AM Class 1

Finished class 1 at Animation Mentor earlier this month and finally got around to rendering out the assignments and doing some revisions over the holiday break. So, here is my progress reel for class 1. It goes from my last assignment back to the first assignment, and then all the poses.

Will try and post the work as it is in progress in the future. On to class 2!

catch

Was up at Art Institute and got to mess around with the Cintiqs! First time really sitting down and using one, so got a quick painting in. Would be hard to go back to a regular tablet after using these for a while!

(This is what happens when you realize why everyone on your team is yelling and pointing at you.)

Also, almost done with class one at AnimationMentor. Have been pretty busy and haven't gotten around to posting anything yet, but will try to post some work over break!

Heartland Film Festival

Yesterday, the Heartland Film Festival announced their official selections for the 2010 festival. I was lucky enough to have my animated short selected. It will be shown in a shorts collection on a few different days.

Click HERE for dates and time of screenings.

Click HERE for the Heartland animated shorts page.

Will be really cool to see my short on the big screen playing with big animated shorts like Poppy that also played at the SIGGRAPH 2010 festival.

In the meantime, you can go to the North & South website http://northandsouth.tk/ , still on temporary hosting for now. And here are two poster designs for the short I did a few weeks ago.

Hopefully the short will also make it into a few other film festivals in the future!

North & South Website

Wanted to create a website for my short ever since I finished the project, but never got around to it........until now! Seems to be what most people do when they make a short. Spent the last few days making a simple site with just a few pages. Used iWeb for the first time, but you can actually build pretty nice looking sites really fast with it. Did a little html/css coding at the end too though, and added the javascript for shadowbox that makes the pics and video pop up.

Right now I have it hosted through my dropbox and then renamed the url with dot.tk, which is good enough for now I think. Anyone know any good free or cheap domain/hosts I could use?

I will have the full short on the site after it's been shown in a few festivals most likely. Will also have some preproduction stuff on there at some point.

so........

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THE SITE!

ps: I tested the site on mac versions of safari, chrome, and firefox. All seemed to work pretty well, let me know if you have any problems.

patterns

This is my mouse pattern for about an hour of internet browsing. You can see on the left, the black circles are areas of rest for the mouse and spots I go to often. Most of the markings are where the browser was sitting, where the tabs are at, and then the dock at the bottom. On the right are less markings. This is my secondary monitor, and for this I just had iTunes there so I would occasionally go there to change the music.

I will do a few more of these to see my mouse pattern while working in Maya and Photoshop.

You can get the program for this here: http://iographica.com/

Harry

This is my entry for 11 second club last month. Ended up 96 out of 233, not too bad. I think it needed a few more breakdowns and inbetweens before splining, and the poses are a little too snappy. The whole process for this one took about 5 days from start to finish. Will hopefully have an entry for this month too.

Giant

A little boy makes a discovery in the woods. Created for this week's illustration friday topic "giant". Finger painted on my iPhone with brushes app. Makes me want to buy an iPad for some bigger finger painting!

Here's the video that shows each brush stroke, one of the coolest features of the brushes app.

satellite

Wanted to do a quick painting after I saw the illustration friday topic this week, SATELLITE! Done in Photoshop, couple hours, inspired by 2001!

futbol!

Quick painting done today while watching Argentina beat Mexico in the World Cup round of 16! Done in Photoshop, about 2.5 hours. Next up Germany!

Series of Tubes

Made a quick portfolio site using flavors.me. It was pretty easy to set up and get looking good quickly, because you can interactively make changes to the site using their design panel. Their site system has its limits though so I might try one of the other portfolio sites like weebly.

I'm still working on this site somewhat, but I just wanted a place to be able to quickly put up my demo reel and other things.

Check it out!!!!

gray hills

Trying to do more speed painting. This one done in grayscale to practice value a bit, still needs more range. Done in Photoshop, about 25 minutes.

the pixar process

Found this cool little breakdown of the typical pixar process for a shot from Toy Story 3 on the facebook fan page. These are the steps they typically go through from start to finish for each shot.

