3D Bean Bag WIP: Splining + Some "Pin"spiration

After the last animation, I decided to try finishing this one. (Told ya I'd come come back to it)!

I've splined it and am re-working the ending with the notes I had gotten on the original 2D project. My professor suggested that I end with the bean bag trying to reach for the penny that he gets so excited over, but he can't reach it because he's too fat.

Since everyone in every class ever has the bean bag fall down, this seemed like a more original idea.

I still have a good bit to clean up on this. I have to settle the ending still. The whole ending is probably the worst park. Then I need to clean things up over the entire thing. Take care of some glitching/shaking and some sliding, but it's getting there. I'm also glad that I could actually have a penny in the scene that I couldn't in the 2D version for class.

Also...

My friend and I were messaging today a little bit and she brought up how she was having trouble making some bowling pins for a game. So just for fun, and since I hadn't modeled anything in Maya in ages, I decided to try making one. A pin seemed easy enough and surely it was. I was able to model, texture, and render the whole thing in about 30 minutes. I cheated on the texturing and just made solid colors in PS rather than get actual textures, because finding textures online that would fit was a challenge. Also, this wasn't for anything serious, so I just dropped something simple on it and let lighting do the rest.

I got a little nervous when I was forgetting some things that were once muscle memory, but I figured it out.

I still don't know how to adjust the sampling right to get this grain to go away.

But here's a bowling pin.

And this little side project actually inspired me a little to try making one of those corny, poorly animated 1990's animations that you see in some bowling alleys on the screens when someone gets a strike or whatever. Sometimes they show little cartoony animations of the pins crying and stuff. It's funny because of how awkward the animation looks, but it's all in 3D.

Maybe just for fun I'll try to model the bowling alley with the lanes and the ball. Or maybe just have one lane and actually animate a character bowling and knocking over the pins. Maybe too ambitious again, but it would be fun!

Funny how one thing leads to the next.

God I love my job! (well, technically not my "job" yet, but you know what I mean)