Heartburn in December

Well it's been a very busy couple of months! I put this animatic together 2 weeks ago:

There's a few changes to the shots that are needed, but for now I am rigging. Mantel's rig is done, and his textures are almost done as well. Everyone else is still sitting at geometry done, except the city Acheron, some details on the airship Ecclesia and the volcanic landscapes. Here's some renders:

I really need to catch up on the geometry and textures before Christmas break. I'll have the rigs done by Friday, so I'll be able to put up some vids of the characters moving around then. And no, I am not suffering from indigestion.

Heartburn

 Welcome back! Well I had a fantastic summer internship at Chuck Gammage Animation Studios (http://www.cganim.com/) where I learned lots more about modelling, texturing, lighting and rendering in Maya. I'd go into more detail, but I think for now, and the rest of the school year, this blog will be focusing on developing this little film here.

"Heartburn" started up in the summer 2 years ago. I knew I didn't want to be fumbling around too much with story when I got around to 4rth year, so I laid out the premise, environment, characters and action  during that summer, along with some initial design work.
I also knew, that this film would be done entirely 3D animation, using Maya:

The city Acheron, with its massive armoured wall to protect it from eruptions.

Designs for the ship, Charon, anti-lava suits, and structures inside the city Acheron.

Old character lineup. At top, Mantel, a worker, Caldera, a soldier and another worker. Below the lineup are various ideas for Mantel, and Avalon (the stripey girl)

At the start, the story was about an engineer named Mantel who wanted to be free of the terrible conditions in the city, Acheron. Mantel builds a ship, the Charon, to cross the lava ocean to freedom. The oppressive General Caldera is angered by Mantel using resources and manpower on what Caldera thinks is a fruitless, suicidal effort, so Caldera banishes Mantel and forces him to leave before the Charon is ready. The ship breaks down out on the lava ocean, it floods with lava and everyone onboard but Mantel is killed. Mantel, clinging to the last bit of unmelted ship, then rides the ship down as it falls off an immense lava-fall at the edge of the lava ocean. Mantel wakes up on a piece of scrap metal floating in a water ocean, where the girl, Avalon, swims up and saves him.

From the start I knew the idea I had was much too 'epic' to present in a short film, so I thought of a few ways to show a snippet of the larger universe I envisioned. The design style also evolved, initially I imagined a fairly straightforward sci-fi style for costumes, props and buildings. Around August this year I realized I wanted a more identifiable style, so I had a simple thought, "everything is trains". I love trains. So I decided the costumes, props, sets and vehicles would all be designed around the world of late 1800's steam locomotives:

 Avalon's swimsuit wasn't very 1800's like, so I started considering more era-appropriate dress.

Caldera's 'steamsuit' was steampunky enough, but too limiting for movement, and still too sci-fi compared to Mantel and Avalon.

His new suit took reference from the American civil war. He's got a cow-catcher for a collar, his cane has a little boiler on the end of it. Not seen here is his monocle.

The Charon's inital design is on the top right. Current design is the big one. The top left design is again, steampunky, but you can't see a train anywhere in it.

The airship Ecclesia, Avalon's vessel that she uses to rescue Mantel from the falling Charon. At the very beginning it was a sailing ship just seen in the background on the water ocean. As I fiddled with the plot, Avalon took on a much more active role. The current story has a great big beauty shot with the Ecclesia diving down past camera. Current design is on the right, though I'm adding a few more side propellers.

These last 2 months were dedicated to getting our stories as close to where we want them as possible. Changes can still be made until December, but not very big ones. Heartburn now consists of the action of Caldera trying to get rid of the rebel Mantel, who is being supported from the outside by Avalon. Mantel is nearly killed by Caldera, and in Mantel's failed escape he is rescued by Avalon with her massive airship. Avalon and Mantel return together to overthrow Caldera.

The film is 1 minute 44 seconds long, that's including the title and credits as they are. I don't expect it to get much shorter. The voices here are all done by me, with the assistance of some audio editing, I'm contacting a voice actor to see if I can get some professional voices for the final film. Here's the leica!

