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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 9</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">New!!</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments <a href="../../../index.html">on the front page</a>!</font></p>
              
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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8"><b><a target="" href="../../corner/index.html"><font size="-1">Thinking 
          Outside the Box</font></a><font size="-1">:</font></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8"><br>
          Exercise</font></p>
        <p align="right"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Paul &quot;<a target="_self" href="mailto:paul@loonygames.com">Villam</a>&quot; 
          Steed</font></b></font></p>
        <p align="right"> <br>
        </p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Time to start 
          optimizing again. Let's start with the dome on top the body. We already 
          deleted the faces underneath so we don't have to worry about that. Since 
          the character won't be seen up too close in a non-attacking manner we 
          can shave the top down a little and merge the very highest point. We 
          can also use the high curve angle in the front to merge those faces 
          (for the most part the monster will attack head on, so a profile can 
          be less detailed than a frontal silhouette). Merging these vertices 
          results in…</font></p>
        <p align="CENTER"><img src="images/totb9_18.jpg" width="408" height="128"></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ta Daaa. Now 
          let's look at it from the top and pretty it up a bit. Turn the top edge 
          in the middle and the curve angle in the back is pretty high so we'll 
          split the diff and merge those vertices. Let's tweak the shape a little 
          by scaling the outlining vertices. Ah, I see some vertices here and 
          here that can be merged…Hmmm. What do you think?</font></p>
        <p align="CENTER"><img src="images/totb9_19.jpg" width="384" height="186"></p>
        <p align="LEFT"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Cool. We went 
          from 75 to 62 faces. Not bad, not bad. </font></p>

        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">On to the main 
          body (which has 126 faces). Let's begin by simplifying the bottom area 
          and front and back 'mouth area'. The bottom will be obscured quite a 
          bit by the tentacles, and the front and back areas will have objects 
          coming out of them. So let's start merging vertices at the edge of these 
          areas. </font></p>
        <p align="CENTER"><img src="images/totb9_20.jpg" width="404" height="166"></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">(<a href="index8.php" target="">Continued 
          on the next page</a>)</font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp;</p>
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      <p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"> </font></i><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
        Thinking Outside the Box logo illustrated and is &copy; 1998 Dan Zalkus. 
        Thinking Outside the Box is &copy; 1998 Paul Steed. All other content 
        is &copy; 1998 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
        productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so 
        don't even try it. We've got really big guns, and we're ripped, baby.</font></i></p>
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