shout

Synthesizer Evolution

by shaggy on February 12, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Posted In: Miscellaneous Debris

It almost feels like a Pokemon tale looking at that title. Here’s the deal…

Back at the end of November, I ordered a Slim Phatty from Sweetwater and was told it’d be a while before they’d get some in. Around the first of the year, I finally received my Slim Phatty and I loved it. Unfortunately the Value encoder knob was pretty glitchy. Sometimes it’d recognize a click and sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes it’d recognize one click as two. It was really touchy and it started driving me a little crazy. So, I contacted Moog support and was told that I should just have Sweetwater ship me another one to replace. After a quick e-mail, I had everything worked out to get a new Slim Phatty but I’d have to wait at least another month to get it. Luckily, I was able to keep the first one while I waited.

Fast forward to this past Thursday and things get more exciting. When the delivery guy brought the package to my door, I noticed it was rather large. It seemed too large to be a Slim Phatty and I was right. Inside the box was a Little Phatty Stage II which is quite a bit of an upgrade from the Slim Phatty. Now, I could have kept my mouth shut but that would have been the wrong thing to do, right? Well, at least it would have been morally wrong. With a deep sigh, I called my rep at Sweetwater to tell him of the mix up.

I’ve been working with Bob Mondok off and on for a few years whenever I ordered something from Sweetwater. He was a little confused about what happened at first but he told me that he’d look into the situation and get back to me. I got a call the next afternoon and was told that when Moog sent them a shipment, they accidentally had a handful of Stage II’s labeled as Slim Phatty’s. So, I basically asked Bob to make me a deal on the Stage II and we could just wrap up the whole situation. In the end, I got $200 off a new Stage II which made me pretty happy.

Customer support was A+ on both Moog and Sweetwater’s part. Not only did they quickly deal with each issue that came up, they treated me better than I could have asked for. After playing around with the Stage II, I have to say that it does sound a bit different than the Slim Phatty. It certainly has more headroom. Anyway…that’s my story.

└ Tags:
  Comment
crazy

Character Design – Gogler

by shaggy on February 10, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Posted In: All Things Art

One thing that I need to start experimenting more with is character design.  When it comes to 3D modeling, most of my work has been prop like objects.  I really haven’t gotten into creating a brand new character.  So, that’s what I did today.

Gogler is kind of a cartoonish beast. I suppose it’s been inspired by a number of things that are out there and I may have even seen something like it before. It’s hard to see it with this render, but he’s got four tentacle-like fingers. Is it a he? I guess it could be.  Who knows!  When I look at it, Gogler sure does feel like something my imagination would create.

I’ve started rigging him up so that he can move around but that part still needs some fine tuning.  I need to get a bit more into weight painting so that it all works properly.  I really enjoyed doing this exercise and I think I should do some other creatures even if they are simple ones.

└ Tags:
  Comment
embarrass

On The Edge

by shaggy on February 8, 2011 at 8:05 pm
Posted In: All Things Art

While it’s a little hard to tell in this image, I’m starting to work more on my own textures. The giant robot figure that I used does come with a set of textures but I decided to try adding my own. I experimented a bit with doing various things with edges to make them look a little more worn.  I think I still need more practice with this sort of thing but I feel that I’m on the right track.

This images was rendered in Carrara and I used some shaders from Digital Carvers Guild.  I did a little bit of post work in Photo Shop Elements but nothing too drastic.

└ Tags:
  Comment