Alice In The Maze - Scratch Project

I have been testing out a new character with animated poses - a little preview of Alice here at Scratch

Alice is a vivacious blonde that has been developed with a swinging walk and a lively run. She has a number of outfits that are bright and some of them work to a defined palette to make your design processes smoother. These will be added to Project Isabella Graphic Workshop next week.

Change My Name

Although I can hardly say

Everywhere I went people knew my name
Written on my face were the scars of fame

quote Trading Yesterday - Change My Name

I did think it was maybe time to change the blogs name to something that suited me and the thing I get up to a little better.

So "Impromptu Art" has now been renamed "The Secret Life of a Lollipop Lady" where I get to describe all the things I get up to creatively to learn and develop my business Project Isabella Graphic Workshop 

I have some posts lined up regarding activities on Scratch the fun I am still having with Filter Forge and Carrara and all this to proof to the new small children at the crossing that I don't actually stand there all day!

Day 4 Something I’m good at.

The task for todays blog is .. Day 4 (5th of July) Create a post on something you're good at. What is it? Tell us how you go about doing it. Why are you good at it?

OK so I’m not going to get girly and English about this and start making a list of the things I’m bad at, I am going to do what is asked and deliver. I have a whole load of things that I do for my business that I am good at, graphics and patterns and all sorts of glorious things and for the main part I show how they are done you can have a look at the Make Snake and see for yourself.

But in this blog I think I should maybe talk about something that has occupied some of my time today and that was as a result of the #GBHour twitter chat.

If you haven’t heard about twitter chats they come in all shapes and sizes a good place to source them is at The Chat Diary. It’s a great way of meeting new twitter people that share interests.

For home based and lone workers the chance to stop and chat for a bit can be great.

For the business based ones it’s an opportunity to let people know what you are doing and to hear what they are up to. Where possible if you require something say so and see if it can be found.

OK so why am I talking about this? Well I happen to have been proven on more than one occasion to be good at it and been awarded in several venues for good twitter action. But more importantly the activity has brought real value to me. The social contact is welcome as I spend more time putting hair on 3D mice and tweaking pixels than I do talking to people so the twitter thing is great for me and an important part of my day.

So in the social venues – go chat, share and laugh no real strategy involved just use the same common courtesy as you would if you were having a proper conversation and remember that potentially the whole world can see – so don’t go bitching!

In particular I’d like to mention the business twitter chats – these can get manic and hosts can and do get thrown in twitter jail. The energy required is manic but real connections can be found in all this madness. First of all people attending have already proved that they are outgoing and wish to push themselves which means they are often approachable if you need their services or would like to discuss a joint venture or collaboration.

The busy ness of the business twitter may benefit from a little organisation before you go in. Prepare a little text file with the things you would like to say including the hashtags that are required to participate.  These can be things about yourself, your business, requests or how you wish to connect. Throw your Facebook page in the hat if you have one but take the effort to visit the pages of those who have bothered to visit you.

Do follow as many people as you can within the chat and retweet as much as you can – that’s how it works – don’t be the one who drops by leaves information and then does not follow others or retweet it does not go unnoticed and it communicates poorly on your business – if for some reason you do not think retweeting and this sort of action is not appropriate for your business twitter stream then it’s simple what you need to do – something else - don’t take part.

And I can’t say this enough – when you click on a hashtag it drops into the search screen – make sure you select ALL on this stream and not leave it on TOP as you will be missing a lot of the action.

Anyway I am pleased with my twitter chats and this is how I found my latest collaboration with @BabylonBlu – go visit. I’ll have some updates on this next week. 

Shattered after the manic twitter today.

Oh dear how many penultimates

I had thought it was going to be four but I elongated the last two for better pics and more drama so there is now five pages in total.

My Daz Comic Strip - for the Artzone Competition.

Another competition I have been enjoying with Artzone.

Here are the first 2 pages

Click the images to view


If you need an insight into some of the comments then do ask and all will be revealed.

More to come tonight and tomorrow.

Competition closes Friday night I think.

This should be the last time I put a man in a dress.

Felt poorly on Sunday -- and in my weakness I couldn't resist the urge to create another entry for the latest competition at Artzone.

This should be my last as I need to focus on my cartoon entry and my Vue Picture for the competititon in the Vue 6 a New Dawn Group

Hair dressing challenge.

Here is one I'm not entering into the Carrara Hair competition - it ends today by the way.

I'm not sure if I have explained why I'm not sharing my competition entries for the hair competition - its mainly because I'm not allowed to - it's part of the rules. The prize is quite major on this one so I'm not going to mess with them there rules.

I may have time this evening to correct a black eye problem on one of my final renders for my second hair and then I appear to already be considering the next challenge.

