I finally got tired of sitting on this little guy, so I decided to throw him out into the wild and hope for the best. Maybe I'll come back and actually build it some day, but for now, at least it'll give others a chance to play with it:

PDF of Pieces

PePaKuRa (PDO) Files

Good news, everyone! _{</Prof. Farnsworth>}

Some of you may remember the model of the Sentry Turret (from the game Portal) I did a while back. A few weeks ago, a member of the DIY site, Instructables, suggested I enter it into one of their current contests. Being one of my earlier models, It's fairly simple compared to some of my more recent ones, so I spent a few days re-building it while documenting the process to write a step-by-step guide. This will also be useful for some of you, as I've received more than a handful of requests for help with this model (as well as other portal ones) since Portal 2's release about a year ago.

The contest is judged by a combination of the results of a popular vote from registered site members, and the scores from a panel of the website's staff, so if any of you happen to have an Instructables account, _{or a minute to create a throw-away one}, I'd really appreciate your vote! Thanks for the support!





Additionally, since this was one of my first models, in the process of writing the guide I ended up making a handful of small tweaks and corrections to the PDF & PDO files; both have been updated with their new versions.

Quick little project I knocked out this weekend, w00t!

[link]

Blarghhh... I've had no motivation to work on anything lately. I wish I could blame my lack of productivity solely on work (and that's not to say it isn't at least partly responsible), but really I just haven't felt like doing anything.

My latest project (PotatOS) has been sitting idle since before Christmas... my muse seems to be on quite the extended holiday...


On a semi-related note, I got my first smart phone last month, and I am friggen addicted to DrawSomething! If anyone wants to play, my username is billybob884 !

Once again, we find ourselves on the cusp of a new year! 2011 has been tough for so many in several ways, and while I have been fortunate on the employment front, the time I've sacrificed to secure my position has cost me greatly in terms of artistic inspiration. But as we celebrate the completion of our journey around the sun, I look back on the fun I've had designing and building, and feel a renewal in my desire to model. With any luck, I'll finally finish the PotaDOS (PotatOS? I've seen it spelled both ways) model that's been sitting in my incomplete folder for so many months.

That being said, I wish the best to you all in this coming year, with high hopes for the future (or, at the very least, that the US govt. can get its shit together ).

This latest one took waay longer than I had hoped it would; Portal 2's release was a big contributor to the delays, but life in general has been sucking up a lot of my time. There's been a lot of birthday's and family events, my sister's Semester at Sea send-off, overtime at work (counting the commute, it's a 13 hour day without overtime...), but in the fleeting moments I've had free, I managed to finish the mechano-sphincter!...er, Mechanical Iris:


Still Shots

Animated



With this guy done, I hope to finally make a little headway with my next project, PotatOS! (Potato-powered GLaDOS from the above-mentioned Portal 2...) While I've converted the texture file to a usable format, I haven't been able to convert Valve's new model format yet. I could create a model from scratch, since it's pretty simple compared to many of my other projects, I'm hoping with a little more patience I won't have to.

I got Portal 2 this past Monday and had to hold off on it the whole week, since I really didn't want to play it in multiple sittings, and just finished chugging through the single player. I'm pleasantly surprised with how well it turned out. I wasn't expecting it to bomb by any means, I mean it's Valve after all, but for a sequel it's amazing! As good as, if not better than, Portal 1. Skip to the last paragraph if you haven't played it and/or don't want any spoilers.

Being a "10-hour" game, it had much more time to develop and move past the simpler puzzles, so it ended up being much more challenging towards the end, especially with all the new toys they added. I'm ashamed to admit I had to cheat on 2 or 3 of final few levels... but for the most part it turned out to be stud that was obvious in hindsight.

I did predict Wheatley becoming the bad-guy though; for some reason it's becoming an unwritten rule that the britt is always the back-stabber, though in the credits he did seem genuinely sorry for what he did... I was quite pleased with the ending otherwise, you even got the companion cube back at the last second!, and while the credits song was just as passive-aggressively funny as “Still Alive”, the tune just didn’t strike me as catchy.

