I, for one, welcome our new overlords!

     Starting December off right. Working on a more complex mesh, as to slowly hone my skills. I've got a few screen shots of an alien I'm currently working on. I found the reference photo using Google Images, so no claim to rights there. I chose this reference for it's relative simplicity. It is more complicated then my others models yet it is easy enough to use the new modeling technique that I learned. Eventually I will be able to use the new modeling technique on more and more complex models...

     In this picture you can see the very roughed in basics of the alien, who I am naming Ralph. I really like how the eyes are turning out, I've extruded the region and then set it back into the skull. It gives the face some depth, which I have yet to accomplish in previous models. The geometry is still a bit of a mess but I've been cleaning it up as I go. I'm going to make a few more shaping passes on this model before I start to add more detail. On the left side of the work area you can see the object in it's smooth form. I do this to make it easier to detect any terrible misshapes and bumps. On the right side you can see the object in wire frame mode. This helps me manipulate all the vertices with ease while giving me real time output on the left. Anything I slide around or update on the right, immediately gets displayed on the left so I can judge progress.

     In this picture you can see a sneak peak of the alien rendered with some lighting. On the right side you can see the scene setup with the reference picture loaded into the background. The left side, in this picture, doesn't update in real time. I just have it up there for shits and grins basically. I've got a lot of work to do on this little guy still, but I wanted to post an update on my progress.

     I would like to thank everyone for taking a moment to check this out. Your words of encouragement and advice are amazing and always welcomed! I will have another post very soon with some more progress on Ralph. I hope to take this character all the way to basic animation. Which means... finish modeling him, texture him properly, rig him, and then finally start to dive into animation!
     -Eric