CRACKING THE CODE!
I've done it! Okay, maybe I didn't exactly get up at 4:00 AM but after reading the information about the working method of The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown, it really struck a chord with me and I remembered the old days when I was doing what I loved, loving what I did, and was super productive. So I did not exactly rise at 4:00 AM, but I did, in fact, get up at 5:30 AM. By 6:00 AM or just after, I was sitting down to "work", which term I put in quotes because when you love what you do, you get to play all day. By playing, I got all my characters done!
Well, at least all of the characters needed for the first show. There will be one or two more that will be introduced a bit later.
Also, not all the characters shown were done today, nor are all the characters done pictured here. There are five characters which I finished earlier today, which are not shown, but they are somewhat minor compared to these, and I just didn't feel like putting together a third image. ;)
So how was following The Da Vinci Code creative process? Well, it was dark when I got up. It was quiet. Nothing was going on and that was kind of cool. Because I had not wasted any of the day away, there was no need of rushing. I had fun just creating. I had more done by the time I broke for breakfast at 10:30 AM then I get done most days. On top of that, I was psyched and ready for more. The biggest plus is that by 3:00 PM my characters were done and I was off to go shopping. The day was mine and I could enjoy the sun in the peace of knowing a lot got done.
Dan Brown says that his writing is a discipline and he must hone his skills. To that end, he writes seven days a week. I am taking that to heart to. This is what I do. It's all I have ever wanted to do. I don't mean just making animation, I mean the specifics of making what you want your way and not letting any "have to" scenarios crawl in. Getting through all the nonsense in my head to find what I truly desired was like cracking a code in and of itself. Now I can clearly see that most of what I was doing previously, was what I thought I had to do in order to sell. That is not the way to success. Only by cracking the code that leads to true desire will that be found.
Well, at least all of the characters needed for the first show. There will be one or two more that will be introduced a bit later.
Also, not all the characters shown were done today, nor are all the characters done pictured here. There are five characters which I finished earlier today, which are not shown, but they are somewhat minor compared to these, and I just didn't feel like putting together a third image. ;)
So how was following The Da Vinci Code creative process? Well, it was dark when I got up. It was quiet. Nothing was going on and that was kind of cool. Because I had not wasted any of the day away, there was no need of rushing. I had fun just creating. I had more done by the time I broke for breakfast at 10:30 AM then I get done most days. On top of that, I was psyched and ready for more. The biggest plus is that by 3:00 PM my characters were done and I was off to go shopping. The day was mine and I could enjoy the sun in the peace of knowing a lot got done.
Dan Brown says that his writing is a discipline and he must hone his skills. To that end, he writes seven days a week. I am taking that to heart to. This is what I do. It's all I have ever wanted to do. I don't mean just making animation, I mean the specifics of making what you want your way and not letting any "have to" scenarios crawl in. Getting through all the nonsense in my head to find what I truly desired was like cracking a code in and of itself. Now I can clearly see that most of what I was doing previously, was what I thought I had to do in order to sell. That is not the way to success. Only by cracking the code that leads to true desire will that be found.
12 Comments:
So true.
It's all about the Double D's.
And no, I'm not talking about big jugs.
Desire and discipline.
Very cool to hear that's working for you. Was there any place else where you read about Dan Brown's process, or was what you mentioned in the previous post pretty much it? Thanks for helping to inspire all the rest of us!
I'm in the process of trying to write an outline right now, but the science reading I'm doing is a little hard.
So I'm going to take it easy with that while I get some help with understanding it, and study Poser, do some reading about the business of film-making in general, and get ideas while walking my dog.
I doubt that I could get up at that early of a time (I'm not what you'd call a "morning" person :P ), but lately I do find myself working much later into the night than I used to.
Great-looking characters; the lighting of the renders is a litle dark (had to bump up the Levels in Photoshop to see more of the details) but they look very well designed. :)
FWIW, I agree with Jason... Most of your recent renders seem kind of dark to me, including the ones in your banner. Are you putting them together on your Mac? Because, as I understand it, Macs use a different gamma level than PCs.
That's been my mode of operation for many years. I wake up at 4/5: 00 am every morning. That's when I accomplish most without any outside distraction, when everyone is probably sleeping or too tired to disturb my peace driving their cars. Sometimes O force my self to go to sleep early so that I can wake up by 2:00am or 3.
Hey T, did you use Lightwave for those Characters ? They are quite cool would love to know.
I have checked some of my recent renders, and viewed my site many times, on my PC at work when I was a UFO and I recall them seeming fine, but just to be safe I will check the site on my Tablet PC and make sure. I am on the Mac now and using a very different monitor so who knows. I suppose I should also go through them with a color picker and see what the levels are.
Tunde: These characters were all done in Poser. And modo, and its sculpting tools, was used to create special morph targets and model anything else I needed.
jcl: That's correct - PCs usually have a 2.2 gamma level, while Macs usually have a 1.8 gamma level.
What that means is (unless you're using ICC Color Profiles, although there are a few times when even that doesn't help), images designed on PC and imported to a Mac will appear brighter and images that are created on Mac and imported to PC will appear darker.
jcl: WOW! You are right! These images seem very dark on my PC. I don't know how I couldn't have seen that before. Well, I used to do a process which added a bloom filter to all my images, which is why I may not have noticed in the gallery images, for example, though they still seem a little darker than expected. But the title bar and the recent character images are very dark by comparison. Apparently a brightness contrast adjustment of 12% seems to getthem back into the desired color range. I will have to remember that.
Makes me wonder why Anigen never came out so dark. Maybe Quicktime auto compensates for that or something.
Terrence, I have always wondered how to rig Poser characters (especially Daz3d models) with their high polygon count in lightwave. I would appreciate some tips. I hate weight maps with models that have high polygon count?
Tunde: I've never tried rigging Poser characters in Lightwave. Personally, I think that by remving the Poser character rom Poser you lose all the great advantages that Poser gives, especially with Daz Characters. Conforming clothing, Walk Designer, Talk Designer, all those incredible morphs that let you shape a character into anything you want, all that goes away once the character leaves Poser.
I think you might be forced to use Weight Maps on the legs of Poser characters to rig them in Lightwave. The legs are so close together that there is no other way to get rid of the bad influence. I know it can be done. While working on Lake Placid 2, our Poser expert used Poser 6 and the face room to create many nice looking digital stunt doubles for characters in the film. I didn't see the rig, but I saw the results and they looked great.
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