Easyref - A modeling friendly image reference system for Blender.

I'm using the image reference script authored by Cedric Lepiller, the same guy who created Speedflow and Speedsculpt, it's called Easyref and as he would say in his French accent, "this is nice". What's really unique about this addon is it allows you to put the image right into Blender, overlaying your work-space, you then construct geometry right behind it, it's magical.

Above is the model with Easyref overlayed, and below is the  unfinished model as it is, closely matching the proportions of the reference image.

Updated design sketch

It occurred to me to make the hot dog creature a beast with two backs, the bread bun is now a predator and the dog it's meal. Just added eyes and re-positioned legs. This makes the idea a little more interesting for me, I have a natural tendency towards the generic unfortunately, so I hope this adds some twist of meaning to the final image. I plan to make a start on the 3D version this weekend.

One of the strongest features of MyPaint is it's ability to sample a previous brush stroke from your sketch and make that particular brush and all it's settings available to you, so when you go back to a piece of art and make changes, you can very easily be painting with exactly the same brushes without having to recreate them or locate them in a stored menu.

More character designs realized in Blender

The concept sketch.

The finished model.

A scrappy concept I did in MyPaint.

The more polished 3D version created with Blender.

This might be my next Blender work. Perhaps I'll think of something more interesting.

DUIK Bassel, or DUIK 2 released.

The free animation and rigging script DUIK has been updated and is now available. Not only does this super useful script help animators who use After Effects set up IK (inverse kinematic) rigs, it also includes many handy work-flow tools and expressions, for example, being able to select multiple key-frames on different layers, and copy paste them without creating new layers, that is just one tiny thing among others that even non character animators would want.  Sure there are plenty of commercial animation assistant scripts out there, but DUIK is free, widely used and well tested.

More Bevel after Boolean characters.

I've been enjoying getting back into Blender to create a series of character designs, making use of the the Bevel after Boolean add-on.