I made a few changes to my (non-competing) entry into weekend challenge #1042.
There are a few more things I’d like to do, like add assorted wildflowers and ground cover to the grassy area, and maybe add something to the bloomery to make it more visually interesting.
Okay, final version, I think 
Time to move on to the next weekend challenge!
Here is my attempt to animate Paul’s expressions together in a realistic looking way. I had wanted to do this when I was working on him months ago, but I didn’t quite get to it.
After render I spotted a few things: the image is too dark, the eye lashes are a bit off, and there is a little too much jaw movement at first and not enough later. Besides that I think it looks pretty good. I put specific effort into shifting keyframes around so that the various elements didn’t move exactly together, and to have one movement naturally transition into another.
EDIT:
I rendered it in gray with the wireframe.
I’ve wondered at how to do this in the past. Turns out it’s fairly easy. At the top left on the viewport select view, then from the dropdown, click ‘Viewport Render Animation’. Your animation will be rendered at the same resolution, location, and with the same settings as a regular animation.
When creating my entry for the most recent weekend challenge (1043, ‘Ember’), I discovered a blender feature I was previously unaware of: the ability to use shading nodes with lights.
To use this feature, select a light and click the ‘Use Nodes’ button under the nodes drop down on the side.
Then head over to the shading workspace. Here you will find you can add nodes to the light shading graph (?). They don’t seem to work how you’d expect at first, but that’s because you need to utilize the ‘Light Path’ node and/or object coordinates from the ‘Texture Coordinate’ node to interface with the lights shading.
Here is the setup I used on the main light in my ‘Nuclear Ember’ scene:
And here is a comparison to show the difference in the final render:
Check out Pau Homs’ video on Youtube for a more thorough explanation (see below).
I made a fuzzy pill to test hair physics
… I lost my hat
Is that a tic-tac?
Nice progress!
The fuzziest!
It’s the new white penicillium flavour.
I wish they sold them where I live
Never even tried the ordinary flavor
I do wonder how penicillium tastes though.
I’m not swallowing that. 
It’s a kind of thing that just might watch you with its little black eyes when you’re not looking =)
You do you, Pir. I’ll be over here with the mintiest er… moldiest fresh breath around (it makes sense, trust me).
Who knows what lurks beneath the white fuzz?
Surely not I 
Long time, no post. I was intending to submit an entry into last weeks weekend challenge, but I ran out of time, with it being Canadian Thanksgiving, and me being Canadian – that’s my excuse anyway, and I think it’s a pretty good one. Though, I did do some sketching and came up with a few ideas, see:
And I got a start on the scene in blender for the my entry before I ran out of time:
Even if I don’t finish my entry, I still enjoy the process of coming up with ideas and sketching them out. The process I’ve use goes like this:
I really like having a written prompt as a jumping off point for creativity, and this process lets me get out many ideas without having to commit too much time to any single idea.
(Side note: congrats to @PMDesigns on the win in last weekend, great idea and execution!)
Welcome back; was wondering what you were up to.
I agree, the Weekend Challenge is really great for getting one’s brain thinking about alternate creative ideas. I don’t usually participate because of lack of energy but I’ve bookmarked Helge’s site that collects all the prompts and plan to use that extensively.
Thanks! Yeah, I’ve had less free time at the computer to spend on blender things lately 
Life has been busy, but I’m trying to make more time for it because it something I very much like to do.
That’s a useful link: a good set of prompts is great to have, plus one can have a look through the entries after using the prompts – it’s great to see what other people come up with as well.
Another Canuck here, how’s it going eh?
Ya, to me words also matter! I first sketch with words and some loose concepts. I have sketchbooks that have both words and drawings, going back 30+ years. Insane.
I also photograph anything that has the slightest morsel of inspiration … thousands of those images, ha! Both film and digital.
LOL … I too found my imagery past the cut off of last weekend’s ‘The monument’ challenge.
Need a late late late entry thread??
Well, I spilt my poutine on the chesterfield, but the cut on the last milk poured like perfection, so I’d say it’s definitely going.
Haha, yeah, I took a few pictures of the texture of some rocks on my last camping trip, just so I could have it as a reference because it looked so interesting. With smart phones, it so easy to do, but sounds like you were doing it before we had that convenience.
