5/15/2012

Posted a test render of the bean plant for the CSHL Symposium in the Photo Gallery. Also updated the playblast of the bean's animation as seen here.

5/6/2012

For this year's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Symposium, I'm working on a time-lapse animation of a sprouting plant. I've posted a playblast of current progress to the new Works in Progress page for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as seen here.

Also, I've posted all the available certificates received from Digital Tutors after completing one of their courses on the Digital Tutors Certificates page. Since I've been using them a lot longer than they've apparently been handing out certificates, this page is doomed to be forever incomplete. The rest of the courses I've taken with them (to the best of my recollection) are listed on the page about My Animation Education.

The psychologist in New York has experienced some difficulty with his headgear and has sent the unit back to the company for examination. I'll be continuing to study and figure out Unity Scripting language so I can construct an interactive environment where his clients can view and manually advance their own speech or lecture notes, and interact with other virtual people in a very basic way.

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4/13/2012

For the psychologist in New York, I have been studying Unity3D (a gaming engine) with the intention of creating interactive levels for him to use to treat his clients. With the desire for interactivity came the realization that animated and pre-rendered footage would not be sufficient, and so for this reason I have decided not to use An(i)ma for the crowd simulations. Instead, I am looking into using assets from Daz3D, as I’ve found they are far more readily imported and used in Unity, and can be scripted to be interactive.

Right now we’re looking into hardware, and investigating the use of his headgear as a cost-effective solution. It’s a Z800 3DVisor, with onboard rotational tracking. Its proprietary eMagin motion tracking software is touted as being able to translate head movement into on-screen motion. If this can work with the Unity game engine then we have a ready-made VR solution already on hand.

Also, I’m still studying up on Maya and Mudbox integration via Digital Tutors for use on future projects. Among other things, I'll probably end up using Mudbox on the shark model I created.

The 2D project Black Friday the 13th is finished and posted in my new page for 2D animations found here.

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2/23/2012

Much news, many new programs, and so on. I'm currently in the process of incorporating new software and content, which I'll be detailing below.

I am currently speaking with a psychologist in NY who is interested in some animations for his treatment programs of clients. He is using virtual reality equipment in treatment of his clients to help overcome such debilitating phobias as fear of flying and public speaking. I will be working to provide him with some crowd simulations in various virtual environments (airplane cabin, conference room, and so on) using a program called An(i)ma.

An(i)ma itself seems to be a pretty neat little program. With just a few clicks, one can place crowds of people into just about any OBJ model. These virtual crowds can wander up and down stairs, escalators, ramps, and can walk, sit, or simply stand around as individuals carry out some random basic animations like waving, talking, laughing, checking their watch, and so on. They even step out of each other's way when walking, avoiding collisions by themselves. Although it was designed primarily for architectural previsualizations, it can easily and readily be used for some basic background visual noise in just about any animation set in a populated area.

An(i)ma is also readily integrated into Maya by use of plug-in.

In regards to crowd simulation software, I am also watching developments of another Maya plug-in called Miarmy, which seems very powerful for a reasonable price. This plug-in looks to be for a much different purpose than An(i)ma, which is mostly only useful for basic crowds as background. Miarmy allows much more thorough control over the generated crowds, and can utilize many of Maya's inherent features. 

Concerning Maya itself, I upgraded to Maya 2012, and got a copy of Mudbox, which I have to admit I much prefer over 3D Coat. I like the comparative ease-of-use, the ease of finding well-made tutorials (Digital Tutors again), the natural integration with Maya, and so on.

Since I learned that they were free this month, I figured I might as well give Daz3D, Hexagon, and Bryce a shot. Daz3D seems to be a great source for fairly realistic looking models of people and environments. I don't know if I will use Hexagon or Bryce as I am quite content to model whatever else I need in Maya.

I am pleased to say I finally found a suitable female voice for the Black Friday 2D project that should be readily available to work with and of a sound quality quite fitting for the role. I hope to get that project finished very soon.