Everyone says this is an ambitious project, and I completely agree. My goal is to challenge myself this year. I plan to finish this film as I envision it. However, I have a backup plan, that I can animate at least 1 minute of the entire story and call it a demo.
This week (which is reading week) I am diving head first into modelling the characters; Mantel, Caldera and Avalon. Ahead of me is modelling the sets, props and the two ships. Then there's texturing, and then rigging. All of this is to be done before Christmas break.
Somewhere in modelling, rigging and texturing I also have to figure out exactly how I will generate the lava. I intend to use realflow, where needed, and I need to learn how to handle that.

Cars

So here's what I got together from the Auto Show. I started with just pencil work, then by the time I got to drawing this wonderful Ferrari 458 Italia I decided to use markers. I was happy enough with the result that I went ahead and marker-ed the other drawings I liked, and this is the result.

Pixar much? At the end of Cars they had a cameo with Michael Schumacher as himself, as a Ferrari. Of course, he was a Ferrari F430, which doesn't have quite the same visual effect (for me) as the 458 Italia. So what I'm saying is they better put the 458 Italia in Cars 2. And a Delorean while they're at it.

No, the Stig (read: Top Gear!) was not there, but I wanted to have at least 1 'human' in my assignment, so I dropped him in. Here he contemplates how he's going to get in to this decidedly too-small Audi kart. The size was on purpose, in real-life this thing looked like it was designed for a kid.

And to be cyclical, there was an episode of Top Gear where Michael Schumacher claimed to be the Stig, so have I drawn the same "person" twice here?

Here's the photo reference!

Internship!

Hey folks! I think I'll put up some art here soon, but for now some news!

So I got myself an internship position at Chuck Gammage Studios in Hamilton! I'll be working with 3D projects, hopefully a little bit of everything; modelling, rigging, animating. Here's their website so you can see what they do: http://www.cganim.com

SO I'm very excited for this, it's a great studio and I get to do 3D! Also, finally no lame jobs over the summer. I've never been employed as an artist before, this is the next step up towards the dream.

Meanwhile, today we went down to the Toronto Auto show, oddly enough for Life Drawing class. Didn't draw any people, but I took a somewhat caricatured approach to drawing the cars (I think), I'll have some art from that up once I finish working on it. Till next time!

Goaticorn and Portfolio

In case you haven't noticed, off to the right here I've got a link to my online portfolio now. Prospective employers for my internship this summer will be directed there as I keep applying. Most of the stuff on there has been put up here in some form, mostly the life drawings are new.

Also this is new. It's that model+rig I was talking about. The 2D design was done by my fellow classmate Keely, but everything 3D is my handywork: model, texture, rig and animation. I wasn't able to make much else new since this took a lot of effort on its own, possibly I might make more and update the portfolio later, but for now I'm happy with my selection and people have been giving it a positive reaction (thanks everyone, I really do appreciate it!) so for now this reel is what I'm applying with.

You'll have to go to the online portfolio for the full reel, I don't feel like putting that on Youtube, but here I'll let you watch the rotation and animation of my Unicorn/Goaticorn character:
It's been suggested that the front legs need work and more bounce in the body as well. I was going for a more pompous walk, but a nice trot I think is what people are envisioning and it wouldn't be overly hard to re-time things to get that. For now I don't have the time to re-render, but again it's certainly something I'm considering for updating the reel with later.

Year 3 Semester 1 (madness) Wrap-up

SOooo that was crazy. Most of us were pulling all-nighters, some had several all-nighters in a row. But that's all behind us now, well until next semester. Or until immediately after Christmas, because we have to get working on our demo reels to get internships this summer...

While I'm working on that, here's what was put together this semester! First up is the Action Analysis project:

Well I didn't pull any all nighters for this, but got pretty close. Anyways the shadows were done last so they need lots of fixing, which is why I made them very faint so they wouldn't stand out too much. Also if I do get around to fixing this up there's lots of line wobbling that can be fixed. But overall, I mean it is 'done' and worse stuff has been put on television, even on the big screen!
Next up is the 3D animation project, 'A Thinking Character'

So I had a LOT of fun with this, and I feel there's still a million things I could play around with. Pretty much this and the 3D walk before it (might get that up, might not) taught me that I love 3D animating. I feel so much more in control and not having to worry about re-drawing the structure perfectly for every frame for me means I can focus on how the volume is moving and why. I'll always do rough paper tests of the poses before I jump into the 3D, but it's in 3D where I really feel I can start creating a unique motion.

