Update

Okay, so what's going on at the moment?  I'm juggling several things - it is now possible to link your Instagram page to your Wix site, so I'm currently in the process of fiddling around with that as a fair amount of my creative output is making its' way onto Instagram - photos, pencil drawings and 3d work.

• Razorback - the story has fallen by the wayside a bit.  I'm still adding bits on the journey to work every day, but it's slow going when the writing is done one-handed on a phone.
• Blender - my monkey character is now in Blender and textured, although the process has been complicated.  I unwrapped the model in Blender and then discovered - hooray! - that the program doesn't map everything symmetrically.  According to the folks in Internetland it is a known issue.  Unfortunately, it was the monkey's face that was unsymmetrical.  The workaround was to import the model and UV map into Wings, and then re-unfold the face, which Wings did beautifully.
• Cartooning - I'm currently working on an inked and coloured in version of a doodle that I did in pencil a few weeks ago.
  
  

Continuing with Blender

I've left my penguin model for the time being as his body is throwing up some niggly rigging problems. I don't even know how to make his head rotate when he doesn't have a proper neck.
I've resumed work on my duck character, who I'd previously used Rigify to provide with a skeleton. So far I've learned how to unlock the IK so his arms and legs can move more easily, set up the lights, change the background colour and now I'm in the process of setting up his eyes so they can both follow a target.

Back to Blender

I am making yet another attempt to scale the huge, slippery mountain that is Blender.  So far I have textured and rigged my penguin model (having decided to start with a simple figure without any fiddly bits like fingers).  It is going surprisingly easily, despite having to rummage around in the various toolbars and menus in order to find the functions that I want.
Blender is a great program that can do some really amazing things. You just have to be really patient with it.

Yet another post about the tortoise

After a lot of blood, sweat and tears, modelling on the tortoise's shell is just about finished.  I wish I'd made his body more of a round shape now, as it would have saved a lot of trouble, but never mind.
He needs texturing, of course.  I've previously been using UVMapper to unwrap my characters, but have just started playing around with Blender again, and have decided to have a go at using it to unwrap and texture my models, starting with something simple.  My penguin character is the simplest model, so he's going to be the first to get Blendered.

Tortoise - update

Work continues on my tortoise character.  The shell is taking shape, although at present he looks more like a hamburger.

On a related note, I dusted off one of my old pictures and posted it on Instagram this evening.  I've recently taken to posting a lot of pictures - photos and sketches - on there, and have been getting a lot of positive responses from people.  The problem with Instagram is that every picture uploaded on there has to be square, so I'm having to produce two versions of every picture to accomodate that.

My Instagram gallery is located at: https://instagram.com/simonf1972/

Tortoise

I've come up against an interesting challenge recently.  I've been modelling a tortoise character in Wings 3D and have arrived at a crossroads - should I settle for giving the character a modeled half shell on his back and then use a texture to suggest the other part of the shell on his belly, or should I model the entire shell on both sides?  The latter option would certainly make him look more tortoise-like.  However, in looking at real tortoises, I see that the construction of their shells curves very snugly around their legs, which works fine with a quadrupedal creature whose limbs are all for walking on and are all pointing at the ground.  When you try and apply the same shell design to a bipedal creature with arms and legs, it doesn't fit - it is too restrictive.  Particularly with a 3d character who is to be rigged in a 3d program, and who you want to be as flexible as possible.
In desperation, I've turned to the design of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and have realised that, rather than having full turtle shells, they are sandwiches: each one has a shell on his back and a sort of orange breastplate on his front.  In between, there is a dark green area that allows free movement of each character's arms and legs.  It is a very sensible design, and one that I couldn't appreciate until I tried designing a similar character myself.

Back to the 3rd dimension

I have recently (as in a few weeks ago) had a workplace accident and broken my left wrist and right ankle.  As bad as this is, it could have been a lot worse, as I am still free to use my good hand (my right) to continue with my creative pursuits while housebound.
A lot of my recovery time has been spent working on my 3d figures, making improvements to the geometry and re-doing the texture maps on the characters to make them more user-friendly.  A chap that I met online has been attempting to rig my figures, with a view to us selling them together on the Renderosity website.  In the process of rigging them, he has come across issues with the models and provided some valuable feedback, things that I wouldn't have known to improve on my own.
I thought I was done with 3d.  Having embraced traditional media again, and fallen back in love with pencil sketching, I put my old 3d models online with a "help yourself" notice, only for this fellow from the States to get in touch and draw me back in again.  And suddenly this accident happens and I have almost unlimited time to work on my characters.  It's a funny old world.
However, every gift from God comes wrapped in a problem, as a mate of mine from Yorkshire once said.  The guy who's been rigging my characters has got tendonitis, which affects both of his hands.  Last night he emailed to say that he'd been unable to do anything over the last five days because of the state of his hands.  This leaves me wondering what's going to happen if his health doesn't improve.