Before I converted www.douthwright.com into this Blog, there was a book store page where I had listed recommended books on art, animation, and 3D (specifically for Maya). Well, the book store is coming back. I am in the process of reviewing and revising my books list and making sure visitors can simply click on a book and link directly to an online book seller (it will either be Barnes & Noble or Chapters/Indigo, I haven’t decided yet). Any revenue generated from book sales will go toward maintaning this blog and future plans to include video tutorials for 3D in Maya. So check back in the next few days and you should be able to start checking out what books I recommend.

I finally decided on a working title for the 3D project so I had something more unique to refer to it as, than just “The 3D Project”. So, from here on I will refer to the 3D Project simply as “The Pilot”

The end goal is produce a static shot and leave it at that. So what that means is producing a full model of a pilot character, his outfit (which includes the helmet), the aircraft/spaceship, and the hangar where the scene takes place. Originally, there were plans to include a second character, a deck worker who might be refueling the spaceship, but the schedule won’t support it.

Even surface materials and lighting are being left out of the this first project. My only goals are the modeling of the scene objects and even then, only from the angel of the static camera. The test rig of the helmet was just an exercise in one of my other passions, rigging. It will be hard, but I have to leave rigging to another time.

As for the design style, I will be scanning some drawings in the days to follow this post which will show just where I am going with the style. All I can say, is it is no longer “photorealistic”, as I had first envisioned. I am now developing a more cartoon-like style with exaggerated elements. Stay tuned for some drawings that will hopefully say it all!

After many years (and just as many different looks), this site has settled into what it is today, my personal blog. Older versions of this site used to contain tips on how to put together a portfolio for submission to animation schools. I promoted the school that I went to for animation. I linked to every animation web site I knew. I posted my own portfolio. All this and every bit was hand-coded in pure html. It was a nightmare to keep things updated and the look always fresh.

I even had tried out Joomla last year as a solution to manually updating all those pages. Even Joomla turned out to be too much to work through in my “spare” time. So I settled on a nice, neat little blog. Will any of the old content find its way here? Perhaps, but for now I am just going to slide into the world of blogging gracefully and without lofty goals. I hope you will appreciate it and come back from time to time to see what’s new.

‘Till next time, farewell.