And finally the last stop motion project, the puppet walk:

This turned out better than I expected. I didn't really do a final playthrough before handing it in (we only have 1 class to complete each test in the stop motion course), but I've discovered this semester that as long as I'm constantly flipping the frames while animating, checking to see that each one relates to the frames around it, I can trust the end product to move convincingly.

So the ending of the walk is a bit abrupt, I think even just one more frame would have fixed that, but I'm really happy with the smoothness of the walk. Again, no big plans for stop motion, but given the positive experience this semester I'll probably dabble with it somewhere.

For now, I'm working on that demo reel. The plan is to make, rig and animate one model, do one other model, and make one or two other animations using pre-made rigs off the interwebz. I've got a good start on one model and a rough on the other. Aside from that, I feel I can drop in this stop-mo walk, and maybe if I fix a few things in the Action Analysis I can put that in too. I'll put in the 3D animation I got here, but only if I can't make something new in time. I mean I love the animation, but just about every other animator from Sheridan has used that rig so I'd prefer to stand out.

Merry Christmas!

Stopping Motion

Well my action analysis is actually still at the school so that's not going up this weekend. However I did discover I had the frames with me from my Stop Motion assignment we did this week, so you're getting that instead!



While I don't intend to go into stop motion (I like the forgiving nature of computer 3D much better) I am having lots of fun with the class, and I can feel how handling these puppets relates with handling a digital rig. The program we use in class is VERY limited as far as editing goes, pretty much if there's something wrong with a frame you can either delete it and hope everything else matches up, or delete it and EVERYTHING else afterwards. You can't insert frames made afterwards into a previous space.

Didn't really need to do anything crazy to fix this up. There were 2 frames during the anticipation right before the 1st swing which were slowing down the movement far too much, so I just removed them. I was going for an effect like he had real trouble swinging forward the first time he brought the club behind his head, but after I shot it it didn't really work, so I edited it to be a more straight-forward swing. I made a double swing because I felt I needed to put more energy in after the 1st still. Also, the ending is a little abrupt, needs about 2 more frames of ease-in, but too late to fix now.

Unrelated, you've probably heard about Minecraft by now, and if you haven't, well, uh, now you have. I started playing it back in July and I've built a fairly extensive castle by this point. I've been using it as inspiration for drawing landscapes, buildings, and creatures lately. I did a bunch of sketches of the monsters and this weekend I caved-in (spelunked) and scanned them so I could paint them. Here's the 3 I got so far:

1st one is actually one I made up for the game, I just call it 'cave beast' and while it might not be implemented by Notch (the Minecraft creator's alias) I hope someday I'll be able to mod it in. In the middle we have the Creeper, the exploding enemy, and the last one is the new zombie pigman found in 'The Nether', complete with golden sword! Obviously these guys will never appear in-game with this much detail, but like old games the concept art exceeding the in-game graphics has it's own charm. Something I like about Minecraft, the limited graphics (to compensate for infinite manipulability) make everything sort of iconic, like how I used to make the starship Enterprise out of 5 square LEGO bricks. And it entertained me for years.

Animals and News

Well the group film is on it's way, we have the rough storyboards and will have more finalized boards by next week. We've got a great and funny story and everyone is on-board for it, so that's going swell. I've been placed as 'layout manager', which means it's my job to make sure the layouts are getting proper attention, and help everyone produce them. Of course everyone helps with every part of the process, but we each have a specific focus as well.

Layout and Storyboard class are both completely focused on the film right now. For animation class, I've got some key poses and backgrounds that I'll put up very soon. Meanwhile we went to the Royal Winter Fair, again, today so I've got studies from that. As well we're doing a small anatomy study project, and I'll have that up once I take a picture of it.

