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not-my-back · 7 years

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Tickletober Day 3: Witches

(Cutting it hella close, but this idea just popped into my head an hour or so ago. Enjoy!) @tickletober2017

Mary did a swift turn in front of her mirror, admiring herself with a small smile. Although witch costumes were incredibly stereotypical for Halloween, she felt that hers was particularly awesome. Her cloak-dress wasn’t too short, nor was it too long, complimenting her curves and showing off her matching knee-high boots. Her freshly manicured nails were tapered to a satisfyingly spooky point, painted an alternating black and orange with spiderwebs designed into the former and jack-o-lanterns’ faces into the latter.

The best part of her outfit by far, however, was definitely her hat. A metaphorical cherry on top, it matched her outfit perfectly, it’s point perfectly creased and its rim impeccably round. Sitting atop a meticulously styled head of long, curly black hair, it brought every part of her outfit together. She was going to blow the other party-goers out of the water tonight!

With a satisfied nod to her reflection, she glanced at the clock and sighed; even though she spent so long on her costume, it wasn’t even CLOSE to being time to leave! “Looks like I got ready a bit early,” she sheepishly said, sighing and taking a seat on the edge of her bed. She pulled out her phone, deciding to absentmindedly browse to pass the time. After all, she certainly wasn’t going to take any of this stuff off just to put it back on a few hours later!

The party had been a few weeks in the making; just about everyone Mary knew (and a few friends of friends she wasn’t so familiar with) was going to be there. However, to Mary, it didn’t matter that everybody was going to be there; it mattered that SOMEbody was going to be there. A long time crush of hers was going to be there, and thanks to her best friend, Mary had gotten some inside information and learned that she was also going as a witch! Knowing the saying that imitation was the most sincere form of flattery, Mary had taken it to heart, deciding that going as a witch herself would be the swiftest way to spark a conversation between the two. To get close to her.

Idly humming, she continued to flick through her phone, thoughts running through her head. The conversations she might get to have. The things she might get to know about her.. the ‘other things’ she might learn.. a blushing smile brightened on her face. Even though she tried to keep this certain aspect of her life WAAAY out of public settings, she couldn’t help but think of the different ways she could bring her thoughts to fruition, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to resist if certain situations cropped up. If she happened to raise her arms, stretching during a particularly boring conversation.. if Mary decided that there was only room for one witch at the party, and sparked a ‘fight’ between the two.. if she happened to take a tired seat, and prop up her..

“..huh?”

A weird, soft weight settled on Mary’s head, causing her to look up from her phone, her reflection giving her no clue as to what the cause was. The hat wasn’t particularly heavy in spite of its intricacy, and the sudden shift in weight was nothing short of suspicious..

Reaching up and sliding the hat off of her head, she frowned in frustration, already knowing she’d have to redo part of her hair— not that she didn’t have the time anyway. However, her frown did not last long as she turned the hat’s opening toward her to inspect the cause of its sudden heaviness. To say her jaw dropped would be an understatement, her eyes having become the size of saucers and her cheeks going cherry red.

For perfectly there in the opening of the hat was a pair of bare, immaculately beautiful feet. Mary’s heart thumped hard against her chest, unable to stop her eyes from wandering. Past the delicate ankles, there was nothing in her hat but swirling darkness, clearly where these soles were protruding from. Succulently pale, dainty feet, with perfectly curved arches and delightfully round, velvety heels. Tiny toes, which twitched in place, as if confused by the coolness and openness they found themselves in. A delicate, pink blush contrasted the pretty pale at the balls and heels of these feet, and a slight scent of bubblegum lotion teased her nose, making her cheeks redden even further.

“W-what..?” is all Mary could manage at first. But as seconds passed and she continued to stare (and her heart continued to pound at her chest), her own trembling started to settle, and a wide smile came to her face… although she could not even begin to TRY and explain what was going on, who was she to look a gift horse in the mouth? She’d been given a present, one way or another, supernaturally or otherwise, and by goodness she was going to accept it!

With a smile, she lowered the ‘hat’, letting its point rest in between her legs before she shut them, snugly trapping those feet face-up in her lap. Trapping.. that was an exciting word. One she’d never imagined having the pleasure of using to describe a pair of feet in front of her. “Cute.. I may not be able to explain this. Like.. at all.. but I’m going to tickle the hell out of you~” Mary cooed, wriggling her sharp fingernails mere inches above the unaware soles. It seemed their owner, whomever the unfortunate soul may be, could not hear her, as the adorable feet didn’t even flinch at the threat, nor shudder at the spidering ‘claws’ hovering over them.

