Nuggetty Goodness

So, a mere 4 months after buying my new PC laptop, I suddenly realise that this means I can play with zBrush!

What I really love about zBrush is how totally intuitive the sculpting process is. If you know how to sculpt in 3d (as in, with real, traditional clay, etc), you know how to sculpt in zBrush. I do understand that there's a lot of things like polygon counts and whatnots that models made in zBrush have downsides in... but I hope in my nuggetheart that this is the kind of interface that 3D programs can move towards. I have no idea if that's practical within my nugget shelflife of course, but in the meanwhile... VIRTUAL SUPER SCULPEY! WOOT!

I've also learned that the top part of the sphere should not form the front of your 'face'. -_- It only took me 4 hours to figure out how to patch the hole in the mesh. Ah noobie goodness.

 

Welcome to the Nugget's How Annoying Are the Names? Fantasy Novel Rating System, inspired by a couple of fantasy books I've read recently.

How Annoying Are the Names Rating System
Not Annoying at All - Barely Noticed 'Em: Good book
Mildly Annoying at First, but Quickly Got Used to Them: Decent book
Quite Annoying - Never Got Used to Them: Bad book
Hai! I'z a Fant'Asy Nov'el and I haz the Nam'ez to Prove I't: Toss the book, all you'll remember about it was how irritating the names were 

Now, to be clear, I've always loved the fantasy genre. But unfortunately, as a nugget gets more aged and fermented, I find I have less and less patience with bad fantasy. Which is sad, because... as in any genre, the bad outweighs the good. :(

An absolutely lovely (and funny!) flowchart on picking a Typeface, by Julian Hansen. It's wryly accurate, and I'd print it out and stick it on my wall... if I had a printer!

See the original.

Part of what I'm trying to do with these weekly sketches, (other than prodding myself into not being so darn lazy about sketching) is to get myself to 'loosen up' stylistically. Not to have this neurotic desire to delete each and every single 'mistake', and instead, to work the 'feeling out' lines into the sketch.

Intellectually, I know that madly deleting lines left and right can lead to a piece that isn't as rich as those where the feeler-lines (can't think of a better term right now) are left alone to do their thing. Soooo here's me mentally slapping my hand going, 'No! No eraser (tool)! Bad nugget! Leave it! Erase only for highlights!'

I think it's working - especially compared to my first sketch of this series (bleck!) but still a long way to go towards training myself NOT to twitch for the eraser. XD

For almost every game I play, one of the first things I do is...turn the music off. The only other game to recently escape this fate was Sacred Gold.

Jade Dynasty, however, has a gorgeous soundtrack. It's pure Wuxia, through and through, and could easily be a Wuxia movie soundtrack. While I don't play Jade Dynasty anymore, I'll most happily load up their sound track and go, 'OOOOOMMMMyaaaaa....'

 

 

According to legend, Kralkatorrik is one of the slumbering elder dragons, who's been snoozing in the middle of Grothmar Wardowns in the Charr Homelands since... before anyone remembers when!

Rotty, though, informs me that Kralkatorrik is the Elder Rot Wallow, far superior to dragons. He cites his own adorably spiny back as a reference. Gotta admit, there is a resemblance...