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

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

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

We had this idea of a nice design representing the VPS Cloud, an array of nodes (Hypervisors & Data) being worked on by little men, such a construction site .. that idea was fun, but quickly we realized that was the wrong message, a “construction site” might lead people to perceive the cloud as still “under construction” .. there fore, an “unfinished” product… not the message we wish to relay.

While we all know that we will always be working on the VPS Cloud, to create new features and improve on it’s specs, we wanted a more mature image, so instead of a construction site with little men, we went for a finished VPS Cloud type setup with little robots maintaining it.

The next task was, what kind of robot ?, since the VPS Cloud is an omnidirectional object, the robot will need to move in all 3 axis (X,Y,Z), so we did away with legs and gave him a propulsion system that allows him to hover and fly anywhere, second, since he needs to receive data in real time from the Cloud Control, he got an antenna, and last, due to the complexity of tasks and maintenance he must perform, a tool-belt and flexible arms were added …

This was the first sketch of the mascot on the white board (proud to say I did it myself.. hehe):

We where quite pleased with it, so the go ahead was given for Everaldo (outstanding Brazilian artist who is working here in the UK office with us on this and other projects)to clean it up and vectorize it .. and in no time, he had a final design that blew us all away:

What do you guys/gals think ? we quite love it, and the best part is we dont believe we are plagiarizing anybody else, also, the idea will be we will have multiple color and configurations of the robot for different tasks.

We are now trying to come up with a name for this one, as he will be the default mascot, so please, if you have any suggestions, do post them in the VPS.NET Blog

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

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.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, Relio, Toonz, WebHosting, XMAS

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.

The hasty sketch


The final Art

Technorati Tags: Cartoons, Christmas, Relio, Toonz, XMAS

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” ..

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.

The Draft

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).

Technorati Tags: Cartoons, Disney, Funny, Galileo Galilei, Goofy, Pateta, Rea & Leo, Relio, Toonz, WebHosting

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:

The Final Cartoon:

Technorati Tags: Funny, Cartoons, Rea & Leo, Toonz, WebHosting

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

Technorati Tags: Rea & Leo, Relio, Toonz, WebHosting, Work

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

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

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.

Technorati Tags: Funny, Rea & Leo, Relio, Toonz, WebHosting