Some In-Progress/Upcoming 3D Projects

this is a companion post to my most recent update post, as an excuse to show off some of the 3d work i've been doing lately, and preview what you should be expecting from me in the coming months

a big chunk of my time has been devoted to this humble lil model of my lil dog character, which served as both a really good introduction to more advanced animation skills, like facial rigging and modeling, and also a really, really fun vtuber avatar

up until this point (like with moo-moo manor) i'd only been working with face rigs based around texture/model swapping. that kind of technique works fine if you don't want or need particularly smooth looking facial animation, but it has pretty harsh limitations when trying to make faces that look convincingly 3D or lifelike. even when going for a more illustrative, non-photorealistic look, i find that textures that are painted onto a mostly flat face model really can't get you a look as convincingly illustrative as a well made, fully modeled face rig.

also, maybe even more importantly, ive figured out methods of rigging characters to expand in a way that i feel is a lot more convincing than what i'd managed before. you can see this in action below! blender's driver system is really cool

i'd considered a few different ideas for animations i could make with this character, but none of them really clicked with me! i ended up with a couple short animation blockouts, but i didn't like the end result of either of them very much. oh well, they were good practice, at least

what i will absolutely be finishing in the future is an animation idea i had from the POV of a maid serving the tremendously large and tremendously soft ruler of a nation who is tasked with the arduous duty of serving her breakfast/performing the necessary aftercare afterwards. it's still very work in progress, but i want to showcase the current sculpt for said animation here for a bit

i'm thinking it's going to be a very fun time. look forward to it!