Props- Fedora and Desk

It's really annoying that my connection at home seems to have it's own preferences to where I can and can't surf to. From work, I can get into this blog, my email account, and all kinds of lovely Internet-type stuff, but from home, I can't access popular sites like Yahoo Mail, Google Images, this blog here that you're reading. But I can get to BS sites like YouTube and DeviantArt without fail...and blazingly fast, too. And before everyone suggests that I clear out my cookies and try turning off my antivirus software I'll mention that the connection failure affects my Ubuntu box in exactly the same way....so I think we can rule out Windows Firewall, thank you very much Mr. Joey Stevens from tech support. Incidental, if his name was really Joey Stevens, then I'm the pope.
Anyway....now that I've gotten that out of my veins, let's show some pictures (I know you already scrolled down and looked....fess up). First up is the Fedora. When I hear the audio clip, I see a Bogart-ish character--fedora, unbuttoned shirt collar with the sleeves rolled up, soggy chewed cigarette. So, since I'm the director in this bit, I'm gonna run with it. Lofting a bunch of curves into a nice nurbs hat here worked out pretty nicely I think.



I'm gonna forgo the shirt and cigarette so I can avoid messing with cloth and particle smoke. I just wanna animate something fun.
We do need a scene, though. Seeing as how the clip seems to be a phone call, we'll need a phone. Seeing as what gravity tends to do to phones, we'll need something to put it on. A Desk would be great right about here:
Ahhh, that's nice. Nothin' too spectacular--just a big, solid desk. For a note, all the modeling being done for this piece is done by eye. At work, I have to recreate stuff down to the Nth degree, and it's really tedious. Put a nice little bump map on the desk to break up the slight amount of reflection for that "just got polished by the help" look. I see the shot opening with the character sitting in the chair, legs propped up on the desk--should make available a nice dismount when the phone rings. So I'm gonna have to make up a small rig for the chair so's that I can pivot it on the legs and I won't have to put any nasty keys on any geometry....in my book animating geometry directly is just bad form.

Got the phone and the lamp modeled and rigged for action already, so I'll post those later when I have the time. 'Till next time....