Meanwhile, here's my animal work from the fair. I started off with some pen gestures, went back to pencil for some structure practice but then I moved to markers. I had a lot of fun blocking in the basic shade and color with marker, then finished each drawing with pen contours on top of the block in. Definately gonna keep trying this, it's much better than doing a line drawing and then colouring in Photoshop afterwards:

I'll note the colours aren't quite right due to the scan, but since it's not an attempt to get exact color it's not a huge deal.

Year 3, and GO

Well Summer as always did not go as expected, but it certainly wasn't dissappointing either. I picked up quite a bit of know-how for Maya through tutorials and practice, which is helping immensely as we get into Maya Animation class this semester. I have 2 short videos from that, but I'm still fiddling with export settings so I'll have them up here when that's solved.

Meanwhile, there are basically 2 projects this fine 3rd of Animation: the group film, which is only in the concept stage 1st semester and gets produced 2nd semester, and for this semester we have the Action Analysis assignment. Animation class and Layout class are both completely dedicated to this 1 assignment, I finished the rough storyreel for it today, so here it is:


The end product might have some of this art in it, we don't have to animate the whole thing, only up to 6 seconds worth. For layout we'll have to make a complete, full colour background, which also pans. We also need voice during the part we animate, the sound clip in this vid is a placeholder, though the line and timing will be roughly the same. But the sound quality will be better since we'll get access to the sound studio for recording. In the meantime now you know what I sound like! (I'll do the voice for the finished line too)

I've been doing some vehicle doodles lately that I might put up in a sketchbook dump (if you cross your fingers hard enough, I wanna hear those phalanges cracking!), unfortunately I can't put up stuff about the 3rd year film, cause it's not independent so I don't have all the rights. But when it is finished (of course it's not technically even started yet!) I'll be sure to link you guys towards it!

End of Year 2 (a month later!)

So I took a little break from this after the end-of-year madness. Class ended over a month ago and I was hunting for a summer job (last time I'll have to do that though! Yay co-op next summer!). Decided to finally put a few things up from the last projects, as well as a few extra art-type works I got my hands into after school ended.

Starting off with the final painting assignment:

This used line-work from a pan-background layout assignment we did, which I never put up, which included a character walking across it from our walk-run animation, which I also never put up here...

Moving on! Final storyboard assignment used our 4 characters from that big character design project, which I DID put up, and put them into a TV-style storyboard sequence. We had to plan out a 3 sequence story and then choose 1 of those sequences to board. Then we had to observe carefully the ins and outs of TV storyboarding. I'll find out exactly how I did on this project when I pick it up in September, but I did well in the class so I'm guessing I did well with this.

Don't think you've seen the last of the trains! Having this sequence occur on a moving train, and viewed through various camera angles makes the sequence quite special layout-wise. And what do you know, I used part of it for my final layout assignment, which I'll post up if I ever get around to fixing 1 or 2 things with it.

Finally, away from assignments, here's some paintings I've done for my own enjoyment. The first one here I started back in August of 09, most of the work was done then but I finally got around to finishing the thing after class ended. Also, if it looks similar to the image at the top of this blog, that's because the top image is a previous version, one with a more cartoony rendering style. For this painting I wanted a lot more realism:

This next painting had similar motives, improving my realistic-rendering skills. I wanted to try my hands on something complex and metallic, so I choose Samus Aran from Nintendo's Metroid Prime series. I was also inspired by watching some people doing a playthrough of Metroid Prime, I would start replaying the game myself, but I've got loads of art stuff I'm trying to do right now, plus work, plus I probably enjoy painting more than playing anyways. Or rather, painting is a sort of playing for me, sometimes, which I'm sure is a very good thing.

The blue stuff is a crazy radioactive substance called Phazon. Samus is firing her Plasma beam, which is the strongest in the game, and since the sun is made of plasma I figured I'd make the visible innards of the gun resemble the solar surface, whereas in the actual game it looks more like lava. Also at first I didn't want the gun to be firing, but rather show the inside of the barrel glowing. But then I felt the void around the gun needed something more compositionally-speaking, so I went ahead and added a big fancy beam blast.

Well this post is more than big enough, as I said I have lots more art stuff in the works, so if all goes well there should be more pictures for you guys and gals to glance at soon!