I think I've done it.

One of the biggest things for next semester is tackling this procrastination.
I believe this will start with a better dish-washing routine.

Right now, my turntable for 3D modeling is rendering. It's rendering very quickly, actually. I may have done something wrong. I learned how to render animations 3 hours ago. I'll post the turntable when I'm done. Tomorrow, maybe. And I want to post my animation, even though I'm not proud of it. I should be, but I'm not.

Just keep playing that calm music and breathe and it'll be over soon.

(no subject)

That project received a less-than-10-minute critique.

: (

Chrysanthemum

My fingers are permanently dirty. My feet are probably worse. My nails have grown long enough that I've noticed them. I'm pretty sure that my hair is clean and I remember that I've showered about once a day for the last 3 or 4 days. I feel very lucky that someone bought me dinner yesterday, it was my first real piece of meat in a week.

I have one more flower after this. I will do it tonight, probably out of a cone because I'm decently lazy at this point.

I think, if I am able to arrange my piece successfully, it will look nice.

Chrysanthemums. Personally a favorite. Some of the petals actually do fall into each other, and it looks very computerized, but I'm quite fond of these. I specifically changed my pink light to light orange. Chrysanthemums that look pink are a little sickening.

Snowdrops and Workflows

Snowdrop flowers. The inside texture includes a failure from photoshop- I forgot to turn off the Layer containing my UV texture editor snapshot lines. My light is slightly less pink.

Helped a senior color his final project, using Flash and a lot of Eye-Dropper -> Paint Bucket commands. I really like this coloring- there are pretty finite rules with wiggle room in inconsequential areas.

I've also been watching a lot of TED Talks.

I decided that I would follow my own world-flow path. I do not particularly like staying awake into the late night. I still partially fear that the sun will not rise if I stay up later than 2am (though that may be exhaustion). And my productivity decreases if I have less than 7 hours of sleep.
"Normal" is different for everyone, and I know right now that some part of me primally rejects staying up all night. Someday I might.
I tried yesterday to wake up earlier. I was sitting in front of a computer at 6, feeling awake, and watched the sunrise. I can't imagine it any other way. If I sleep from 11pm to 5am, I think I can make it through finals.

Aster

This is a rather poor aster, but the idea is fine. And from a distance, it isn't that bad >_<.
I ma try to add a second bump to the middle so that it's not so.. glow-y.

Next is a snowdrop. Then, sleep.

Morning Bird gets things done

This is what I did this morning, before noon.

A rose, still in production, but looking decent. And a checkerboard next to it.

A poppy and poppy-bud, with simple color. I put it in the vase. The vase is supposed to have water in it, but I don't quite understand how to do that with the refractions/reflections. So I just duplicated the vase, cut off the top, colored it black, upped the transparency, made it smaller, and put it inside. And I don't know what's up with the wood texture, but it's trolling me. 2 lights +reflection in the table.

Second go, changed the second light to a nice pink (and its shadow to green). The black background is unsettling.

I need to make more flowers. *bane of my life.*

3D Modeling progress

Surprise! This is due Tuesday! next tuesday, not a week from tuesday.

I made a directional light for the scene, painted the orange-yellow texture, smoothed the middle part, and made texture/translucency things for the petals. I still need to make the leaves, and their bump-mapping. Their color will be interesting. Yay.

Welcome to the beginning of the end.

Finals are coming. And I have the privilege to do 3 final projects on the same day. That day is also my anniversary.

In un-finals-related news, we have been covering mirrors, reflections, refractions, glass, all sorts of fun things. We covered ray-trace and depth map shadows. The still below is from a rendering of my Thanksgiving-homework, a showcase of my work.

The bottle is supposed to have a label on it, the 'background' is cheap and not lit well, the ray-trace shadows are grainy. The bottle also doesn't have the refractions that (I think) will make it look like it has a shell rather than a thin layer outside a darker layer. And there are no bump maps on anything.

In the spare un-school-related news, I've been excitedly following the 2012 republican debate. When I registered up to vote, the card my parents got in the mail said that I'm a registered conservative. I tried to register as 'nothing' or 'other' or 'independent', I don't want to be part of a party this early in my life.

In less serious news, my hair is purple again! A skunk-stripe of purple. It's the very top layer of my hair.

But at the same time. I've been in the computer labs (loosely) from 9am-12pm, 4pm-11pm. I'm looking forward to baking cookies tomorrow morning.

I've been thinking flowers, maybe daisies, to brighten up the room...

NURBS petals (altered planes) and a polygon sphere (smoothed temorarily). Temporary color, too. On the way to a bouquet!
I need to find out how many petals daisies actually have. Wiki says ~20. 18 it is.

3D Modeling final

And this is the first drawing for my Maya modeling final. It will contain birth flowers, from each month, coming together in a bouquet. The flowers together in one place is impossible because of different growing seasons, but they come together to make a year. At the same time, they are fragile and delicate and are constantly in a state of decay. The vase sort of represents the world that contains this metaphor for time.

I think of this piece as a painting. I'll design how I create the petals/leaves first- what shapes I'll use and how I'll make a lot then tweak them to make each petal a little different.

my midterm is due on thursday

I won't freak out, I'll just sleep less.
It's a profile self-portrait map, with the top lip, nostril, and eye indented as lakes/inlets. I still need to finish the coastline and mountains and make a wall for the hairline, and I need to find a place for the castle.

it's been a while

I've been working and working and working and I've learned so much.
I've also not learned- last weekend I read 50 pages of world history, just for my teacher to spend all the time on the shorter reading. "I should have known" doesn't qualify, I don't have much foresight, but at the very least, I should have spent more time on the other homeworks. As soon as I find out how to screen capture on macs I'll try to get my scifi lab up here.

I've continued with the self-portraits, some are definitely better than others.

At this moment, I'm in a dark computer lab, on a mac, pretending to do my modeling homework. We use Maya 2012 and I must complete a science fiction lab by tuesday. I also have 2 small stopmotion projects, and at least 40 pages of reading.

I also stayed up till 4am last night. 4am is the morning. I don't like it. When I stay up at night, I feel like the sun won't come up in the morning.

It's not that much work. Or, I feel like it should be more. Or, I can sequence time and plan more effectively. I don't know. Next semester will be more, I hope. The best days are when I don't have 5 minutes to breathe, I have everything done and I get things done, and I come back to my room still energized after 9 hours of classes.