# What I do for school/future career...



## MFB

Hi guys/gals.

It's Thursday, which means I've been in class from 9AM-5:30~ and then come home and loaf around feeling like the rest of my day is useless, so I figured I'd instead of doing homework I should be doing (desperately); I'd post my art-works of what I do for school and future career of 3D Environment Artist.

Here's some stuff from my Hard Surface/Organic Modelling class, in which we model both ...hard surfaces (metal, wood, plastic) and organic stuff (skin, clothes, etc)



Close-up of the light-bulb housing




This next one was by far my biggest challenge and I tackled it over the course of a few days assembling the pods one day, then the ground another, making the generator here and there, etc... Total count for this scene was over 7.7 MILLION polygons, which for reference, characters in games are usually around the 10-15K mark but can go as high as 30K + environments which are around 100-300K depending upon the style/environment/etc... so say 4-500,000 TOTAL?

Each one of these images took 37 minutes to render, 37 MINUTES for one photo.










This is an underground crystal cavern project I started for an outdoor scene but scrapped for that assignment since it was meeting full criteria. Ideally, I'd like 
to go back and finish it to be a full portfolio piece.




From the other end of the cavern looking inward




My most recent piece, an underwater scene featuring a handful of sunken ships, some shields, etc... This guy when he was said and done was 1,440 frames of content and took about ...9 hours to render for just under a minute of footage!


Once this quarter ends I'll be updating my new Tumblr (exbendableart.tumblr.com) fairly often since we do weekly assignments. For my own personal projects, I'll be starting a spaceship hopefully in two weeks during my break, but we'll see what happens.


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## JoshuaVonFlash

Awesome stuff, when I around 10 I wanted to be a graphic designer, but then I started playing music. But I've always had a soft spot/hobby for this kind of stuff. I haven't done any 3-D modeling though, I've just kept it doodlings and stuff like that.


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## MFB

The hardest part about 3D Modeling is getting the software. It's crazy expensive for the base program I use ($4K for 3DS MAX) along with other programs costing around the same like ZBrush which is used for pretty much all game characters now because it makes creating wrinkles and hair, etc... so much easier.

Once you GET the software, it's just about putting in time to get quicker at modelling. I've whipped out some quick models before, and some stuff you can create bases for like human bodies. You create a generic template to work from, then just re-arrange certain elements to create a new physique and then create clothing on top of that.


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## JoshuaVonFlash

I never knew the software cost that much, btw I've always wanted to know how people in the virtual/gaming arts get their jobs. Do they just simply apply for a job when there's an opening or are they given a position by the school they graduate from? And what's the fastest time you've ever put together a model?


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## Promit

You mentioned homework so you're a student... 3DS and the rest of the Autodesk software have been free for students for some time now. ZBrush is sadly not free but 600 is... Well, more reasonable than 4,000. You get Mudbox from Autodesk but everyone seems to hate Mudbox.

As far as how people get these jobs, games and entertainment are very much based on ability rather than credential. It's all about showing a strong portfolio with solid technical and artistic ability. And the ability to see something to completion. Many build those portfolios and skills as part of their degree, many do it on the side. After that you apply for jobs. Games, movies, TV, whatever.

Me, I am a programmer and I have been making games on my own time for years and years. I took a break during college to work on AAA titles which was a very nice year off. I didn't have a degree, just a history of creating and a lot of technical knowledge.


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## MFB

Yeah, that's true that as a student we do get it for free which I can't stress how amazing it is that they're willing to do that for us. Same for Unity who have both a free version and a Pro version which has some cool stuff but nothing too major in comparison if you don't really need it.

I didn't realize Zbrush was so much cheaper, I knew it was an Autodesk product which usually means a hefty tag attached to it but that's not bad at all. Not sure what the learning curve is like compared to 3DS/Maya (the latter of which I've heard is a nightmare)


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## Alimination

MFB said:


> Not sure what the learning curve is like compared to 3DS/Maya (the latter of which I've heard is a nightmare)



Honestly if you know one program you know them all. I started out in Max in school, but when I went to my currently job we use Maya primarily. It's mostly the keyboard shortcuts that you have to re figure out. 

