An Introduction to: D-SLR Photography

For those of you who don't know, D-SLR stands for "Digital - Single Lens Reflex". I find the Wikipedia description quite adequate enough to describe its differences from a normal digital camera -

" A D-SLR is a digital camera that uses a mechanical mirror system and pentraprism to direct light from the lens to an optical viewfinder at the back of the camera."

In layman's terms, simply because I don't quite get all the inner workings of a D-SLR itself, personally I'd describe it is a high resolution digital camera with more options like setting the lens aperture and shutter speed, as well as usually viewing your subject through an optical viewfinder instead of an LCD one. This also allows it to have real time changes made without and lag time at all, unlike some digital cameras on the market. But enough with all the technical info.

I've obtained a D-SLR camera from my dad, who had just gotten a new one and decided that I could have his old one. Although I can't take video with the D-SLR he gave me, it allows me to take professional level photographs already. Below are a couple experiments of pictures as I played around with the D-SLR on my free time.

An Introduction to: zBrush - Creature Concept

Recently, I've been experimenting with zBrush, a 3D modelling program, but it has a whole different spin to it. Unlike other 3D programs, it's interface allows the user to "sculpt" their creations out, using a set of zSpheres and then making a polymesh from it. Below, I was practicing sculpting out my creature concept.

Here you can see a zSphere primitive, where the entire creature is created out of connecting spheres.Next, I exported it to get a 3D poly mesh, which is where I ended up:

But not learning how to fully use a program before you actually start playing around with it does have its problems. It turns out the moment I exit the "Edit" mode on zBrush, it automtically converts what 3D model which took me 2 hours to make into a simple image file. I was stumped. I couldn't believe my bad luck. But at least I know have a single very nice render which you can see above. Hopefully, next time I'll do better, eh?

Yearbook Graduates Template

I've been quite busy the last couple of weeks bogged down with not only projects, but a Yearbook.

You see, two friends of mine, Andi and Vivian, decided to collaborate to make a Yearbook for the two Gifted Grade 8 classes only. Now, the few problems with making yearbooks are the designs, and the costs. The costs we've gotten a rough estimate already, because we were supposedly going to print out all of our sheets today, but no one was finished their own jobs. Anyways, the designing portion was fun at least, and here I'll show you what steps I took to reach the end result.

I started off with a small sketch in my sketchbook, shown above here. It essentially summed up the gist of what I wanted to do, so I went straight ahead and made a rough draft, but only this time, on the computer.

Now that didn't look the most appealing to me, but it was my first template, so I stuck with it for a while. Then, after obtaining our graduating photos from my French teacher, who is helping us, I started to make my Graduates Pages Template a whole lot better.

And there you have it, that's the end result. I won't put all the text in yet, lest it spoil the yearbook for you. They're only 5 dollars each, and ask Vivian if you want a copy!

Creature Concept Details

Skeletal Structure

Organ Systems

Muscalature

Now I'm not sure if I'm putting a bit too much detail on to my creature, but I've designed my creature from bone up in order to have it be completely biologically sound. Each of the three drawing I have made can be layered one ontop of the other in order to create the entire biological structure of my creature.