cycles

I've been messing around with maya lately, so here are two quick walk cycle tests on different rigs that I did to practice animating in maya.





The robot is still in blocking stage, not sure if I'll go back and finish it though. Will probably move onto other things, maybe the 11 second club clip from this month.

brushes

I bought this little app called brushes on my iphone and have been messing around with it. It was $5 and the first non-free app I bought from the app store. It's basically a little mini barebones version of painter. There are only 3 brush types, but it is pretty crazy what you can create with this app after you get used to painting with your finger.

Here is a quick little painting I did the other day.

It's really nice that you can just bust out an iphone/itouch and paint/sketch something at any time. The really cool thing is that the app remembers each brushstroke so that you can see the painting being done from start to finish.

You can go here to see a bunch of paintings other people have created using this app.

2D

Quick little 2d animation test. Working on 2d animation makes me wish we had a class that concentrated only on 2d animation.

totoro busts a move

I walked outside yesterday, and there happened to be a strange bear setting up some cardboard flat on the ground in front of my house. Then, this bear (he told me his name was totoro) started to do the running man dance on top of the cardboard. I had to get this on video, so I went inside, got my camera, and this is what I saw.

As you can see in the short clip, he's got pretty good dance moves, so don't be scared if you see a dancing bear outside your home.

(P.S. This was created for a camera matching / tracking assignment).

totoro goes to antarctica

I created this scene for a particle system assignment. I threw totoro into a blizzard and added some music to make it more dramatic! Not sure I'll take this setting/scenario anywhere else, but it would make for a cool short animation.

Demo Reels

Here are my most current demo reels. The first one is the most current, for March. The second is from February. Both were created for different portfolio reviews. I like finding a song to fit the reel, it's fun to edit the reel to match the song. I'll have another demo reel up for April and hopefully more work done. Also need to get working on a design portfolio and try to get an 11secondclub submission for April. April will be very busy.

March Reel


February Reel

Totoro Commercial

Here's what I've been working on lately. It's a 30 second commercial spot where we are have to go through all of the production process ourselves. It started out by selecting a toy to be your character in the commercial. From there came the model, then a fully textured model, then a rigged model, then a walk cycle for the character. In between all of this, I also created a script for the commercial and storyboards based off that script. It's a lot of work creating everything in this way, but really makes you appreciate what goes into each step of the production process. Next up is creating an animatic, and then start animating for the final commercial.

I'm using Totoro for my commercial, and it's for an energy drink. Only Totoro will be 3D, everything else will be video footage, and then they will be composited together.

Here's the initial sketch for the character.



Here's a 360 of the textured model.



This is the walk cycle for the character.



And finally, this is the storyboard for the commercial.





High quality versions of these videos and more videos for this project can be found on my youtube page here.

More to come soon.