Caution: Introvert
Below you’ll find posts about my hobbies, random musings, good ideas, worse ideas, and other assorted things I make for fun. Geek dad stuff is a given and probably cool stuff I’ve seen or done.*
My professional work will largely be seen in my portfolio pages under all of the non-Blog menu items in the header right up above. If you’d like to hire me for some creative work then check those pages out first and then head here to contact me. Or this may change, we’ll see. Cheers.
*I make no guarantee of any blog posts being interesting, well-written, researched, or entertaining. These are aspirational goals all, I’m afraid. Read at your own risk.
Can I have an Adobe-free life?
I’m old enough to remember what a revelation it was when Photoshop added layers. Old enough to struggle learning Illustrator 88 with no YouTube tutorials or even internet. While no expert, I consider myself very skilled in Adobe’s ecosystem especially the big three for me: Indesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop.
Today, however it’s time to choose. I was just laid off from my full-time design position I’ve held for 25 years. Needless to say my Creative Suite and lately Creative Cloud expenses were paid by my employer. That’s over. Just before I was dumped I started to learn After Effects via a Udemy course to add a new skill to my Bag of Tricks™.
Luckily a few years ago I bought the v1 Affinity suite of apps on sale; I think it was $75 for all three; to OWN. I really liked Designer a lot and began to do a lot of my illustration work with it. It actually felt like it had been built in this century as opposed to Illustrator. Photo was great too, but I had little opportunity to use Publisher. My pro work needed to be in InDesign to collaborate internally and I had little desire to do page layout at home.
Canva buying Affinity was worrisome, but when they launched Affinity v3 it was impressive and free. Naturally most of us never believed the free part, but Canva seemed to be aware of how their potential customer base feels screwed over by Adobe and their best sales pitch was constantly assuring creatives that they are not Adobe. I believe them, for now, but Canva; be aware! I’m keeping my eye on you!!
Deciding that I was going to make a go with Affinity, the announcement that Canva also aquired Cavalry, an After Effects competitor I’d never heard of, made me more confident I was making the right move. After a few hours trying out Cavalry it was clear that it was way ahead of After Effects in terms of useability. It felt modern just like Affinity had to me before. Even better, this time I didn’t need to unlearn any app habits like I had to with the Affinity suite. I had barely got into After Effects when I lost access to it. Cavalry also appears to play nicely with Blender which I’ve used for years and recently began learning to animate with it.
I’m going to make a go of being Adobe free as a freelancer I think. I plan to chronicle that adventure here as well. If success is in my future maybe this will convince others that they can do the same.
Let’s go make some stuff!
1940’s truck jack
A new 3D model for my latest diorama in 1/35 scale.
Latest 3D model made for my own diorama, but it will be another entry in my Cults3D shop as well. It’s a Hein-Werner 8-ton bottle jack modeled from a drawing in a 1941 Hein-Werner catalog. Did the US Army use them in WWII? Maybe? But the truck in my diorama has a repaired flat tire and it stands to reason they used a jack. These were around during the war so I figure there’s a chance a few made it to Europe, right?
Camping, but with tanks
Here’s my first complete figure available on Cults3D. It’s a 3D scan of my son in some clothes that were close to what I wanted, and then I sculpted in the parts to make it historically accurate, in this case of an Afrika Korp self-propelled artillery crewman in 1940-41. The head and boots were sculpted from scratch in Nomad Sculpt and Blender. My first figure in what I hope will be a series called the 200 Series. I chose this subject out of necessity for a 1/35 scale diorama I’m planning, but wanting to make casualty figures was a long-term goal of my digital sculpting.
I’ve always felt it was odd after years in the 1/35 scale armor modeling community that so few dioramas featured casualties. One reason is that there are simply very few casualty sculpts available. There’s this conceit that somehow showing casualties in your modeling is distasteful which I consider ridiculous. After all we are often modeling subjects from WWII, the most destructive conflict in human history where tens of millions were killed. To me some dioramas looked like “camping, but with tanks.” To me, figures are the most expressive part of armor modeling and are there to tell the story. And sometimes that story can be grim and sad. I’ll never understand the need to depict ultra-accuracy with a vehicle while ignoring the reasons it existed. It feels disingenuous somehow (in my opinion of course).
My creations for this series will be drawn from real historical photos but will not be models of specific people, but instead amalgams of various sources, real life model poses, and my imagination. I don’t feel they need to be overly gruesome to be effective, but sometimes maybe that will happen. We’ll have to see. Maybe I can fill a niche with these, but no matter what they will help me tell the stories I want to with my hobby.
Pit Droid
My first droid built with my first FDM 3D printer.
My first 3D printed droid is finally finished. Assembly and painting was a lot of fun and my xp with scale armor modeling came in handy for the tools and techniques to weather the droid up nicely. The color scheme will serve quite a few uses. The dark blue and yellow will work for a social media pic for my full-time University of Rochester job. The light blue and yellow is a nod to Ukraine, and maybe if the Sabres are ever any good again I can dress him up for a playoff run. The Droid Division files I printed from were fantastic. I have no idea how much I spent on it, other than too much. If I make anything larger than this I need to invest in a better printer to get smoother prints; filling and sanding is not fun.