I feel pretty good about myself today. I got lots of positive feedback yesterday, and it left me feeling like I can do anything. First I got a call from my brother regarding his project and how it blew his teacher away. Apparently his instructor liked it so much he asked if Chris could prepare a version with the course title as a header, instead of his group’s fake company name, which he can use this weekend at an open house where they try and rope people into going to Mohawk. Hopefully that means his group won the contest they were having, and I was right all along – I kept telling him there was no way anyone would have something as detailed and visually accurate as what we made.

The second thing that made me feel good was a phone call from James regarding the Post and Beam book, and his thoughts on what I’ve done so far on the Bents. He printed and distributed the P&B booklet to the students yesterday, and said he loved the way it looked. Unfortunately this phone call came after I emailed him at 2:30 in the morning our time (I guess I need to remind him Holly has kids), when I hit a roadblock in the Bents book. I emailed him my work so I could ask his opinion on how to proceed, and after he mulled it over he decided to call back and discuss some options.

I suppose it’s my fault for having a nap in the evening which resulted in me being up all night, and when everyone bailed on the Nazi zombie battle I was so bored I decided to do work.

Working from home rule: boredom forces productivity!

After I talked to James and we decided how to proceed, I realized it was incredibly late and I still wasn’t tired. I put my mp3 player on, and started colouring a model I made the other day. That’s it up top. I felt he was appropriate for this post since I truly had a feeling like I can conquer anything I want to after all of yesterday’s positive feedback. He needs a name still and I have to render him, but until I have the time to dedicate to that here’s an animated png with lots of things I should have hidden (seams that wouldn’t show up in Indigo).

I might attempt to render him using a new engine I discovered the other day called IRender nXt, which I can get a 30 day trial of. I stumbled upon it while looking for a material stripping Ruby Script in one of the online Ruby libraries. It looks good, and a tutorial I saw showed an amazing result using default materials in Sketchup without assigning any material properties. That could be a big time saver, and I believe it’s cheaper than Indigo (if I decide to purchase one or the other).

My brother just called, so I’m off to work on making an animated something for his teacher. If possible, I’ll post it here later.