In celebration of my first trip to the Manitoba Museum in a while, I decided to see just how detailed a 3D model I could make of a dinosaur head. This one is more or less based on T-rex. I still have a wee bit more detail that I’d like to add to the model. Mostly around the mouth area. Then all I have to do is texture, light and render out a final image.
An earlier attempt at modeling a dinosaur can be found at this link.
Enjoy.
Remember this guy? I managed to get a more detailed render completed, and then coloured the guy in Photoshop. The background is some old watercolour texture I had lying around from who-knows-where. I wanted an old-timey feel to the illustration so a lot of muted tones.
Looks like no sooner that I complained about maybe the geocache Kimmy and I set up last summer not being approved, it was! Add in a little procrastination on my part, and the site is now activated! You can read all about my ideas for the cache here and here.
Of course, it is now under quite a bit of snow right now, so I don’t imagine many people will be out looking for it for a while. Probably not until the spring thaw. For anyone braving the elements, or thinking about next spring/summer activities, you can find the info for the cache by searching for Sir Charles Esengrim’s Treasure Trove over at www.geocaching.com or by the id number GC3VJWD.
And the name of the cache you ask? It’s named after my wife’s cat, Charlie. Sir Charles Esengrim is in fact his full name. And he is very well read on his blogs (he’s not much of a Twitterer) so be rest assured, he does follow this blog very carefully, and is quite anxious as to how the geocache turns out.
Well, I guess it’s officially official once it’s been blogged about. If everyone’s calculations are correct, I’m going to be a dad for the first time in and around April 4th of next year.
Yikes!
Not to worry, Kim (my lovely wife) and I have planned this for some time. And since we did keep our family plans on the down low, we did manage to surprise quite a few people once we started making the announcements. And it wasn’t easy trying to keep everyone in the dark. It’s not really fodder for this blog, but we had been trying to conceive for some time, so keeping things quiet was a little hard to do at times. And one thing this ordeal had taught me… the value of patience. As a graphic designer working the trenches, most days are spent working like mad to respond to your client’s demands. Get this thing done now or it’s the end of the world, is the hallmark of the modern graphic designer. This little project was quite a bit different. Our kid is coming on his or her own schedule, and nothing is going to change that!
First it was pretty surreal, find out we’re pregnant. But it’s been slowly sinking in. And it’s getting realer and realer by the day. A few weeks ago we had the chance to hear our baby’s heartbeat for the first time. And in a few more weeks, we’ll get to see an ultrasound. First baby pics!
So it looks like a lot of changes in the future. No late night galavanting for this cowboy. Sleepless nights. Changings. Trying to fight like mad the helicopter parenting craze the world sometimes seems to be in the grip of.
Not sure how it will affect me as a designer. Now I’ll have someone looking up to me, asking me questions about what I do for a living. Why I do the things I do? Is what I do environmentally sustainable? Ethical? Will I be able to live up to the values I will try to instill into my kid? Does it matter if I can’t? Why so much time on the computer Dad? What’s a blog and why am I in it? Not always easy questions to answer. Expect for maybe that last one. But seriously, in the distant past, I know I sacrificed a lot of things just to “get the job done” that will be harder to swallow in the future I think. Good thing as I write this, I’m in pretty good shape where I work, so hopefully this won’t be too much of an issue in the future. But you never know, the pressure to deliver can be quite strong, and while as a designer, I may be able to hold fast to my ideals, no designer is an island, and we are subject to pressures from outside groups (clients) or internal ones as well if we work in an agency environment (various ad execs or marketing reps). It’s not always an easy thing.
Clearing out some space the other day, I can across some old magazines (remember those?) from Applied Arts. It’s a Canadian magazine on advertising and design. I think it’s still around. I haven’t subscribed in ages. Anyways, a bunch of the old issues I still have dealt with ethics in advertising and design. Maybe I’ll have to re-read those articles. Maybe they’ll mean something different as a thirtysomething would-be dad than a twentysomething snot-nosed designer 🙂
Oh and in case anyone is wondering, I’m probably not going to blog too much about the future family on this blog. As with work, I’m going to be purposely rather vague about everything. Unless of course I go totally crazy and involve my future ankle-biter in some sort of art project. Now there’s an idea…
Image note: This image was taken of me at the last Secret Handshake. And unlike 90% of the photos on this blog, it was neither taken by my wife or myself. It was taken by this guy Luc Desjardins. I’d post a link back to his site, but it seems to be down. Anyways, he’s a pretty great photographer. And he seems to be the official photojournalist of the Secret Handshake meetings. He’s always running around shooting things with his camera that he brings to these events. Some sort of Cannon. Tsk. Tsk. My wife must never meet him. She’s a die hard Nikon girl. I took advantage of the situation to emote my future parental angst knowing full well I’d be blogging about it sooner or later.
Eye Opening Design 