By Chongchen Saelee

I want to share with you my personal tips on how to implement blazing fast Qt applications. I’m just a hobbyist programmer, but I still understand the importance of programming principles such as KISS (keep it simple-stupid), OOP (object-oriented programming), optimization, utility, and user-friendliness. In the end, you’re writing a program that people want to use. Therefore, if even you can’t use the program, then you’ve done it wrong. (more…)

UPDATE! Now he has actual Blender material lenses, not composited in Photoshop like last time. Also, the hair is still a bitch. Was looking up low-poly hair alternatives. Maybe will go that route next time have more control over styling.

UPDATE! Figured the hair out. Lighting changed, but that’s minor and easier to fix.

With enough practice, I actually modeled exactly what I wanted. Ramping up to my Agent S comic, I read that some artists have to sculpt their own character designs for reference, which I think will help. It’s like making a dummy or action figure, you just pose it and trace or whatever. Anyway, this was a low polygon head that I applied subdivision modifier to. I also experimented with the hair particle simulator, which obviously didn’t turn out that great. It’s hard to manipulate. But there may be another technique using cloth simulator and high resolution hair texture. That might be next time.

Man. Wow. Blender 2.76 was just released a few days ago. And wow, look at what I churned out. I modeled the glass cup really quick. But using Cycles Renderer, took about 3 hours to render out. The 3D text was easy, but I’m still challenged by how to make the bevel for the border/outline along with bevel for the inset area. Anyway, the performance seem to be way better, no more crashing. There’s also a new cloth, wind physics simulator. And a “portal” light tool that sucks up the ray tracing, which improves rendering times. All have yet to be tested by me, but Blender just impresses me with every release. They’re latest open source movie is called Cosmos Laundromat. It also looks incredible.

Another practice using Manga Studio 5. This time it’s New 52 Superman.

I suppose like any other commercial work, you have to do it methodically. You have to lay out the foundation, then go in and refine it. This is what 2 hours yields me. But this time I experimented with Manga Studio 5’s watercolor tools. It looks very authentic, like it would if you physically painted it.