All in all the dark humor was just as dark, and the puzzles were just as puzzling, so if you liked Portal 1, it's successor will be right up your alley

Additionally, I've been getting a lot of new traffic on my old Portal models lately, most likely due to Portal 2's release, but I've no immediate plans to recreate any of the new characters (or update any of the older ones), as I've been getting requests for already... but time will tell. I've also got another project in the works (which obviously has been sidetracked a bit ), but hopefully it'll be done within the next few weekends (frankly it would have been much sooner, but I've basically no time during the week anymore).

Ay! Faith and begorrah! A big happy St. Patricks Day to those who celebrate it! Now go get drunk!

Gahhhhh... It has come to my attention that some of my models are being sold without my permission...

[link]

[link]

Many thanks to the user who alerted me. As I offer my models for free, it pisses me off that other people are being cheated for my work... oy.


I am attempting to contact either the seller or website administrator to have them taken down and any buyers refunded (though it's a Chinese website... so we'll see how far I get)




UPDATE

Well, apparently they've been taken down already!

That was...suspiciously quick. To be honest, I hadn't expected to hear back from them at all... huh. I had to browse through the gallery to make sure, but I don't see them anywhere.

w00t!

Now that I tihnk about it, most, if not all of the models being sold are probably without permission. I don't off-hand recognize any of them, but if you happen to see one and know who the author is, please don't hesitate to contact them!

I'm actually going to have to keep checking this site; even though these two have been taken down, their gallery is up to 17 pages, where it was only about 14 an hour ago...

Well, that was fun. I've been working on this model on-and-off since the start of December, and just finished about 2 hours ago. The description says it all, and then some, but a few quick points. Though I did design and build mine from scratch, the original model idea belongs to Hiraku Nakamura, who only recently released/began selling the template to the heart-version of this. His cube template is as of yet unreleased.

All considered, I'm thrilled it works as well as it does. If I were to do it again (which I'm NOT going to), I'd probably use something sturdier for the pole so it doesn't shake so much... and maybe re-design the gears in the gearbox. They work pretty well, but they tend to slip if I go in reverse...

Now go check out the still pictures and the video!

Damn, what a day.

As some of you know, I started working at an electrical engineering firm in New York a few months ago, and lately they've had me going on site. So today, I got up, drove to the train station, took the train to new york, to the subway to my office, took a cab to the harbor, took a ferry across the river to Jersey, walked 6 blocks to the site, took the ferry back, and took a bus back to the train station. About the only thing I didn't do was fly... or kyack.

Anyone else have a fun day?



Also realized I hadn't been posting my little footer section for the past 6 or so entries, so I quick updated those

So I know I haven't posted a new model in months (with the exception of the Leg Lamp), but I do still stop in daily and answer my messages. I quick logged in about 5 minutes ago, and wham! Almost 400 messages in my inbox!

Apparently the Halo Needler gun I made way back in September of '09 just got a DD today! w00t! (my second DD!) Not sure what suddenly brought this on, but whatever, 's all good by me!

Work's been sucking up all of my free time, and I really haven't had any inspiration for my next project yet, so unfortunately I've nothing to say on what's in the works next... but I'll think of something!

Wow, haven't posted in a few months... quick! Say something!

Finished my latest little project... take a look if you've got a minute!

Completed shots

In-Progress shots

Hope all my US viewers had a great Thanksgiving!

Lotta stuff happening all at once (as they do often do in life), so I wanted to put up a little message for those interested.

- I've been promoted to Founder for the group ! Originally, started this group back in December of '09 and asked me to be Co-Founder, which I have been to the best of my abilities, but he has since stepped down for his own personal reasons (more info at the groups news board)

- My job's been going well, been there a full two weeks now and no major screw ups! The commute kinda sucks though, it's sucking up waay too much of my free-time/sleeping-time. Gonna have to do something about that.

- Ah, the next model. I still haven't had any luck with getting models out of Brütal Legend, so in the mean time, are there any fans of the old game, Stubbs the Zombie? I've been re-playing it, and I realized that since it was made with the original Halo 1 engine, I might be able to extract models from it with Halo 1 tools. Still just a theory, but if I'm able, I'm considering making that my next project.

