Model Turntable

Rigging is nearly done, but here's a turntable:

Light Spirit Update

Here's the finished model (subject to further tweaking maybe?)




Started on the rigging. The controllers have yet to be parented to anything, I'm in the process of laying everything out before that. I need to figure out what to do with the eyes.

Revisiting 'The Light Spirit'

About...oh a year and a half ago, I did this for studio as practice in AfterEffects and visual storytelling:



Well...NOW I'm making it 3D. Stay tuned for progress.





Hoorah I fixed the anatomy!

Art Rules: Start to finish

Wow, time is flying.




The summer has officially ended and the new semester officially began (about 2 months ago sheesh). I'd like to say it was a relaxing summer, but it wasn't, not in the slightest. Summer was filled with studying, travel, moving, computer building, summer camp counseling and best of all: animating.

I was tasked with creating a simple, short animation illustrating the rules for an elementary school art class. The manner I chose to go about animating this was a bit different than I have done in the past. Since my knowledge of flash is extremely limited, I decided to imitate the flash vector look in Illustrator and use AfterEffects for the animating. This determined the workflow of the middle to latter part of the project. Thankfully, I made the decision early.

Development

First and foremost (after decided the method) was to establish a theme or set of characters. I considered the client her school. The elementary school's mascot is the dolphin mostly because of the school's proximity to Sea World. This informed my first character: Van Dolph the artistic dolphin. You may have seen videos of dolphins painting and I needed to consult youtube to recall what it looked like.

Initial Sketches:

At first I wanted to use Van Dolph as the sole character to illustrate the rules. But that seemed boring. In the past, the school district used different mascots to illustrate the 'pillars of character' that students should strive to achieve. Having a different character to represent each rule would give the children something more to relate to. So I decided to use Van Dolph as a kind of ringmaster to direct the other characters to the classroom rules.

Below are development sketches for the characters from start to finish. Kudos if you catch the art jokes.

#1 Listen and Wait: Illustrated by Van Dolph


#2 Raise your 'fins': entire cast


#3 Stay seated: Winslow the Otter


#4 Use time wisely: Keefe the Turtle


#5 Use kind words: Salvador the Eel


#6 Do your best: René the Octopus


#7 Be careful with tools: Marcel the Crab


#8 Clean up when finished: Jeanne-Claude the Clownfish



(If you didn't catch it, their names refer to famous and favorite artists)


Putting it all together

Before vectoring and setting up the characters and scenery, I did a storyboard animatic to share with the client and to figure out order and timing as well as sounds. I chose an animated storyboard for this purpose.


I began the tedious process of creating the characters as vectors in Illustrator. The setup took me over a month to complete.


I brought everything in AfterEffects and continued the setup of the scenes to prepare for animation. Additionally, I had to find a way to make some of the shapes move organically instead of the rigidity my art would make animating it flash style. This is something I researched in the beginning and I found that AfterEffects itself had a solution. I used what is called 'puppet pins' to make a rudimentary 'rig' of my characters. It is similar to making those puppets with brad joints I did in elementary school. The thing AE does to utilize the pins is create a mesh around your object and uses the pins as the point to manipulate the mesh so it calculates the movement of the rest of image. This worked wonders with my sea anemone and octopus.

The animating in AE is otherwise clunky. The program is intended for video compositing so it has its limitations. I liked the challenge of pushing it to do more than it was designed for to see its true capabilities. AfterEffects is powerful and I've still yet to explore all it can do!

Final touches

Early in the game, I debated on whether or not I would find someone to narrate the animation. When I did make the decision, my mom found an adorable 10 year old girl to add that extra touch. Her voice really summarizes the cuteness of the images and keeps the tone playful.


Here is a short clip of the final. I can't put everything up here because it was a commissioned work and I don't wish for it to be used freely. Shoot me an email if you'd like an official copy and we can negotiate.

ReBoot Nostalgia

When I was a little kid (hmm say 7 or so) I discovered the wonder that was computer animation. I certainly didn't understand it the way I do now, but this discovery lit a spark in me as a kid. This spark of course was ReBoot.

ReBoot, created by Mainframe Entertainment in 1995, was a gigantic breakthrough in animation. This was the first completely CG show to be aired on television. I remember waking up and tuning in to ABC just to watch this show. It was something I had never seen before and all the colorful characters grabbed my attention. I didn't really understand most of the computer jokes and some of the characters were a little creepy (Hexadecimalfor one). Nevertheless, ReBoot stuck with me.

When Cartoon Network picked it up, ReBoot went from a silly Saturday morning cartoon to epic. Obviously, it was meant for an older audience than previous seasons, but that's what made it even more great. The story was compelling and I HATED to so much as miss an episode. I programmed the VCR, had all the episodes on tape and watched them over and over.

Over time, ReBoot got buried under new obsessions with anime, but I never forgot how awesome it was. Then I came to College and suddenly ReBoot has revealed itself to me in an entirely new light. I understand even the most obscure computer jokes and am discovering that the people that created this show were tired, geeky animators. Not unlike the rest of us here in the Deptartment of Visualization.

For instance, the character Phong not only makes reference to the early computer game 'Pong' but refers to the type of shading algorithm used to render him. It's called Phong shading. The minute I began working with the shader in Maya, I started giggling. Suddenly, it all made sense.

Just tonight, after studying for my 'Foundations of Visualization' final, I watched one of my favorite episodes, just to poke more fun at the hellish semester I've had. The character Dot Matrix (so named for the printer ha ha) and the rest of the group went into a game similar to Dungeons and Dragons. Upon encountering an extremely creepy statue in the game, she says "Ugh, it gives me the jaggies!" It took a moment for it to sink in, but I immediately broke down into a fit of laughter. 'Jaggie' is a sort of computer slang term for aliasing, as this makes the edges of an image jagged and gross. I learned about it this afternoon while studying alaising. It was like the writers made the joke just for the benefit of people in the field of computer graphics. I now adore this show more than I ever have!

Oh, and I almost forgot about this guy, his name is Ray Tracer. Guess why.

Here's some videos I found that talk about the making of ReBoot. Good lord, a lot has changed in 15 years.


And the jaggies reference is about 4 minutes into this video:

Fancy and Fabulous! Texture 1st pass

On plz do go on.
Playing around with that rig again.

BUT I have begun to texture!

The sweetness of the dock, fruits of a days worth of messing around with texture

This texture is a bit different, I painted this one on here. Looks like a rock to me...

painted on the ground too...i don't know why the light is making it look so eerie, but I like it. It is about the right color scheme I'm wanting.

Color Script + Rigging Blah

Yes, it is blurry on purpose. This is a color script of my short for this semester. The point is to convey the feeling of what I'm wanting to convey.


and also:

RIGGING IS A B***CH GAH. Freaking koala bear and his crazy hip joint constraints and stupid IK handle mess rant rant rant rant RANT.

Interesting Blog

http://www.angryanimator.com/word/

Found this through a tutorial in VIST 284, I found it interesting and useful. There's tutorials on simple animation technique as well.

Fascinating

hahaha. I'm a little irritated with a few things on this, could have done better. But I still love the fall, really looks like Kirk guy has weight to him.

Kirk and Spock Skit

Using a rig I found on Creative Crash. This is a screencap, the actual animation will be posted on youtube after I finish.

Ko-Ko-Koala!

Working on skinning my koala, testing the skin weights. He's so cute!

Fubar the bear

Bear made in Blender from a tutorial

Tree Progression 2

Pass 3

Turntable Practice

Got a turntable to work in Maya 8.5

Tree Progression 1

Attempt 1:


Attempt 2, Pass 1:

Hello World!

This is a introductory entry for the VIST 206 blog. Here, I will post works in progress, finished projects, frustrations and perhaps a musing or two.

Before today, I used livejournal for this purpose, but I think it is high time my livejournal account became more private. I'm sure no one wishes to hear me rant about my insecurities, emotional issues etc. etc.

So I'm sure I should discuss who I am, why I'm here and what I do.

Firstly, I am a student at Texas A&M University seeking an undergraduate degree in Visualization (called VIST or Visual Studies here). I am very proud to have an opportunity to participate in this program as it was almost an uphill battle to be accepted. Having started my college career in Civil Engineering (ick), my GPA left much to be desired. But through hard work and perseverance, here I am. Currently, I am a Junior at the University but I will probably be here an extra year to finish my coursework (whoo victory lap!).

Why Visual Studies? I could have taken my art to one of the art institutes or something, and yet here I sit. Call it a hunch or divine providence or whatever you choose, I feel this is where I need to be. I enjoy art more than anything and working with computers and programming is also something I enjoy. So why not combine the two? This is the first program I really heard of that stimulates both parts of my intelligence, the left brain and the right.

As far as goals go, I have a few, though I'm waiting to see where this program takes me.

I would like to work as a character technical director. But what I'd really like to do is concept art, though to achieve that I need to take my art to a much higher level. I'm also a writer, at least I consider myself one. There is a story I've been formulating over the last 5-6 years that I'm hoping to someday bring into full fruition. You will often find me drawing my original characters, trying to figure them out on a personal level to be able to write them. Here's hoping my dream of publishing this isn't just a pipe dream.

This about covers it. I should probably mention my obsession with art history, cultures, folklore/stories, archery, birds, dressing in medieval garb and renaissance festival travels. I will probably mention my escapdes at Sea World another time. ha...

Sketchbook pages to come.