Without further ado, they hovered no longer, descending as swiftly as Mary’s desire peaked. A flurry of black and orange hit the pale soles like a tidal wave, Mary unable to even THINK about starting off light; after all, it’s not like the owner of these soles would know just who was being so mean, right~? As her nails dug in to the tender flesh with vigor, the feet responded in kind, jolting in surprise as if stricken by lightning, and then spasming in a similar nature. Their toes splayed and wriggled madly, her feet not even able to properly flail amidst the suddenness of it all.

“Hmhmhm..~!” Mary’s own laughter flowed out of her lips in the absence of any on this obviously tender pair of feet’s behalf. In less than a minute she was caught up in the moment, her nails treating these soles as though they’d been in her care for hours, and yet it was just the very start. “Coochie coochie coochie! Whose a ticklish pair of feet~? You are! Hmmm..~!” She scratches wriggly circles upon those soft heels, making the feet recoil and futilely wriggle from side to side. She scrawled long, mean rakes through those curvy arches, making them react violently, making the hat itself shudder in reaction. not that it mattered from between her legs, essentially stockading those feet in place. But the best reaction of all was when Mary dug into those adorable toes, scribbling furiously at the velvety toe stems’ undersides. This caused the feet to go still, shivering in place but rendered immobile. For most, this would make them deduce that they weren’t a sweet spot at all.. but Mary knew better. She could FEEL just how badly these feet wanted to react under her fingertips, but they simply couldn’t because of the sheer amount by which it absolutely, totally tickled. “Ohoho.. is that a bad spot? Is iiit~?” With a smirk, she leaned in close, gently blowing a soft breeze on the otherwise unoccupied shivering soles. “How about I tickle these tender toes for a while? ..I think I will~”

Leaning in just a bit closer, she breathily whispered nearly right against the soft skin of her arches. “The only break I’m going to give you is when I decide to go find my hairbrush..~”

…

Two hours passed. Mary pulled her brush away, which had since rendered these poor feet an aggravated pink, shuddering in the aftermath of relentless tickles. Although Mary was going to dive right back in soon, she had only halted because her scrubbing arm was getting tired. By now, she was bothered and disheveled herself, her carefully styled hair frazzled and undone by the heat of the moment. The blush on her cheeks had never left, and there was a bit of saliva upon her chin— something her chin and these soles had in common.

However, it seemed this break in the action ended up being the relief these soles needed; with a sudden POP, they vanished, the swirling darkness inside her hat dissipating..

Well, the pop didn’t come from the hat itself. It came from the notification sound her phone had made. Panting and wearing a disappointed look, she pouted and let the hat fall to the floor, crumpled, as she picked up her phone. It was nothing more than a text from her best friend, and she almost groaned as she remembered there was still a party to attend..

Even though the feet were gone from her ‘hospitality’, what the text said made her heart pump harder than it had anywhere in the middle of the long session. Mary’s crush wouldn’t be making it to the party… because she was unexpectedly worn out all of a sudden~

“I… LOVE this hat~!” she giddily exclaimed, giggling and kicking her legs excitedly as she hugged her phone close to her chest. Even if it was just a one-time thing, it was easily a once-in-a-lifetime memory… for Mary AND her crush~

#tickletober #tickletober2017 #tickletober 2017 #tickle #ticklish #tickle community #feet #witch #witches #halloween #day 3 #tickletober day 3

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knb217-digitalcreaturesprogress · 5 years

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Final Thoughts and Reflections

This process of making these two creatures was a good way to learn the pipeline process of modelling and sculpting a riggable character.

The first thing that I did when I knew I had to draw some turn arounds for my characters I grabbed my kangaroo and dragon figure that I have from my collection and used them in the creation of my turnarounds. This made the process easier as I didn’t need to focus on doing too much research of creatures from different angles. This also made the process easier to complete them quickly and made sure that the anatomy for the base mesh was possible.

I was confused at first about when things needed to be done by when and for what each class because it wasn’t made very clear in the lecture. It took me some time to make the kangaroo mesh as I left the file at home and didn’t have it for the first class. I had a lot of trouble with the kangaroo model in general, but I was able to complete it better than the first one that I made.

The dragon model, however, I finished in 6 hours – the first iteration anyway. I enjoyed doing this very much and I had a very good time making it. There are improvements that I could have made to the process (with the mouth and the wings) and particularly with the mouth. This process was enjoyable and went very quickly considering the amount of work it involved.

