Welcome to NullMind's Lair, the blog of a cranky Web Hosting Geek

Robot Update

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Tonight I managed to start some of the texturing on the Robot, unfortunately Modo is still proving unstable at times, it crashed a couple of times on me.

Texturing in Modo, I cant say it’s hard, but I prefer the way lightwave does it, hopefully with the upcoming versions it will get better, I was also a bit disappointed with the lack of “Glow”.

Next I will try painting on the textures, to give it a bit of an worn-off look in some areas, I still need to make the belt, tools and more detailing, but it’s getting there

robot4.jpg

Robot 2

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

Today I managed to create the arms and the hands/claws of the mascot, next I ned to create the antenna and start texturing, I’m also not happy with the rings, so will work on those later.

robot2.jpg

VPS.NET Robot in 3D

Monday, February 16th, 2009

Just or kicks, I decided to build the VPS.NET robot in 3D, it’s ben close to 5 years since I have done 3D modeling, a few weeks back I decided to give Maya a go, but it’s cluttered UI is just such a mess, so I decided to try something a bit closer to what I am used to, MODO.

Since MODO was built by the old Lightwave team (and I am a LW fan) I found it allot easier to jump into it, sure nought I am still looking around trying to find the location for certain tools, but it sure was easier than Maya.

This is the result of an hour or so of modeling while learning Modo .. still allot of work to go :)

robot1.jpg

The VPS.NET Mascot

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

I have always been a huge fan of website mascots, they are not just great marketing tool, but also a fantastic way for people to relate to their provider, plus for us, it’s a fun way to express ideas by utilizing the mascot, you can create cartoons, explanatory graphics, etc .. much nicer than plain text and a chart.

With that in mind, we decided to create one for VPS.NET .. here is it’s story.

(more…)

New XMAS Creative

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

We added some nice touches to the Relio site, one of them is a Christmas theme logo

Nata-Logo-Big-1

And the other is a Christmas theme splash for the main-page

Xmas-Splash-2
Do you see Santa ?

We will do more of both for each major holiday :)

I also added a new CSS feature (lightbox) to open the images with a faded BG, looks great.

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Rea & Leo – Ep 7

Friday, December 1st, 2006

This one was a no brainer … it’s December.

The idea behind it was to make a cartoon where Leo is complaining he wont wear a clown’s red nose .. the idea behind the nose is so he looks like Rudolph.

I am amazed at how much people liked this one, maybe it’s the XMAS spirit.

XMAS DRAFT
The hasty sketch

Issue7
The final Art

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Rea & Leo – Ep 6

Friday, October 27th, 2006

When I was a kid living in Portugal, I used to love reading “Disney” comic books, used … nah, I still like them even these days :) .

Anyway, one of my favorite comics of all times, was a series of stories published in the late 70’s, early 80’s entitled “Goofy Does History”, on those stories, Goofy played very famous characters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Midas, Marco Polo, etc .. and one of them was “Galileo Galilei” ..
 Comics Col Brasil Disney Abril Patetafazhistoria Icon 4
Yep, this exact comic is on my bookcase

I remember that one of the great things about those stories was how for example, at such young age, I learned how Gutenberg published the first book ever, and that that book was the Bible, or that Galilei experimented that two bodies of different mass and weight would fall at the same rate on a vacuum (the “Falling Bodies” theory), these are things I would only hear about many years later in High School, but there I was at the age of 5, and thru comics, I was learning.

A fact that didn’t went unnoticed, so these days, I spend some time looking for those same comics in english, so my children can read them and while having a laught with them, they are also learning.

Anyway, enough nostalgia, our next cartoon episode, was based on my re-colection of the Goofy Galilei episode, where he tests his Falling Bodies theory by asking a heavyset woman and her puny husband to leap from the tower of Pisa into an old mattress to test his theory that they would both fall at the same time (hey, it was a cartoon book after all).

On this episode, we illustrate that sometimes you just feel like trowing the deadbeat customer’s server’s from the 10th floor, but hey, if you have to do it, might as well make a science project out of it and test the great master’s (Galilei) theory.

The sketch was done a big on a hurry, I had the idea on my mind and needed to give it to Paulo @ Yellowicon/Iconbase within 5 minutes so he could do the final Art; To illustrate how on a hurry we were, I had to capture the sketch on my MacBook Pro Webcam since I had no scanner around and there was no time to wait until I got back home.

Issue6-Draft-1
The Draft

Issue6-1
The final Art

In the end, I love the result, it’s a funny Gag, and I am sure Relio visitors and other friends will have a laugh at it , and who knows, a few might do a google on Galilei and learn something from it (especially those who wont have a clue what his theory was).

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Rea & Leo – Ep 5

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

For this cartoon, I had envision a “mobile datacenter” based on a trailer.

Since modern trailers have an AC on top, you get your cooling system, they are off the ground, so it’s raised flooring, add a nice combination lock to the door, a $150 generator from Homedepot (B&Q), a Sat-Web dish for redundancy, a few DSL lines .. and “presto” .. you got yourself a datacenter that can outrun the hurricanes (or be taken by them).

My Original Sketch:
Tira5-Sketch
The Final Cartoon:
Issue5

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Rea & Leo – Ep 4

Saturday, September 9th, 2006

Initially this was suppose to be a small side story that happens on Ep 2, the idea was to have a mice see and fall in love with a mouse, while Leo on Ep 2 answers the phone.

But Dirceu misunderstood my idea and started working on two storyboards instead, in the end it gave way to a cute short .. :)

Issue4

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Rea & Leo – Ep 3

Thursday, August 24th, 2006

The guys at everaldo have finished drawing the 3rd installment of the Rea & Leo Cartoons.

I had the idea of having Null beat up Leo because he wakes him up from a great dream, I remember when I was a kid, my dad to get up at 4:00 AM to get his Restaurants/Bars ready to open by 7:00 AM (yeah, people start drinking that early in the Azores), so he always took naps in the afternoon, since he was one of those that talks on his sleep, you could sometimes hear him talking about millionaire deals, try to wake him up, and you might get slugged :)

Issue3
Yeah, it will come true someday.
Below is a very rough sketch I did t get the project going, it’s a bit messy, it was done in a hurry when the idea hit me, and my kids were all over me at that exact moment :)

Img022
My Sketch

Initially I was going to have Rea say “You woke him up, didn’t ya ?” .. but in the end, we felt this cartoon strip needed no words.

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