My Last Post In September

I am still working on my Melissa Harris Perry caricature. The hair is coming along, but not quite there, yet. After tinkering with the car a bit more as well as the lighting, I will consider this a finished piece.

And speaking of unfinished pieces, here is a video I submitted to an online competition. I was hoping for it to be more elaborate; I wanted to create sand blowing in the wind; waving flocks of hair; and perhaps some seagulls over the horizon. But once I realized I couldn't get "elaborate" to work for me, it became a rush job with three days remaining before deadline. That was on Friday. This is the "finished" video I submitted today.

And now: Work in Progression....

I am still struggling to fix this hair in Blender. Urgh. Do hair stylists have to go through any of this? Apparently, because there is no fool proof way of creating long tiny braids in this program, I've been reduced to faking it. 

Let's review.... Here is the hair that I am trying to reproduce for the purposes of this caricature.

After several attempts at this, I resorted to creating a sphere from which the hair strands would magically sprout. I then tried to turn the strands into braids using Blender's lame braid making system. 

The next trick is to insert the ball-o-hair into the head of my unsuspecting character. Then position it look pleasant to the camera.  

And once all is said and done, it looks something like this....

So, what do I think? The hair looks sloppy; I don't see any braids; she looks like a boy; and I'm not happy with it. Oh well. back to the drawing board... so to speak.

So, here's another work in progress...

Last year I created this caricature of MSNBC talk show host Melissa Harris Perry. I thought it looked okay, but no one else seemed to think so. Therefore, I decided to look this piece over and address a few issues. Below is the image I created.

Here is the image it was supposed to parody...

And now, here's what I have thus far...

And for those who don't know, this is what she actually looks like...

Yeah, I know. I still have some work to do...

You've got that WIP appeal, so WIP it on me...

Here's a minor project that I'm currently working on as part of an online contest among Blender users. The prize is a little more than name recognition within the Blender community, so let's see if that matters in the long run. 

The theme of the contest is "ten". The "ten" could be a score, an amount; anything. But whether it's an animated short or a still illustration, "ten" has to be the theme. So, I slapped together a few elements and came up with this... 

That isn't too weird, is it? Should I zoom in a little more? Or perhaps zoom back? Should I come up with something else? Or maybe not even bother? What's your opinion? I'd like to know.