If you're on a budget check out Blender. It's a free and top notch program. Totally able to compete with the top dog tools.

Zbrush is a bit different because you're not in a 3D word necessarily, It's more like you're looking down at a model and turning it around with your hand as you sculpt. The interface is different from most 3D applications. Once you master it, it is an irreplaceable tool. Their main website has fantastic beginner tutorials. 


Also cool scene! 

Have they thought you texturing and material/shaders yet? Man, you went far and beyond polygon count lol 7 mil for a simple scene? You're brave sir! Has your machine exploded?

hehe seriously, your work eats my beginner stuff.

Check out the wireframes on some of the industry games. It's all in the Textures.


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## Philligan

That's awesome, man.


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## MFB

Alimination, I haven't posted my textures yet since I'm in that class right now  I'll definitely be posting them once they're done though. For HSaOM its more about the model then anything else so everything gets a basic gray material.


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## Sebastian

Why on earth didn't I see this earlier 

Awesome work man!


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## mikernaut

Actually to chime in I would say that a good texture artist is an unsung hero, ( Even if the model is mediocre, a solid painter/texture artist can really push it to greater heights) but more often it's still a sum of all parts. quality of the model, polycount, lighting, engine etc.

What's the old saying? " your only as strong as your weakest component/part?"


My studio is working on a mobile game currently and the limitations are ... shall I say politely .. very frustrating for the art team. It feels like your handicapped off the start, so it's up to the talent of your team as to what they can squeeze out, giving the restrictions.


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## MFB

Yeah, I've been looking do a low-poly game for a little while now and from what I've seen for other games in the vein that I'm doing, the textures go a LONG way as well as normal mapping.

I'm sitting here right now actually unwrapping a Gladiator for my final on Thursday and good lord, it's taking forever. I then have to do through and do the texturing which is going to be extremely mediocre since I'll have about two days to do it, then render a turnaround + wireframe for a demo reel to pass the class. 

Kill. Me.


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## MFB

Sneak peek at what I'll be posting in a few days for my Materials class





Just rendering the wireframe alone has taken just under 10 hours with Mental Ray for 166 frames, and the total video is only 300 frames. I also have to render this out one more time with the actual materials on there, which I'll be doing at school with a small render farm (hopefully)


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## Alimination

mikernaut said:


> My studio is working on a mobile game currently and the limitations are ... shall I say politely .. very frustrating for the art team. It feels like your handicapped off the start, so it's up to the talent of your team as to what they can squeeze out, giving the restrictions.



I like what you brought up. There is a little magic in that kind of limitation. Back in school our teachers gave us a limitation of only being able to use a few colors to paint on a canvas. It really pushed us to think outside the box. 

Same could be applied with guitar. There was a clinic with Greg Howe and he talked about ways to improve creativity. He suggested by maybe write a song off one string? (which he pulled off on the spot effortlessly) lol


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## MFB

Materials and Lighting class has officially wrapped up (thank GOD) so I'll ha e that posted up soon. I'm gonna be starting my own personal project this week so hopefully I can show that off too.


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## MFB

It took a LOT of work in the end (6 all-nighters in a month) since I got behind trying to please my HS&OM teacher and neglected M&L, but I got a B- from the teacher whom I clash with the most and really care not to have again; even though I know I have at least one more class to take with him, as well as possibly/most likely my Portfolio classes 

Here's a shot from the game I'm currently building in my spare-time, it's going to be an on-rails sort of flight simulator where you go flying around in space shooting out turrets/enemy ships/collecting power-ups, etc...

