Blender part 12 – Steve’s back again!

So I fixed his fingers somewhat – still not perfect, I can’t get a good fist, but the fingers no longer twist in an awkward way.

Stand-up comedian

As mentioned in a previous post, I’m a fan of comedy. Also, I’m a fan of Stewart Lee¹. To my mind, he elevates stand-up to an art form² and is also hilarious. To Mrs S he just drones on about stuff³. Anyway, I have a picture of the man in full flow.

This photo was the inspiration for Steve’s new job as a stand-up comedian. But to make it more obvious that Steve is in a comedy club, rather than giving a lecture (on the use of Lammas bread in recipes for hobbit), I thought it was necessary to add comedy club trappings. This means a curtain and lights such as Stew has and a neon sign so we know he’s in a comedy club. And a microphone, mike stand and a suitable pose.

The mike stand was the easiest part. A cylinder for the upright and another, cut in half lengthways, for the clip.

The microphone was also fairly simple. I decided to just show the top of Steve’s hand, so I didn’t need to model the flex, mainly because the right arm looks a bit weird when it’s bent. So a cylinder, tapered a bit, a sphere as the inner part of the microphone and another sphere given a wireframe look as the input bit. And a flat cylinder as the metal ring around the bit you speak into⁴.

Posing Steve wasn’t too hard since I’d done a bit of this already. Getting the hands to look reasonably realistic depended on getting the curl of the fingers right, which I had done already.

Now I just needed to set the scene.

Blender can add physics to an object, and the physics I needed for the curtain is the Cloth Modifier. Using this, an otherwise flat object can be made to act like cotton, silk, leather whatever you like. You can drop it, drape it or pin it in place to react to gravity and other forces.

For this, I followed a tutorial to make a curtain which would hang behind Steve. And I decided that the Mordor Improv is a slightly down-at-heel establishment, so the curtain is drooping a bit.

More interesting is the neon sign behind Steve. I had to go through a couple of tutorials to get from ‘I have this idea’ to ‘I can do this now’. Two fonts are in this – Bauhaus (Mordor) and Freestyle Script (Improv). The Eye of Sauron was originally the O of Mordor, pulled around a bit and given a different colour to look more evil eye-like.

So now Steve has a job. He’s struggling to keep Sauron’s minions entertained at the Mordor Improv.

If you have any Middle Earth jokes, let me know!

1. Some would say the two are mutually exclusive. Mrs S, for one. ↩︎
2. Strokey beard moment. ↩︎
3. She’s right. But it’s the way he does it. ↩︎
4. Sorry to get all technical with you, there. ↩︎