And lastly, I uploaded the next playblast from project Happy Joy to the appropriate works in progress page here.

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1/18/2012

Posted the final version of the pea plant to be used in this year's symposium poster in the Photo Gallery, along with a copy of the poster itself. The symposium this year is about plant biology. I opted to use Mendelian pea plants because I figured they were a good match for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Gregor Mendel's experiments demonstrated inheritance and alleles, and CSHL is well known internationally for its work in genetics.

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1/12/2012

Posted in the Photo Gallery is a snapshot of the pea plant I'm working on for the CSHL Symposium poster.

The 2D animation project is on hold as the voice I would like to get for the female is on vacation at the moment.

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12/20/11

Posted for the first time are screenshots of the 2D project (found on my new 2D Animation pages) that I’m aiming to finish as soon as possible, before it becomes irrelevant. I wanted to lampoon holiday shopping lunacy, so I did a short Black Friday themed animation where I paired it off with another kind of Friday. I guess you could say it deals with the transience of icons as well as spoofing shopping madness.

I made everything in Toon Boom Studio, which is a pretty good basic 2D animation software package. One of my favorite Studio features (that the higher Toon Boom programs seem to lack) is the scene manager feature, which allows creation and arrangement of multiple scenes within the same project, similar to a built-in linear editor. I also have Animate, which I’ll be using a lot more often in the future.

Right now I’m just waiting on some voice acting, and working on arranging the audio.

Also posted is the current progress on the latest scene from the Cerebus project, under the Cerebus Animation in Progress page.  

***

11/26/2011

I've finished the Digital Tutors training course on Render Passes, and now it's time to take their course on Advanced Compositing with Maya and Toxik.

I've received another updated version of a rig for a character for the Cerebus project, and will get to work on that scene as well. It's the follow-up to the first scene I animated for this project, and in this one the head farmer interrogates Cerebus.

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11/16/2011

Uploaded the finished playblast of the next Cerebus scene to the External Work/Cerebus the Aardvark page.

I've finished the Digital Tutors courses on Animating with Props and Camera Animation in Maya. Now, it's off to take the Render Passes in Maya 2009, followed by the course titled Advanced Compositing Workflows with Maya and Toxik.

11/12/11

Uploaded a playblast of the next Cerebus scene I'm working on (click the link to view). This shot focuses on the bird that poops on our Earth-pig anti-hero as it flies by. I'll be utilizing nParticles once again, giving the poop a nice thick sticky white look.

Looks like 3D Coat has a new version (3.7) and has app-links to Maya! I'll definitely be downloading that.

***

11/4/2011

Uploaded an updated demo reel.

Uploaded some playblasts of the next shot for the current Joker project. I admit it, I'm going for shock or gross out value here. This isn't going to be one of my milder sequences of animation. After the injection of whatever it is in that syringe, Robin's going to heave, and then his face will spasm and contort into a grimace-like grin. I'll be using nParticles for the spew. It won't be too much, though, as who would go out to fight crime on a full stomach, anyway?

The Advanced Skeleton rig was a good find. It's proving easy and smooth to work with so far. Robin is proving responsive, and I've re-rigged Harley Quinn with the setup. I'd like to re-do the Joker as well, since I went overboard when modeling him and put in too much geometry for wrinkles around the elbows. The result is that the elbows became a nightmare when painting weights or trying to deform properly.

10/17/2011

Uploaded a rendered version of the Startled Dummy project to the Personal Projects/Original Materials page. I still might at some point make another background for this particular piece. I rendered it in Maya and put the layers together in Composite.

At the moment, I'm glad I found Advanced Skeleton, as it seems to be working out rather well for Robin. The general body rig seems to be doing quite well, but I can't quite get the face portion of the system to work. Needs more practice, but I can generally say that Advanced Skeleton actually animates smoothly and without slowdown, which will allow for some nice scrubbing and animation practice.