Right now, one of the corridors which will repeat (kind of like Temple-Run where you've got a handful of paths and they just interchange) is 3,400 polygons and the four-way intersection between them is at 849, so I'm at 4,249 total for a large chunk of the game. You'll also notice a railway running down the middle of the pathway, which is gonna be for a service-cart that goes around making repairs to the ship's exterior and you'll have to dodge it. Along with that, there's going to be little service-tunnels which you can fly through but will be somewhat challenging as they'll have clusters of piping and such to deal with, so I'll have to model those soon; along with the turrets that you'll destroy, and a large chunk of other assets but right now I wanted to get the main environment components down.


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## MFB

More sneak peeks coming at ya, this time it's a service tunnel I decided to make which goes below the main run of the ship's hull. With some of the missions I've got in mind where you've got to first take out power generators for the turrets, you can either dodge their rounds by spiralling/etc, using your shield power which is limited to period of use and then recharges over time, or just straight avoid them by going in these and around until you find the generators and then take em out.

Given how fast the ships move, the light fixtures aren't super high-detailed and will more rely on textures than bump/normal maps




Entryway into the tunnel, which as you can see is a pretty simple/clean transition. There is an inclined ramp that leads down, but given the angle you can't see it




And here's said ramp leading down into the tunnel


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## MFB

Also relevant, business cards!

The other day I designed a vertical card and got some feedback and I tried something different. That next one had the same info twice, but they were mirrored so that regardless of how you flipped the card, it was immediately readable. Needless to say it looked crammed and was a better idea than execution. Then today I remembered looking at some cards that were sort of based off of playing cards and I figured I'd try my hand at them (no pun intended). 

Kind of crappy with the black barring but it does have some personal info on there and I'm not too keen on having it just floating around on the web (at least not until I'm worth a damn for work)





This is a sort of time lapse for the revisions I've done and you can see how they changed. I changed from my original 3x3 white-on-black square to a hexagon to create this little honeycomb looking thing and it reads both down, or clockwise which works nicely. I tried two different styles of borders: one along the inner portion of the card connecting the two pieces, as well as one along the outer edge; then eventually both together. That created this weird negative space which framed the card rather oddly so I ditched it, but did realize that filling in the missing portion from the original (top left) gave a more complete feeling (bottom left). From there I played with the size/spacing/placement of name and info and it was where I wanted it.


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## MFB

Welp, what initially started out as a low-poly ship quickly turned into a regular count ship, and this is right at about 20K, mainly due to the front guns/rockets, but this is just one ship out of probably 5 or so that I've got planned. I got the hull of the ship down in about 2 hours, then did wings, and moved onto little details like the engine and thrusters, stabilizer fins, rocket pod, etc... Total time spent modeling was off and on about six hours, and I'll probably go in and add a bunch of little details for a higher-poly (100K maybe?) normal map that can be applied to this 20K mesh and really bump up the look (no pun intended)


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## MFB

Ship progress = currently unwrapping, got about 3/4 of the way so it should be done shortly and ready for texturing. Completed portions are: nose tip, front extrusion, cockpit, top/mid/bottom of hull, landing gear flaps, wing hinges, hinge screws, cannon housings, stabilizer fins, right rear thruster, left air intake, combustion chamber. Which means it needs one more intake unwrapped, one more thruster, the main engine exhaust, cannnons, wings, and rocket pods/rockets.

My new school quarter started yesterday so I won't have too much cool stuff to show off in here since I'll probably be busy just working. At the moment, I've spent the past hour or so working off and on in Maya and I've got to say it's quite horrid. Everything I know about modeling in Max is still relevant, but the shortcuts are entirely different, there's no simple way to load custom presets, and everything takes an extra step at minimum. I don't see why anyone would want to use this after using Max. Hell, even moving around the viewport is a pain in the ass since you have to use Alt for everything instead of just middle-mouse.


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## MFB

One week of using Maya and here's what I managed to model for an old west town square. Buildings are town hall, sheriff's office, saloon, general store, and hotel on the far end with the staircase all centered around the gallows; because who doesn't love watching a good hanging? Threw in some hitching posts as well. Wanted to add in a train platform/ticket booth and some train tracks but might not get time tomorrow before our final hand in but whatever, this'll do compared to what some people got done.


