Introduction to Lighting in Maya Lessons 8, 9, & 10

Did these in one fell swoop. I think I can fairly understand the usage of shadows and ambient light, as well as the differences between raytracing shadows and Depth map shadows.

Introduction to Lighting In Maya: Lesson 5

Oh. My.
I didn't know about this!
Why did I not know about this!?

Looking through the spot light and moving it like a camera will make things with said lights SO MUCH EASIER!

WAIT!!! MANIPULATORS!?!

By the power of Gray Skull, it just got BETTER!!

Feel like you're reading Facebook posts yet? I'd hope not, I think my grammar and spelling is above such dreadful game.

Introduction to Lighting In Maya: Lesson 4

Lighting may not be allowed in my job description, because I'm having a lot of fun with it!

I do believe I made that other crayon look like a flashlight in this scene.

As Bob Ross says, "We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents."

Intro to Lighting In Maya: El Numero 3

Light, light, light it up, light it up miister!

... That was terrible, I apologize.

Introduction to Lighting In Maya: Lesson 2

I've always known about these various default light settings, but for some reason I never even think about them anymore.
I'm definitely glad for the recap, it's giving me ideas.

Introduction to Lighting In Maya Lesson 1

As the title says.
Also, I like lighting! I can't WAIT!!

Introduction to Lighting in Maya

I think I'll enjoy this.

I've done these before..

Callin' it quits!

I've done what I could, I've had to completely restart the entire couple week project with only the lesser portion of a day to do it.
Here's what I managed:

A guy running from my busted fishbot. Nothing big.

Same guy balancing on top of my fishbot. I REALLY want him to fall for some reason..

Dood (Prinny version of Dude) doing a creepy soldier march. Why is it creepy? If you need to ask, you may need help.

The problems I've faced

I can build a mesh fine, I can build a skeleton, I can build proper controls AND I can animate!
But no matter what I do, I haven't been able to get these things to work for me.
I ended up having to cave and using someone else's mesh.
I'm going to animate 3 different cycles from another person's mesh so I can at least come out of this disaster with a grade.

Here's fishbot. I made him in about 2 hours last night from scratch, hoping he would work. I did everything accurately, followed any digital tutors lesson I could find regarding rigging and what not, and the skeleton kept collapsing on itself.

I was working on Jojo here for a while (back when he was Vivi). Everything was fine until I tried operating the skeleton with my controls. I've looked at everything I possibly could to fix this, and even made a completely different creation from scratch to see if I could get something to work... No dice.

I believe I am in need of a hero

So I managed to paint the weights... And This was the result. I cant get things to level out, and whenever I go and zero out things THIS happens. I'm going to TRY and salvage what I can, but worse case I wont be sleeping any time soon.

I'm going to attempt downloading a rig online and seeing if I can make some animations to save my grade, But doing that in 1 day (since I am busy till tomorrow, and then am busy all Monday) is a rather steep task..

Jojo the magnificent beast

He's rigged, he's got controls, now all he needs is proper weighting and I can do my animation. I already have the animation in my head frame for frame, so I'm hoping I can get this done swiftly.

From Vivi to Jojo

So I thought about the whole "Creativity on Empty" thing and decided that I'd add a twist to Vivi. I thought I'd just make a girl version that I'd call Kiki, but then I thought "Why should I be easy on myself?" and decided to make Jojo here.

His lower body is entirely rigged and has controls (minus the tail, that needs controls).
I plan to come in tomorrow and finish rigging entirely and paint weights. I predict that, if something goes wrong, I'll be finished Sunday night. If nothing wonks out then I should end up with a very pleasant Saturday.

Marvelous Designer Attempt

I do enjoy the program, now I just need to figure out how to use it!

Working on Vivi

So I've modeled and sort of rigged Vivi. I have the bones made, next time will be painting weights.