A bit of a scattered week...

Last week seemed a bit scattered for me. But maybe that was due to switching from a project, where everything had been planned out and required working on it, to one where I had to start from scratch again.

The next project (or current one, depending on your chrono-sphere)...

Designing the leg

Last Monday I recorded my first sketching session for my current project on Patreon. What I rather imaginatively called the "Meggcha Suit" project. Essentially a small static-model mechanised suit, that an egg can fit in to.
I'll provide a link to the video further down, but for those who don't want to sit through 20 minutes of me realising; that thinking, drawing and talking at the same time. Is something that's quite a balancing act and requires a fair bit of practise. Then here are the final sketches I extracted from the video session.

Designing the arms. I like this style of coverings on the arms.

I quite enjoyed recording this, it's kind of therapeutic in a way and combines that age old thing of talking to yourself to sound out ideas. Similar to finding a random person (or friend) to just talk-at about stuff. You don't need them to contribute, it's just a way for people who feel embarrassed talking to themselves, too talk to themselves :)

Final sketch design.

Dotted about are the final-ish designs for the suit. In the space of a few minutes (or seconds), I'd forgotten what style of leg I'd gone for. So I resorted to a stock-style I've always drawn.
Which reminds me of the other good thing I liked about recording my sketching session; Is that I don't have to worry about taking photos or redrawing ideas on paper, before erasing the board. I can just extract stills from the video afterwards.
Just as long as I manage to remember what I've drawn :/

Processing and uploading videos takes ages...

The thing that contributed to last week feeling like nothing much happened (designing wise) is that it took a long time to get the video transferred from my camera to the laptop, then processed by iMovie Annnnnd then uploaded to YouTube. I think it was Wednesday before it was out there to view.

But in the end I did get to do some actual work on the project. Just some basic shaping, although the body section is pretty much complete, with the legs in development.

Sometimes my designs just evolve as I work on them. I've got to be careful as that can lead me to going in circles.

Progress so far. You can see that the feet aren't attached.

It's like I have to keep separate compartments in my head; For coming up with the idea, planning what to do and then finally designing it. When I start to move between them, I can get stuck in a loop or "feature-creep" process (Something I found when I've done programming, buttons and sliders get added everywhere).

I usually end up have to start again from fresh.

But all I have to do is stick to my sketches and I'll be fine :3

Photo session...

What I have to keep reminding myself, is that I did do something productive last week, other than recording the video and starting my next project.

My best set-up so far.

It was the arrival of the 1/4 scale versions of my bottles from Shapeways. So I set-up a little photo booth area and took photos of all of them.

As you can see from the picture on the left, I made use of the cork I'd ordered (for the full-size bottles) as a mini pedestal and platform.

I'm quite pleased with the results. I even refreshed the photos of earlier, smaller, items I designed before.

African themed bottle

Chinese themed bottle

I'm also relieved that the bottles were printed well at 1/4 scale.
They're also a reasonable price too, so hopefully people will be more inclined to buy them.
I suppose I'll have to add more styles one day, with a different overall theme. Not historical. Unless anyone has any suggestions.

The rest of the photos I took can be seen on my Shapeways shop. I could put them here, but the photo arranging tools on Blogger are a bit twitchy and I'd be spending ages trying to put them all in place sensibly.

Back to studying I must go...

Right, as I'm also still studying Physics with the Open University, I'd better get back to doing that. My only gripe with them is that they consider the weekend as part of the study schedule. For me the weekends have always been a way to catch up with things, either studying or anything really.

It just makes this course a bit relentless at times.

Hence having to quit my job in order to spend more time studying.

Anyway...here's the link to the sketching session...

One thing I'll have to sort out for next time is the lighting behind my head. You can see the shadow of my head moving about on the white-board. I thought I'd mention it after the link to the video, rather than before, as I found it quite annoying once I spotted it.

Of course if you decide to read this first before watching...well...I can't help you there.

Right, off in to the real world I go....

Oh, I just remembered, I started up another deviantArt page again. My last one was lost to the ether. I'll upload any nice generated images and photos to it over time. If I remember.

Currently there's just the two generated images of the Six Bottles project.