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10/14/2011

When I had initially found and purchased the Anzovin plug-in, I was thrilled that I had obtained something that could make rigging easy and fast, thus allowing me to focus on actual animation as opposed to spending a significant amount of time constructing a functional rig. However, whenever I used those rigs made with the Anzovin plug-in, I noticed a significant amount of lag, or slowdown, that really made the animation process cumbersome at best, and outright irritating at worst. Scrubbing the timeline to get a good idea of arcing, motion, timing, or even flow was nigh impossible. I recently found what appears to be an impressive auto-rigging system called Advanced Skeleton. I'm currently working on learning it by re-rigging my Robin model. If animation goes smoothly with Advanced Skeleton, I'll be finishing up the Happy Joy project using this new rig, and I will apply it to my Harley Quinn model as well.

At the moment I am starting to render the scene files for the Happy Joy project, trying to stay organized with all the different layers. I'm arranging all the different render layers using Composite and coming to appreciate that particular program more and more all the time.

I'm rendering the Startled Dummy project to give it a much more polished, finished look.                                                    

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9/30/2011

Posted the finished stab-climb scene in the Cerebus the Aardvark page. Once again I used nParticles for the blood.

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9/20/11

Posted the blocking-timing-spacing phase of the next scene of Cerebus the Aardvark in progress. In this scene, Cerebus uses his sword to climb up the serpent monster's belly. 

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9/18/11

Updated the blood gusher effects made with nParticles, and posted the results on the Cerebus the Aardvark page, simply replacing the old video with the new one.

Posted an updated demo reel as well.

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9/14/11

Added some nParticles for snake blood in the latest Cerebus scene, found on the Cerebus the Aardvark page. I made it an over-the-top gusher effect (as it is more of a fantasy adventure movie), with lots of nice, shiny, blobby gobs of blood splaying all over the place.

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9/12/11

Posted the latest Cerebus scene to the Cerebus the Aardvark page. I'm still going to see about adding some nParticles for snake blood, but it's not strictly necessary as my part in this particular project is as an animator, not FX.

Also posted the next playblast (sans background in this clip) for the Happy Joy project.

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9/6/2011

Posted more progress on the climactic final battle scene for the Cerebus the Aardvark 3D movie project on the Cerebus Animation Progress page.

8/29/2011

Posted an updated demo reel.

Posted a playblast of the Cerebus scene I'm currently working on in the Cerebus Animation Progress page. The scene consists of Cerebus and the twins encountering a giant, multi-tentacled serpent monster in the lair of the wizard they have been pursuing. It's part of the climactic final battle of the movie and sounded like a challenge to animate. It's been fun so far.

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8/18/2011

Posted some more playblasts of the "Happy Joy" project currently in progress, and posted some pictures in the Photo Gallery.

I'm currently examining/planning a scene for the Cerebus 3D movie project, which consists of Cerebus fighting a giant, multi-tentacled serpent creature. The idea is to have Cerebus climb up the creature's belly, using his sword as a makeshift handle via repeatedly stabbing it into the serpent. This could also potentially be an opportunity to use some nParticles for the serpent's blood.

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8/13/2011

Posted the next finished scene of Cerebus to the Cerebus the Aardvark page.

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8/1/2011

Uploaded a playblast of the blocking, timing and spacing phase of the latest scene I'm working on for the Cerebus the Aardvark 3D movie to the respective Works in Progress page.

Also, I've decided to remove blog posts after a few months (longer if I'm working on something significant) to help keep things tidy. The older entries referred to Works in Progress videos that were no longer up or available, and so on, and I figured it would be more organized to only have the most recent/relevant blog entries posted.

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7/28/2011

I've re-arranged the site a bit and added a few pages to keep things organized. I've split up the finished animations into External Work (which will hold material I've made as part of a team with other people or institutions like Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) and Personal Projects (which will hold all the material I make on my own from start to finish). Each of these pages have sub-pages pertaining to the subject matter contained therein.

