Monday update

Although today is technically tuesday, I suppose. Whatever.

Sat down to work on the Andrea model some, here's what I managed to accomplish:

- Created and attached a foot
- Worked on the breast region, and got at least something that makes for a good stand-in as a breast
- Created recessed areas for the eyes and mouth
- Made a placeholder for the ear, which still needs to be made
- Some changes to topology, attempting to get rid of n-gons and also attempted to get rid of vertexes with more than four intersections. This was not as successful as I would care for.


Overall, quite a bit of progress for only a few hours of work, I managed to kind of get myself kick started again. Made an investment in a digital timer, and am attempting to utilize a new workflow for myself to kind of get into the swing of things. Basically, I set it for 25-30 minutes during which time I focus solely on modeling an aspect - either I am directly modeling something, or I decide I am going to work on adjusting whatever. Once the timer goes off (or if it is very close to going off), I go do something else for 10-20 minutes. This could be just surfing the net, lounging around listening to the mood music, or maybe even drawing if I feel like it (which I did tonight, for about ten minutes, and it was rather relaxing).

I find it a little easier to concentrate if I force myself to do things in this manner, so with any luck it may even help me to be a tad more productive. I can say "I won't let anything on the computer distract me from working until this timer goes off", and it seems to work well enough.

So, the laundry list of things that still need to be done:

- Need to attach the hand to the arm
- Need to create and attach the ear
- Some basic hair might not hurt, even if it's just a crappy wig-like solution
- Need to mirror geometry
- Should create some eyeballs after geometry is mirrored
- Probably want to create some sort of teeth geometry, though probably nothing too outlandish. Odds are a tongue is out of the question.

Once these things are done, I can say the modeling phase is more or less complete. Excepting of course the need to do cleanup-related items, such as ensuring all n-gons are removed, and hopefully eliminating any potential problem areas with the geometry while maintaining a good edge flow (which is extremely difficult, but that's part of the challenge!).

If I had to write anything else... modeling humans is unlike anything else. Anyone can make a sword or a shield and make it look decent. But organic modeling, particularly human beings, with whom we interact every single day, is infinitely more difficult, because we are so intimately familiar with the subject that we can tell when something just doesn't look right. If you ever want to become a really good 3D modeler, model people. Because it is pretty freakin' hard.

With that, I'm off to bed, because I am tired and have to work tomorrow.