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## Alimination

Hey Ben, have you had a class for concept art yet? Specifically dedicated to Matte paintings?

I know you're getting into the environment art thing, So I figured that should be something you may want to look into before laying out large scale compositions. Saves us hours and hours worth of work. 

Anyways, keep at it mate


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## Promit

Just going to warn you now, environment artists are a dime a dozen and the work is increasingly being outsourced. If that's really what you want to do, then okay. But if your heart isn't set there, I'd strongly encourage you to explore other areas as well.


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## MFB

Promit said:


> Just going to warn you now, environment artists are a dime a dozen and the work is increasingly being outsourced. If that's really what you want to do, then okay. But if your heart isn't set there, I'd strongly encourage you to explore other areas as well.



Really? I've heard there's lots of openings for environment but that character artists were dime a dozen?

Ali, I've done some digital painting and its something Idnlike to explore in more detail - which is why I'm buying a Monoprice or Yiynova monitor later this year


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## MFB

Question for you guys while this is bumped: for your portfolios, did your teachers have you do a specific focus piece? I know for my school, we do two demo reels: one general reel and one focus specific, and I was curious as to if your teachers let you do anything you wanted for that focus reel or if it had to be original.

For mine, I was thinking of recreating a scene from a movie or older game and increasing the quality of it, but I've seen most people doing entirely original works. Is it because that's usually what's encouraged since most people have ideas they want to do, or because it just shows off you can take something from concept all the way to finish, etc...


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## Alimination

We had three portfolio reviews, one for every other year, and the last one was the final one that they helped show businesses to snag you a gig.

The first two, were based off your early classes. So more life drawing, Concept art, environment, etc on the first. Second was more 3D based such as hard surface, and organic modeling, and level design. 

The last was whatever you wanted. I'd suggest showing off a tiny bit of everything, but have your main love on your full display. There is a whole debate on specialty artists vs jack of all trades artists that you could decide for yourself. If you do see a gig available that you really want to be apart of, I'd base my demo reel around that position and show off all it's requirements.

As for the environment art being a dime in a dozen comment, I'd take it a step further and say being an artist in general is tough. Just got to find a way to stand out from the others and network. Sometimes it's just accidental luck.


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## MFB

Man, I finally registered with Digital Tutors last week and I watched like, 3 hours on Modular Modeling for environments by one dude and just spent like another hour watching Gnomon workshop stuff with one of the guys from Blizzard. I'm more impressed with the speed than anything, but I imagine videos are also sped up a bit to make it less time consuming for viewers. 

I also REALLY want Vray now


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## Alimination

man, good for you dude. I took the same route. 80% of my knowledge comes from the gnomon / digital tutors video. Priceless information there. After working on projects for some time, you do develop an eye and thought process that results you in busting out projects real fast.

haha I haven't messed with Vray first hand, but a lot of the settings do seem very similar to Mental Ray. I'm sure the transferring of your knowledge over won't be hard at all. 

Cheers


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## MFB

Watched about ...45 minutes of Nate Stephen's "Environmental Design for Games" and his Maya work is just so god damn mind-blowing (to someone just starting in Maya). I should start learning to use Snaps more since that seems to be the common trend, and blocking out from concept art to 3D space is something I need to do more since you don't really get orthographics to work from like my teacher used to have us do, you mostly get concept stuff and have to stick to that while making it your own.

I need more time in the day for all this shit, I just want to watch until my eyes fall out


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## Vrollin

man I thought I was good because I was doing basic shit in sketchup..... Amazing work mate!


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## mikernaut

In response to the jack of all trades debate. In general your most likely just going to be doing 1 role. While it does help to have the knowledge and multiple skills it is rare (in my opinion) to excel at multiple disciplines.

