Dana's Animated Mind

If you are concerned about the title indicating the topic, let just say I was listening to the NiN song of that title at the time, and sleep deprivation has kicked in. If you want to get spiritual, philosophical, or whatever, fine...but at this present blog, I am not going into that type of thing.

Just wanted to take a break from commentating, and basically say where I am at right now. For the last few months, I have been working on a music video for the devil. Although that may sound odd, although strangely fitting considering some aspects I cover in my artwork, the artist dubs himself the devil. The video is nearly done, and once this is completed I will get back on the ball with Heresy.

As far as Heresy, I do have plans for these things. The time problem has been the same as always, I am the only animator. This could be alleviated, but a few concerns come into play. A lot of the content used is not my own. I purchased a license to use it in the pictures, but I don't have the right to put it on another person system. At the same time, it isn't fair of me to demand anybody to purchase the amount of stuff that I own so they would be able to use it.

Carrara almost alleviates this. It actually saves the model in a format that makes it a little difficult to extract on it's own, but that could be me. The problem remains: It's not perfect getting Poser content in without a little help from Transposer. Kind of wish Poser would develop a way for us to exchange Poser files with the character intact in them without actually putting the source content at risk. Wishful thinking.

I have once (maybe a few times) received criticism that I should model my own figures, do my own textures, blah blah. Well, doing my own textures is an eventuality. Modelling is not my forte though. I used to feel bad about it until I started reading a few books, and found out professional studios just have people who do animating and a department who does the modelling. So where does the criticism that I should model my own human's/monsters come into play?

Frankly, Daz provides a lot of content that can be used, and it would consume a great deal of my time trying to recreate it. So am I less of an artist because I am not one of those elitist who can model, animate, and tie their own shoes with Maya or such? I don't believe so. The rational is this: Art is not in the machine, software, or even the content you can use with it.

Art is an expression of the mind. The machine in all it glory cannot replicate this, and for the most part this is good. It means someone has to sit behind the mouse and keyboard, and tap tap tap. People tend to get lost in that, but art truly does come from the mind.

So when someone tells me "Oh you need to do this...", I just ignore them. I don't need to particulary do anything, because frankly, can they tell Heresy like I can? Do they know the soul behind the redhead known as Kayla? Do they understand the fundamentals of deep dark world I create? Probably not, so why should they get on me about the technical crap? So I don't know how to model, but I know how to tell a story.

Episode 1 was not made on the fact I knew how to model, it was made on the fact I learned enough about lighting and movement to portray emotional impact and response. So those folks who look at Poser, and go "Eww..", there always a few words I could nastily say. However, the kindest one is that they are only tools, our paintbrushes. We cannot rely on just one tool to get the job done.

I did find my USB Key for Lightwave (woot), and Poser 7 Pro is coming with hosting for Lightwave (woot woot). I have been thinking for awhile of bringing it into Lightwave, and doing something outrageous things. In time, I do want to progress that route. However, I don't want to go into Lightwave thinking I rock simply cause I use Lightwave. That is overly shallow. I want to rock because I can use Lightwave well enough to portray an emotional response. >:)

Thats all I have for now..