One Ring to Seal Our Love

And, dear, this is our ring.

One Ring to show our love, One Ring to bind us
One Ring to seal our love, and forever entwine us

Well, not really. 'Cos I can't read Tengwar. The engraving on the ring is no other than the same script found on the One Ring.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them
One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them

Still a far cry from my references (Reference 1, Reference 2) but come on, this is the first time I really manage to draw something by myself. It'd probably look better if I can get the map to reflect more on the ring.

The font used for the bump map is Tengwar Cursive Truetype Font. Map of Middle Earth used in this rendering was retrieved from the internet as well.

Experimenting with Blobby Particles

Some simple renderings with Maya. This time, experimenting with "blobby particles". Again, refer to the video tutorial on The Gnomon Workshop.

The Eyeball Gallery

(For a comprehensive guide on how to create a realistic eyeball, refer to The Gnomon Workshop.)

Was thinking of creating eyeballs of various iris colours. Unfortunately, Google image search didn't come up with satisfactory candidates (low resolution, iris partially covered by the eyelid, bad exposure etc). So, I skipped to the next step, which is to alter the shape of the iris and the size of the pupil.

In the first row, you can see that the first one has a convex irs, the second one more of a flat iris, and the third one with a concave iris. Next, in the second row, are eyeballs with varying sizes of the pupil.

Now, moving on to the next project...

Stop Playing with that Eyeball

The preliminary result of two nights' work. An eyeball constructed from scratch using Autodesk Maya with the help of a four-hour long tutorial (from Gnomon Workshop). Lots of topics covered, including image-editing in Adobe Photoshop. Recommended even for beginners. (Heck if I could do it, than anyone can. All you need is some patience.)

Be warned though, since image rendering may take a hell longer than you think. I left Maya to render this particular photo (1000px by 1000px, Production quality), and after I was done brushing teeth and getting ready to bed, it was only half-done. That's how long it took.

Shit, time for bed. Gotta stop playing with the eyeball. More tweakings later.

Maya Basics

Kryptos's Shrine is under construction...

Tremble with fear, thou feeble mortals, for his dominion shall soon expand till the ends of the world. And then, upon the completion of his Holy Shrine, he shall rule man with wrath!

Nah. Just fooling around with some Maya tutorials...