but it looks pretty good for a day's work.

Not bad if i do say so myself.

I've done some goggles that are still a work in progress:



And i've been learning about applying materials and textures. That will be the next thing I'm working on.

I looked up going to school for 3d modeling, but they want me to be a great artist with a full understanding of lighting and to produce 10-20 drawings. It may take a while to do that. I have to practice a lot, and that comes back to the time thing. There are so many things I'd like to be doing that I rarely have the time to do them all and my priorities are scattered.

The other thing I've been looking in to and talking with my wife about is alternate housing. Not like house boats or anything, but alternate building techniques. At first I was just reading some post about woodworking (something else I'm researching, making dining chairs) and came across something about a Cob house. I was curious and looked it up. Turns out that Cob is a clay/straw mix that is then sculpted to form walls. Sounded pretty interesting. So I started researching more on that and discovered papercrete. That's right, making bricks out of paper. Not as crazy an idea as one might think. I once learned how to make some dice out of toilet paper, hot water, and sugar. They made for some pretty serviceable dice when we were short on materials and large on time and imagination.

So turns out people build these bricks out of a wheelbarrow load of paper (usually used news papers or junk mail picked up at the post office), a bag of cement, and water. So similar to my dice making. they then form them in bricks, build walls, roof it, and then cover it in stucco to seal in the water.

I talked with my wife, expecting her to think me crazy for even suggesting we build a house out of paper, but she thought the idea was really cool and was interested in further research. Paint me flabbergasted. (yes, i used it.)

So now I'm doing 3d modeling, building chairs, and planning a paper house.

Geez, I'm a nut.