First, the story artist creates the storyboard for the shot. This one is from Sequence # 300 - Warm Welcome, where the toys are welcomed by Lotso and tour the Butterfly room at Sunnyside Daycare, drawn by Jeff Pidgeon.

Then, a color key will be created to capture the mood, color, and lighting of a shot that will help the lighting artists. This one was done by Toy Story 3 Art Director Dice Tsutsumi.

Next is the layout phase where the camera is staged and the characters are put where they will be in the shot.

Now, the animation is done for all the primary and secondary characters. Textures have also begun to be applied.

Finally, lighting, shading, and cloth/fur simulations are applied and combined with everything that came before it to give us the final frame.

Nice to see the process like this in screenshots. There is a short article on Pixar and Toy Story 3 on the new Wired magazine, check it out!

R+H reel

Finished a new demo reel the other day that I submitted to Rhythm & Hues for their animation apprentice program this summer.

Tried to get a good range of different animation, some acting, some body mechanics, but also keep it pretty short. This reel is a little different than the one I sent in. The other one had a little bar at the bottom with breakdown info for each shot.

Hopefully I hear back from them at least!

north & south Trailer

Been a while since the last post, but was busy with finals and graduation stuff. I did get my animated short finished back at the end of April. I won't be posting the full short online just yet since I plan on submitting it to a few animation festivals. Many of you have already seen the full short in person, but here is a really short trailer I put together for those that have not seen it yet.

Should have some new animations and reel done soon.

passes

Been busy trying to finish this project. I am getting closer to the end, and I should have the animation done in a week. I wanted to do a few render layers for this project if I had the time, so I spent a day troubleshooting and getting things working.

After many different attempts I found a way that works well for zdepth and ambient occlusion passes. This is what the beauty shot that combines diffuse, zdepth, and occlusion passes. It also has a little bit of color correction.

Here's the render straight from Maya so you can compare.

Here's the depth pass.

And here's the occlusion pass.

All of these renders are still using fairly low final gather settings, but I might render with higher settings depending on how much time I have to render.

Wilderness Explorer

Short kinetic typography assignment for new media class, done in After Effects. Sound clip is from UP.

busy month!

animatic one

Here's my blocked animatic for my animated short, north&south. It should give you a good idea of the story, camera shots, and pacing. I cut out about 3 or 4 shots from the end, so you'll have to wait to see what happens!

Will post some fully animated shots as soon I get them done.

expressions

Today I've got a facial expression sheet for my character. Drew and colored the first one, then copied it a few times and repainted the eyes/mouth for different expressions. This has helped me create the blendshapes for the face in Maya. Should be able to get a good range of expression by mixing these.

Also, here's a quick screenshot of shot5 from my animatic.

One month left! eeeeeeeeeeee

walking bacon

Today I've got a walk cycle test to break in the character rig and get used to how he works.

My character was rigged by Zeb Wood. Really helped to keep me working on other parts of the project, and the rig is working great! Here is what the rig looks like.

Will post parts of the animatic soon, don't want to give away too much though!

north & south (2)

Today I give you two more test renders. This first one is a render test when I was trying to get clouds that would render fast but still look good. Ended up going using a sky spherical mapped to the haze slot of the sky, and tweaking that. This should allow me to even have the clouds moving!

In this next one, lil bac is going exxxxtreme.

More to come!

north & south

Been working on an animated short for my capstone. I have a lot of progress and test renders to post. I'll be trying to post a few sneak peeks every few days until it is finished at the end of April.

Today I give you two test renders.

More updates to come!

mad nerds

Had to recreate a tv show intro, so decided to do Mad Men. Worked with Charles YUUUUU on this one. All done in After Effects and a little Illustrator.

Charles Card

Accepted everywhere that MasterCard is not accepted!

bouncing

Quick bouncing ball animation done with After Effects as an in-class assignment.

for the birds