Term 5 Recap

Hello Everyone,
So it is the end of term 5, going onto term 6 which is the final term. Yeah, I'm excited but scared and sad but happy... a lot of emotions. I just finished registering my schedule in my calendar and I'm going through an emotional roller coaster. But we'll get on that in term 6; lets focus on Term 5.

The main focus of term 5 was my Demo Real, getting it as complete as I can get it before the end of term which is Christmas Break. I knew that after the break it would take a bit of time to get back in the swing of things so yeah I worked myself to the ground to get where I'm at but it was worth it. I'm not going to show any of the animation just because I would like to refine parts of it more but I will show some test renders from each shot:

I think they are looking good so far and I'm excited to see the rendered animation in action; if only I can get the renderfarm to not fail on me...

Also during this term we had our last acting for animators class and the main focus was lipsync and subtext. It was of course an awesome class and really fun to see everyone's work. We got to use the new VFS rig which was rocky at first then after a while I got accustomed to the lag and the necessity of playblasts just to check on some things.

The Sound clip is from Step Brothers, I've never seen the movie but that is actually to my benefit for that fact that I'm not bias toward one way of acting. I was able to explore different ideas of subtext and just have fun with it. Hope you enjoy!

All in all, it was a busy but awesome term and I'm so excited for next term even though it is a bitter sweet feeling.

till next term

Term 4

Holy Crap, Term 4 is over already! That means only two more terms then I graduate! Anways, crazyness aside, it was an awesome term. We had a major focus on our streams this term, so for me that meant a ton of animation! We had one class where we created animation shorts in one class period where we were given whole weeks to do previously. Then we also got into full swing into our demo reels.
I'll show some of the Animation exercises we were able to do in class:

You would be surprised at how difficult a balloon is to animate; they don't move like normal objects!

 I also got a chance to animate a quadruped, it is a little different than a human walk cycle. There are two more legs to deal with. It was still fun!

For our last assignment we were to animate our quadruped running, all I have to say is that tail is dang annoying but I had fun and turned it into a fox :)


Near the end of Term 3 I decided that Layout played into my storyboarding and illustration skills; so that I wanted to pursue it further. So my focus turned more toward layout and animation kinda took second place. Also, during this term we met with industry professionals that went over our demo reels with us on a weekly basis to help us get more focused. So what was awesome is that the school brought in a professional Layout Artist for one of the mentors. I got to pick her brain every week to know more about the industry. It was Amazing!

With my mentor I was able to lock down a pretty solid animatic, before the end of the term. So that I was given the option to try another animatic or continue with the animation of the animatic. I decided to continue with the animation to the end. That way I can showcase my skills in Layout and also animation.

So to finish off the blog I will post the first version of my demo reel storyboards. I want you to know that everything in the reel has changed... seriously I think the only thing that is the same from the original is the theme (which has been tweaked) and the asset. Enjoy :)

That is really how productions go; they start off in one form but by the time it is finished it is completely different from what is was. Don't believe me, go check out the original story of Star Wars.
alright, till next post :)

Term 3 update... sorry for being late

Whoops, I realized that I didn't update my blog with what I had worked on during Term 3 and Term 4 just finished. Sorry about that, term 3 was awesome! It wasn't as crazy as term 2 was and we started getting into the pre-production work for our demo reels. This meant storyboards, beat boards, and character designing. All that super fun stuff. I also got into premiere and started playing around with the program, it is very similar to Avid; with an Adobe spice to it so it was quick to learn. But lets jump into what I worked on during Term 3:

Term 3:

In term 3 we had our last lighting and surfaceing classes; here we mainly focused on strategies that hit all the fields of Modeling, VFX and animation. For lighting we worked on RGB lighting and Gamma Correction; and between Lighting and Surfacing class we learned how to work with Renderman. To show us the difference  between Mental Ray and Renderman: Here are some images that I worked on in lighting class:

 This first one was my first attempt in lighting with renderman; I found it incredibly frustrating. With the low light that I was going for there was a ton of grain left over in the render to the point that I had to go back into photoshop in order to fix it. It was still a good experience though!

The above image was our Gamma Correction assignment; another head ache. I had missed the original class teaching the theory but I was able to meet with my instructor about it; but despite all of that it was still a challenge to get my head around the concept. I know it now but it was still a head sore trying to get the image to look like I wanted it to.

Onto Surfacing:

 This Assignment we were working with surface shaders. At the beginning, we were given the option to use Renderman or mental ray. I attempted Renderman but again I was having issues. First everything was blue and then I couldn't get the water to look like water; the displacement was affecting all the layers and so the water took on the brick surfacing. Finally I gave in and went back to Mental Ray, which is more complicated but I was familiar with it. I was also able to fix the displacement with the alpha channels. I am happy how it turned out!

The last assignment we got in Surfacing was with fur, all the fun stuff you can do in Maya! I might have gone a little overboard with the hair but I like my hairy caveman!


