"Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can't afford to lose." - Thomas Edison

Over the last few months i have experienced a existential crisis in the sense of I seem to have had a lack of time.

Although time is constant, of late I don't seem to have had enough Time. Time is also money, and I don't seem to have much of that lately either!

When I look back on my time, I can see I have been engaged in jobs that would, at face value, seem to take no time at all, but they have in fact used up a lot of my time!

I don't feel I wasted time, but when I look back on how I spent my time, I realise I needed more time than I had.

I tried to make time by doing things that saved time in my spare time, but these took a long time, and in the end it became a race against time to make sure I did things on time!

As time marches ever onward in to the new year, I will endeavour to manage my time more effectively and make up for lost time. There's still lots I want to do and share with you, and although time flies I realise I have all the time in the world. there's no rush. I will get round to things.

All in good time.

"Knowledge is the treasure of a wise man" - William Penn

While moving over to my new Samsung Dex setup I have been collecting all my old files from my desktop PC together. I have also been going through old disks, and hard drives.

Although tedious, going through scores of files folders and wondering what files like 'K752.jpg' were... (it was my dog!). It was a useful thing to do because I found treasure like no other. A lost arc-hive (ahem).

I managed to find an entire library of OBJ files that I have created or collected over the years. Also bits of old 3D  projects that were perhaps never completed.

I managed to find myself a OBJ previewer app so I can scan through these things a bit quicker. But its given me the opportunity to perhaps bring these into Nomad and give them a new lease of life and this is something I will be doing in the coming weeks.

There are a lot of files and documents to go through so I have top men working on it right now.

'top men!'

“I would say time is definitely one of my top three favourite dimensions.” - Randall Munroe

I have enjoyed 3D modelling over the years. Products character design, I've played about with most things during my career.

I've been using Autodesk Maya for years. As with most creative software you get hooked on what you use first and the Maya interface was always something I liked. I find it less cumbersome than other 3d packages out there, but each to their own.

When Autodesk introduced Mudbox I got into digital sculpting and I really liked that too.

So when I decided to switch to my Samsung Tablet (insert plug for the previous blog post here). The 3D side of things was something I thought would have to say goodbye to, or it would have to stay on the laptop.

That was until I discovered Nomad.

Oh my god its bloody brilliant!

(G Force is not paid to endorse Maya, Mudbox, nomad or any other products connected with or to any other corporate entity... unless they would like to......Please Pay me !)

Nomad is a 3D sculpting software available for Apple and Android.

I had played with other Android apps that allowed either 3D modelling or sculpting but couldn't say I'd ever found something that would come close to the experience I got from using Maya. But with Nomad the sculpting experience is great.

(Insert shameless plug warning here)

I also have to say that considering its 'only an app on a tablet'. The quality of the work that I can produce seems exceptional.

I set myself the task of trying to 'break the app'. If I could produce a sculpt of a similar quality and texture to what I could achieve in Mudbox then I'd be sold.

I set about sculpting dragon scales on a sphere. Everybody loves dragons, (apart from zombie snow monsters).

The poly count of this sculpt is about 1.5 million. And I have over a dozen layers of texture and paint on top of that and this thing still kept going. Its ridiculous!

I'm going to keep on exploring nomads potential over the coming weeks and months and see what I can really do with it but I can see this becoming another key weapon in my creative arsenal.

“I like physics, but I love cartoons.” - Stephen Hawking.

So when I thought about doing this blog it was going to be just a written thing. Just some of my thoughts and ideas as I went along.

I also thought it would be a good idea to show some 'behind the scenes' stuff. So screen captures of my work or in progress stills.

But besides that there wouldn't be a lot of graphics here. 

I'm not really a fan of talking to a screen (and you're not really interested in what I look like ... are you?) So 'vlogging' isn't really for me.

 But we do live in an interactive world. So I decided I would create a character to do the blog for me.

Meet Log

He started out as a graphic created in Adobe Illustrator. I prefer Illustrator for this stylized kind of artwork. And being a scalable vector graphic made sense.

Using some face elements that I already had from old animated characters it was simple enough to bring him to life to use as title cards for the blog.

But then, as these things do, another idea hit me.

With just a few more tweaks. I could create a character to go into Adobes Character Animator.

This would then allow for a more interactive blog experience. I could throw these on YouTube easy enough and I don't have to sit infront of a camera. (I also wouldn't have to worry about lighting or tidying this dump).

All I need do is write these blog posts down, record them as a voiceover. Few tweaks and Boom! Helllooooo video blogging.

People still may not look at them but who cares, this is more fun!

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. ― John Maeda, The Laws of Simplicity.

I love technology, its been a key part of my life. But I only like what works and what has a purpose and recently that got me thinking.

Over the last year or so I've been doing more and more digital artwork. Over the last month or so I've been playing more and more with my Samsung tablet and creating more of my artwork using that.

My current set up is this:

I have my desktop PC (a reasonably powerful machine) going into 3 monitors. My Wacom Cintiq is the 4th screen and from this I can run the full Adobe Suite quite happily. I run Autodesk Software (Maya & Mudbox) and also use it for Video and Audio production work.

I also have a reasonably powerful Windows laptop which also runs all the same software and can run 2 additional monitors (or just 1 and my Cintiq as the 2nd). Add to this technology menagerie a Samsung Galaxy Tablet and Samsung Phone and .... well it's a lot of stuff.

I've been playing about with my tablet a lot more these past few months, using Autodesk Sketchbook primarily. And the other day I thought to myself, "Do I NEED all this?"

The answer .... well ... no .... I don't think I do.

So, I had a bit of a think about what I have and what I think I want or am going to try to do Art & Design wise, and THIS is the new plan:

 The Desktop PC is going to go ! 

(This actually gives me a ton of space as it was a huge Alienware beast of a machine).

The Samsung Tablet running a mix of android and Samsung Dex will become the weapon of choice. Courtesy of screen casting and a decent USB hub I can still work on multiple screens or my Cintiq if I choose to. Moving to this setup could give me some greater flexibility in the way I work, and I will still have the laptop to do some of the heavy lifting if I need it.

There's going to be some trial and error in wiring the office so I wont sell the Desktop juuuust yet (always good to have a plan B !) 

But I reckon it will work.

If you're interested my new setup will be: Samsung Galaxy Tab, Samsung S9 Phone, Wacom Cintiq, 1 USB hub, 3 x 1 TB SSD Hard Drives, Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 & Condenser Mic, Onkyo Home Cinema System

It's not easy keeping a diary. You have to be pretty committed - Karl Pilkington

I have never been one for 'keeping a diary' but I have decided to do a few new things this year. (not dieting or jogging....no thanks!) 

So to that end I have decided to 'log' what I do creatively. I will be doing this retrospectively so this first post is a few weeks behind reality but I think that's ok as It gives me a chance to reflect and see if any of this was a good idea. I don't know if anyone will be interested in reading any of this. But it seems like a good idea, so what the hell! 

So lets go boldly where many, many people have gone before.

G Force's log, star date ... 1  .... so far so good.