I'm starting my new job on Wednesday, and won't have much time to throw into my projects anymore... well, at least the big ones. Thankfully, this was the last one I had ready to build waiting to be finished.


Check it ooouuuutt!!!


Assembled Image & Action Shots

It's been too sticky for me to want to sit for extended periods finishing my latest model, which I've been trying to get done before I start my new job next week, so I whipped up this little one in preparation for Fallout: New Vegas.


[link]





C'mon winter, get here soon!

Yea... it's been a bit of a crazy week.

For those that don't know, I finished school a bit under 3 months ago. I've been looking around for work... kind of taking my time, savoring having time off (I was an engineering major...ugh), but hadn't had much luck so far, which is where our story begins.

I interviewed at a firm in NY about... 5 weeks ago. They had told me they would let me know in a week or so, one way or the other. Two weeks go by, nothing. I give em a follow-up call to see what the deal is, but no one is answering. 3 weeks, 4 weeks, I figure 'Oh well, they gave the job to someone else and just didn't have the courtesy to call', so I end up taking a... less-than-appealing job working on an assembly line, just to get a little cash flow going.

I found the position through a local staffing agency. The lady didn't want to hire me at first because I was so over-qualified for it, which makes sense, I probably wouldn't stay long, but she ends up taking me anyway because it's only meant as a temporary gig in the first place since the factory has a large work order at the moment, and really needed the extra help.

First day there, the NY place calls and offers me a position.

Obviously I take it; even if they were to offer me a terrible salary, it'd still beat the hell outta working my ass off in a sweat shop for $10/hr (it turned out to be a pretty decent offer actually, but that's besides the point), but now I gotta call the factory lady and say, I'm really sorry, but this place I told you I thought wasn't going to work out actually offered me something, blah blah blah, I can finish out two weeks to give you time to find someone else if you want, etc, just trying to be as polite and apologetic as I can. So she gets all huffy, like oh, you've inconvenienced me sooo much (you're a fucking staffing agency, this is YOUR JOB to deal with flaky people, deal with it), and tells me to just finish the week (just this past week) and be done with it.

So now I've got a job in the heart of Manhattan, and tomorrow I'm going out for pizza to celebrate my employment, unemployment, and subsequent re-employment.

w00t!

As far as my personal projects go, I had started a new model back around the start of July, but it's been on hold all this week since the factory was a 2nd shift job (3-11pm). This Saturday was the first time I've touched it in a while. I've also got a few bits and pieces in the mail for a second idea I've got in the works... hehehe.



tl;dr:
I got hired, quit, and got hired elsewhere in the span of a day.

Gahhhhh poison ivy suckssss. No idea how I even got it though, I haven't been around anywhere I could have gotten it... maybe from my dog?


Side note!
My llama models are now a Daily Deviation!... well, the PDO deviation was chosen, oddly enough, but whatever, my first DD!

Also, my poison ivy rash has finally gone away, so I've gotten started on building my next model!

Finally! I got's me a Golden Llama! Thanks be to



ALSO! I'm apparently only ~800 hits away from the 200,000 milestone. Yay for me!

Also! Sometime last night I hit the 200k pageviews milestone! w00t!

Huh, did anyone know there was a limit on how many Llama badges you can send?

There were problems with your submission:

    * Couldn't give that badge, since you've hit the rate limiter.

I've been scrambling to get as many out as I can to quick get to 10k since I finished the paper llamas (plus I'm only 800 away ). I don't know if it's per hour, day, or what, I just got this a few minutes ago (for the first time, I might add). Anyone else have this problem?


Update

Waited about half an hour (5:50 to 6:25) and I'm able to send again, so... only so many per hour?


Update 2

I'm getting a different error message now:


There were problems with your submission:

    * Badges have been given too quickly, and have tripped a spam filter. Slow down a bit. You won't be able to give more badges for a few minutes.


I don't seem to be getting the original message at all, so this must have replaced it to better explain the problem.