Since the last update, I've been working on a few things. I got my action shots down, including: a volleyball spike, a football kick, and snowboard jump, and I included it on my demo reel, which I'll post here. I didn't have quite enough to make entire youtube video out of.
I've almost completed the bust. The rigging is pretty much done. I tried to make the character really cartoony, very flexiple. Everything is a stand alone, not musch joint hierarchy, the only ones are the face controls are controlled by the head Control and Global Control controls everything, other than that, everything is manual on this guy. I used 4 flexiplanes, one in the torso, on each arm, and one in the neck. The face is controlled using a curves and joints. Very much like, if not exactly like the system I used for the mermaid.
The most difficult chanllenge on this character was probably the skinning of the mouth, specifically the lower mouth, because the skinning had to be very pecise and pretty large range both in and outside, behind the mouth. Still needs a bit more work though
The picture below, shows (on the left) an example of the deformation and (on the right) shows the base pose.
jThe character was originally going to be used in one of my short films, called Possession. Was about a guy feels like he's losing his mind and eventually becomes possessed. The charater was going to represent the Devil or a demon. The story has been in prepoduction for around 5 years, gone through a lot of changes, so much so, that this character is no longer a part of the story, which is a little depressing, but that's how it goes.
On top of all of this, I'm starting to learn French. Over the years, I've always had an interest in knowing other languages and from time to time, I've tried learning a number of different languages, including: Spanish, Mandrin, Japanese, German, and French, but after a while I always quit. However French and German has stuck with me for a while. Currently I'm not learning German, but I plan to after I learn French. I've been studing French for a while now. No where near fluent, but I usually get the jist of what someone is saying in written Fench. So, maybe in a few years I'll be fluent and be able to go to Quebec or France.