What followed next – although not as bad for the kangaroo – was a nightmare for the dragon. To be able to have it in mudbox I couldn’t have any tris. I’m used to working with tris and quads in maya and it took far, far longer than it should have to be able to fix all my tris and ngons. As a result of this process I had to have many more edge loops that probably necessary. This fixing process was a nightmare and maya crashed several times during this process and I lost hours of work that I had to redo. I learn my lesson about saving.

UVing took some time. The kangaroo had an upset that I didn’t know how to fix, but because of the simplicity of the mesh, I knew that I didn’t need to worry to much about it. It was at this point that I realised that there was a symmetry tool which made the process of UVing the dragon so much easier. Even still, it took more than a few tries (because of the fact that Maya kept crashing on me) but I was able to do a very good final UV that was able to work well. I was very happy with the mesh and at this point I really didn’t want to do the retopo because I had a few other processes that I had to do, but my UVs were clean and it looks neat when unwrapped.

Mudbox was very fun to do. I enjoyed all the tools and the warps and the stretching and the imprinting and the joining and everything of the sort. The enjoy the process of mudbox and the texturing tools and wax and sculpting etc. I did have trouble with doing the scales and the first iteration looked more like fur. I had trouble with figuring out how I wanted to do scales and then I figured out that there was a way to do them as a stamp. I decided to then just texture the underbelly and use the texture of muscles and the fur like texture that I had made in mudbox while making the model bigger. This took some time because I wanted to make it work properly. I wasn’t sure how to do the colouring at this point.

Moving back into Maya from Mudbox took some time and I was unsure on how the next process worked. I knew how I was going to do it but the process of topologizing but I was dreading it. I didn’t know how I was going to do the extra features (the claws) and what I should leave out (the marks dents on the horns). This process, like the fixing of the mesh took far longer than it probably should have. I wasn’t able to keep everything to quads this time and it wasn’t as much of an issue as I was working and painting in substance painter this time.

The UVing process was much like it was last time. It was slightly harder as I had to be more careful of visible seams.

Substance painter is difficult to work with. The textures that you see in the substance painter viewport never transport into other channels (like maya or unreal) the textures are difficult to show up and it was hard making the textures not look flat and just slapped on colours. I enjoyed the process of painting the textures on but some of them were more difficult than others to get right. I could have made more of an effort with the fur and the scales but as I knew how finnicky substance painter can be I didn’t want to waist my time making it look good when it ultimately wouldn’t translate into Maya.

The exporting of the textures and putting them into Maya drove me up the wall. I was only able to figure out how to do it thanks to Mike Hermes’ youtube video and his easy way of processing it. At the point of watching his video I was on the verge of a mental breakdown. I struggled to understand and had to watch his video many time before I was able to see what he was doing. I am not pleased by how the textures transferred over but it is the best I was able to do with how finnicky the relationship is between the two programs.

If the texturing didn’t send me up the wall, the lighting did. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get the spotlights working in the render window. It took several hours and a good nights sleep before I was able to understand (and only with the help of Damian) that I was able to get my light rig working and be able to light my scene. Even then my light rig didn’t light up my dragon as well as it probably could have (I blame my table screen that has a slightly lighter resolution than my main screen) but I was able to light up and render my images properly. Because of the difference in lighting between my two screens my dragon ended up being darker than I intended and in the final rendered images.

In the future I will take more time to make it work. I endeavour to make sure I can get the lights working early and test them out before committing to anything.

In conclusion this process was both rewarding and frustrating. Several times I was on the urge of a complete mental breakdown and had to walk away from the project for a bit. I did learn from this frustration and in the future the lessons I have learn from this process will make it so that I am able to complete to a better standard than I have in the past. For future projects I will be using Maya and Mudbox and Substance painter all together again because while the relationship between the three is finnicky at the best of times I do prefer substance only for the ease of painting and the masking process is simply easier.

Bibliography

Alverado, J. (2016). Maya Rendering Black Frames Problem Fixed! [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhds-QySEVo

Hermes, M. (2018). How to bring SUBSTANCE PAINTER textures into Maya and use them [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpxkZQqpSag&t=607s

How the Kangaroo Got Her Pouch | Learning to Give. (1999). Retrieved from https://www.learningtogive.org/resources/how-kangaroo-got-her-pouch-0

LinkedIn Learning. (2016). Maya 2017 Essential Training | Use Maya lights in Arnold [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcDlYq8vGM8&t=145s

PRINCESS, T. (2008). Dragon Poems - Poems For Dragon - To Be A Dragon Is To Live Free! - Poem by LOST PRINCESS | Poem Hunter. Retrieved from https://www.poemhunter.com/poems/dragon/page-1/14598171/

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