3D Max experiment

I Have been experimenting with 3D max lately and am coming along quite well I think, I have been trying my hand at modeling and doing slightly more complex animation animation techniques which at first where quite difficult to understand but later became quite logical. of course I have not mastered the skinning process and am only using basic omni lighting at the moment but with time I am sure that it will become second nature. here are two examples of my most recent work.

the first one I experimented with was a short exercise given to us in a recent lecture. I created this model again but did not look at the sheets (well actually once to get the height and width of the initial block that the exercise was started with) I was really surprised how easy and quick it was to model something in 3D max after only a few lessons. I also used custom omni lighting and a custom' skin' (chosen to look like plastic) henceforth inspiring the name 'Plastic man'
I had fun creating this character and hope to maybe bring it to life in the future by adding a few arm and leg movements... maybe even a face.


The second one I did was a more complex animation technique requiring a 'rig' on the character (some controller handles) to make moving the character less confusing... well it did indeed make the character easier to animate but the initial rigging was a pain at first but after a quick visit to Andy Love it was make clear what I was doing wrong and was corrected promptly. I decided to add a few features on the initial object (which looked like a leg with a giant ball on top) so I added a nose, mouth, two eyes, a pair of ears and some spiky hair with an antenna like one in the center. it turned out O.K and was easy to animate - however there was still some distortion on the bottom of the foot when it came back to its landing position but that can be rectified in the future. I am starting to like this program more and more and am quite sad to hear that we may be converting to Maya next year, however the experience gained here will not be in vain and I may even like Maya more.