Personally, myself I have been trying to get into more character concepting but usually find I get pigeonholed into painting textures. I also took a zbrush class at the local college but modeling programs can be frustrating to get the feel/control. ( funny enough I hated photoshop when I 1st tried it and now that's my go to program vs drawing with pencil and paper like I used to do.) So maybe one day I'll get over that 3d hurdle.

That being said a 3d generalist is not a bad choice. You can tackle props, environments etc. Characters are most likely going to be handled by senior modelers.

But focus on what you really are passionate about and hopefully your hard work will pay off and shine through.

The industry is very tough the last few years with the bad economy and studios shutting down left and right. There are also lots of schools pumping out more people looking to compete for very few jobs against others with work experience.

If we wanted a easier career path we should have been programmers. LOL


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## MFB

mikernaut said:


> That being said a 3d generalist is not a bad choice. You can tackle props, environments etc. Characters are most likely going to be handled by senior modelers.
> 
> But focus on what you really are passionate about and hopefully your hard work will pay off and shine through.



The more I can do to NOT model characters, the better off they'll look  That's the biggest reason I want to learn Zbrush/Sculpting, because from what I've seen it's a lot nicer for characters, and then you bring it back into 3DS/Maya for re-topoligizing and voila - great characters (relative to the artist's ability)



> If we wanted a easier career path we should have been programmers. LOL



I wish coding were that easy, I've done two semesters of Unity now and I still can barely stumble my way through it


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## MFB

We hit mid-terms for the quarter today, and uh, turns out I'm about to take my first portfolio class next quarter  This is the one point I was worried about since I don't feel any of my work is portfolio ready, especially for a focus reel. Not much of what we do is environment focused, and even the class that we do have for it (Game Environment Art) is more about quantity than quality (something I detest, nay, ABHOR).

We also were just forced (yes, it was a homework assignment) to submit our work into our schools award ceremony, which also sucked big time. I have stuff I work on in my free-time but nothing that's award worthy. People spend YEARS developing stuff for judging and suddenly we're handing in stuff we've had one WEEK to work on? Talk about pressure.

Hopefully I'll have some new stuff to post on here soon, at the moment it's just been all character models (which suck) but Team Production is getting into swing so I should have some concept art for shots/environments that some of y'all might dig


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## MFB

So I've been kind of slouching on this since nothing I've done has been too interesting from a visual standpoint (mostly character rigging which is all the under the hood stuff and "ruined" how I see games now)

BUT, one of my classes is now going full steam ahead with Team Production and I've got some fancy-schmancy MAPS!

This is the first one I designed for our Junkyard game. A lot of this comes down to Modular Modeling so that while it might look like a lot of space to cover, a good chunk of it will be reusable models that repeat but not in a way that the level makes you feel like you aren't going anywhere and it's still easily navigable. The main concept throughout all of these is several main paths that allow you to go all throughout the map with smaller, narrower paths and some hidden ones through the junk piles. 







While that one wasn't bad, it's simply a jumping off point for what worked and what didn't and it still felt kind of large and not detailed enough. I worked my way up to this one in which you can see the junkyard is built around an enemy campsite and there's the main building in the back which they protect. The centralized location of the guard center means they take the same time to find you regardless of where you are in the map since that's their spawn point.






I've come to like this last one the best and instead of doing a pathway tutorial before the game, you simple crash land in the middle of the junkyard and that's the reason that the enemies are hostile towards you; because you're technically an invader on their turf. There's still a jump/crouch "tutorial" as you walk through the junkyard but it's not as cut-n-dry as the previous maps.





At the moment I'm working on a fourth map taking some concepts from the rest of my team and integrating them into the newest map which'll blend some of my previous concepts as well; then Friday we'll be meeting up and choosing which one to go with for the final design.


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## MFB

Update!

This week's focus was on doing an interior/exterior and I think pagodas are really interesting from a design standpoint, so I figured, why not? They can be kind of tricky getting everything line up right and I definitely should've sized it differently because it's not to human scale at the moment but oh well, it looks pretty. Best part was, all I had to model was one of the following:

Staircase
Base walls (different from steeple walls)
Base roof
Base railing
Steeple walls
Steeple balcony
Steeple railing
Steeple roof
Top roof

It's modular modeling (modeling one element that repeats in the scene) at it's finest since  That'll definitely cut down on unwrapping time for texturing in the next week so I'll get a jump on that Thursday night and make some magic happen.