The Works in Progress page also now contains sub-folders organizing the playblasts and other materials pertaining to specific projects as they are posted. The current "in progress" projects are the shark project and my third project focusing on the Joker. There is also a works in progress page pertaining to any Cerebus animation that hasn't been finished yet.

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7/26/2011

Posted the next finished Cerebus playblast to the Cerebus the Aardvark page. In this clip, the twins get up from the table and gesture to Cerebus to follow them.

Also posted a playblast of the next shot from my current Joker project in the respective Works in Progress page. I had to come up with a way to work with the "kissy" sounds during the Happy Joy song, so I set the camera on Harley Quinn as she plays the guitar and let her make kissy faces at Mr. J as he dances in leaps and bounds around her.

I did in fact revert to using the previous Joker rig (after making a few modifications), and animation is going much more smoothly with much more favorable results. I replaced the channel box controls for the fingers with actual control curves on the joints themselves, and I made his coattails and bowtie manually controlled as opposed to dynamic IK splines. I also added some blendshapes to make his collar react automatically when he turns his head or tilts it back.

At some point, I might re-make Harley Quinn with a self-made rig, so as to be able to animate her more readily. But for now I'm just going to get this project finished.

***

7/21/11

Posted a new Cerebus playblast of another finished animation I made for them over in the Cerebus the Aardvark page. I had to re-post this playblast because I adjusted the characters according to some new information about their seating arrangement. In this update, the twin that is speaking glances at the other twin, seated to his right.

Posted another playblast of the other Cerebus scene Im currently finishing up in the Works in Progress page. There was an unexpected problem with one of the rigs I received in that the blend shapes did not work. Thusly, I could not finish the facial animation at present time. In the meantime, however, progress is posted.

I also deleted some irrelevant videos from the works in progress page to help keep things tidy.

In other news, Ill probably end up using my previous Joker rig for the current Joker project. The Anzovin rig, while it may be very convenient to create, turns out to be very slow while working. It creates the effect of working blind, because I cant really scrub the timeline smoothly enough to see the animation Im creating.

I like Digital Tutors immensely, but their download Vault program is giving me some difficulty. I currently am not able to download any videos or apparently update my catalogs. I may just end up having to re-install it.

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7/11/11

The next clip I animated for WhatComix Entertainments Cerebus the Aardvark movie is up in the Cerebus the Aardvark page. I was debating animating the small money pouch using a dynamic nCloth system, but in the end I went with a simple bend deformer and blendshapes (much more concise for a short animation like this).

Working with the Cerebus project has introduced me to concepts I might not have otherwise tried to use. One of these concepts is referencing, and Ill be incorporating it into my current workflow. I like the idea of having a referenced file that one can update at the source if necessary and then re-load into all other files in which it has already been referenced. Im going to be trying it out in a new workflow methodology to see if I can speed things up around here.

I have finished the second shot in the next Joker project, and will be moving on to the third. I plan on using referencing for all my characters from here on in, in the event that I need to change something on one or other of them, and also to keep scene size down while working.

Im currently in the middle of Toon Booms Animate series of training tutorials, so 2D is still something Im going to be incorporating in the future.

I am also working on learning how to create blend shapes within 3D Coat for use in Messiah. A forum topic I recently found indicated that the Paint/Sculpt rooms Microvertex Painting option is actually the correct 3D Coat feature to use, as its paint layers can hold sculpting information.

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6/29/2011

Updated my demo reel to include the latest Cerebus animations. The demo reel itself can be found on the Demo Reel page. All of the featured animations in their entirety can be found on pages within this site.

Uploaded a playblast from the new Joker project, which can be found on the Works in Progress page.

Uploaded the animations I made for both the introduction credits and final credits for the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's 2011 Symposium, which can be found on the Cold Spring Harbor Lab page.

Joker and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © DC Comics. The 3d models and animation made here by me are for animation practice and fan service only.