My Random Thing From College

Also known as: A Random Thing That I Made in College on My First Day Because I Was Bored and there Was Nothing to Do.

My current college class, Intro to Computer Graphics, teaches Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign.  This is a prerequisite to the Computer Animation class, but they still had Blender on the computers--Autodesk Maya, too!!  I'd been wanting to try Maya (a much more professional Blender-like tool) for quite a while; I still experiment with it every now and then before classes start, so right now I know my way around the basic basics (which is still more than I used to know, anyway).  Nonetheless, I used Blender to make the image (In College on My First Day Because I Was Bored and there Was Nothing to Do).

First, I modeled a basic Gus-like guy.  For the fire, I could get into the technical details of creating a domain cube, setting a particle system, setting smoke within the physics properties, modifying the properties, setting a ramp for a fiery effect and tweaking even more settings, but this is past-Blender 2.64, so I went around it differently, a.k.a. pressing the space bar to search, selecting "quick smoke," and setting the type to "fire."

To get the guy more glowy than ablaze, I tweaked the "flame rate" to about .25 instead of 1, making less (or just less-powerful) fire.  As for the disco balls, I believe I just made them reflective and just a bit transparent; it's surprising how cool that can look if you modify the sky as well!