Threw in a daylight system to make it look pretty, and voila





Oh right - the best part is, the polycount for this entire scene is about the same as a character model (19,177 to be exact)


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## MFB

It. is. (almost). COMPLETE!

Ended up dropping my Advanced 3D class as I just got overwhelmed to the point where I couldn't bounce back and started focusing on portfolio pieces, like the above pagoda. However, I didn't build that one to any sort of scale, just used what 3DS calls "generic units." This one here is built using real world scale in feet, and I busted out a skeletal system to measure how far to make the steps, and how high the walls would be in relation to top of their heads, how wide to make it, etc...

Currently missing from exterior: base railing, base/spire railing posts, base roof posts, spire roof detail

Interior status: 0%


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## MFB

Haven't gotten much time to finish up the Pagoda as we're in full-swing with our game production and we've only got 4 weeks left to finish the entire thing so now it's time to tighten our belts. Did some new renders of it to throw up on LinkedIn for the professionals and whatnot.





And here's two models I'm going to be using on business cards once they're completed with unwrapping and textures




You should all know this little ditty




When I get a chance I'll post up some of the sculpts I've been doing in Zbrush/Mudbox and hopefully have a link for you guys to download the fully playable game by the end of September


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## MFB

Oh ho ho, made some progress on the Lightsaber. He's now unwrapped and ready for texturing. This was probably my fastest unwrap now that I'm getting used to using projection maps and then heading it from there; basically they immediately flatten out cylindrical areas instead of my having to break them apart and re-stitch back together, and then play around with spacing to make sure they're perfect.

Edit: apparently I didn't post the finalized hilt either, so here's all of them at the moment to show it's progression


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## MFB

Big bada 

Graduation is 3 months away now and I have a decent amount to do for class work. Both are re-dos of classes I failed earlier, both basically at the final of the class since I didn't have time and because I had missed an assignment here or there and that already hurt me so I said ".... it" and moved on.

For now, have a look at my focus reel that's like 99% complete.



I'm working on some of the revisions right now actually and it's gonna take five-ever to render them out.


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## MFB

Also, if anyone would be willing to check the site that's on my title card (exbendableart.com) and make sure it's working properly, I'll give you all the ghost rep you want. It's been 50/50 on my home PC, sometimes it does what it should (redirect you to my Wordpress) and other times not so much.


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## flint757

Works on latest IE, Chrome and Firefox.


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## ThePhilosopher

It did redirect, but the content was extremely slow to load for me.


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## MFB

Hmmm, interesting. I've noticed when I go to the page it loads like 60% then luls a bit then speeds back up. Was that what it did to you Philosopher; or was it just slow overall?


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## ThePhilosopher

The blue bar went all the way across and I could hover over links, but there was just a white screen visible.


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## MFB

Very odd. I'll have to keep checking it on different machines and see if anyone else has that issue.

Was that on Chrome?


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## flint757

In my Chrome browser the blue bar goes across the white screen and then the content pops up. I assume that's what it's supposed to do.


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## ThePhilosopher

Sorry for the late reply, that was both on Chrome and Firefox.


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## MFB

flint757 said:


> In my Chrome browser the blue bar goes across the white screen and then the content pops up. I assume that's what it's supposed to do.



Yeah, that's what it does on mine too, which I assume is the norm for Wordpress. Load it all at once instead of slowly over time.



ThePhilosopher said:


> Sorry for the late reply, that was both on Chrome and Firefox.



Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser, I'll have to keep testing it then and see if it was a weird hiccup.


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## ThePhilosopher

Perhaps there was a slow down on my end, but it's loading right up today (cleared my cache and tried in a private browser).


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