I think that I have gotten along not to shabby with Maya. I know for sure I am not at all a pro but as i just said not to shabby. For my dog I would like to make a few little tweaks and then I may be done. For the possibility of future use, yes i would like to continue on and learn more and to grow more in my and the 3d digital world. I would still like to go on to learn to make animations of my models, too (dream big).

I have been having trouble with my Maya project in more ways than one. I first of all keep running out of time to get much work done it, which makes me sad. I however have gotten most of my other projects done so now I can spend way  more on it. Hurray! I have been working on it some though when I have the chance and this is where I am now (images below). I have learned some things on my own that seem to help me out a lot when I am working through something. I really enjoy the Edge loop tool and merge vertex tool. I came to this program not sure what to expect beside that it will take a lot of time and practice. This was so true! I didn't get to work on my one project as much as I should have because since I was just learning this program this semester I had spend a good deal of time watching tutorials and then trying to follow along with the tutorials till I was comfortable with what I was doing. I felt confident enough finally to get started on a project on my own but when I had started I kept doing things wrong and nothing was working right so it took me probably over two weeks to get just a basic shape down to work from. The more time I spent the easier it seemed to be but it still takes a good amount of time, to say the least still with mistakes. Also, I find it hard to move from one piece to another, something my mind just can't seem to understand how to do.

NO matter how frustrated I get when working with the program I regret nothing. The more I learn the more I enjoy working with the program. This is definitely something to work more with and to consider continuing in the future.

I had finished my other two toys!!

The Gorilla and the rhino are both made the same way the leopard was. They both were completely hand crafted by me. I molded and sculpted the faces, I made the wire armature and I designed the sewing pattern, cut, and sewed the fabric. As mentioned in the other blog post these creatures are based off of the endangered list of animals. In my last semester I had a research class and we were to create a project and write a grant out for it. My proposal was over cheetahs, I did not make a cheetah, I made a leopard with the fabric I had but I did follow the lines a little. The cheetah is rapidly becoming extinct as well as these other animals. The grant was to some how tell and inform the world about the cheetah species and to help them grow rather than dwindle in numbers.

These toys are for our beta toy design class and we will be selling our toys!

TOY SALE: Beta Toy Design Class

May 1, 11:00 – 2:00 pm Pittsburg State University Oval*

The Department of Art is pleased to present a Toy Sale from the toys produced in the Beta Toy Design Class developed by Associate Professor of Art, S. Portico Bowman along with Assistant Professor Norm Philipp, P. E. from the School of Construction. The sale will be held on May 1, 11:00 – 2:00 pm in the Pittsburg State University Oval.

Toys, books and games created by Amber Baumgartner, DJ Bush, Amanda Fitzpatrick, Jake Geither, Cat Jepson, Blane Siebert and Chris Vanderbeck will be available for viewing and purchase. Proceeds from the sale will be given to SafeHouse Crisis Center.

Throughout the semester students have studied the mechanics of toy making such as how to make things move, the philosophy and psychology of toys and the purpose of play, while looking at the toy industry to analyze trends and marketing strategies with an eye to pitfalls and toy making practices that could be challenged and changed.

Norm Philipp introduced many of the engineering concepts and aided in the development and production of components prepared on the 3D Printer. Emi Gennis provided insight into character development and Rhona Shand provided information on the practice of independent licensing. Plans for further Toy Design classes include internship liaisons with a variety of toy manufacturers, and participation in the Mystery Build Kit.

For more information contact:

S. Portico Bowman

sbowman@pittstate.edu

620-235-4305 or 620-235-4302

*In case of inclement weather sale will be held in Porter Hall.

My toys, however, are already sold but please come out and support my classmates and the class for all our hard work.

TOYSS TOYSSS TOYSSS!!!

I am so excited about my toy that I had just finished for Toy Design I mush share everywhere!

    For toy design class were to design a toy for our major project. I decided to create a poseable toy. My cat is made with a wire armature, fur, filling, and the head is made from polymer clay. I have enjoyed making a previous plush toy for the class I decided I wanted to create another and combine that with my interest in polymer clay. My animal choice comes from a list of neat extinct animals. Here is website: https://worldwildlife.org/species/directory?direction=desc&sort=extinction_status
Based off of this list there were several feline creatures, several gorilla/orangatans, and several rhinos on the list so I combined different traits of those and created my own little poseable plush toy of them. Here I have finsihed my cat one first and the others I will have done by friday.

