Shooting for the universe and getting lost between galaxies...

Hello everyone, okay even tho i am genetically deficient and got several disabilities due to being born with a very bad genetic pool ( that's what my doctor said to me, because i got all these things together : spina bifida, asthma, allergies, face and scalp psoriasis and all that kind of nice stuff )

I still have huge dreams, childish ones, unrealistic ones maybe even. Even tho i haven't published a lot of my work on this blog already, i wanted to share what were my dreams at some point, i don't want it to look like i am delusionnal either, but most people will tell you to shoot for the universe if you at least want to land on a whole new world ^^

And that world might have been 3D modeling and animating for me... Well, while i drew a lot and a lot and a lot all my childhood, i also begun to get very interested into video games, especially RPG's of all kinds ( be it baldur's gate, diablo, final fantasy, breath of fire, silver, sacred, the elders scrolls, divinity, gothic, star ocean, all the witchers, and the list could go on and on i played a huge amount of Rpg titles in my younger / adolescent days )

What fascinated me, is having a whole other universe created into a computer, a machine, a view, a perspective, an open window on pure imagination and worlds you imagine / create that takes life on that medium, and you can be immersed totally in these worlds / universes...

So even tho i loved drawing much more than using a computer, or even gaming, i forced myself to learn 3d modeling on some 3d modeling software like 3Ds max with 30 day trial (that i would renew with new email adresses in 2005 or 2006, free student license around the time i got to high school ) and quickly, pretty quickly i realised i had a very good understanding of volumes and 3d space.

So one of my very first 3d models were static objects, i know right, the "easier" stuff than to do organic, but still i was just in the process of learning, so this is my first attempt at 3D modeling anything after i learned the basics of poly editing, shaping segments, extruding forms, using shift + mouse slide to "draw" shapes out of segments and rotating vertex at your will :

From there i would make a lot and a lot of other 3d 'static' and complex models, and at some point interesting myself at simple 3D animation at the beginning, static object animation with one point of rotation and linear movements :

Then around 2006 / 2007 i begun trying to modelize organic things ( body, faces, hands, anatomy, how tissues behave and flaps to try to modelise them in certain poses, a lot of training goes into this. ) And this was one of my first "personnal" work made with that knowledge i begun to gather :

This is a "strength" belt ment to help Draan / Leo with some of his back weaknesses and help him maintain a standing posture (yeah i made the characters with flaws that i experienced in my life being a kid... but the reasons he has to wear one are a little different, let's say that he was a wildling for a long time and for about 3 / 4 years he ran with his four members on the floor and it weakened his vertebrae's )

and it build up my knowledge of anatomy and good 3D practices and low / mid poly modelisation to facilitate the animation when bones are placed under a skin modifier ( it also took me a while to learn about bones, the biped skeletton, understand how to fiddle with influence and bones weight so limbs don't seem weird when they get animated) but eventually, i got it and tried it on that first model, extending his limbs, looking at how he looks and if everything seemed to behave correctly (takes a lot of fiddling with bone influence to get a shoulder bending correctly or even, an elbow or wrist ) :

(yeah i also made animation bones for his tail )

Looks like every fingers can move separatly haha xD (sorry for being an idiot :p)

I also checked if i was able to pose him with the most "extreme" gravity defying postures i could imagine xD :

Ok so... i knew i was more or less able to skin and rig a character at this point, so i tried the basics of animation, and made him a weird looking walk cycle (it's a bit too fast : )

I'll end up this article here today, as it's starting to be very long and i don't know if everyone would have the patience and is brave enough to read through most of it ^^

I'll write the next part another time !