Arashikage Fray

The newest G. I. Joe - Kre-O short I worked on is online this week. Most of the assets were carried over from the last project. I really wish I could have rerigged the Storm Shadow character for the drastic poses he needed. Using the old rig was a battle.




This short is suppose to mimic a Daffy Duck Robin Hood Short. Here's a snapshot of the original next to the Maya project.

This was also the first project I used motion blur with Maya, which ended up being fairly straightforward.

In other news: I moved into my new apartment/workspace last week which is a big improvement over the situation I had over the last year. I've been working on my CyberSnow piece in between setting things up. Might post an update if I get far enough anytime soon. Tomorrow I go back to working for Language Sprout doing illustration work though.

Get the Diamonds Finished

I finished working on Get the Diamonds around Christmas, but it was not released until about a month ago.



The decision to put in voices for the characters was decided after I had done the animation which I feel a bit unfortunate about.

F&T Episode 6

Because of scheduling conflicts I ended up doing a lot more help with on set than with the special effects for this one(mostly carrying stuff and holding up reflectors). However, I was responsible for the floating text effect in this episode, which funny enough was the only filming I wasn't present for. Boy was that annoying to try to track. I would have liked to have been able to do some clean up, but it just wasn't in the  cards.

In other news: I'm still working on art for the Language Sprout Learning Center to help teach small children foreign language. I've done over 30 small illustrations over the last few weeks for that, and I'm hoping to get some discarded sketches and things up soon. I'm trying to squeeze in a Valentine's day project too, but not sure if it will make it on here. Oh yah, and I have to do the effects for the last 2 episodes which are two-parter.

All the Videos

...and little working this week.

Taking a break from paid work this week because:

1. I can! No deadlines!
2. The "simple" rigging system(HumanIK) I tried to use is buggy as hell and I'm gonna have to start that over. Which is really frustrating because of how much time I wasted trying to work around bug issues..
3. Cat-sitting is time consuming and more work then it sounds.

 But I fiddled around on some of my own projects, finished Timber(finally!), and re-did my Motion Graphics and General Reel! 

All I had left on Timber was the title graphic which the client had been very specific about the graphic design and then decided(very rightfully) that it needed more animation to it. Then, she disappeared so the Title animation is all my own thought, although the graphic is less so. I hope that makes sense.




Well, when I say done, is that I am done. There would be some music and a voice-over made, but I don't know if that will ever happen.



Here's my Motion Graphic Reel! You know you wanna see that Timber logo again.



By the way, the logo animation was inspired by Video Copilot's disintegration tutorial. If it was my project, I would have the finished graphic be more charred. But then I also don't know much about the plot.

Lastly, my general reel has had quite a few shots added to it since the last version 6 months ago(where is the time going?). New song in the background too(Odyssey by Overwork). Every time I watch it I want to dance! Hopefully not just because of the awesome song.








In other news: I finished animating another shot of the origami fish. Still tweaking the lighting and I got a little compositing to do before putting it up. And I sadly won't be able to get to that for a while most likely. While I was looking through the footage it occurred to me that I could probably puppet tool the origami turtles instead of the whole 3D process so that should save a ton of time. If it doesn't work out I may just cut them as they have such a small roll and I didn't expect to be working on this that long (or have so little time for it). I took reference images for the remaining fish I have to model and animate, but the lighting wasn't super even so I might need to retake them for texturing.

I went to a super awesome lecture last Friday at MCAD about Visual Conception Art with Disney Animation Studios' Mike Yamada and Victoria Ying. I stopped by Grey Studio Gallery, which hosted the event; looked at some of the work on display. I bought an awesome deck of illustrated Tarot cards from one of their previous shows for inspiration too. (Tarot Deck illustration will probably be forever on my to do list between hand making a kids book and making a Fey based special effects series.)

And I signed up for the MCAD ART SALE. The sale isn't until November, but I sort of miss illustration and I could always use the money so I'll probably try focusing more that way soon unless a new fancy job pops up.

Monday I return to rigging and I shall be a champion!

Ship of Fools Music Video

It's been a couple weeks but the music video is done and up! I assisted with hand drawn animation and coloring on a pretty fast schedule, working under the wonderful Emily Fritze. The song is Ship of Fools by Pert Near Sandstone.

Here are some character concepts I did for the townspeople at the end. I changed the colors later on to match the film's overall scheme more, and altered the designs very slightly to make a tiny bit more readable once I was shown the final background.

 In other news, my demo reel has been updated. And the logo design for Timber has finally been approved. I'm waiting on the character animation to be ironed out before I get to finish up the work on the teaser. I'm just about done with page 23 of the La Jolla's Mermaid book. I have also made some progress with coding in Unity when my arm was too tired to draw anymore. Hopefully I'll be able to get to something showable in Unity sometime.

The current plan of action is to continue illustrating La Jolla pages and do some cleanup and minor corrections on F&T's third episode(they still haven't found a Foley person and have not finished an edit of any of the other episodes for me to work on). Waiting to see about many other bigger projects and opportunities.

I'll see about getting some of the Timber logo work up soon.

Motion Graphics

Look, I did some motion graphics examples so I could maybe get more work. They really aren't that special. Just something to show that I can do things.

Here's Plop. I could have used nParticles to make the puddle, or I could have made a blend shape or some deformers on it, but I wanted to do it fast, so I didn't. I just animated a blobby shape going through a plane like a lazy person.



As for the Plop letters themselves. I just used the Text tool with a bevel and a little experimentation. I seperated the letters and then regrouped them. I used a lattice deformer on the group to make the letter bend as they fall, but I probably could have just used a bend deformer. Then when the letters float in the puddle I just animated the individual letters rotation and position. Since the lattice was on the group and not actually the letters, it was all pretty simple. Slap on a blinn, animate a camera, done.



Shing was even more simple. I made the text with the text tool as before and then used the cut faces tool to make the cut. Most of it was just animating the cut bits falling down. I did animate a point light across the cut. After it was rendered I put in the flash in AE by animating a mask on a solid.



Pop was really the best. I was messing about with shaders to try to make something extra sparkely or something, and I found a bubble shader on Creative Crash that was free use. Looking at it, its pretty simple and I may use it my origami short. Anyway, I made pop to try out the shader. I took the text shapes and bulged them out with the bulge brush and just rendered the text out sitting there with its animated bubble texture. In AE I made up a background was some stock photos and animated the rendered 'pop'. I added some turbulant distortion to make the it more wobbely like a bubble and put a short simple particle effect at the end. Groovy.



I have ideas for more, but I'm not sure I want to spend the time on it with so many projects going on. Maybe if I see a motion graphics job post I'll do some of them.  I'm back in illustrator working on La Jolla's Mermaid now. But like I said, lots going on.

rough animation

I comped together rough animation last week for my Redgirl project.



Lots to do still...

Thanks to my animina-buddies Jack Sutter, Hannah Strenger, and Meg Hamann.

I animated the cutting scenes, and the old crazy lady.