skin so soft

I've been working on modeling a character for my new media a-480 class this whole semester. I had the model mostly done a few days ago, but found out we needed to also texture the character and render out a few stills. Just got the texturing done in a record 2 days! UVlayout program really helps speed things up.

I'll start with the final renders. Used mental ray to render, SSS shader for skin, and ambient occlusion pass added at the end.

Here's the model in T-pose. I will rig it eventually...

Here's the wireframe of the model.
The model as it looks in Maya.
And...here's the original sketch I used to create the character.

This was my first time using Maya for a project, pretty happy with the results, wasn't sure how it would look at first. Getting pretty comfortable with Maya now. Hoping to maybe use this character for an animated short for my senior project next semester. We'll see how that goes!

red lady

This started as quick painting of lil bro, but quickly changed into an angry old woman! Not sure what happened there... (iPhone using brushes).

city

Quick iphone painting using brushes. Read the new update for it coming out has even more brushes. This app keeps getting even better.

production keyframe.02

Reworked production keyframe. Mostly fixed up the lighting, highlights, and depth. Tried to make the character fit into the scene better too.

Production Keyframe

Here is my production keyframe for the Mr. Miacca story. Deadline extended one week so I have time to make changes or fix things. Suggestions?

I did the whole painting in Photoshop for this one. Not sure if I like painting better in Photoshop or Painter, both have their advantages. I might try to do another keyframe from a different part of the story if I have time over the break. Also going to try and start doing one or two hour speed paintings each week.....maybe.

storyboards

Here are the storyboards that I worked on for the Mr. Miacca story. Hopefully you can understand the shots and story from the boards. The boards were done completely in Painter.

I'm working on a production keyframe from the story now, should be up in a few days.

character research&design

Here are some character development sketches for the Mr. Miacca short story. This is the little boy in the story, Tommy Grimes. My sketches had too much of an anime style at first, and I didn't really imagine that fitting well with the story. Then moved into more of a Ghibli style for the character by sketching parts from their movies, but it ended up being too similar.

Ended up moving towards a simpler, more stylized character, something more like Coraline. I think this style should work well with the story.

This last image is the character turnaround for Tommy. There might be some small changes to the finalized character, but most of it is there. Next is storyboarding. Hopefully I will be able to take all this preproduction work and use it to make a short for my capstone project.

Background Research & Design

Here are some background sketches/research/design done a few weeks ago. Have not had much time to post them until now. These are backgrounds for a short children's story about an old guy that eats kids! These will lead to a final finished keyframe from the story. Will post character designs soon, and start working on storyboards...

Here are the sketches leading up to some color keys for the story.

79 drawings #2,3,4

Got behind in scanning these in, but here are a few of the panels from the last few 79 drawings a day. I think I'm getting better at figuring out what to put into the drawing in such a short amount of time, and trying to add some value. I'm not uploading all the panels, but here are a few I liked.

These first three are from Prince of Egypt. Never saw the movie, but looks pretty good, seems like there is some singing though....

These Next two are from Rushmore. I have seen this movie, and it's a classic.

These last three are from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Never seen this movie, but I liked the camera shots, so I'll have to watch it soon.

My sketching hand is getting tired, but will come back stronger!

79 drawings #1

My storyboarding class started today, and at the beginning of every class, we will be doing 79 drawings of frames from movies/animation. They start out as quick 10 second sketches and gradually build up to a final 5 minute sketch. It's hard to do quick 10 second sketches at first, but you get used to it, and just move on to the next one. I actually liked it a lot, really good practice of making quick drawings and quickly deciding how much detail you need and what is important in the scene.

Here are the 79 drawings from the first day, and the movie today was 2001: A Space Odyssey. Will try to post these from each session. Should be a fun class.