Which goes like this.

I want to see a comic strip showing what a day at DAZ3D is like! It is meant to be funny so feel free to interpret that however you want :O) For inspiration I would look up an artist named Flak (I believe his art is only at Rendo ATM) but he has done some hysterical scenes on this theme and I thought I comic on it by you all would be too too funny and give the people at DAZ3D a good giggle after a long days work :O) You can illustrate anything from comedic things that happen while developing DAZ Studio to Launching the new ArtZone...pretty much anything you would like to poke fun at.

Rules:

1. The Comic Strip has to be atleast 4 Panels but can be longer if you like.
2. It Must stick with the general theme
3. Be sure it is something you could actually see in a newspaper so no profanity or nudity. Inferred is ok and you can use characters for profanity like $#*& etc LOL
4. Entires can be in either Black & White or in Full Color...your choice.
5. Can be done in any medium...2D or 3D
6. Because these could get to be larger files, if your image is larger then the forum can take please PM me and I'll put them on my server and give you a link you can post for your entry so you guys can have more freedom
7. All Entires must be in no later then Saturday, April 12th at 5p.m. MST (GMT -7 DST)


However I do seem to be getting bogged down in this one -- making it a lot bigger than perhaps it need to be and it will take a lot of time. Mind you if I start working with Vue again I might get a bit more done as it doesn't make my machine drag as much so I can multi task.

I have in the last week become a moderator on a group at artzone - a Vue 6 group

This is at http://artzone.daz3d.com/groups/vue6

Membership for the group is steadily growing and we have some great members who are good artists and who are helpful. I feel privileged and warm just being part of it.

Mind you those gushy feelings could be just left over exhaustion from pushing myself to work all night on my hair entry for Carrara.

I probably need more sleep - but mangaged to find a pic of me in the office.

Ha - oh I fought a moment like that yesterday.

Ooh Betty Day

I'm up early today! It's the day that Ooh Betty meets her real owner. Sort of nervous that they won't get on.

I'll let you know how that goes on when I get home - I should hopefully be getting home early too which means I may get the opportunity to do some hairdressing.

I had a look at some hairdressing sites quite helpful but I think I will end up making something up.

I have submitted my story to the competition.

I completed my short story for the Artzone competition group on the way home from work. i typed it up and have entered it which gets that out of the way now. I now need to get back on with playing with hair dos and I also must not neglect Betty as she is due to be delivered to her mind creator on Saturday - gosh time flies!

My hair for heads is not doing spectalularly well although I am kind of getting the hang of it. I aim to be a Carrara hairstyling queen and no doubt my stubborness will render me at least adequate in the skill. However whether that is going to be soon enough for competition entry at the end of this month then I am unable to tell.

But just so we can establish that I am still week then take a look at the picture here - poor old Vicky is far too polite to say it stinks!

Ooh Betty went to Carrara

Betty ended up having an outfit made for her in Carrara last night


Ooh Betty you are furtastic!

I have added this to my gallery at Artzone. http://artzone.daz3d.com/index.php?mode=photo_album&act=view&pho_id=133907&p_id=20308

Please feel free to leave a comment here or at the gallery.

I am becoming more comfortable using Carrara now after working with betty and the little doggy and I am hoping this will help when I try and put a hair do together.

Just waiting for a portrait of Betty to render - also in Carrara.

need to retire - but not taking this big teddy thing with me.

Wow - Fluffy troll! - he would be just mint for warming my feet on - and they are going to get worse as I need to head out with the dog and its all frosty and it has just gone midnight.

Troll features here needs a trim on his face - perhaps that is why he looks so cross! I'll see if I can do that for him tomorrow. Good night.

A bit of a do and it has to be done in Carrara

OK - Guess what this is! - This is the evidence that I am on another push to develop my skills. late autumn I did buy Carrara 6 but never really got round to using it because of the combination of a broken PC and then I had Vue delived which at the time suited the way I worked. Vue has not stopped suiting my needs however that should not mean that I do not learn how to use a tool that I own - so that is what the monstrous thing above is.

I noticed today in the competition group on artzone that there is a new competition called hair today and gone tomorrow and it is all about making a lovely 'do! And doing the do in Carrara. Now above is what I made in my first 20 minutes - this is not just my first 20 minutes using the hair room but pretty much my first dedicated 20 minutes in Carrara - so all inall I am pleased with this.

Yes its a shocking messy mop of curly mousy brown hair - but guess what if I had added a few bits of grey I could find anyone who knowe me to testify that it is not far of my own hair!

Of course my facial features are not quite so plain!

Hey look at this -- this is the year I cut it myself and I am a bit cock eyed!