This is where I am at  now. I'm constructing the front paws and will be working on the back paws next. I cant quiet get the shape quiet right though.

Here is a critique on myself:

For starters I had many problems that i should have gotten help with sooner so that got me behind on the point of where I want to be on my model by today. I wanted a full body with tail and ears on head (not detailed).
The topology - I think is alright over all.
 Realistic - Work in progress model... From what I have so far it does have a dog like look and feel so far.
Detail - For the model is in progress there is not much rendered detail and most of that will be in the face, which what I am going to be working on last.
I am behind on where I should be at this point. I feel that the full body should have been done tail and head and I should have been working on rendering out the detail in the body and face.
But since this is the first time I have worked with this program and I am just learning it on my own basically It has been slow going.

I feel though that I have actually accomplished a lot the last few times i have been working on my model because I had solved some of my issues on my own by tinkering around. Once finding the solution this process I figured out helped me work farther along on a slightly quicker pace. It would help me also, quiet drastically probably, if I would set hot keys instead of scrolling through menus. A need to get done.  

Artist's

I had a chance along side five other young artists to give a speech about my work. I however do not want to speak about my work but the others. Going through almost four years of the same classes with these students we still learn something new about them and their work all the time. Amanda Scott, Blane Seibert, Jake Miller, Rose Thornhill, and Kimi Smart along with myself gave a public presentation on Friday March 28th aobut our life and work.
    Rose Thornhill, her insprirations are based a lot off of Manga based magazines and cartoons and films. She is also a creative writer and great illustrator. She has written several of her own novels and made her own illustrations for her characters. She has a very imaginative mind. The illustrations were in character designs consisting of turn arounds and expressions. She also made a short comic of her story and she then made gif's. Her works are very imaginative and has a very anime look and feel to it. She grew up a good part of her life with out her parents and moved around a lot so art was her way of dealing that.
     Jake Miller, his work is based on western and steampunk mostly. His inspirations were on the movies of our child hood like lion king, land before time, hercules, and so on.  His interest lies mostly in the heroic figure and monsters, Godzilla is a favorite. He has created some scenes of the hero figure coming to same the "scene" and or the impossible odds of the hero and a really freakishly huge "monster".
      Blane Seibert is a huge snowboarding fan. He and  his friend has a great dream of owning their very own snowboarding business some day. Blane designs his own designs for snowboards and skateboards, and other kinds of boards. His big inspiration is based on the burton company which is the company that...yes you guessed it....designs snowboards. Blane has learned that designing is not as easy as may seem because the shape of the board is not an easy shape to design on.
      Kimi Smart is a ceramics major. She is only artist in the group that was not a commercial art major. Kimi makes pots based off of her native american heritage.  Her grandmother is full (i think) cherokee and wore the clothes, had all the blankets and created the jewelery with turquise. Kimi embraces her native american heritage and shows that in her pots. She has created pots that have native patterns, bears, whirling shapes. She carves into her pots creating a depth and she recently started painting with acrylics. Kimi is currently in contact with a man that has, along with his wife, a ceramics shop. He creates big pots and his wife paints them. An amazing thing about Kimi is that she never touched clay till she attended PittState. She, along with her family had visited several European museums in her high schools year and she was just entranced by the art work of the master sculptures. She then decided that she wanted to do that.
     Amanda Scott and I have very similar interests but are still very different. Amanda's work is on character designing and illustrations. She has a very cartoon-y and very silly appeal. She has created this crazy ostrich frank from a previous commercial art class and that started a series of ostriches that could be other ostriches with him at the insane asylum or are his alter egos. She leaves the relation up to the imagination of the viewer rather than giving you a really defined story. She works with Photoshop and iPad. SHe prefers to sketch up, ink, and watercolor.
       Attending (participating) in these speeches you get to see the "behind the scenes" of the artist and learn more about their life. It really is an eye opener to listen to the artist talk about their work. It is like when that light comes on and your like oh i get it. It is also surprising if you learned next to these people and watched them develop for nearly four years and to then hear a more indepth past of them and their interest, inspirations and life.