I am not going to show any of my compositing stuff, mainly because the files were pretty big and I didn't want to wait around fo the upload time but here is one animation from my animation class:

It's a simple stand up animation but it was fun to do and turned out pretty good; wait I just looked at it... I'm getting better I promis

I was considering putting my storyboards up but decided that it might take too long. Maybe I'll stick it up in another post.

Ok, hope you all enjoyed the update; sorry again for it's tardyness.

Inktober

My old friends from school are having fun with inktober; so  decided to join in and try my best to get back on the illustration ball. So I dusted off my art kit and pulled out my old crow quill pen and started drawing.
Thankfully it was General conference this weekend as well which not only uplifted me spiritually but also forced me to sit down, and listen and draw. So here are the couple of drawings I've done during those great meetings.

Hopefully, I will find the time to keep drawing the rest of the month so I can continue to participte and just get more practice of the talent I love.

Illustration Friday: Journey

There is something about pirates that is just so fun. I'm a huge Howard Pyle fan, and so I just wanted to do a quick illustration inspired by him. Also, thought that a voyage at sea would be a great representation of journey; this weeks theme.

I like the storybook theme with bright colors and thick lines and thus the style I used. That and it is a fun style to do.

It's a nice break from the 3D work I've been focusing on.
Hope you enjoy.

Animation Stream..Personality walk

So after much debate and serious swaying of my preferences, I have decided that I should pursue the Animation stream at my school. Mainly because VFX holds no interest for me even if I can do it easily; and modeling is still in the love hate stage of our relationship. I love making things move, gain life, and uphold a personality. That and it falls under the sequential Art bit that I have been pursuing for quite some time.

Speaking of personality, here is my 2D personality walk:

For class we had to record ourselves moving in a not so normal way and we got to choose how we walked. Many people chose to walk like zombies or drunks or plain crazy. I went to the chicken and kept with it. Yay Chickens! We recreated this walk in 2D and 3D. As part of our passport film to continue in our program. I'm only showing the 2D cause I don't know if this blog can support two videos. I did have fun making this one. It was difficult cause the walk was more of a hop but I figured out the timing and arcs okay.

So here I go full throttle into Animation. Wish me luck :)

First term at VFS

So my first term at VFS was a roller coaster. Mainly with tests and exams, I had to rush everything at the end of the term in order to get to my brother's graduation but I was able to finish everything and get it all in on time.

There was a ton of work, I had to finish a still life for my lighting, surfacing, and modeling class. Within the still life there were over ten objects and many of them were pretty complicated to build. But despite my inabilities and the fact that I have very little history with maya (the program we use to model the assets) I did it. Not only did I have to build the objects but then I had to surface them and bump map them then compose and light them. And because of events taking place I had two less days to accomplish these projects.
Here is an example of what I did:

I'm sure at the end of the year I will look back and laugh at the easiness of each of these projects but right now I am stressed.... at least I was a week ago when I had to get it done.

Along with those projects we also had to finish a 3d and classical animation. Mine is the animation above. It is an expression of my love for basketball. Or a foretelling of my future, whatever, it was a fun animation to do.

This was only a little taste of what I did this past two months. I could say that I'll do better this next term but it is supposed to be the hardest term out of all of them. And so I don't know what I'll end up showing. if anything... just like my 30 minutes of drawing... oh well.

we'll see

30 min a day of drawing

So I'm going to challenge myself to become better at drawing in photoshop, so what I've decided to do was a simple exercise where I draw a comic page for 30 minutes each day and see what will happen. I will only give myself 30 minutes cause this way I can't fiddle around with the tablet and keep second guessing a line. Also, I've been wanting to finish/start this comic for some time.

I did have one version started on real paper but it didn't get anywhere and I kinda abandoned the project; but I really would like to revisit it. So good subject matter and this way I'll actually get some work posted here.
I will try to do this for one month, cause I have the time now, as aposed to in a month so. here goes:

First, I estalished the look of the characters. At least their basic shape and form. I will probably play around with them a bit more but here they are:

You have your hero, the mentor/guide, and the trickster/rogue. Conflict is set in the story, basic man vs self. With the occasional man vs man and man vs nature.

These are rough cause I did them in 30 minutes and it is going to continue to be rough especially since I'm not hugely comfortable drawing with the tablet.

In any case, here I go.

IF- Beginning

So I started this image on my new computer and I was super excited it cause it will be my first completed art piece on the new machine. Well, something wasn't calibrated right and after two hours of work the program (photoshop) crashed. Of course I didn't save my progress so all that work, gone. So of course I did the sensible thing and gave up. But I am not a quitter and so I tackled the project anew and finished it. Bwahaha I win! That and I figured out why the program crashed and fixed it, so turns out it was a good thing cause if I had started any of my other 'real' projects I would have done something not sensible like through my new computer across the room.

So things turned out for the best and here is the image for Illustration Friday: