I finally found some time to study pyconstraints and I must say I had great fun with them. Pyconstraints (Python Constraints) are custom constraints coded in python by the user, they let us modify the behavior of bones any way we like. Luckily there is a pyconstraint template bundled with Blender and available in the Text Editor where 50% of the job is done for us. We “only” need to fill in the “original” part.

I’m happy to show you my first pyconstraint ! Actually is my second one, but the first mildly useful… so. Here it is ! The X-Pivot constraint ! (<--- yeah go download the blend now !)
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These last years I had the chance and privilege to meet quite a lot of reknown talented people. I mean people like Peter Lord, Daniel “pepeland” Martinez Lara, Bassam Kurdali, and many others. I was lucky.

One of the most noticeable features of these personalities, the one that impressed me the most, was their lack of arrogance. They all are kind and polite people, very enthusiastic about other people’s work, funny and humane.

In the other side, I also met lots of artists that were incredibly arrogant and nasty people, always motivated by envy or jealousy, rude and usually fake in their manners.

I wondered what was behind these two different attitudes towards colleagues.

During our long after dinner chats with Bassam in Ghent we discussed this behaviour pattern he also noticed and we arrived to a conclusion. It’s self confidence.

People that is confident with themselves, don’t act either arrogant, nor envious, nor jelous, nor rude, nor fake with their colleagues. They see them as pairs, not competitors. They share their knowledge and try to learn from other people’s experience with no second intentions or hidden thoughts. They focus on the subject not on names, vanity or fame.

So, it’s not really an incurable state and I think we all went thru that stage in our lives. It’s part of the process of building up a knowledge of our strenghts and limitations, the process of accepting ourselves the way we are and deal with the fact that there are things we can do and some other we can´t. Self confidence, self knowledge.

There is no shame in not being as good at something as other people. There is no shame in accepting advice.

I’m not perfect either, and I recognize that I have been arrogant, rude and fake among other nasty things. And every now and then I’m guilty of envy and jelousy as well. That’s the human condition. However I have learnt to recognize these syntomps as syntomps of lack of confidence. This helps me to deal with my emotions, and keep me focused on what’s important: to learn and get confidence on what I was insecure and made me act as an ass.

Learning is what’s life is about, isn’t it ? Let’s keep learning

The funny part of making a toon style rig is that we are allowed to add all kind of weird stuff and exaggerated deformations. But rig toons are challenging as well. One common problem is how to “bend” our characters as they were made out of rubber ? Among the many possible solutions to this problem the one that I’m going to explain I found the easiest and faster to set up.

The system is based on the deformation of a mesh deformer by using an armature with B-bones. It can be applied to legs, arms or even the spine of a character so I’m going to explain it on a generic limb, but we can think of it as a thigh for instance. It won’t really matter.

I’d like to thank Alambrito here who has kindly lent me his left leg for me to play with. That’s a true friend ! !
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Since in the next months I’m going to be busy with Mercator and daily work I decided to take a moment to finish the original Lighthouse project I was working on, and the one that ultimately inpired The Mercator Project.

The final image can be seen now at the gallery

Some information about the image: foam, fog, splashes, droplets and everything that has to do with the wave splashing against the lighthouse rocks, was done using particles, nodes, textures in compositor and final touches in Gimp. It looks complicated, but in reality… it’s “flor de quilombo” !

Note from Editor: “Flor de quilombo“: argentine expression to describe a big messy and complicated thing that cannot be described in words but living nightmarish suffering and unspeakable horror

EDIT: The lighthouse got popular at BA.org, and its glorious path lead it to the Forum Gallery and even the Banner of that site (!). Not sure if this was a good or bad thing as it was horribly cropped in the process but anyway…
Now that I’m famous, what should I do ? drink Evian water ?