Happy Umgah

[Lukipela]

I've been playing around quite a bit with the Vector capabilities of Inkscape lately. The result is a somewhat deranged umgah.



I'm not particularly happy with the tentacles, and I have a hard time filling up the blank space on the body to make it seem more three dimensional. But I think the face works well at least.

[Draxas]

Too few eyes and mouths. Otherwise, yes, quite deranged, and possibly not in control of his salivary response.

[Lukipela]

Too few eyes and mouths. Otherwise, yes, quite deranged, and possibly not in control of his salivary response.

Yeah, I kept the eyes and mouths to a minimum. I'm sort of harbouring the notion that if I get a hang of this vector drawing (and drawing in general), it might be fun to make a CYOA where you follow an Umgah through his "Evolution". But I'm not quite there yet I think.

[Quinarbre]

Interesting ! I've worked on a similar idea back in a while : I created an svg picture of a makeshift animal, and then toying with a few numeric parameters in the source I was able to make it "evolve" : change the colour of the body, shorten or strengthen some of its body parts, etc.

The most satisfying part of it all is that starting from a single file you can dynamically and painlessly (well, except for the initial conception of the beast) generate more distinct pictures than any hard drive will ever be able to store.

As a bonus, did you know that most browsers can directly display svg pictures ? Firefox has it as a native feature, IE may require a plugin but it's still feasible. The tricky part here is to mix it properly with html/xhtml but I think I've got an efficient wrapper for that too. Send me a message if and when you need help with that part.

[Lukipela]

Hmm, that's sounds interesting. It'd be fascinating to just do a base Umagh and then just "tweak" it. How far did you get on your idea?

[Quinarbre]

Not much further than what I said above.
Here is a small demo, which will work only in Firefox because of petty details such as serving xhtml+xml properly with php.

http://benjamin.wack.free.fr/tweak

I had made preparations for other body parts (horns, fangs...) but I got dragged into other things and never finished the damn thing. Oh, that, and the fact that I can't draw too.

[Lukipela]

Hey, that's pretty great. I wonder if a small joint project wouldn't be in order here... I can't draw either, but maybe we'd be twice as bad together

[Quinarbre]

... and Umgah are not supposed to be pretty. No, seriously, what's great with them is that you don't need to abide by any law of anatomy, so the odd eye can be placed nearly randomly anywhere without it being (extraneously) disgusting.

I'd be delighted to lend you a hand here !
I have one or two other ideas with svg which could apply to this project, but I don't want to spoil them for everyone .
The technology behind the HTML version of Life and Death of a Pkunk may be reusable here too, but it won't spare us the work on the Umgah.

I'm a tad busy right now, with the end of the trimester at the school I teach in and a one-month baby at home, but it should all cool down in 2 or 3 weeks, when I get my parental leave and then the Easter holidays.
Anyways I manage to drop by PNF here and then, so feel free to leave me a message whenever you want

[Lukipela]

A couple of weeks sounds good, I have some pressing business to attend to. Heh heh heh. But I'll be in touch!